A Song Everlasting

by Ha Jin

  Yabin also assigned him to paint the interiors of houses. With a few exceptions, all walls were painted in a white called 7050, which Frank said was a universal color, suitable for nearly all interiors. Tian thought this was quite neat and saw how it made the work easier.

  A cousin of Sami’s, Yu Funi, was the most skilled among the six painters. Tian was added to this group. Usually a house needed only two painters at a time, so the seven of them would be assigned to different homes. Since Tian was new, Funi kept him with her so that she could train him. She showed him how to tape the edges of socket covers and the sides of window and door frames, how to caulk cracks and small holes in a wall, how to pour paint into a tray, and how to wash brushes in a toilet.

  She was in her late twenties and sturdy with muscular arms and thick shoulders. In spite of the cold weather she wore only a thin sweater and a pink headscarf when she was painting indoors.

  “Can you do this?” she asked Tian as she was roll-painting a ceiling, assuming that he hadn’t tried a roller yet.

  “Of course,” he said with forced confidence. “I did this kind of work back in my hometown.”

  “Huh? I don’t believe you. We didn’t use a roller in China.”

  “Right,” he acknowledged. “I only used a brush.”

  He found it hard to paint an even coat on a ceiling, and at first his work often appeared patchy with various shades. Funi had to touch it up to finish the job.

  She was easy to be with—he could relax around her as if they’d known each other for a long time. When she needed something, she would tell him to get it for her because her hands were full. When they took a break, she’d throw on her peacoat and go out for a cigarette with the other smokers on the crew. He always stayed inside, lounging around or catnapping with his head pillowed on his crossed hands. In spite of their age difference—thirteen years—he enjoyed working with her. Her youthful energy made him feel more active and alive. During the first week he had sore shoulders, but soon his muscles adjusted, and he was able to run a roller with ease.

  Sometimes he was assigned to help a plumber fix a leaking toilet or sink or replace a water heater. Tian didn’t have a flair for plumbing at all, but Yabin wanted him to become familiar with the different trades, sometimes sending him off with a carpenter or even an electrician. In general, the work was light on these trips: He just stood at the ready, handing them a part or a tool when they needed it. At most they’d have him help them return or buy parts at Home Depot, loading and unloading their trucks. Yabin joked that in due time Tian might take his job, helping Frank facilitate business and communicate with English-speaking customers. Tian said he was merely a part-timer and there was no way he could step into Yabin’s shoes.

  Soon he found his specialty: making window and door screens. This work used to belong to Sami, but now she was too occupied with bookkeeping and the three children she and Frank had. Home Depot did sell ready-made screens, but they were pricey and didn’t fit well, so Paramount always made their own. When Tian started a screen, he was careful about the measurements, down to the millimeter, and as a result his products always fitted doors or windows precisely. Tian was happy to find himself useful in this way.

  Unlike the rest of them, Frank was a master craftsman. Besides his own home, a clapboard raised ranch he had restored himself, he owned two multi-unit houses, which, because he had renovated every part of the two properties and had done such an excellent job, he had become unwilling to sell. Tian admired Frank’s pride in his work and even thought that if he was ever born again, he’d like to be a master home renovator, earning a living with his hands and skill and physical strength—each year he would rebuild two or three old houses and sell them at a profit. That would be a decent way to make a living. Yet he had noticed that Frank always avoided acquiring properties in slums because he wanted to ensure that the renovated houses could get taken off his hands easily. Frank seemed to have a kind of instinct for how to operate within this capitalist system. He eschewed risks and tried to acquire building materials only from a network of reliable friends.

  Frank seldom joined his workers on-site. He spent his days in downtown Boston or Cambridge, doing high-end custom work for clients who were often demanding but paid well. Frank once told Tian that a graduate student at MIT, a son of some high-ranking official in China, had paid him five thousand dollars to build an exquisite wine rack in his kitchen. The young man owned the apartment and wanted it to be furnished to his satisfaction, so the wine rack was one of a kind, made of hardwood. Frank had since become his personal handyman, and he often raved about the extravagance and openhandedness of his rich clients.

  24

  “Your mother is in the hospital,” Shuna told Tian on the phone.

  “What happened to her?” he asked, stunned, though he knew her health had been faltering.

  “I’m not sure. Her neighbor called last night and said she had blacked out in the doorway of her home and couldn’t get up from the floor. Some members of the neighborhood committee happened to be passing by and saw her. They rushed her to the hospital.”

  “Did the police do something to her?”

  “I don’t think so—you know she has been unwell for some time. I urged her to have a checkup in our medical school here, but she wouldn’t come to Beijing.”

  “Do you need me to come back and care for her?” A paroxysm of homesickness hit him. He knew his mother and his wife had never gotten along and it would be unlikely for them to live comfortably under the same roof.

  “Don’t rush,” Shuna said. “I’m going to Dalian in two days, after I teach my graduate seminar, and I’ll see what she’s like.”

  “Please keep me updated. I’ll be waiting for your call.”

  Dalian City was about six hundred miles east of Beijing, but by high-speed rail one could get there in five hours. Tian feared his mother might have had a stroke, or worse—if so, he must hurry back to take care of her. Since Anji’s death he’d been his mother’s only living kin and he should be at her side. But he couldn’t say this to Shuna, who seemed determined to have him stay in America so that their daughter could attend college there. To people back home, including officials, Tian’s lengthy stay in the States signified that he had settled down, so it would be natural for Tingting to come join him. With her father already in America, there might be fewer official obstacles to her coming here. Tian was sure that must be Shuna’s reasoning, though he felt she had simplified too much. To him, it was money that was the determining factor—as long as you got admitted by a college and your family had the funds to pay, you should be able to come and study. Whenever he thought of his daughter coming to college in America, Tian got unnerved by the cost. There was no way he and Shuna could support Tingting’s education here with their incomes. Yet they owned two apartments in Beijing, both shabby and small. Perhaps they could sell one of them for the girl’s college, but still that might be far from enough. He couldn’t explain the money worries to his wife, afraid she might blame him for not having taken the government’s offer of four million dollars.

  He also realized that his mother’s illness could become an excuse for him to give up the difficult work of a free life and retreat back to a secure livelihood and the endless restrictions he abhorred, like a freed bird back in its former aviary. With that awareness he decided to wait for Shuna’s report after her visit to his mother.

  To his dismay, Shuna abandoned her plans to go to Dalian that weekend because Tingting had a dance test out of town that would determine whether she could advance to the next level of classes. Shuna feared that Tingting might have gotten lost on the way if she’d gone alone. Further, the girl wouldn’t have known where to get lunch and clean drinking water, both of which Shuna carried for her. Tian was angry—his mother was lying in the hospital while Shuna was more worried about their daughter’s dance class. He could tell that Tingting was an unremarkable
dancer and always attended her classes half-heartedly. Perhaps the girl also knew she was on the verge of aging out of her dancer’s body, her frame getting heavier and her limbs thicker. Besides, she should be able to get around and find suitable food on her own. Shuna shouldn’t pamper her so much.

  Tian and his wife argued on the phone. He told her she needed to go to Dalian as soon as possible. She sounded annoyed, but promised to go see her mother-in-law as soon as she could. “Wait until you hear from me,” she said. “Then you can decide what to do.”

  He called the hospital several times, but couldn’t get hold of the doctors who had been treating his mother. Only once a nurse answered his questions, telling him that his mom had just come out of the ICU and would be kept in a ward for further treatment. The nurse was busy and couldn’t speak with him at length.

  When Shuna returned from Dalian the next Sunday evening, she told Tian that his mother didn’t seem to be recovering. Her stroke had also caused a heart attack. Her condition was dangerous, and the doctors only said they were doing their best. The local Falun Gong branch had assigned three caregivers for her, who rotated around the clock. But Shuna could see that her mother-in-law might not survive: She could no longer recognize her daughter-in-law and was also incontinent.

  This made Tian decide to head back without further delay. His passport was due to expire in just a month, however, and he wanted to get it renewed here before he departed. He was unsure how this was done, but he was positive that in China he’d be classified as someone under “border control” and the renewal would be denied. He decided to go to the Chinese consulate in New York to see if the renewal could be expedited. He’d heard that such a service was available if you paid an extra thirty-dollar fee. The visa and passport office on 42nd Street was open weekdays from nine a.m. to two-thirty p.m., and the line was said to be so long that applicants had to get there early in the morning so as to get their visas and passport renewals before the closing time. Ideally he should arrive one or two hours before nine a.m., but no bus ran after midnight from Boston. The cheapest service was Fung Wah, the Chinatown bus, which cost ten dollars at night and fifteen during the day. Many commuters used this bus between New York and Boston, despite its poor safety records and the frequent breakdowns and accidents. The last bus left South Station at ten p.m. and arrived in New York around two a.m. This meant he’d have to wait seven hours for the visa and passport office to open. Of course he could get there the night before, but a hotel room would cost more than $180 in Manhattan. In a crisis like this, he had to save as much as he could, and he was certain that there’d be a lot of expenses for his mother, so he decided to take the last Fung Wah bus.

  He arrived at Port Authority at one-fifty a.m. and went out to stretch his legs a little on Eighth Avenue. The street was still strewn with pedestrians in spite of the early hour. The misty, rust-colored nightglow enlivened the sky beyond the buildings. A rancid odor lingered in the air, reminding him of overused cooking oil and underground sewage. It was still chilly in mid-March, people on the street wrapped in long coats and some in scarves. Tian realized he’d better stay inside the bus station before daybreak, so he went back in. In a hall on the second floor he came upon some twenty men and women sleeping along the bases of walls, most of them homeless covered in blankets, though a few looked like passengers, accompanied by bags and parcels, waiting for the morning buses. They all seemed in heavy sleep despite the musty air in there. Fortunately Tian had on an overcoat and could keep warm even lying on the cold terrazzo floor. He picked a spot and lay down next to an old man who was holding an empty whiskey bottle on his abdomen with both hands. As Tian was dozing off with his knit hat pulled over his face, a rush of sadness filled his chest. If someone recognized him here and took a photo of him, he was sure that word could go viral, that many people would know via social media that Yao Tian was like “a homeless bum” now. Yet in spite of his misery, soon he fell asleep.

  The next morning he was amazed by his ability to sleep well inside the bus station. This reminded him of a saying his mother had been fond of dropping: “Human beings can stand any suffering but not much happiness.”

  After an egg-and-cheese bagel and a cup of coffee, Tian started out for the visa and passport office behind the Chinese consulate, less than a ten-minute walk from Port Authority. More than a dozen applicants were already in line outside the building, waiting for the visa office to open; most of them were from out of state and had arrived in New York the day before. Young couples were with their infants, wives and husbands holding the children by turns. Tian stood at the end of the line, leaning against the wall of the building and waiting, his arms crossed on his chest. In no time the line had grown behind him. Traffic was surging on the street, and along the Hudson locals walked hurriedly through the mist. Tian put on his pair of powerless glasses so that he wouldn’t be recognized. Then four black men in navy uniforms appeared, security guards employed by the Chinese consulate. One of them checked the relevant forms in visitors’ hands, tossing out a phrase or a short sentence in Mandarin now and then.

  The hall on the second floor was full of people waiting for their numbers to be called. All the seats were taken. Some families had come together and stayed in knots in the corners or by the street-facing windows. A woman in her forties passed by, holding a brand-new Prada bag in front of her as if allowing the orange purse to drag her around. Tian was amused. Then a girl shouted at her father, “Your number’s up, Dad. Go now.” She pointed at window 9.

  To get his passport renewed, Tian didn’t need to go to any of those busy visa windows. When window 11 flashed his number, he rose and walked over, taking off his glasses. The woman behind the glass had goldfish eyes and a pageboy thick like a black cap. She bit the corner of her mouth as she flipped through his paperwork, ending with his immigration certificate that proved his permanent residency.

  “Where is your green card? Can I have a look?” she asked, smiling kindly—perhaps she knew he was the singer.

  “I don’t have it on me, but here’s a photocopy.” He had read on the consulate website that a Xeroxed copy of permanent residency papers would be sufficient, and feared that, if they got the originals, they might not give them back. He asked her, “Is there a way to get my passport renewed quickly? My mother is ill, hospitalized, and I have to go back to look after her. I don’t know how long I will need to stay with her.”

  She shook her head. “Because of heightened security measures, we don’t renew passports anymore. We now just reissue new passports to Chinese citizens when their old ones expire—and the new ones are good for ten years now instead of five. But today, I’m sorry, Mr. Yao, I can’t help you get a new passport.”

  The renewal used to be done with an official seal on the same passport, which specified the length of the renewed time, usually five years, but now China had followed the U.S. way, just issuing you a new passport instead.

  “What should I do, then?” Tian sounded desperate.

  She offered, “How about this—you leave your passport here and also give me a check for fifty-five dollars? I will put a note to your application saying it needs expediting. Sometimes you might get a new passport within ten days if they rush it.” She sounded professional and eager to help him.

  He paid the fee, which included the cost for the expediting, and thanked her again. Before leaving, he even said he was his mother’s only son—the only family she had now, so he must see her in case she couldn’t survive this time. The woman nodded and told him that he should get his new passport soon.

  It was not yet one o’clock, and he bought a hot dog and a bottle of grapefruit juice from a food cart on his way back to the bus station. Though exhausted, he was happy about this trip. Once he had his new passport, he’d fly back to China without delay.

  25

  During the following week he was restless and called his mother’s hospital every night. The calls
never lasted long, since the medical personnel were all busy. Sometimes he could get hold of one of the Falun Gong caregivers at his mother’s bedside, but they sounded uninformed of her actual condition, able only to describe her symptoms and how poorly she ate and slept.

  The official mail from the Chinese consulate came in the middle of the third week after his visit to New York. When he unsealed the envelope, he was surprised to find only his old passport with the top corner of its front cover cut off. For a while he stared at it dumbly; then he understood that his passport had been revoked. Panicking, he opened it and found at the bottom of the first page a scarlet rectangle in which was printed canceled in both Chinese and English.

  He tried to get his head around the invalidation. This meant he couldn’t go back to China at all—not until he had a U.S. passport and was granted a visa, as a foreigner. But green card holders had to wait five years to apply for U.S. citizenship. He still had four years to go.

  He went out to walk in the cemetery in the north. He needed a quiet place to subdue the turmoil in him. There was no one around, and he sat down on a boulder on the side of a trail while tears trickled down his face, stinging his cheeks. The air smelled damp in spite of the strong sunlight. In the distance a large rust-colored tanker ship was emerging, breaking the line between sky and water.

  He might be barred from seeing his homeland as long as the current Chinese government stood. What about his mother? Shuna had her hands full with her job and their daughter—she couldn’t go to Dalian more than two or three times a month. The only solution Tian could think of was to hire two caregivers to look after his mother in the hospital. But that would cost a lot, at least thirteen hundred dollars a month. He thought of having his mother transferred to a hospital in Beijing, but that would be infeasible—impossible unless they could afford the astronomical costs, whereas in Dalian the municipal government was to pay her medical bills.