A Free Life

by Ha Jin

  “I never thought you were such a businessman.” Nan slapped the top of the karaoke machine Shubo had just installed.

  “We’re living in America now and should be coolheaded about this sort of thing.” Shubo’s voice was harried, while his fingers were thrumming a table. Behind him a carpenter was busy building a bar.

  Niyan said to Nan, “We don’t have an opening right now. When we need Pingping’s help, we’ll let her know.” Unconsciously she combed her upper lip with her teeth. Beyond her, on the beverage machine was taped a bottomless-cup sign.

  “Yes, you can let Pingping fill in for you when you have to go to a party,” Nan sneered.

  “Wait a second,” Shubo butted in. “Was I not a handy stopgap for you for several years?”

  “So? That was how you learned this trade. That was a procedure for your apprenticeship!”

  “Nan, you have a penchant for going ballistic. Truculence is your Achilles’ heel, you know.” Shubo sucked his cheeks, his wispy mustache bristling.

  “Only because I’m too gullible about people. With a good buddy like you, who needs an enemy?”

  “We really don’t have an opening now. You’re being unreasonable.”

  “At least I’m not out of character—haven’t forgotten how I started. All right, thanks a million!” Too sick to argue with Shubo anymore, Nan wheeled around and stalked out of the Gold Wok.

  “Such a hothead,” Shubo said to his wife, and cracked the joints of his fingers.

  “I did promise Pingping to let her work here.”

  “So what? We’ve changed our minds. We own this place now and must run it in our own way. Once Pingping is here, Nan will poke his nose into our business for sure.” He passed into English: “Too many dragons cause a drought.”

  “The right American idiom is ‘Too many cooks spoil the soup.’”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “But aren’t Pingping and Nan our friends?”

  “No friendship is unconditional.”

  Niyan breathed a sigh and said no more, believing he was right. In this place one had to take care of oneself. Friendship was largely based on mutual usefulness—only personal interests could bind people together.

  24

  EVER SINCE Nan began working at the motel, he had kept a poetry journal, which was a traditional practice of ancient Chinese poets. On the first page of his blue spiral notebook he had copied these lines from Frost’s “Oven Bird”:

  The bird would cease and be as other birds

  But that he knows in singing not to sing.

  The question that he frames in all but words

  Is what to make of a diminished thing.

  At night he often read those lines before writing down his ideas and reflections on poetry and writing. He regretted not having started the journal earlier, which helped him organize his thoughts and also provided material for his poems. When he sat at the front desk alone, he felt at peace with himself. At long last he could sit like this, thinking and writing devotedly. How mysterious and miraculous life was! Even Pingping’s back injury had done him a service, forcing him to change his life. He couldn’t help but wonder whether it was the working of some supernatural power that had lifted him out of his old rut. How fortunate he was to have Pingping as his wife and fellow sufferer.

  Every day he told her she must concentrate on her recuperation and mustn’t work too hard on her paper cuttings, which she had begun making for Janet’s store and which she enjoyed doing very much. She and her friend would split the money from the sales of her artwork, and Pingping wanted to study many patterns, improve her scissor work, and develop her craft. She imagined that someday she’d show her mother the cuttings, which would force the old lady to admit that her oldest daughter was superior to her in the art. Nan fully supported Pingping’s plan and bought her rolls of paper of different colors and a set of scissors, large and small. But he advised her to take the paper cuttings mainly as a hobby, not as a profession. In other words, she mustn’t give herself any pressure and must rest well, not sit too long and hurt her back again. He also told her to avoid going to the Gold Wok, which she might hate to see now. Shubo and Niyan had reorganized the business, and nowadays many Chinese customers, including a foursome glee club, would go there and sing karaoke songs until midnight.

  The Wus talked about what Pingping might do after she recuperated. Ideally, she thought she’d like to get a degree in library science and work as a librarian eventually, but that was not feasible. Besides being unable to write in English and having to pay high tuition, she couldn’t leave her family for college. Taotao would need her help in the next few years, and she’d feel restless when away from home. As a compromise, she thought she’d like to open a clothing store at Beaver Hill Plaza. They could import fashionable clothes from China and other Asian countries and sell them here for a good profit. They had known people in this business doing quite well in Massachusetts. So Nan went to see the owner of the plaza, who agreed to rent the Wus the suite next to Janet’s store, which had been vacant for more than half a year. The Wus planned to open their shop in two or three months.

  At last free of the restaurant, Nan somehow felt wary of food and had deliberately curbed his hearty appetite. These days he ate just one meal a day, usually in the evening. If he was hungry at work, he’d drink a cup of coffee with a lot of milk and sugar in it, and if hungry during the day, he’d eat a banana or an orange, as though reducing his food intake could strengthen his body and mind. He didn’t know how long he could continue to do this, but he wanted to exercise his willpower fully so as to live a life different from before.

  One morning, as Nan was about to leave the motel, Mr. Lee called him into his office. His boss narrowed his small, kind eyes and said, “Nan, would you like to be the manager of this place? I will give you a big raise for that.”

  Without thinking twice Nan replied, “No, I want to work zer night shift so zat I can take my son back from school in zee afternoon. He has some extracurricular activities.” True, for the first time Taotao could join the chess club, though he wasn’t good at any real sports thanks to lack of participation over the years. Before Nan had changed to his current job, the boy had had to return home immediately after school, by the bus. Now Nan would pick him up late in the afternoons, and on Thursday evenings he’d drive him to the Red Cross office in Lawrenceville for public service. Sometimes father and son talked about where Taotao would go to college. The boy, already a freshman in high school and half a head taller than his mother, always said he’d go to the Northeast for college, partly because he was still a Red Sox fan. These days he had been talking about sociology as his college major. Nan, knowing Taotao might again switch to another subject in the humanities or social sciences, didn’t discourage him and just asked him to come back to see his mother at least twice a year. He suspected that his son might want to meet Livia again, and worried that she might still do drugs, but he didn’t ask him. He was sure they still had e-mail contact. In time he’d try to dissuade Taotao from going to college in the Northeast, since Pingping would prefer to have him closer to home.

  Mr. Lee, having expected that Nan would jump at the offer since almost a third of his wages went to health insurance, was moved by Nan’s explanation and said, “You’re a good daddy. I understand.”

  The offer saddened Nan in a way. It reminded him of his interview seven years ago with Howard, the owner of Ding’s Dumplings in Manhattan. Howard too had meant to make him a manager eventually. Nan’s life now seemed to have come back in a circle to the starting point. Yet he could see that he was no longer the same man. He had been toughened by the struggle, by the mistakes he had made, by the necessary process of acclimatization that a regular immigrant like himself would have to go through. What’s more, his family had a relatively stable life. He could even say he was a better man now, wiser and more capable, and determined to follow his own heart.

  When sitting at the front desk in the small hours, he�
�d think about his life, especially about his twelve and a half years in America. Many things previously unclear to him had become transparent. The notion of the American dream had bewildered him for a good decade; now he knew that to him, such a dream was not something to be realized but something to be pursued only. This must be the true meaning of Emerson’s dictum “Hitch your wagon to a star.” To be a free individual, he had to go his own way, had to endure loneliness and isolation, and had to give up the illusion of success in order to accept his diminished state as a new immigrant and as a learner of this alphabet. More than that, he had to take the risk of wasting his life without getting anywhere and of becoming a joke in others’ eyes. Finally, he had to be brave enough to devote himself not to making money but to writing poetry, willing to face failure.

  On Christmas Eve, which was a Friday, he wrote a poem for Pingping for the first time in his life. The lines came naturally and effortlessly as he jotted them down in his notebook. Seeing the words on the paper, he was moved, also awed, his vision blurred a little. The poem went:

  Belated Love

  So many years I wandered around

  like a kite scrambling away from your hand

  that held a flexible string.

  How often my wings collapsed,

  soaked by rain or shattered by wind.

  Still, I went on scouring the clouds

  for a face that might blow the shimmer

  of my brain into blazing lines.

  With a seething heart I wobbled through

  the air, chasing a sublime haze.

  Now I’m at your feet,

  no zest left in my chest,

  my wings fractured,

  my mouth foaming regret,

  my words too jumbled to make sense.

  What I mean is to say,

  “My love, I’ve come home.”

  Having read the poem once more, he wept, tears wetting his fingers. Never had he been able to write with such fluency and feeling. He revised the poem numerous times, rearranging some lines and replacing a word here and there. He worked hard at it.

  After four o’clock sleep finally claimed him. He rested his head on a rubber pad on the counter and dozed off. His Collins Cobuild Dictionary sat beside his elbow, on top of which was a volume of Linda Dewit’s poems. By now he used only monolingual dictionaries so that he could understand the definitions of words more accurately and learn the language faster.

  “Merry Christmas!”

  “Merry Christmas to you too!”

  Nan was wakened by the joyous greetings in the corridor leading to the kitchen. The low-pitched lobby smelled of fresh coffee and muffins. He rubbed his eyes and smiled as Mr. Lee, in a gray anorak, stepped in to replace him. Even though he had to work on the holiday, Nan felt genuinely happy. “Merry Christmas!” he said to his boss.

  Mr. Lee looked at him in perplexity, though he greeted him back. “I thought you’d be upset about working tonight,” he said inquiringly.

  “No, I’ll be happy to work here every night.” Nan beamed despite his tired face.

  As Nan headed for his car, a homeless man, Jimmy, who was a veteran of the Vietnam War and often mooched cigarettes from passersby, was sitting on his heels with his back against the wall of the motel. He stood up, grinning at Nan, and said, “Merry Christmas, sir. Can you spare some change?” He put out his dark-skinned hand, his ring and little fingers missing.

  “Merry Christmas!” Nan cried back. He thrust his hand into his hip pocket, pulled out four singles and some coins—all the money in there—and gave them to Jimmy.

  Jimmy said, “You gave me a real holiday, sir. Thank you!”

  “Buy yourself a cahp of coffee and a doughnut.”

  “I will.”

  Nan could feel Jimmy’s eyes following him all the way to his van. The sky was overcast and the wind chilly. It threatened snow. He lifted his head to watch the low nimbus clouds. Snow would make today more like Christmas, and Pingping and Taotao might roll a snowball again in their backyard. Nan felt sleepy, his forehead numb, yet he was strong in spirit. He pulled out of the parking lot and turned on the radio, which was playing a swelling carol. He reminded himself that he mustn’t nod off on his way home.

  EPILOGUE

  EXTRACTS FROM

  NAN WU’S

  POETRY JOURNAL

  January 3, 1998

  THE OTHER DAY, at the used book store Book Nook, I picked up a volume of poetry, A Peculiar Time, by Dabney Stockwell. Having read it through, I feel it’s a remarkable book: fresh, elegant, intimate, and full of mysterious lines. But there’s no way to find more information on this poet, who should be in his seventies if he’s still alive. Neither Barnes & Noble nor Borders carries his books. This saddens me, because it shows how fragile and ephemeral a poet’s reputation can be. In the acknowledgments, Stockwell listed the magazines in which most of the poems had originally appeared. Obviously he was known, if not famous, when the book was published in 1969. No matter how good one’s poetry is, its survival seems to depend on chance. Therefore, one shouldn’t expect any success. In the end there may be only failure.

  January 30, 1998

  I have found that the addressee, the “you,” in lyrical poems is vital in shaping the poetic voice. It functions like a sounding board that helps determine the level of diction and the volume and tone of the speech. Generally speaking, it’s more effective to identify the addressee in a poem so that the readers can be clear who is speaking to whom.

  March 9, 1998

  Good news. Yellow Leaves accepted two poems, “Pomegranates” and “The Drake.” Though it returned my other three pieces, this is my first acceptance, which I hope portends an auspicious beginning. The editor suggested only one minor revision—deleting a comma. I revised four other poems slightly and sent them out to Still Water Review.

  April 7, 1998

  For a long time I couldn’t decide in what kind of English I should write. I used to avoid using American English because some of my poems were set in China. These days I feel I must depend on the American idiom and stop confining myself to the neutral English like that used in the Holy Bible, NIV. My subject matter would eventually be American, so I should get myself ready for the task of speaking in the American idiom. I mustn’t live in the past and must focus on the present and the future.

  May 4, 1998

  Heard from Arrows today. Its editor, Gail Upchurch, urges me to quit writing poetry. She wrote, “I admire your courage, but I should let you know you are wasting your time. English is too hard for you. You may be able to write prose in English eventually, but poetry is impossible. So don’t waste your time anymore. Do something you can do. For instance, write a memoir about the Cultural Revolution, which I’m sure will be marketable. Or write some personal essays. In brief, the way you use the language is too clumsy. For a native speaker like myself, it almost amounts to an insult.”

  Screw the memoir! It’s a kiddie form. I don’t mind insulting someone by my writing. A poet is supposed to outrage people. Gail Upchurch spoke as if I hadn’t known I was waging a losing battle, and she didn’t know I already accepted myself as a loser who has nothing to lose anymore. To write poetry is to exist.

  June 13, 1998

  Chinese poetry does not have the concept of the Muse. As a result, the poetic speech can originate only from the human domain. This is an interesting phenomenon, which marks the fundamental difference between Chinese poetry and English poetry. Perhaps this can explain why Chinese poetry is more earthy and bound to the affairs of this world. Should I believe in the Muse? I don’t know, but I can see that such a belief may empower a poet. Still, how can we be sure what work has divine sponsorship and what does not? Even if we are sure, can’t our convictions be but illusions? In other words, how can we trust our own visions? Probably to stay within the human domain is a better way to go.

  July 6, 1998

  Tu Fu wrote, “Writing is a matter of a thousand years; / My heart knows the gain and the loss
.” It seems he was quite certain that some of his poems would last a millennium. Although he is a great poet, if not the greatest in Chinese, his confidence verges on megalomania. The mortality of one’s poetry is contingent on many factors mostly beyond the poet’s control. By contrast, Horace said he hoped his work would survive himself by a century. This is more human, aware of his finitude.

  July 20, 1998

  Talked with Dick last night. He is bored in Iowa and said he’d try to see if he could work out a deal with his university so that he could teach only one semester a year. He misses New York, especially the nightlife. He is opposed to the idea of self-publishing, because a vanity press book is looked down upon by professional poets. Screw the professionals! William Blake published Songs of Innocence and of Experience at his own expense; so did A. E. Housman with A Shropshire Lad. I should not exclude self-publishing once I have enough poems for a book.

  August 22, 1998

  Fives poems were rejected by Poetry, but the editor wrote an encouraging note, saying he saw “a glimmer of talent in every poem.” He seemed to address me as a young woman. I’ve been revising the poems and will send them elsewhere soon.

  September 6, 1998

  Too many people call themselves poets in the U.S., just as too many people call themselves artists—here even a con man is called con artist. I don’t believe in the “art” of poetry. For me it’s just a craft, not very much different from carpentry or masonry. It’s a kind of work that can keep me emotionally balanced and functioning better as a human being. So I write only because I have to.

  September 27, 1998

  Gail Upchurch wrote again and said she still couldn’t see any progress in my poetry. She quoted Yeats, who in a letter declares that no poet who doesn’t write in his mother tongue can write with music and strength. I was disheartened by the quotation, as I do love some of Yeats’s poems. I felt as if a brick had hit me in the face. On second thought, I believe Yeats’s statement might be true only of his time. Nowadays TV and radio are everywhere, and you can hear native English speakers talk every day, so it may be less difficult for a writer to choose to write in his adopted tongue.