by Ha Jin
It was sprinkling, raindrops pattering fitfully on the bay windows. Lina was watching the evening news, but her mind hardly registered what the anchorman was saying, nor was she captivated by the horrific scene the TV was showing of the havoc wreaked by a suicide bomber at a bus stop in Mosul. Around six o’clock the door opened and Panbin stepped in. Leaving his umbrella in a corner to dry, he said, “Mm, smells good.” He was a tall man of thirty-four and looked younger than his age.
Lina went over to the dining table while telling him, “I came back earlier.” She lit a candle and planted it on the steel pinecone.
He scanned the meal. “What special day is today? A holiday?”
“No. I just thought we should celebrate.”
“Celebrate what, the second anniversary of our friendship?” He laughed, a little embarrassed by his own joke.
“You can say that, but this is also for our parting. Come, sit down and dig in.”
Having shucked off his jacket, he slumped down on a chair and picked up a pair of chopsticks. “I told you I wouldn’t think of it,” he said.
“Don’t be silly! Zuming will be here soon and I have to move out. If he knows about our affair, I’ll be in big trouble.”
He sighed, chewing a piece of curried chicken pensively. He’d never met her husband, but she’d talked about Zuming so much that Panbin felt as if he’d known the man for ages. He told her, “Maybe I can speak to him after he settles in.”
“No. Don’t ever provoke him. He practiced kung fu for many years and might beat you up.”
“So? If you want to divorce him, he’ll have no choice.”
“Why should I do that? Before I moved in, you and I had agreed that the moment your wife or my husband came, our partnership would end.”
“Things have changed. I love you, you know.”
“Don’t be softheaded about this. Come, for the good time we spent together.” She raised her glass of Chablis, but he shook his head and didn’t touch his wine, his pale face taut.
She put down her glass, and a prolonged silence ensued.
He finished the last bit of rice on his plate, got up, and said, “Thanks for this memorable dinner.” He headed away to his own room upstairs, his feet thumping up the flight of wood steps.
She expected him to come to her that night, but except for going to the bathroom to wash up and brush his teeth, he didn’t step out of his room. At the same time, she was afraid he’d join her in bed, because once he took her into his arms, she might lose her head and promise him whatever he asked for, even something beyond her ability to fulfill. She remembered that he’d once made her call him laogong (hubby) again and again while making love to her. Afterward she had felt so guilty that she bought a digital camera and had it delivered to her husband for his birthday. Tonight, despite her fear of losing self-control, she longed to have that intense intimacy with Panbin for the last time. After Zuming came, she would have to become a faithful wife again.
When she got up the next morning, Panbin had left for work without having breakfast. Usually he would make toast, scramble eggs, and boil rice porridge or sesame gruel for both of them, but today he’d done nothing and had not even touched the leftovers from the previous evening. She knew she might have injured his feelings, but he was being unreasonable. They had a written agreement that entitled either of them to call off their relationship anytime without the other’s consent. From the very beginning they’d both understood it was just for mutual convenience that they had come together.
In her tax office she was absentminded for a whole day, and even exchanged words with an old customer who complained that she had not deducted enough business expenses on the form she’d filled out for him. He was a supervisor at a warehouse but demanded almost eight thousand dollars in tax credits for things such as brand-name suits, shoes, a computer, books, magazines, floor lamps, batteries, even a pair of dumbbells. Lina said this was cheating the IRS. The bull-necked old codger flew into a rage and said he’d go to another tax office that could give him a better deal. Somehow a rush of emotion drove Lina to the brink of tears, but she took hold of herself and told him, “Okay, suit yourself.” Hard as she tried, she couldn’t manage a smile.
After the customer left, Lina finished up for the day. It wasn’t four o’clock yet, but she planned to move out of Panbin’s house today. Three days ago she had rented a place, a one-bedroom apartment on Sanford Avenue. She wondered if she should ask someone to give her a hand, but decided first to make sure she had packed everything. Perhaps, she hoped, she wouldn’t have to take her belongings with her all at once. Her husband wouldn’t arrive until late March, still two weeks away.
To her surprise, Panbin was at home. On the floor of the living room sat her six boxes, all opened; evidently he’d been rummaging through them. She sneered, “You want to see if I filched something?”
“No, just curious.” He grinned and lifted her one-piece swimsuit. “I’ve never seen you wear this.” He sniffed it. “May I keep it?”
“For a million dollars.” She giggled. “I’m a married woman with a husband.”
He dropped her swimsuit back into a box and said, “Sit down. Let’s talk. I was out of my head yesterday evening. I’m sorry about that.”
His apology mollified her some, and she sat down opposite him. She said, “Please don’t act like a crazy youngster.”
“You know what, I feel I’m also your husband.” The expression on his face was serious, almost stony.
“Where’s our marriage certificate?” She giggled again, her cheeks twitching a little.
“That’s just a piece of paper. I love you. I know you better, I know every part of you, I know all your likes and dislikes, and I know you love me too.”
“Don’t talk like that, please! We’re both married and must be responsible. Can you abandon your wife and kid for another woman?”
“Well, I’m not sure.”
“See, don’t play the hypocrite. What we’ve done is wrong, and we ought to mend our ways, the sooner the better. Truth be told, I am fond of you, but I must take my heart back and tame it before Zuming comes.”
“Tell me, do you still love him?”
“This has little to do with love. I’ll try to be a good wife to him.”
“Can’t we remain friends?”
“Depends on what kind of friendship you have in mind.”
“I mean, we’ll meet once in a while.”
“And hop into bed?”
He grinned while nodding yes, his round eyes glimmering. “Honestly, I love you more than my wife, but I can’t divorce her because there’s no way I can take my son away from her.”
“So let’s part ways now,” she said, unsure if he was telling the truth. “The temporary pain will ward off all the miserable complications.”
“It’s not that simple. I won’t let you go.”
“But you cannot make me stay.”
“You know, I have a mouth that can talk.”
“God, are you threatening me? You will brief Zuming on our affair if I don’t remain your mistress?”
He made no reply, an awkward smile breaking on his face while small fans of rays appeared at the outside corners of his eyes. He exhaled a long sigh.
Not sure if he’d just issued her a warning, she was upset and went to the kitchen to call a cab. He followed her and pressed down the switch hook of the phone, saying, “I’m still your chauffeur and coolie, you know.” He grimaced and his eyes clouded over.
She wanted to say he was a free man now, but her voice failed her. Together they carried her boxes down to his SUV in the driveway.
Living alone was no longer easy for Lina. She was accustomed to Panbin’s house, to its spacious living room and the big, comfortable bed, and also to the meals he’d made for both of them. When they’d been together, he wouldn’t let her cook because she complained that too much exposure to kitchen grease would age her skin. He joked that she was just a lazybones, but he took over the coo
king and liked it. Now, in her own apartment, she had to do everything herself. Sometimes she wouldn’t make dinner and would just pick up one or two things at a delicatessen. Since moving out, she’d expected Panbin to call, but he never did. Perhaps he was still full of spleen, as the saying affirms: “You hate as much as you love.” But he was not a young bachelor and shouldn’t have behaved as if she’d jilted him and wasted his life. At times she wanted to phone him, just to see how he was doing, and once she even dialed his number but at the second ring hung up. If only she could shut him out of her mind. If only her workplace weren’t in downtown Flushing so that every day she wouldn’t have to pass the building that housed his software company. Whenever she walked on the street, she was afraid of bumping into him.
On March 24, her husband arrived. She took the subway to JFK to meet him. They hadn’t seen each other for more than four years, and he’d changed quite a bit. He had gained some weight and his face looked wider, his eyes weary, probably thanks to the twenty-hour flight. When they hugged, she gave him a smack on the cheek, but he didn’t kiss her back. Instead he said with a smile, “Hey, we’re in public.” His voice was still strong, though less hearty. She had always loved his manly voice, which often sounded fearless and even commanding. She noticed a sprinkling of gray hair behind his temples, though he was only thirty-three, two years older than she. He must have worried a lot these last few years. Together they lugged his baggage out of the terminal and joined the line for a taxi.
Lina had bought fresh, uncooked dumplings. Back from the airport, she put on a pot of water to boil them. Zuming hadn’t brought much with him; at her suggestion, he had stuffed one of his two suitcases with books, which are triple-priced in the United States. She was pleased to see the brand-new dictionaries and self-help books, useful to both of them. Zuming had said several times on the phone that he would like to go to graduate school once he was here, but she had neither agreed nor disagreed about that.
In addition to the books, he’d brought along six cartons of Red Eagle cigarettes at the advice of a friend who had been to America. Zuming lit a cigarette and dragged at it ravenously, saying to Lina, “I couldn’t smoke the whole way. That almost drove me crazy.”
His smoking unnerved her. She wanted to tell him to smoke outside, but she stopped herself. This was his first day here, and she wanted to please him as much as possible. She poured half a cup of cold water into the boiling pot so that the stuffing inside the dumplings could get cooked some more. After replacing the lid, she turned around and smiled at him. “I’m so happy you made it to New York finally,” she said. “After dinner, you should take a shower and then go to bed. You must be exhausted.”
“I’m all right.” He looked at her questioningly, as if wondering whether the full-size bed was big enough for both of them.
“I thought you’d need to rest well after the long flight,” she explained.
“We’ll see what we can do.” He tilted his big head, his heavy jaw jutting to the side while his nostrils let out tentacles of smoke.
He enjoyed the chive-and-pork dumplings and ate them with raw garlic, which Lina didn’t mind. For a whole year she hadn’t tasted raw garlic because Panbin was a southerner, from Jiangsu Province, and couldn’t stand the smell. She peeled several cloves for Zuming and also ate one herself. She found it quite tasty. She thought of reminding him to brush his teeth after eating garlic, but she decided to save that for another time. Maybe she would buy him some gum and mints.
“Do we have a drop of liquor in here?” Zuming asked, licking his teeth.
“No, only some cooking wine,” she replied.
“That’s no good.”
“Maybe I can go down and get a bottle from a store.”
“No, no, don’t bother. I don’t like American wine anyway.”
An airliner roared by, the noise so loud that the ceiling seemed to vibrate. They both stopped talking. When the racket died down, he said, “Heavens, how can you sleep with airplanes flying right overhead?”
“They don’t cross the residential area at night.” She laughed.
“That makes sense.”
As they ate, Zuming told her about their families. His father had just retired and might start a kindergarten with the help of his mother and some other retirees in the neighborhood. His parents had demanded that Lina give them some grandchildren. He emphasized “some,” which meant they all knew there was no one-child policy in the United States. As for her parents, her mother missed her terribly and couldn’t stop talking to people, even to strangers, about her, the only daughter. Her father’s condition had improved a lot after the stroke, though he still couldn’t drive his cab and so had to rent it to someone younger. As they talked, Lina felt rather down, not because the news was bad but because the weight of the two families, despite the distance of an ocean and a continent, came back to her all of a sudden. She was still young, yet when she thought of her family she felt aged like an old woman.
She told her husband, “We cannot afford to have kids before we settle down.”
“I understand. There’ll be a long haul for us.”
Zuming insisted they make love that night, and she was willing. Afterward he fell asleep and left her awake for hours. She listened to his snores, which weren’t loud but sounded like a broken fan.
• • •
During the next week Zuming went out every day to get to know the area. He also spent many hours in the public library gathering information on business schools. He told Lina that he wanted to do an MBA, having found out that it was easy to earn small wages but hard to make big money here. “Who knows, someday I may end up on Wall Street,” he chuckled.
She was reluctant to discourage him, but she was worried. Living in Panbin’s house, she had paid only two hundred dollars a month for food and utilities because he refused to take rent from her. Now her expenses were more substantial. Her job at the tax office wasn’t secure; the filing season would end soon, and the summer and fall would be a lean time. How could she make enough to support both Zuming and herself?
One evening she told him, “I don’t think you should go to business school this year.”
“I have to.” His tone, full of resolve, surprised her.
“Why? I’m not sure if I have a stable job. Where can we get the money for tuition?”
“Don’t you have forty thousand in the bank?”
“Like I said, we mustn’t touch that because we’ll need it for the down payment on an apartment.”
“Well, I’m not sure we should buy our own place here. Anyway, I must get an MBA.”
“I don’t think you should rush.”
“I want to give it a shot this year. You owe me that.”
“Why? Why are you so stubborn?”
“You still think I don’t know?” His face lengthened, his eyes ablaze.
“Know what?”
“You shacked up with a man named Panbin Wang.”
She was stunned, her mind whirling. How did he hear of it? From Panbin? Who else could have given her away? “How—how did you know?” she stammered.
“Someone told me.”
“Who?”
“That’s not important. If you wanted to have a peaceful conscience, you should not have slept around.”
She started to sob, covering her face with her narrow hand. Meanwhile, he lounged in a chair and, pencil in mouth, continued reading a dictionary. He would have to pass the TOEFL to be admitted to a business school.
Her sniveling accentuated the quietness of the room.
A few moments later she said, “Zuming, I’m very sorry. Please forgive me. I was a weak woman and needed a man to help me here. You’ve seen how hard life is in this place where everyone’s busy and treats others like strangers. I was so miserable and so lonely that I often thought I was losing my mind. On weekends I felt worse, cooped up in a room like a sick animal. Whenever I saw children I wanted to touch them and even imagined taking them away from their mothers.
I wanted to live! To have a normal life. Panbin Wang comforted and helped me, emotionally and financially. Truth be told, without him I might’ve gone mad or died. At least without his help I couldn’t possibly have saved that amount of money for us.”
He sat up and took the pencil out of his mouth. “Honest to God, I didn’t touch a woman for four years, although I had opportunities. When your father had the stroke, I nursed him every night for three months, biking to the hospital through wind and snow. No matter how miserable and depressed I was, I had to take care of your family and mine. Don’t use your suffering to exonerate yourself. I suffered no less than you.”
Now she knew she would probably have no choice but to let him go to business school. This meant she’d have to empty out her bank account. There wasn’t another way to placate him, to prevent him from disclosing her affair to her in-laws and thus bringing her parents to shame.
That night she didn’t sleep, nor did she remove his hand resting on her thigh. Despite her fear of his anger, she felt she must stay with him. She also thought of Panbin, but still felt he was too glib and too smooth. She wondered how her husband had learned of her affair. The more she mulled it over, the more she was convinced that it must have been Panbin who had told him. She recalled his words—“I have a mouth that can talk.” Apparently he had betrayed her. How could he be so vengeful and so unscrupulous? He was a big liar and had lied to her about how he loved her. If he’d really cared about her, he wouldn’t have stabbed her in the back.
