A Song Everlasting

by Ha Jin

  17

  Freda left for work early the next morning. Tian’s head was woozy with worrisome thoughts. Never had he been so lustful in bed with a woman, not even remotely so when he’d made love to Shuna. He wondered what had happened to him. There was no way he had become that much stronger physically—he was growing older, and the struggle for survival here sapped his energy continuously. How could he have become so passionate about someone he didn’t even feel attracted to? Something was wrong.

  Then it flashed across him that some of the herbs prescribed by Dr. Liang must have been aphrodisiacs. Why would that old bastard do this to him? Was this a trick he had pulled on him? Tian wondered. As he was making rice porridge mixed with brown sugar for breakfast, his phone chimed and he picked up. It was Freda. She was bubbly and said, “What an unforgettable night we had! I didn’t expect you to be so wild in bed. You made me feel like I was hovering between life and death. At moments I thought I was going to pass out—”

  “Listen, Freda. It was a mistake. I shouldn’t have invited you over to do the tea ceremony to begin with. Also, I was not myself yesterday—”

  “I have to go to a meeting now, sweetheart. I’ll text or call again when I’m out of the meeting.”

  Her giddiness unnerved him. He was afraid he wouldn’t be able to convince her that their passionate one-night stand was a mistake or an accident. No matter how he looked at it, this was a mess he might not be able to get out of easily. He was at a loss about what to do.

  After breakfast he went downtown to Lasting Health to confront Dr. Liang, but the old man was not in. Mrs. Siu, the woman at the front counter, simpered knowingly, then said Dr. Liang was under the weather and wouldn’t be able to see patients for some days. Tian asked her for the prescription the doctor had made for him, but she didn’t have it because the old man kept all the sheets locked away somewhere. Tian was angry and said the herbs made him sick—it was his patient’s right to know what he’d been taking. She assured him that they had a clear record of all the prescriptions, but it was the doctor who kept them. Tian could come later, and Dr. Liang could answer his questions.

  “I have an idea,” Mrs. Siu said. “Why don’t you bring the herbal extracts here so I can tell you what they are?”

  “I took the last batch yesterday,” he told her. “Is there another way we can find out?”

  “Not that I know of.” She shook her head of permed hair. “I will tell Dr. Liang that you stopped by for the prescription. You can come back in a few days and speak to him. He has kept track of everything. No worries.”

  The impasse enraged him. He said he might sue Dr. Liang for malpractice.

  “Please don’t be so furious, Mr. Yao. Dr. Liang is a poor devil. Even if you take him to court and win the case, you won’t get a penny from him. All he has are his old bones and the clothes on him.”

  He was stumped. Seeing his confusion, she smiled and went on, “Why don’t you take this with you, for free?” She placed on the glass counter a bottle of Pei Pa Koa, a traditional cough syrup.

  “I’m not coughing, no need for this,” he said shortly.

  “You’re a singer, aren’t you? This will help protect your throat. Even if when you’re not coughing, just take one teaspoon a day, and you’ll see the difference it makes.”

  She spoke so kindly that he accepted the bottle and left the herbal store. He knew the cough syrup, a classic remedy, which he had taken years before and which might be useful for him indeed. How he wished Yabin were still in town. In a messy situation like this, he could have turned to him for help. Then he realized that he’d just slept with the woman who Yabin would want to avoid at all costs. Talking to him about this would only embarrass them both—he’d better cope with it by himself.

  That evening Freda called again and said she had to talk with him. “For a whole day I couldn’t think of anything but last night,” she confessed, then lowered her voice to a whisper. “I still feel your cock throbbing in me.”

  He was startled and stammered, “Something was wrong with me. I…I wasn’t my normal self.”

  “You’re as wonderful in bed as onstage. I love a slim and energetic man. Can I come see you again? Maybe this evening or tomorrow?”

  “I’m sorry, Freda. I wasn’t myself last night.”

  She laughed. “Don’t you feel lucky to sleep with me?”

  “Listen, Freda, I told you it was an accident. I was drugged by the herbs I’ve been taking and lost self-control.”

  She laughed again. “That is the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. Any man can be turned on by drugs, but no man could fuck a woman for six hours if he wasn’t crazy about her. Tell me the truth—didn’t you have a great time with me last night?”

  “I was…I was not myself, like I told you.”

  “Didn’t we have a lot of fun?”

  “That was not what I intended to do.”

  “Listen, I dated a man who had to take Viagra. The drug could only help him for thirty minutes at a time. Now you can’t say you were wild about me because you took some herbs by mistake. I saw your prescription at the herbal pharmacy and there was nothing special in it.”

  “I have to admit you did turn me on.”

  “So you should have come up with a better excuse.”

  “It was really an accident. I was not myself last night.”

  “Please, Tian, I can tell that you have lots of feelings for me. You said I was delicious and kissed every part of my body. You can’t just walk out on me. I saw the guitar on your wall. Honestly I expect to hear you sing songs to me. I know you can play that instrument too.”

  “You expect too much,” Tian said helplessly.

  “Listen, I’m not the kind of woman you can pick up or drop at will. Besides, I know you’re better than that. You always treat women with respect and you know how to love a woman. You’re a great kisser too, and you don’t know how extraordinary a lover you actually are.”

  She was practically raving. He was tired of this madness, this nonsense, this difficulty in getting his thoughts across to her, but he also felt ashamed. He was sweating a little and his face was hot. Yet, no matter how she raved and ranted, he wouldn’t let her come to his place again.

  Finally as if tired of her own raging, she said rather calmly, “I will get back at you if you just dump me. You can’t treat me like a whore.”

  “I take you as a friend, a regular friend,” he said desperately. “We’re also business partners.”

  “Please, Tian. I love you, I can do anything for you! Just let me come see you tomorrow night.”

  “You’ve loved the wrong man. I’m married with a daughter and have a family to take care of. Please leave me alone!”

  “I won’t. You wait and see.”

  The more they fought, the harder it was for him to find responses to her demands, so he hung up. Still, he was terribly agitated and couldn’t stop imagining what kind of damage she might do to him. For whatever outrageous move she made he might be to blame. In a way, she was right: Any decent man should not drop a woman he’d just slept with. At heart he knew he might have been attracted to her the night before, though he was certain that without the herbs, he couldn’t possibly have had sex with her for so long. But if he reflected on the one-night stand objectively, he couldn’t pin the blame all on the herbs—he had been horny and lustful. If only he could have been more careful about a crazy woman like Freda. This reminded him of a recent report: A young man in Bangladesh had castrated himself because he believed that most troubles and miseries in his life came from his genitals. That was quite insightful, wasn’t it?

  Now Tian felt trapped but was trying to prepare for what Freda might come up with. She would cause some damage, he was sure.

  * * *

  —

  Two days later he heard from his wife. She emailed to inform him that a wom
an named Freda Liu had contacted her, claiming to be his girlfriend and saying they were having a blazing affair. Shuna asked him about his true relationship with this woman, who she’d heard was his manager. He wrote back urging her to ignore Freda for now. He’d tell her everything later. “It looks like I won’t be able to have her as my manager anymore,” he told Shuna.

  For several days he was too nervous to broach the matter, and his wife was quiet about it too. When they spoke on the phone, she sounded normal and cheerful. She reported that Tingting was doing well at school and had just came in second in her English class.

  Tian knew what Freda had revealed to his wife might be tantamount to his betrayal of Shuna, so he didn’t know how to explain. Then one night he received a long email from her. Freda had spilled everything to his wife and even begged her to let her share him with her, since Shuna was not available for Tian in New York. Freda promised that she was not a threat to their marriage—she wanted to be nothing more than his girlfriend while he was here. Freda had even bragged about the sex they’d had—Shuna pasted the words Freda had written: “Last Sunday night he kept me busy in bed for six hours, six hours! He is crazy about me—he said I was sweet and delicious. I was drunk with love, utterly captivated by him. Elder Sister Shuna, Tian is still a young man—I’ve never met a man so sexually deprived. It’s unnatural to make him live in celibacy like a monk. Please allow me to help you care for him before he returns to you.”

  Freda blamed Shuna for being selfish and for letting Tian come to the States alone. Because of her perverse notion of freedom and the American dream, Shuna had made her husband suffer alone here, enduring the drudgery like a menial worker, living from hand to mouth. She simply had no idea what America was really like. In a word, Shuna was ruining him and had better summon him back so that he could resume his illustrious career in China. “He is a celebrity in every sense, not just a rice-winner for you,” she’d told his wife.

  Reading Freda’s words, Tian felt a little upsurge of gratitude—Freda understood his situation better than his wife did. At the same time he wasn’t sure of Freda’s motive. She appeared mild and more reasonable with Shuna. His wife was smart and wouldn’t easily be swayed by a young woman’s emotional outbursts. Shuna asked her to give some proof that she had indeed gone to bed with Tian. Freda mentioned a scar near his crotch, about an inch and a half long, from a hernia surgery. “It has six stitches like a crawling insect,” she specified. She’d also sent his wife a couple of photos of her and Tian together. The shots were all in public settings, showing nothing intimate, though they contained only the two of them. Freda must have meant to show she was young and pretty, with elegant limbs.

  Shuna was furious at Tian and demanded, “What are you going to do? Why didn’t you tell me that you were having a woman there? Now you must choose between me and her.”

  He wrote back, “I was drugged by the damned herbal doctor—his prescription made me lose self-control. He must have been trying to turn me into a regular patient.”

  Shuna returned, “Don’t give me that excuse. The doctor must have sensed something going on between you and that woman. He must have seen on your face that you wanted her.”

  That made Tian wonder whether Dr. Liang had indeed read something in his looks. If so, that might have emboldened the old codger to prescribe some potent herbs for him. Perhaps Shuna was right—any man who’d gone without touching a woman for more than a year could easily appear lustful. Tian hated himself for having landed in such a mess. He told Shuna he’d break off contact with Freda altogether and stop her from meddling with their marriage.

  “I’ll fire her straightaway,” he promised his wife. At any cost he must keep his family intact.

  * * *

  —

  Finally he caught Dr. Liang in the herbal pharmacy. The old man was all smiles, showing his blunted teeth, one of which had just fallen out, giving his mouth a new gap. He was happy to see Tian and called him “Mr. Yao” to demonstrate that he remembered his name and was already treating him like a regular patient. This only stoked up Tian’s temper even more. Dr. Liang gestured at a leather-encased stool, offering Tian a seat. Tian took it, his eyes fixed on Liang’s face, which was pink as though he’d eaten a lot of ginseng.

  “Why did you prescribe me those aphrodisiac herbs?” Tian asked.

  “Tell me, do you still often get up to pee at night?”

  Tian shook his head. “No, not anymore. But the herbs made me act abnormally in bed, like a crazy man.” His cheeks heated up as his hackles were rising.

  Dr. Liang chortled, as if this was expected. “Did the herbs work?” he asked. “Didn’t they make you feel younger and more vigorous? I thought your young missus would enjoy that too.”

  “Good heavens, you thought she was my wife?”

  “The two of you make a lovely couple.”

  “She’s not my wife, she’s my manager!”

  “Well, it couldn’t have hurt as long as you had a great time in bed. I meant to help you.”

  “But you messed me up. I’m a family man with a child—” He caught himself, realizing he had said too much.

  Dr. Liang laughed and said, “All I knew was that you needed to have wholesome sex to keep your kidneys functioning normally.”

  Tian wanted to slap him but checked himself. The old fart’s words only verified Shuna’s accusation that he had appeared horny and lustful. He must also have shown some level of affection for Freda in front of Dr. Liang, who had then taken it upon himself to harmonize their supposed conjugal life. However, that could just be the herbalist’s pretext—more likely, he only wanted to get them hooked on to his service. Yet those were merely Tian’s conjectures, and all he could do now was shun Dr. Liang.

  18

  Pei Pa Koa, the cough syrup Mrs. Siu had given Tian, was quite effective in soothing his windpipe and cleansing his lungs. It mainly consisted of honey, mixed with more than a dozen herbs. He took a teaspoon every morning, holding the morsel in his mouth and letting it drip slowly down his throat. He found that it was helping reduce phlegm and the heat in his lungs, and his voice was getting clearer, even stronger. He decided to take this medicinal syrup regularly from now on, though he was still angry at Dr. Liang. He stopped by the herbal pharmacy twice during the following month, but the old man was no longer there. Mrs. Siu grimaced and said Liang had quit and they’d have to find a new herbal physician, but so far without success.

  He decided to speak with Yabin about what had happened with Freda. It was embarrassing to broach the subject, but he needed his friend’s advice. He told Yabin about the one-night stand over the phone, mumbling, “I was drugged or wouldn’t have lost self-control like that. You know I wasn’t that fond of Freda.”

  Yabin chuckled. “I can understand, Tian. You hadn’t been intimate with a woman for such a long time that she must have looked like a goddess to you.”

  “That was not it. I was given some powerful herbs to strengthen my kidneys, but they just turned me on and I couldn’t contain myself.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Tian. I should’ve told you the nickname I had for Freda.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Superglue.” Yabin snickered.

  That was a little mean, but Tian could see how it fit. Then the thought came to him again, and he asked Yabin, “Do you think Freda might be working for the Chinese government?”

  “That’s unlikely. She’s absolutely unpredictable and vacuous. How could they possibly use someone like her? Besides, her college major was public relations, not related to espionage at all.”

  “I wish I had been more careful with her.”

  “Tell me, Tian, are you really interested in her? Do you like her in bed?”

  “Like I said, I was drugged that day. Otherwise I wouldn’t have gotten close to her, because I cannot trust her. Now I’m in trouble and Shuna is fur
ious.”

  “Remember, Freda still views you as a celebrity. She might not give you up so easily.”

  “By now she should be able to see what a loser I am here. I can’t even afford a manager. She just makes peanuts by working for me.”

  “Believe me, she isn’t working for money. She only wants to stick around.”

  “How can I make her stop?”

  “Make it clear that you’re not her boyfriend. And don’t sleep with her again.”

  “Of course I won’t.”

  Yabin didn’t seem to be doing well in Boston—he was enjoying the quieter pace of life, but his cousin’s construction project had run into a snare. The Chinese government had begun to enforce a restrictive policy for transferring funds—nobody was allowed to send abroad more than fifty thousand dollars a year, so Yabin’s cousin couldn’t find a way to get the full amount for the land over to the seller in America. As a result, the land purchase and the spadework were all stalled. But Yabin sounded in good spirits, confident he’d find something else to do in Boston. It looked like he might not come back to New York.

  * * *

  —

  For days Freda had been calling Tian, wanting to meet again. He told her that he couldn’t use her help anymore, but she insisted on coming over and sorting out their account. He thought of seeing her in a café, but, fearing she might make a scene that could call attention to him, he agreed to let her come to his place again. They made a plan to meet on Saturday morning, and he’d drink a mug of strong black tea to keep himself awake and vigilant.