by Ha Jin
“Who is your client?”
“I can’t name him—or them. But I can put their terms on the table for you to consider. My clients would like to offer you a sum of money in exchange for your cooperation.”
“What do you mean by ‘cooperation’?”
“Stop performing outside China altogether.” He grinned, revealing a gold crown in the back of his mouth.
“So your clients want to buy my voice, my silence?”
“You can put it that way if you wish.”
“Well, I’ve never heard such a proposal before. Tell me, how much is my silence worth?”
“They can offer four million.”
“Yuan or dollars?”
“Certainly U.S. dollars.”
Tian shook his head, too dazzled to speak.
“Think about this, Mr. Yao,” Harry Hong went on. “This is an extraordinary offer, isn’t it? I hope it’s acceptable to you.”
Finally Tian got his wits back and said, “Let me sleep on it, all right? I can’t decide now.”
“Of course, take your time. But let me make it clear that once you accept the offer, you will have to abide by our agreement. If you break your word, my clients will ruin you and your family. They have infinite ways to do that.” He took a pen out of the inside pocket of his jacket and scribbled a phone number on the back of his business card. His index finger had no nail, its tip merely a tapered stump.
“I understand,” Tian said. “I’ll let you know my decision soon.”
Mr. Hong knocked back the remaining espresso and then handed him the card. “Here’s my mobile number, and you can call me anytime.”
After exchanging a few pleasantries, Tian decided to leave. Mr. Hong assured him that if he took the offer, the money could be delivered in any way he preferred. Tian told him he appreciated that and would figure out an appropriate way. Then they stood up and said goodbye. Mr. Hong headed to the men’s room, his olive-green trench coat still draped over his chair, while Tian turned to the front door.
Four million dollars would be enough for him and his family to live on comfortably for the rest of their lives. He’d better talk with Shuna—they ought to consider it carefully. He emailed her so that he could make everything clear to her. He wrote, “They would like to buy my voice, my total silence, for four million U.S. dollars. We must discuss this before I answer Mr. Hong. I will call tonight.”
He thought Shuna would reject the offer immediately, but on the phone she sounded excited. She asked how they’d pay him. “They could deposit the money into our joint account in Beijing,” he told her. “The delivery can be arranged according to our preference. Mr. Hong promised me.”
“Gosh, I’ve never thought they would spend so extravagantly.”
“It’s not their money to begin with, and they wouldn’t give a damn about whether I’m worth that much. I’ve heard that the government is flush with so much cash in recent years that they worry about how to spend it. They even put a huge TV screen in Times Square to show what’s going on in Beijing. Someone in power must be uncomfortable about my presence among the dissidents in America and wants to rein me in. My performances here might undermine their Grand Propaganda Plan. What do you think I should do?”
“Logically speaking, if you love Tingting and our family above anything else, you should consider the offer favorably. With four million dollars, our family will be all set. We’ll have the funds we need for Tingting’s education abroad. We can also consider investment immigration to the U.S. or to Canada—I’ve heard that if you plunk down half a million dollars, you can get a green card within three months. In short, this is a great opportunity.”
He was taken aback by her enthusiasm. He had been tempted by the offer, but was counting on her support to resist the temptation. Yet what she said perplexed and unnerved him. He did love his wife and daughter, and he knew that he had brought them a great deal of stress lately, but this offer was a different matter and he felt it shouldn’t be confused with his devotion to his family. Tingting and Shuna had their lives, and he had his own. How could he sell himself all at once only for their comfort and security? He grew quiet on the phone, unable to express these thoughts that might upset his wife.
“Well,” she continued, “it will be your call, Tian. No one but yourself should decide what to do.”
“What if I were to turn down the offer?” he asked.
“I’ll understand and won’t blame you. Let me say this: If you love our daughter unconditionally, you should seriously consider the offer. Of course, you have your own ego, your own demons that you have to wrestle with on your own.”
He couldn’t sleep that night. He was a singer, and without his voice, what would become of him? He’d be nobody—he’d have nothing to work for, nothing to strive for, nothing to believe in. What troubled him more was that Shuna seemed to think mainly about their family’s security and comfort. What if he went mad from grief and remorse after he cut this deal with the devil? He could foresee that he’d never be able to live with himself after making this impossible bargain.
He called Harry Hong the next morning and told him that he had decided to decline the offer, its great generosity notwithstanding. “Please thank your clients for me,” he said.
For a while Mr. Hong didn’t say a word, though Tian could hear him breathing. Then Hong said, “On a personal note, Mr. Yao, I will remain your fan.”
“Thanks very much for understanding.”
What a relief he felt. He remembered Li Bai’s line: “I am equal to any duke and prince when mingling with them.”
When he told Yabin about the offer and his refusal two days later, his friend was stunned into silence for half a minute. Then he smiled warmly and said, “You have all my respect, Tian. Truth be told, if I were you, I might have taken the money. It makes one’s life so much easier and more secure.”
Tian was uncertain about that and felt money could also bring a lot of turmoil into one’s life. Yabin then told him about a secret campaign called “Mouth Sealing,” which was being carried out both inside and outside China. Some offices in the central government, particularly those in charge of global propaganda and overseas Chinese affairs, had been making offers of money and real estate to intellectuals and dissidents who were critical about the state’s policies. The condition for such an offer was to remain silent about anything the government undertook. Yabin knew that some people had accepted the money and the apartments and had stopped criticizing the Party. In fact, they had all disappeared from the media and the public view. Word had it that a few exiled dissidents in North America had accepted home loans and business deals from the Chinese government. In exchange, they worked as informers to sabotage efforts here to promote human rights and democracy back in China. Some of them took advantage of such an opportunity and just returned home, where they could remain silent and anonymous for good.
Their offer to Tian was, by far, the biggest that Yabin had ever heard of. “You’re a man I can trust,” Yabin told him. “You’re upright and steadfast because you have no desire for material gain. But be careful. They’ll make more trouble for you, I’m sure.”
10
Even as Shuna urged Tian to stay in America, she was beginning to feel frustrated about his absence from home. In their phone calls she often said how much she missed him and that Tingting kept asking when he’d be back. She told him to be careful about women in New York. Back in China, when he went on tour, he always traveled with female colleagues and mixed choirs, and met talented, beautiful women at the performances, though he managed to stay clear of any emotional entanglements. But it wasn’t like that here. Every once in a while, after a show, women would approach him and show their interest in getting to know him better, but they made him uneasy because he was uncertain about their backgrounds. Some of them were likely covert agents employed by the Chinese government. So h
e treated them perfunctorily and avoided any involvement. Unlike other men he knew, Tian couldn’t spend time with an attractive woman without becoming emotionally invested. Back in his former ensemble, there’d been a lead dancer who’d always had a gaggle of young women around him—he claimed they were all his girlfriends. Tian used to tease him, saying he must be awfully exhausted. But the dancer said Tian was too old-fashioned—for him, hopping into bed with a woman was just a way to have fun and to relax. The amazing thing was that the less commitment the dancer showed to any of the women, the more eager they seemed to be with him.
Yabin, however, didn’t seem to be so careful with women. In early August he told Tian that Barrie had moved out and that he was seeing someone new—a young Chinese woman, and a rare beauty. Her name was Freda Liu; she had just gotten her master’s from Hunter College and began to work in foreign trade. When the three of them had brunch together one Sunday morning, she seemed poised and eager to find out more about Tian. She told him that her parents had both been army doctors in Chengdu, where she’d grown up. Tian was impressed by her Mandarin—it was flawless, without a trace of Sichuan accent. She also told him she’d gone to the University of International Relations in Beijing. At the mention of that school, Tian became leery—it was known as a top spy college that produced special graduates, many of whom were dispatched abroad as secret agents. Freda was talkative and laughed freely. When she laughed, she seemed unable to close her prominent eyes. Her egg-shaped face was so pale that Tian was surprised to hear that she traveled a lot and frequented seaside resorts. She loved the beaches in Dubai—they made her feel like she was living in a mirage.
“I enjoy your songs,” she told him. “I’m sorry you’re having a precarious life here.”
“His career will pick up soon,” Yabin joined in. “He has more freedom in choosing what to sing in America.”
Tian told Freda, “I like it here. At least I have no one bossing me around.”
She nodded in appreciation.
As they were eating egg foo yong, she told him he shouldn’t be living alone. In this city, most people were too preoccupied with their own lives to pay attention to others. It was possible to grow sick and even die without anyone noticing. Freda had learned this lesson from the case of an old man, an immigrant from Bosnia, who’d lived alone and passed away in his apartment in Brooklyn—no one found him until two weeks later. By then his body already smelled, the odor spoiling the air in the hallway. To share your life with someone was a way of survival, a way to keep yourself balanced and sane. Freda hinted that she might be able to find Tian a girlfriend.
“I’m a married man with a young daughter,” he said. “I have to do right by my old wife.”
“I know your wife is a history professor, quite young actually,” Freda said. “She’s a good-looking lady, to say the least.”
“That’s why I ought to cherish her all the more,” he quipped.
Freda and Yabin giggled, as if what he’d said was beside the point. Indeed, neither of them seemed serious about their new relationship. Freda even said she wasn’t sure how long she would stay in this country, though she hoped she could immigrate if such an opportunity presented itself. Nowadays it was so difficult to get a green card, she said and sighed.
She was living on Long Island now, where she had just started working part-time at an import-export company. She couldn’t keep a full-time job because she was taking courses at Hunter College. Only by remaining a student could she stay in the States legally. She loved to come to Flushing, though, for the shopping and the genuine provincial foods, so she and Yabin managed to spend a lot of time together. Yabin later told Tian that Freda was eager to move in with him, but he felt it was too soon. Whenever Tian saw the two of them, Freda brought up the topic of his single life, even though he kept reminding her that he was a family man. “For many immigrants and expats,” she told him, “if your spouse can’t join you in six months, you can be considered single and may live with a girlfriend or boyfriend. It’s a healthier way of doing things.”
But now that Shuna and he spoke every other day, she was on Tian’s mind all the time, and he couldn’t help but live and act as a family man. Before he’d left for the States, Shuna had told him that she wouldn’t mind if he had a girlfriend abroad, believing he might have such a need. In recent weeks she often alluded to this topic in her emails, as though anxious to find out if he was still living alone.
He didn’t like the way she had shown her generosity, as if she wouldn’t have gotten hurt if he had lived with a woman in America. Shuna tried to play the role of the good, understanding wife, but he didn’t need her to force herself like that. He once countered her in his email, asking, “How about you? Aren’t you lonely yourself? Sometimes I wonder whether it’s worth such a long separation for us to pursue the dream, or the illusion, of freedom. Now I can see why lots of people prefer security to freedom.”
She didn’t respond to his question directly and instead offered a suggestion: “Perhaps we should allow each other to choose a temporary partner.” It set his head spinning with misgivings. He remembered that Tingting had insinuated that her mother and Professor Bai had been quite close lately and that Shuna had many friends. Are there already other men in her life? he wondered.
The more Tian mulled about Shuna, the more agitated he became. But he kept his unease to himself and always assumed a cheerful tone in his emails to her. He wanted to maintain their mutual trust.
Freda knew quite a bit about his wife and referred to her as “the smart lady.” He told her, “It won’t be easy for any woman to outshine my wife. Some women have told me they felt intimidated when they met her.”
Yabin laughed and jumped in, “That’s why I always say smart women are sexy.”
He sometimes talked about wealthy Chinese businessmen who were looking for young women—mistresses as well as child-bearers—who’d graduated from top colleges so that their children would inherit good genes and high intelligence. Tian thought it preposterous—he felt that the intimacy between a man and a woman should be based on the feelings they had for each other, not on procreation. “You still believe in the bullshit of romantic love?” Yabin challenged, grimacing. “It’s an obsolete notion. Love pitches its tent in excrement—that’s from Yeats almost a century ago.”
Tian sighed and admitted, “Perhaps I’m behind the times.”
* * *
—
On Labor Day weekend, Yabin invited Tian to join him and Freda and a few other friends at a shooting range in Edison, New Jersey. Tian knew Yabin was fond of guns, and had once seen an M16 and a revolver in his car, but Yabin didn’t keep his firearms in New York. He stored them at a club in New Jersey. The group he liked to go shooting with was composed of other expats and exiled Chinese. Some of them, having seen the crushed peaceful demonstration in Tiananmen Square, overtly advocated violence and dreamed of forming their own force to overthrow the Communist regime. They argued that ten thousand unarmed civilians couldn’t resist a squad of soldiers who fired at them. One dissident had even tried to solicit donations from successful businesspeople for raising a regiment of Chinese SEALs a thousand men strong. Yabin, though gentle and peace-loving, also wanted to become a marksman—not to kill but to master the skill. He revealed to Tian that some of the exiles had been taking lessons from a professional sniper. Tian wasn’t interested in guns, but Yabin said some well-known dissidents would be at the shooting range, so he agreed to come along to meet those exiles.
The range was behind a knoll south of Edison. It looked like a man-made gulch, its slopes built of sandbags. Standing at the open end of the range, it felt safe and quiet, as the semi-enclosure seemed able to contain the firing. Five men from Yabin’s group were already there when they arrived. They stood in wooden stalls, where they had been firing handguns at a pair of targets planted at the deep end of the range. Tian could see that none of
them was a particularly capable shooter—they were all somewhat clumsy with guns. He recognized two of the men: Huang Fan, president of the Democratic Party of Chinese Nationals, a new political party composed of more than seven hundred expats, and a political commentator for the New Tang Dynasty Television network in North America, which was owned by Falun Gong. With them was a young American, Michael Pauley, who introduced himself as a professor of global studies at Columbia. Tian liked Huang Fan, who was more like a scholar than a political activist—he was book-smart and idealistic, eloquent with a tongue loose like a waterfall whenever he appeared on TV.
As Tian was shaking hands with them, they all said they were happy to meet him in person. Chang Huan, the political commentator, offered him his pistol. Tian fired three rounds, but none of them hit the target, so he handed the pistol back, saying he shouldn’t waste their ammo. Yabin was more capable. He emptied a whole clip of bullets and didn’t miss a single shot, though Tian could tell by the jumping puffs of dust behind the target that he had mostly hit the sides of the human figure, not the chest or head.
Freda shook her head. “You’re not that good, Yabin. You can’t kill an enemy if you shoot like that.”
“Show me how well you can do, then,” he challenged. “Always easier said than done.”
Freda removed her sunglasses and took the pistol from him. She loaded five bullets and stepped aside to face a target on the right that hadn’t been used yet. Without hesitation she began to fire. One after another, the shots hit the center of the human form. They were all astounded, and nobody said a word for a good while.
Yabin ran over and verified five bullet holes in the central part of the target. Shaking his head while striding back, he cried, “You’ve got forty-nine points.”
Freda smiled and said almost apologetically, “I was on a shooting team at college.”
Still, most of them remained silent. Professor Pauley said, “No wonder you’re such a markswoman.”
