A Song Everlasting

by Ha Jin

  To his knowledge, his mother had no savings at all. All she had was a shabby two-bedroom apartment. Though Shuna was a professor at a top university in China, she could make only about twelve hundred dollars a month, so Tian would have to provide the funds for his mother’s care. But he was hardly able to make his own ends meet these days and was not sure how he could come up with that kind of money.

  When he told Shuna that his passport had been canceled, she was silent for a good while before she spoke again. As she was speaking, she seemed to be generating and organizing her thoughts. He was always amazed by her perceptive mind.

  She said, “You won’t be able to return to China anymore. Tingting and I will have to join you in America.”

  “It looks that way.”

  “I’ve just heard that they didn’t give me the research grant I was supposed to get. Without the official funding, I can’t have my passport back from the university, which controls all the professors’ international travel now. Like you, I’m stuck.”

  “This is awful,” he said. He didn’t add that he now believed they might have to stay separated for a long time. The cancellation of his passport clearly indicated that the Chinese government viewed him as a dissident. The official hands had been working against them at every opportunity; they knew the most effective way to destroy a dissident was to break their family.

  Shuna went on, “See, that was why I urged you to take the offer of four million dollars two years ago. We could have immigrated through investments. The money could have transformed our lives.”

  “But I couldn’t sell my voice like that.”

  “Once we had the money and landed in America, you could have kept singing somehow.”

  “But that would be devious, wouldn’t it? I couldn’t live with myself.”

  “In this time and age honesty is synonymous with stupidity. This is an awful truth, isn’t it?”

  “If we’d deceived the government, there could have been terrible consequences.”

  “Once we were outside their borders, they wouldn’t have been able to harm us.”

  “They can always pin a criminal name on you and get you repatriated. It’s dangerous to play tricks on them.”

  He changed the topic, saying that he’d have to hire caregivers for his mother. In order to pay for her care, he might need to suspend for some time his monthly remittance to her and Tingting. Shuna, always reasonable, said they could manage. That was a relief for him.

  But for days, even while at work with the painters and cleaners, he couldn’t stop pondering whether, despite everything, there might be a way to get a new passport. He talked to Yabin about his predicament. His friend believed there might be a way for him to get another passport. He mentioned that Freda had a classmate at the Chinese consulate in San Francisco and that he, Yabin, had once asked the man to help a friend of his expedite a visa application.

  Tian was hesitant to contact Freda, but what was there to lose? He had to follow any lead that presented itself. According to Yabin, Freda was going back to China soon, so there should be no harm for Tian to contact her. He emailed her and asked about the diplomat who’d been her classmate. To his relief, she replied on the same day, saying she would contact her friend right away. She sounded calm and reasonable and seemed to have changed some.

  Two days later he heard from her again. Her friend had looked into his case and had learned that the decision to revoke his passport had been made in China, and that the Chinese diplomatic offices in the States could only carry out the orders from above. The only place he could even try to get the cancellation reversed was in Beijing, at the Ministry of State Security. Tian had landed on a blacklist, from which he’d have to get his name removed—only after that could the Chinese consulate issue him another passport. Tian could hardly fathom the bureaucratic labyrinth involved, just the thought of which gave him chills.

  These days Freda phoned him quite often, and now he was obliged to answer her calls. She also texted him lengthy messages. In their communications, she told him that she needed to return to China because she couldn’t find a full-time job here, unable to use the professional training period allowed by her visa. She’d look for work in Tianjin, where her parents now lived. If she couldn’t find a position that she really liked, she might immigrate to North America eventually. “I might come back to look for you one of these days,” she wrote. “Don’t forget me.”

  She still made him nervous, but intuitively he felt he could use her help once she was back in China. So he tried to be friendly to Freda and even asked her, once she was back, if she could find a way for him to get a passport. She’d always said she knew people in high places in Beijing—he could tell that might be an empty boast, but out loud he only said that she was absolutely remarkable, her ability to get things done.

  “Of course,” she said to him on the phone. “You’re my friend. Besides, spending a single passionate night as lovers can guarantee an everlasting affection, right?” She quoted the proverb, which gave him a jolt.

  Before she left, they arranged for him to transfer funds to her each month so that she could help his mother. She then would convert the amount into yuan and use it for his mother’s care. In fact, Freda promised to go to Dalian personally and hire the right people to look after her. Tianjin wasn’t very far from his home city, just four hours by high-speed train. He was touched by her help and even wondered if he’d been too hard on her. Flighty though she was, Freda could be loving and devoted. He had to admit that at heart she was a good person. Her last message to him before leaving New York was: “Cherish your talent, Tian! Please quit home repairs soon! Your field of action is the stage.”

  He wondered whether he should let Shuna know his arrangement with Freda, but decided against it. That might complicate matters. He told her only that he’d found a way to hire two local women to tend to his mother. Shuna didn’t press him about this. Fortunately, prior to retirement, his mother had been a clerk in the municipal tax department, so her medical costs were to be covered by the government.

  26

  Paramount Home Improvement had run into trouble. The company had just finished renovating an antique house on Riverside Street, but before it could be put on the market, it had to be inspected by the Quincy municipality. The workers had gutted the old house and replaced everything inside except for the floors, which they sanded and then varnished so that they appeared like cherrywood, shiny and vintage. Funi kept saying, “This looks like a luxury home.” And, viewed from inside, with the new cabinets, new bathtubs, new toilets, and new ceilings, the house did indeed look gorgeous. Frank had skimped on nothing.

  The official inspector came, a broad man with a brushy mustache and a sunburned-looking face and wearing a short-sleeve button-down. His belly was hanging over his belt and his arms were thick and hairy. He went through the rooms on both floors, checking the heating system, the windows, and the sinks. He also poked here and there as if to see whether everything was firmly set. Then he went down into the basement. He looked at the PVC pipes overhead and told Frank, “You guys know the requirements, but you didn’t follow code.”

  None of them knew what to make of that, so no one responded. When they were back on the first floor, the inspector explained to Frank, “I looked through the whole house and checked all the pipes in both bathrooms and under the sinks. I didn’t see a single purple mark. How can I say you guys are up to code?”

  Tian translated those words for Frank, whose face contorted as if he was struggling to smile but produced only a grimace. The inspector added, “You have to use purple marks on the pipes and the other PVC parts, following the code, or else how the hell can I tell if you used the right primer or any primer at all?”

  “What should we do about this?” asked Tian.

  “Redo all the pipes.”

  Frank looked baffled—code seemed to be something new to h
im. He tugged at Tian’s sleeve and told him to ask the inspector to step outside with them so that they could talk more about this. Once they were on the front porch, just the three of them, Frank pulled out a signed check for two thousand dollars with his name and home address printed at the top. He said, “Just let us pass, officer. We already have buyers lining up for a view of this house.” His forced smile crinkled the corners of his eyes to form a pair of fishtails.

  Tian translated his request. The man took the check and glanced at it, then told them, “Here’s my card. Contact me after you redo the pipes.” The card stated he was Thomas Glashen, construction inspector contracted with the city government.

  Without further ado, he strode away to his Ford pickup. Frank looked crushed. He had put more than one hundred eighty thousand dollars into the renovation. He needed to get the capital back so that he could start another project. Spring was a busy time, the beginning of the year for the real estate business, and he couldn’t afford to be stuck. He called their plumber and asked about the purple marks. The man told Frank that the code was outdated and few took the trouble to follow it nowadays, but if the inspector chose to throw the book at them, they might not be able to do anything about it.

  Tian was amazed that even Frank, a master in home renovation, was ignorant of the old rule. Despite his superb skills, his boss wasn’t completely respected in the home repair business. He looked slow, if not silly, when interacting with English-speaking customers.

  Yabin was more experienced in dealing with Americans, so he began to communicate with the inspector on their company’s behalf. The major concern was the check Frank had given the man, which could be evidence of bribery. Obviously someone like the inspector hated to see so many Asians entering home renovation in Quincy and was trying to suppress the trend. Tian had noticed many small companies owned by Chinese or Vietnamese immigrants specializing in a single area of home improvement—floor setting, countertops, roofing, fences, garage doors, window replacements, landscaping. The quality of their work tended to be substandard, but they charged considerably less.

  Ultimately, they had no choice but to redo the pipes in the house. The job took three plumbers a full day, using a purple primer on all the joints of pipes. Glashen never mentioned the check, which was cashed two weeks later after he provided his approval of the house. Absurdly, the clearing of the check brought a kind of relief to Frank. He kept saying that some Americans were insatiable beasts that would eat you without spitting out your bones.

  Laura, Yabin’s girlfriend, was outraged, saying it was a racist act. She believed that if the purple-mark rule was already obsolete, no longer in the book, it should never have applied to Frank’s renovation. The inspector had cheated them two times over—since he’d accepted the money, he should have let the house pass the initial inspection. But instead, they’d had to redo the pipes and still lost the two thousand dollars. Laura wanted to write to The Boston Globe to complain, but Frank stopped her because he might have to deal with Glashen again down the road. “It would be foolish to tear down our bridges,” he told them.

  * * *

  —

  Tian’s mother took a turn for the worse. For days she remained unconscious and the caregivers could no longer feed her the liquid food they prepared for her. She had to be kept alive by IV drips. The hospital issued to Shuna a crisis notice—a form stating that her mother-in-law might die at any minute. Shuna emailed it to Tian and said she was leaving for Dalian without delay. She had to ask two colleagues to teach her classes for the rest of the week. During her absence, Tingting would eat at a neighbor’s home.

  Tian was desperate but unable to figure out a way to go back. Normally, if a dissident’s parent was dying, the Chinese government provided a onetime visa for the person to join the family for a deathbed reunion and for the funeral. But his case was unique: His passport was canceled, and even if he managed to return, he’d be stranded in China. He was so devastated that the next day he stayed home from work, crying from time to time. If only he were able to do something for his dying mother!

  Every night he spoke with Shuna on the phone. The more they talked, the more hopeless he felt. She was quite certain that his mother didn’t have many days left—she was having her final clothes prepared for her and was planning the funeral service. All the arrangements she made were fine with Tian, but he was seriously considering attending the funeral, heedless of whether he could return to Boston afterward. Although his passport was canceled, legally it would expire in a week—he might seize the last few days to get back home. Shuna was adamantly against the idea, saying that even his mother would hate to see him there if it meant he’d run such a risk for her.

  “Didn’t she tell you never to return?” Shuna asked him.

  “But I want to see her one last time—”

  “She’s already unconscious, not able to recognize anyone. Tian, I know you’re heartbroken, but the only safe thing for you to do is remain in America. I believe that’s also what your mother wants you to do.”

  Later Tian told Yabin what Shuna had said. Yabin shook his head and breathed a long sigh. “I didn’t go back when my father died,” he said, “because I had to take a big exam for my MBA at Fordham. I was told that for many days he wouldn’t lie down at night—he feared he might not wake up in the morning and would die without seeing me back. In his final moments he kept murmuring my name as if to keep his heart beating until he could see me for the last time. Since he passed away, I’ve felt his eyes on me now and then, smoldering with pain. Sometimes I wonder whether our way of life is right and whether all our sacrifices were necessary and justified. Why do we Chinese face so many obstacles in life?”

  Tian echoed, “And all of them are artificial besides.”

  “Exactly. Since birth, we have been caged by all sorts of rules, some of which we have adopted as our way of life and even as part of ourselves. I can’t help wondering if they’ve been coded into our DNA.”

  “I hate that ruthless country!” Tian cried, suddenly possessed by a fit of anger.

  Wordlessly Yabin nodded in agreement.

  Two days later Tian’s mother died. Her body was shipped to a local crematory, where the funeral was held in a little hall, attended mainly by members of Falun Gong. A few neighbors were there too, but they all kept a low profile, dodging cameras, afraid of being associated with the religious group. Tingting had been there for her grandmother’s funeral too, and Tian felt relieved to know that. His mother’s ashes were left at the crematory and would, by custom, be interred two months later. Shuna sent Tian photos of the funeral, which showed about a dozen or so wreaths standing beside his mother’s portrait and every attendee wearing a black armband and a tiny white flower on the chest. Shuna arranged for a reception in the adjoining room so that the mourners could share a light repast.

  Tian was grateful to her for all she’d done for his mother. Shuna was strong, full of fortitude and capable of meeting the task. She often said, “There’s no river we can’t cross.”

  Then she found out that his mother’s will contained almost nothing. Falun Gong had sold her apartment to pay her medical bills—her status as a practitioner had disqualified her for the health coverage that a retiree was entitled to. Shuna was upset, having hoped that his mother had bequeathed something to Tingting, her only grandchild. Tian was unhappy too, but understood the sale of her home had been necessary. Her apartment was shabby and fetched only 600,000 yuan, barely enough to cover her medical bills. For their unfailing help, Tian felt beholden to the local Falun Gong.

  * * *

  —

  Tian had noticed that there weren’t many dissidents living in the Boston area, and even fewer political activities among the expats and immigrants. Still, when the twenty-third anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre was approaching, some dissidents, mainly in academia, were preparing memorial events. Tian had never volunteered to pa
rticipate in this kind of activity unless he was invited, so he hadn’t attended the memorials of the past two years. One local dissident, a professor at Boston College, approached Tian, inviting him to perform at a gathering in memory of the tragedy. Partly owing to his anger, Tian agreed to take part in the memorial. There’d also be a conference at Harvard, where a course on the Tiananmen movement had been offered by a young professor, Rowena He. Tian had read that she was determined to preserve this piece of history in part because she had seen that students from mainland China hardly knew anything about the tragedy. The Chinese government had done a thorough job in producing a collective amnesia, making most young people ignorant of the massacre. At most some of the students had vaguely heard of it. So Professor He embarked on teaching such a history seminar centered on the Tiananmen massacre, which was eventually fully attended. At first, many Chinese students, particularly those from the mainland, wouldn’t believe there’d been such bloodshed, and even expressed their resolve not to be convinced by the instruction, but as the class proceeded, more and more of them began to see the truth, verified by evidence of many kinds: personal accounts, photographs, footage, bloody clothes worn by the victims, live eyewitnesses. Some students emotionally collapsed toward the end of the course, never having imagined that the government could be so brutal. They were reminded that the student demonstrators in 1989 must have been the same age as they themselves were now. The seminar was a great success, yet Professor He lamented that to her knowledge, Harvard was the only school that offered such a course. Tian remembered that his father-in-law, who’d passed away a decade before, had once said that courage manifested in the way one lived and worked every day. Yet when Tian expressed his admiration for the professor in front of Yabin and Laura, they seemed underwhelmed. Laura even said that the woman must have too much leisure and extra energy to spare. “In retrospect, I’d say it was necessary to suppress the rebellion,” Laura said blandly. “The crackdown at Tiananmen Square led to China’s miraculous economic development.”