A Song Everlasting

by Ha Jin

  She arrived at around ten, and they talked about the remaining three engagements she had helped him set up. He was generous and wrote her a check that included her commissions for all the jobs she had booked for him even though he hadn’t received some of the payments yet. She seemed pleased about this, but she was also eager to continue to be his manager, saying she’d surely get more business for him and would be useful in many ways he couldn’t foresee yet. He was irritated by her stubbornness and said, “Look—it’s over between us. I’m a married man and I made an awful mistake. I’m sorry about that. Freda, I’ve appreciated your help, but I’m taking a different path and will strike out on my own. You have seen how little my business is. I really don’t need a manager at all.”

  “I know your business will grow bigger.” She smirked, then licked the corner of her mouth.

  “But I don’t see it that way. I hope we can part ways as friends.”

  “You can’t get rid of me like this!” she said fiercely, her eyes ablaze.

  “What do you want from me? You’ve tried to wreck my marriage—how much more damage are you going to do?”

  “I want to be with you. You can’t just fuck a girl and then dump her like a whore. You can’t use me this way!”

  “I didn’t use you.”

  “Then what did you do to me the other night? Why did you keep me busy in bed like that for so many hours?”

  “It was a mistake.”

  “That’s easy for you to say, but I’m not buying any of that.”

  A flush of anger seized him. “Get out of here!” He pointed at the door. “Get out!”

  “I won’t! Damn it, you’ll have to kick me out.”

  He was enraged and rushed to her and grabbed her by the arm. Pulling her up from the chair, he dragged her to the door. She swung around and scratched him on the neck.

  “Ouch!” He rubbed the side of his neck and saw a glistening strip of blood across his fingers.

  The sight of blood inflamed him. Forcefully he shoved her at the door. She fell and her head knocked on the wall with a thud. She was stunned, then let out a cry. “You beat me! You beat a woman! What kind of man are you? I won’t let you get away with this.”

  Seated on the floor with her legs stretched out, she began blubbering as a purple swelling like a large grape emerged on her forehead. One of her stiletto heels had fallen off her foot. He was transfixed, aghast at what he’d done, but unable to find words to pacify her.

  She fished out her phone and dialed a number. As he was wondering what she was doing, she cried to the other end, “My boyfriend is beating me up. Please come and help me!”

  He realized she was speaking to the police. “Stop it!” He yelled and struck her hand to knock off her phone.

  “Ow! He’s beating me again. Please come to my rescue!” In the same breath she spat out his address.

  Now he was completely at a loss. He grabbed the phone from her and began to condemn her, calling her a spy, a toxin in his life, sticky like superglue. He yelled out whatever came to mind. But to any names he called her, she wouldn’t respond. She was lying on her side, her face toward the baseboard of the wall as if she were sleeping, too soundly to hear his furious words.

  In no time a siren blared from the street. Then his buzzer went off. He hesitated for a moment but pressed the button to let in her rescuers. The police, two men and one woman, stepped into his apartment, all bearing batons and firearms. At the sight of Freda on the floor, the female cop took three photos of her. Then they stepped over and raised Freda’s upper body and asked her if she could understand them. She looked at them with a blank face, her eyes half closed. The camera flashed again.

  “Miss, did he do this to you!” asked the black policewoman, pointing at the purple bump on Freda’s forehead.

  Wordlessly, Freda nodded. Tian protested, “I didn’t beat her. She fell and knocked her head on the wall.”

  “That’s not what she called us for,” the white policeman told him.

  “Well, Mr. Yao,” said the black policeman, the older man among the trio, “you must come with us.”

  “Why?” Tian said loudly. “I didn’t beat her.” Then, taking a deep breath and lowering his voice. “She was my manager and we were just discussing our final business arrangements.”

  The policewoman interrupted him by asking Freda, “Is he your boyfriend?”

  Freda nodded. “Yes, he is.”

  Tian jumped in,“Damn it, I’m not her boyfriend! I’m her boss.”

  “That makes no difference if you hit a woman,” the white cop said. “You’re under arrest.” He brandished a pair of handcuffs and stepped up to him. “You have the right to remain silent. Hold out your hands!” he ordered.

  “Why? I’m not a criminal!” Tian refused to move his hands while red splotches appeared on his lean face.

  “That’s something you should prove in court,” said the black cop, who looked disgusted. “No man should raise his hand against women and children in this country. Do you understand? This is an American value.”

  Reluctantly Tian let them cuff him. They took him out and dragged him to their white cruiser with blue stripes. Freda looked stupefied and followed them out of the building, too shaken to say anything. “Do you need to be treated at a clinic?” the policewoman asked her.

  “No, I’m okay. Thank you,” said Freda.

  They put Tian into the car while Freda only stared at him, her mouth agape as they pulled away with the strobe slashing daylight.

  They took him to their precinct and told him that he’d have to stay in there for two nights because nobody could process his case on the weekend. They snapped mug shots of him, from his front and both sides, and also had his fingers and palms printed. Then they stripped him of his phone and wallet and his belt and shoes. They made him wear slippers, which were so big that he had to move around with stiff legs. He wanted to contact Yabin and Cindy Wong so as to get hold of a lawyer, uncertain how his immigrant attorney would respond to his arrest, but he could not remember his friends’ phone numbers. A stalwart guard supervising the jail cells shouted at him, “Be quiet and just wait for your time to gripe to the judge!”

  Before slamming him into a room, they ordered him to undress. They checked every part of his body and even poked his anus. He was angry and cried, “Why do this to me? This is harassment!”

  The same guard said, “Matter of fact, we’re trying to be responsible. What if you have medical conditions and croak in our hands? We have to make sure you’re physically okay and capable of going through the confinement. You think I enjoyed poking your stinking ass?”

  After the “checkup,” they put him into a sizable room, and he gradually got used to the semidarkness in there. It had two rows of bunk beds along the walls. In a corner sat a toilet, beside which there was a small sink. A pair of folded beds leaned against the wall beyond the toilet. On the ceiling a terrain of damp patches spread in the plaster, reminding him of a landscape ravaged by a flood. A fluorescent tube went on blinking above the door. Tian realized this room must be a temporary cell for new arrivals. Fortunately there were only two other detainees in it. One was a middle-aged black man wearing a graying ponytail and the other a squat young Korean with a large square face. In Tian’s heart he couldn’t stop cursing Freda, the madwoman who must have meant to do him in.

  A tiny window, narrow and rectangular, looked onto an enclosed yard and let in a slanting column of sunlight. When he was tired of dozing on the top bed of a bunk, he would stand behind the window and observe the small empty yard. The sense of the double enclosure, of the cell plus the yard, made him feel more desolate. He was afraid they might send him to a real prison. If that happened, his life would be ruined.

  The black man harrumphed and Tian turned around. The man said in a smoky voice, “Hey, I’m Kevin. What’s your name?”


  “I’m Tian.”

  “What brought you in?”

  “I fought with my manager,” Tian told him, reluctant to elaborate.

  “You beat him up? You have guts, man.” Kevin batted his large eyes.

  “No, I pushed her and she fell, so she called the cops.”

  “Your manager’s a woman? You can’t fight with a woman, you’ll never win.”

  “That’s right. How about you? Why are you here?”

  “I drove away somebody’s automobile. The guy owes me lots of dough.”

  So this man was a car thief, Tian thought. But Kevin didn’t look wild or mean. In fact, if in a suit and tie, he might resemble an office worker. “How about him?” Tian asked about the Korean, who was sullen and reticent, probably unable to speak English.

  “Bong? Oh, he’s nuts.” Kevin’s chin pointed at the young man lying at the bottom bed of a bunk. “He beat up a guy who slept with his sister.”

  “His sister didn’t like the guy?”

  “Their parents wouldn’t give their approval.”

  Tian wasn’t sure how much Bong could follow their conversation, so he stopped chatting with Kevin lest the young fellow take offense. Tian reminded himself to keep quiet and try to relax, waiting for Monday.

  Late in the afternoon, a guard shoved their dinner on plastic trays through the tiny opening in the door. Tian lost appetite at the sight of the meal: four slices of white bread, two franks, steamed broccoli, a small carton of milk. “Eat before it gets cold,” the guard’s gruff voice told him. “You Asians like hot food, don’t you?”

  At first, Tian didn’t want to touch the meal, but then he forced himself to eat. The watery broccoli stuck in his throat and wouldn’t go down. He wondered why they hadn’t put some flavor to it. A pinch of salt and black pepper would do and wouldn’t cost anything. He didn’t touch the cold milk, which could upset his digestion, so he gave it to Bong, who took it and mumbled, “Thanks.” Tian wished they’d given him a small tub of yogurt instead, which his stomach had learned to tolerate.

  After dinner, he lay down again, pulled up a smelly blanket, and tried to sleep as much as he could, to save his energy and while away the time.

  19

  Finally it was Monday. Unable to contact Yabin or Cindy, Tian begged a middle-aged officer to let him call his lawyer. The policeman, wearing a name tag that said perry, was kind enough to help him find his attorney’s office number. Marge Johnson gasped on hearing where Tian was. But after he explained the situation, she said she must get him out of the police’s hands without delay and have his arrest removed from the record, or this might jeopardize his application for immigration. She assured him that she would start working on this right away.

  Fortunately Freda showed up at the precinct around midmorning. She changed her story, saying Tian hadn’t beaten her and she had phoned to get help because she’d been beside herself with anger when he was trying to show her the door. She also clarified to the police that Tian was her employer, not her boyfriend, and that the bruise on her forehead was the result of an accidental fall. It took her nearly a whole hour to convince them that her call had been nothing but an outrageous threat. When Marge Johnson arrived, they were ready to let Tian go, though they said his attorney would have to file some paperwork to get him released.

  Tian was worried about the additional lawyer fees. Johnson’s rate was $350 an hour. She had already spent three or four hours on his case today, and his bill would be increased considerably. But he was glad to be free again. He ran into Freda on his way out. She looked shamefaced and said, “I’m sorry, Tian. I didn’t expect the cops to arrest you. I locked your apartment when they took you away.” She handed him the keys he’d left behind.

  He accepted them without a word, glaring at her. Deep down, though, he kind of appreciated her effort to make amends.

  Riding the subway back, he found some text messages on his phone, including those from Cindy Wong, Yabin, and some media reporters. He suspected that his arrest might have become news. Coming out of the Flushing subway station, he picked up The China Dispatch. As he had expected, the incident was on the second page with the headline “Famous Singer Arrested for Battery.” The short article described Freda as a young mistress of Yao Tian’s and claimed that the two of them had been cohabiting for an extended period of time. Owing to an intense quarrel, the cause of which was still unclear, he had attacked her in their home, and out of desperation she’d called 911. The police showed up and took him into custody. The article went on to condemn him as a married man who had abandoned his wife and child back in China. It also reminded readers never to raise their hands against women and children. It concluded, “It looks like Yao Tian will have to fight a courtroom battle soon. A grim lesson, indeed.”

  Unsettled, he went to the public library across the street. Looking through the other Chinese-language newspapers there, he found his story in every one of them, though they each worded the case differently. They all carried a file photo of him singing onstage with his arms open and his head tossed back—the exaggerated movement he hated and was even ashamed of. He wondered how the papers had come to know of his arrest. He didn’t remember seeing anyone on the street when he was put into the police cruiser. To his mind, the only possible source of the news was Freda.

  Tian called Yabin, who had texted that he was worried. His friend sounded relieved on hearing his voice. “Where are you now?” Yabin asked.

  “Back in my apartment,” Tian said. “How did you get to know of my trouble?”

  “Freda phoned me. She was distraught and begging for help. She said she’d called many people and I was the first one to pick up. She said the cops wouldn’t listen to her explain and just dragged you away.”

  “That’s a lie. She called 911 and claimed I was her boyfriend and had beaten her up.”

  “She knew she’d made a terrible mistake. Your name’s come up on all the Chinese news sites—it’s a big story now.”

  Tian didn’t comment, though he cursed Freda mentally for spreading the word of his detention, wittingly or unwittingly. Every effort she’d made to salvage the disaster only got him deeper into it. He just hoped she would disappear from his life from now on.

  For the rest of the day he stayed in, afraid of being recognized if he went out. He cooked ramen noodles with poached eggs and canned french-cut green beans and sliced beets. The simple meal, with soy cheese, tasted wonderful, and he wolfed it down while reading news on a Canadian Chinese media site. It too reported his arrest, quoting The China Dispatch as the source. Below the article a commenter remarked that Yao Tian should be barred from access to guns, as domestic abuse was often the precursor of gun violence. The person added, “A wife-beater can easily turn into a random assaulter of others.” The words spoiled Tian’s appetite, and he put away the remaining noodles. For the whole day he sat on pins and needles, fearing that his wife would soon hear of this scandal.

  Toward ten p.m. that night Shuna called. She’d seen the story online but sounded calm. She asked him about the jail cell and the food he’d eaten in there. He told her that the detention was a mistake by the police, and that his attorney would get the arrest removed from the police log so that the incident would not affect his application for immigration. Shuna sighed and said, “You didn’t keep your word. You promised me you’d break up with that woman, but obviously you didn’t.”

  “Listen, Shuna.” He tried to sound clearheaded. “Freda and I were together for the last time to square our accounts. But afterward she wouldn’t leave, so I showed her the door by force. She scratched my neck and I got mad and pushed her. She fell and knocked her head on the wall. That was why she called the police.”

  “Why did she come to your place for the final settlement?” Shuna pressed. “Why not do that somewhere else?”

  “She’s touch and go. I feared she might make a scene publi
cly.”

  “Does this mean it’s finally over between you and her?”

  “Absolutely. From now on, I’ll handle all my engagements by myself, without a manager.”

  Although Shuna seemed to accept his explanation, he was still agitated. For days he didn’t shave. He avoided downtown Flushing and public places. When he had to buy groceries, he went to the bodega down the street, run by a Pakistani family who didn’t know who he was. He spent a lot of time reading. Some of the exiled writers he’d met had given him their books, mostly self-published in North America, and he’d never had time to read them. Now finally he could enjoy them. He particularly liked some of the poetry books and often stayed for hours on a single poem if he found it beautiful. He would think about how to set it to music, and found some short verses that might work well as songs. How he wished he could have written such poems himself.

  A handful of reporters contacted him, requesting interviews, but he declined them all. Attorney Johnson had emphasized that he mustn’t speak publicly. “For now, silence and a low profile would do you good,” she told him.

  He enjoyed the solitude, but Freda still called him every night. If he saw her number, he would shut off the phone. Once he picked up by accident and greeted her. She pleaded, “Are you still angry at me? Can’t we remain friends?”

  He kept silent, fearful of starting a conversation with her.

  She went on, “Can I do something to make up for my mistake, Tian?”

  “No, it’s over between us,” he said and hung up.

  Still she would phone him from time to time. She always sounded guilty in her messages, though he couldn’t relent yet.

  PART THREE

  20

  In the fall Tian’s application for immigration was approved, and he was given a paper green card for the time being. The laminated one would arrive in a month or so. He was thrilled, and relieved that his arrest had not affected USCIS’s assessment of his case. Though he’d paid almost five thousand dollars for the attorney fees, he was grateful to Marge Johnson, who had worked diligently on his behalf. He was glad he’d followed Yabin’s advice and had avoided lawyers who represented only Chinese applicants—attorneys who, most often from China themselves, took advantage of their clients’ ignorance of English and American society. To thank Marge, Tian presented her with a large panda doll for her five-year-old daughter.