by Ha Jin
I didn’t share my thoughts and questions about my father with Juli, though my mind had been full of them lately. In the center of his plight may have resided this fact: mentally, he couldn’t settle down anywhere. It was true that in his later years he began to like America and grow attached to my mother, but he could not imagine spending the rest of his life with Nellie. His heart was always elsewhere. Wherever he went, he’d feel out of place, like a stranded traveler.
1958
Gary and Nellie didn’t have many friends, but that didn’t bother them, since they preferred a quiet life. They were no longer in close touch with her parents, who had come to see their granddaughter the previous winter but stayed only three days, having to head back for the endless work on their vegetable farm. Since the birth of Lilian, Gary and Nellie seldom went out together, because they were reluctant to hire a babysitter. Once a man who had dated Nellie many years before phoned and chitchatted with her for more than an hour. Gary blew up and exchanged angry words with his wife. He threatened to move out if she kept answering that man’s calls. She caved and told her ex-boyfriend to leave her alone. She knew that her husband’s threat was not idle. Sometimes when Gary worked late into the night, he’d sleep in his little cage of a study, on a futon that he had insisted on buying over her objection. She was alarmed, afraid he might have lost interest in her, revolted by the ten pounds she had gained after giving birth. (In reality she was still trim with long limbs and a twenty-eight-inch waistline. She took great pride in her figure, and it would easily outshine her daughter’s in the future.) Nellie noticed that Gary was sometimes absentminded, seated at his desk doing nothing. That made her wonder why he looked so sad.
Indeed, his mind was elsewhere, shadowed by the memories of his other wife. One of those moments he always remembered was an evening soon after their wedding. Yufeng was sitting cross-legged on the warm brick bed, needle in hand and thimble on finger, mending a tear in his quilted overcoat. She was wearing a green tunic printed with tiny jasmine blossoms, which set off her smooth face, calm and shiny with concentration. He was lying with his head in her lap and observing her raptly, though she kept urging him, “Close your eyes and take a nap.” The light thrown by an oil lamp was soft but sputtered from time to time, and the bridal chamber was so peaceful that he felt he’d love to repose like this for the rest of his life. If he died then and there, he’d be happy. This tranquil image of Yufeng plying her needle would rise in his mind every now and then, haunting him and misting his eyes. If only he could rest his head in her lap again.
He felt she must still love him, but in a perverse way of thinking, he hoped she had betrayed him by finding another man. That would have made her life easier and assuaged some of his guilt, though it might cause her to lose his salary. It was too cruel to let her wait for his unforeseeable return. She’d be better off if she stopped being his wife. On the other hand, without her in the household no one was there to take care of his elderly parents. Like him, Yufeng was misused relentlessly. Someday he’d have to find a way of making it up to her, if he could.
Yet his thoughts about Yufeng did not totally incapacitate him in his current marriage. He was fond of Nellie, and once a week they still had sex, even with abandon. He would kiss her on the mouth and nibble her earlobes, and when inside her, he would move slowly and gently, feeling her blood pulsating in his loins, so that they both could reach climax. He’d do anything to make her come and loved to see her ecstatic face clench as if she were in pain. Much as he enjoyed her body, sometimes he preferred to sleep alone, giving the excuse that he had to work late into the night and was reluctant to disturb her. In a sense that was true, but he also meant to keep a clear head for his day job and secret mission.
In DC’s intelligence community Gary had gradually acquired a reputation as the best translator of Chinese. He was nicknamed the Linguist. His good name was partly thanks to his friendship with George Thomas, who was in charge of Chinese affairs in the CIA’s East Asia Division and often assigned Gary projects. To further his own career, Thomas had resumed his work toward a PhD in Chinese literature at Georgetown, writing a dissertation on the Tang poet Du Mu, whose lyrical poems he loved so much that he could quote some exquisite lines off the top of his head, especially those about mist-swathed Nanjing, the capital of many dynasties. Besides the primary texts, Thomas needed to read some secondary sources written in classical Chinese, but his grasp of the language wasn’t up to the task, so he asked Gary to translate some key passages of the conventional poetry diaries, which had been left by many major poets and had over the centuries become an essential part of Chinese poetry criticism. This was easy for Gary. He checked out a thick anthology of the diaries from the Library of Congress, a place he loved and visited at least once a month. Thomas wanted to pay him out of his own pocket for the translation, two dollars an hour, but Gary adamantly refused to take money from him. He did the work out of gratitude, and also to deepen their friendship now that Thomas was a senior officer in the heart of the U.S. intelligence business.
In return, Thomas invited Gary to a club named Bohemian Alley that offered live music. The place smelled of cigars and whiskey and had a poolroom in the back. The waitresses were young and lovely, wearing high heels, knee-length skirts, and tiny flowers, mostly forget-me-nots, in their hair, though the fluorescent lighting made their faces appear a little greenish. Gary and Thomas would drink beer and munch nuts and chicken nuggets. Thomas would ogle the waitresses’ behinds unabashedly while Gary tried to bridle his own impulses, and soon his neck grew stiff. He wished he could have Thomas’s bold wandering eye. Once in a while the two also had dinner there, steaks or barbecued pork chops or chicken enchiladas. When eating, Thomas would pick Gary’s brain about problems concerning the Far East.
It was there in the summer of 1958 that Gary discovered jazz. He enjoyed the spontaneous ebb and flow of the music, the swings and plunges, and the assured improvisation by the black musicians, one of them wearing dreadlocks, a hairstyle Gary hadn’t seen before. In spite of the mercurial notes, the music was so comforting and relaxing. Unpredictability—that was what he loved about jazz—everything was freewheeling, unprepared, yet always under control. He was so enamored of it that he began collecting jazz records, in particular those of Louis Armstrong and Benny Goodman.
One evening Thomas told Gary over a glass of Chablis, “You’d better get naturalized soon.” His green eyes were snapping meaningfully, as if to hint that once Gary became a U.S. citizen, there’d be more lucrative work for him.
“I’ll do that,” Gary said.
Since he wasn’t naturalized yet, Thomas could give him only less classified documents to translate, mainly the type listed as Confidential. Above that there were levels, such as Secret and Top Secret, to which Gary, as a noncitizen, was denied access. Nevertheless, every once in a while Thomas would use Gary for rendering secret orders for the spies in China that could not allow any ambiguity or inaccuracy. By translating these directives, Gary came to know some agents’ code names, their missions, their communication plans. He just kept notes on them and did not attempt to send out the intelligence right away, because he remembered the instructions from Bingwen: he was a strategic agent, not a petty spy specializing in sabotage or stealing technology. In addition, time is a determining factor in the espionage business. Generally speaking, the information before an event takes place is intelligence, whereas the information on an event that is already unfolding has become news. If the event is over, any information about it is nothing but archival material. Without a direct delivery channel, Gary couldn’t pass urgent information to Bingwen quickly, so he didn’t make an effort to collect the kind of intelligence whose value hinged on a time frame.
At the same time, his mind had been preoccupied with the ongoing events in China. At the end of July 1958, Khrushchev visited Beijing, and the two countries signed a joint communiqué that highlighted the cooperation and solidarity between them. A month after the Soviet lead
er had returned to Moscow, Mao ordered a massive bombardment against the Nationalist troops on Jinmen Island. One evening five hundred artillery pieces—cannons, howitzers, heavy coast guns—fired all at once, shelling the military positions, wharves, airfields, supply lines. Within hours hundreds of soldiers were killed outside the bunkers and in the trenches. Three generals, all vice commanders of the Jinmen defense, were also among the casualties. The top brass were eating dinner in a dining hall when a barrage of shells landed on them. Two generals were killed on the spot and the other one died on arrival at the field hospital.
For days the Nationalist army was too crippled to fight back. Then the United States gave them twelve 8-inch M55 self-propelled guns, which were delivered under cover of darkness. With the deployment of these heavy howitzers, the Nationalist troops began to fire back and managed to suppress some of the Communists’ artillery (though one of the big guns was blown up by a hostile shell that landed right in its barrel). Soon mainland China declared that it would bombard the island only on odd-numbered days to give the civilians and the defending troops a breather. Such a practice, which was also a way to dispose of expiring shells, continued till 1979, when China and the United States finally reestablished a formal relationship.
Following the events after the attack, Gary came to know that John Foster Dulles and Chiang Kai-shek had recently held secret talks about how to deter Red China’s aggression. The secretary of state suggested using nuclear weapons, which Chiang agreed to in principle, saying that a handful of small tactical bombs might do the job. But when Dulles revealed that the warheads should be at least as powerful as those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Chiang was aghast. After the talks, his government informed the White House that nuclear weapons should not be an option—the fallout might endanger Taiwan and the U.S. military bases in East Asia.
Another piece of information also took Gary by surprise. Some political analysts in Southeast Asia believed that the Communists’ artillery attack served two purposes: one was to sabotage Khrushchev’s new policy of promoting world peace because Mao, an advocate of confrontation, was always spoiling for a fight against the imperialist West; the other was to form a link with Taiwan—in other words, the bombardment signified a territorial claim. It was reported that the moment Chiang Kai-shek heard of the attack, he’d said in praise of Mao, “What a marvelous move!” That was because he didn’t want to see an independent Taiwan either, still viewing himself as the leader of the whole of China. Initially Gary was baffled by Chiang’s words. All three of the generals who had died were noted for their ability and bravery, and Chiang must have known them personally. So how could he call the bombardment “a marvelous move”? Evidently, to the top commander, even generals were expendable. The whole affair felt as if Mao had stretched out his hand and Chiang had shaken it with appreciation, so that Jinmen Island would serve as a link between the mainland and Taiwan. The two sides seemed to have worked in tandem, and only the soldiers were the losers.
Gary took photos of the documents, specifically the conversation between Dulles and Chiang. He wanted the Chinese leaders to be more cautious when they decided on military action in the future. They ought to take into account possible nuclear attacks in retaliation.
After telling Nellie that he wanted to travel back to Hong Kong to see his cousin, Gary went in early December, a good time of year for a vacation there. He gave thought to the possibility of being noticed by U.S. counterintelligence. “Let them follow me,” he said to himself. “If that happens, I’ll go home sooner.” But nothing happened, as McCarthyism had been publicly condemned and foreign travel was more common now. In Hong Kong, Gary handed his films to Bingwen. For this intelligence he was paid a thousand dollars, deposited directly into his account at Hang Seng Bank.
It was on this trip that Bingwen revealed the existence of Gary’s twins back home. The news made his stomach heave. He was speechless, staring at the photo in which Yufeng and their son and daughter were smiling at him. They all looked content: his wife had aged a little and was fleshier than before, while the children both had his eyes and mouth. The boy was bonier and shorter than the girl; if only they could have traded bone structures so that he might grow up more strapping. The photo must have been recent because the twins looked eight or nine years old. They had started school the previous fall, according to Bingwen. After examining the three faces in the grainy picture for a long while, Gary sighed and said, “If only I had known Yufeng was already a mother.”
Bingwen lifted his cup of oolong tea, his pinkie sticking out, and took a sip. He asked, “Your point being?”
“I would’ve had second thoughts about getting married abroad.” Eyes glazed in pain and smitten with regret, Gary wanted to add, “What a terrible mess!” but he held back. Furrows gathered on his broad forehead and his ears buzzed. He swallowed, wheezing and pushing down a wad of misery in his windpipe. Unconsciously he lifted his cup, but the tea splashed, leaving brown drops on the white tablecloth. He put it down without drinking it.
“I see,” Bingwen said. “You want to be more devoted to Yufeng and to your kids. That’s why our higher-ups did not allow me to disclose the truth to you—they feared you might want to come back soon. Our Party and country need you to stay in the enemy’s camp.”
“They ordered you to keep me in the dark?”
“Yes, my friend.”
In shock, Gary realized he might have to live in the United States for a long time. In spite of his bitterness, all he could do was to ask his handler to take care of his wife and children back home. Bingwen promised, “Rest assured, their well-being is guaranteed, in the hands of our country.” He picked up a succulent shrimp ball with his red chopsticks, dipped it into the satay sauce, and put it in his mouth.
When Juli was back in Guangzhou, she sent me her brother Benning’s email address and two photos, which, though somewhat blurry, showed he had a rectangular face and curly hair like my father’s. I wrote him, saying I was his aunt and would like to meet him if he lived nearby or came my way, but I got no reply. He used a Hotmail account, so it was impossible for me to surmise where he might be, in China or abroad. His sister sent him messages as well, and she did not receive a response either.
Then Juli mentioned that she was going to perform in a concert. It would be her debut, her “first big event,” which I felt I ought to attend since her parents wouldn’t be there. I decided to fly down to Guangzhou to spend a day or two with her, and also to see her sing. I had a friend from Wisconsin, Stacy Gilmour, who was teaching international finance at a business school in that city and said she would be happy to put me up in the two-bedroom apartment she had to herself on campus. I flew south on the third weekend of May.
I’d been to Guangzhou two decades before to do archival work for my book on the Opium War, and now the city was much brighter and brisker in spite of auto exhaust and the floating smog clouds. To my amazement, there were a lot of Africans living here, many with businesses in the area called Chocolate Town; they were involved in importing and exporting, mainly buying Chinese products and selling them in Africa and the Middle East. I guessed they must like the semitropical climate, which was too sultry for me. It wasn’t summer yet, but the downtown at noon was already sweltering like a busy kitchen. Juli was ecstatic to see me and introduced me to her boyfriend, Wuping, a tall man whose shoulder-length mane and disheveled appearance brought to mind the French philosopher Descartes, although the fellow wasn’t interested in philosophy. He managed the troupe whose band had taken Juli on. Like her, he was a northerner, from Jilin province, and his family had moved here many years before. He looked much older than my niece, perhaps on the verge of middle age. He drove a black minivan, the type nicknamed “bread box,” but his resembled a coffin on wheels.
After dinner with the two of them at a Vietnamese restaurant, where we had vermicelli noodles and seafood sautéed with napa cabbage and cayenne peppers, I spent some time with Juli alone, seated outside a bar on the Pe
arl River. A yacht with a boat-length TV screen attached to its side chugged back and forth in the shadowy water, displaying a series of commercials, while to our right, about two hundred feet away, a crowd of middle-aged women and men were clapping their hands and singing a Mongolian song: “In the blue sky float white clouds / Below the clouds horses are galloping …” A distant drumroll went on throbbing spasmodically as if a show was under way. Behind us a high-rise residential building loomed, silhouetted against the starry sky and leaking columns of lights through the undersize windows. The air smelled of overripe banana and was vibrating with a faint din like firecrackers exploding far away. Over iced tea Juli and I talked about inflation and boyfriends. I confessed that I had dated a dozen or so men in my life and married twice, but only two of them still meant something to me, Henry excluded.
“How about your ex-husband?” Juli asked me.
“Carlos is one of the two. He’s a good man, but we didn’t get along.” I stopped there, reluctant to talk more about him.
Juli said she’d been called “nympho filly” in high school, though in reality she had dated only one boy in her teens. “Or one and a half actually,” she said. “My second boyfriend dumped me as soon as he left for college. We’d been friends for less than a semester, and I didn’t do anything with him, so he shouldn’t count.”
I asked her how serious she was about Wuping. “I love him,” she told me.
“Does he love you back?”
“I think so.”
