A Free Life Read online

  6

  NAN didn’t expect Danning would write back within a month. Usually a first-class letter traveled more than ten days from the United States to China. In this case, Nan’s letter had reached his friend via the magazine; the detour must have taken an extra few days. Danning wrote in a loopy, cloudy hand:

  August 29, 1992

  Dear Nan Wu,

  What a thrill it was to hear from you. How time has been speeding by! Yes, Sirong and I married last year, and we are living in Beijing now. I didn’t go to the People’s University to teach. Instead, I have stayed home, writing fiction and freelancing for magazines. But I cannot continue living like this and will soon look for a stable job. Probably I will work for the Writers’ Association, which is interested in me because I can speak English.

  To be honest, I am not satisfied with my Alaskan novella. The editor cut too much from the story, and as a result the prose feels choppy and crude. She also put in many sentences of her own, which are out of place. Some of them are plainly jarring. The magazine was eager to cater to the readers’ interest in the exotic, so the editorial department demanded that all the stories be set in foreign countries, and we were supposed to make them as outlandish as possible. I had no choice but to concede, otherwise they would not have printed the piece. Well, you see this is China, where nothing has changed much. I often feel I’m living in a net, having to navigate through many invisible holes. Sometimes I miss my old days in Cambridge, MA, where I was left alone and could dream alone, lolling on a bench outside my apartment, basking in a sunny indolence, and watching the scudding clouds.

  I have been working hard on two novels, both set in the United States. Stories about American life are hot nowadays. Have you seen the book Manhattan’s China Lady? It’s a runaway best seller here. My publisher is eager to have a blockbuster like that and has pressed me for the manuscripts several times. I have to finish my books soon, but I don’t know how to write popular stuff and may disappoint my publisher.

  Give my regards to Pingping and Taotao. Talk to you later.

  Shake hands,

  Danning Meng

  Nan remembered the time when Danning had lived in Cambridge, but in reality his friend hadn’t always had the kind of leisure described in the letter. Danning had once taken three days off from his lab, able to lounge around, but only because a tick had stuck to the top of his ear and given him a low fever and painful joints. After that letter, Nan and his friend kept up a correspondence, though they didn’t write frequently, four or five exchanges of letters a year. Nan would follow the noise Danning went on making in China. Gradually Danning became a well-known author, though he never wrote anything better than his Alaskan cannery story.

  Once Danning claimed that he was going to write his “great Chinese novel,” which would exhaust the genre of the novel technically. Nan couldn’t imagine such a monumental masterpiece and thought of asking him to define his vision, but he refrained, feeling that his friend had become a glib man, if not a blabbermouth. He mentioned Danning’s ambition to Pingping, who smiled and said it might just be a boast. She simply couldn’t enjoy that man’s writings no matter how hard she tried.

  7

  WHEN it got cooler in late September, business began to come back at the Gold Wok, but Nan and Pingping couldn’t feel relieved. Many people were still out of work, and about a third of the suites at Beaver Hill Plaza remained vacant, though the economy was reported to be improving. The large hall left by A&P had been filled by a Goodwill store, and the parking lot was again half full in the daytime.

  One afternoon Nan sat slouching at the counter and reading his Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. Beside his elbow, toward the wall, was a small aquarium in which a pair of angelfish was gliding. A string of bubbles kept spiraling up from the pebbles at the bottom of the water. As Nan was perusing the verbal idioms listed under the headword point, in came a tall man with dark hair; his ruddy face looked familiar, but Nan didn’t recognize him. The man, wearing a black T-shirt, smiled and nodded at him, then stretched out his hand. “Hey, Nan Wu, don’t you remember me? Dick Harrison,” he said in a mellifluous voice.

  Now Nan recognized him—the young poet, Sam Fisher’s friend, whom he had met several times in New York. Delightedly Nan shook his hand. “What brought you here, Dick? I didn’t recognize you because your hair is short now. You look so young zat I thought you were a student.”

  “Thanks. I took a job at Emory.” Dick rested his elbows on the counter.

  “What kind of jawb? Teaching?”

  “Yes, poet in residence.”

  “You teach how to write poetry?”

  “Yes, plus literature. Sam told me you had opened a restaurant in an eastern suburb of Atlanta, so whenever I saw a Chinese restaurant, I’d pop in to see if I could run into you.”

  “Sanks for looking for me.”

  “I’m so happy to find you.”

  After introducing Dick to Pingping, Nan led him to a booth and they both sat down. He asked his wife to make some appetizers and Tammie to bring over a pot of Dragon Well tea, a delicate green tea, not the red stuff offered to their customers. By now Pingping could cook as well as Nan, though she usually worked at the counter as the hostess and cashier. The two friends resumed conversing. Now and again they looked at each other and tipped their heads back laughing as if someone had cracked a joke nobody but they two had caught.

  “How’s Sam?” asked Nan.

  “He’s okay, but he drinks too much.”

  “I didn’t know he was bibulous.”

  “Come again?”

  “He’s bibulous.”

  “Oh, yes, he’s fond of alcohol.”

  “How about his boyfriend, Min Niu?”

  “Min doesn’t drink much. They had a big row the other day. Min moved out, then Sam apologized and Min went back.”

  “So they’re still a cahple?”

  “Of course, Sam depends on Min.”

  Nan was surprised that Min Niu had dared to quarrel with Sam Fisher, the famous poet.

  “How about you?” Dick went on.

  “I’m doing all right. We bought a house nearby and also zis business.”

  “This is impressive. I can see that you’re becoming an American capitalist.”

  “Come on, I still have a mortgage to pay. How can you call me zat?”

  “Okay, you’re not rich yet, but you’re on your way to realizing your American dream, aren’t you?”

  “I just want to be independent.”

  Tammie came and put the teapot and two cups on the table. Dick tilted his full head of hair and said to her in his one-toned Mandarin, “How do you do?”

  She didn’t reply and instead tittered. She stared at him, her round eyes intense and widened; her lips parted, then twitched a little. Still she didn’t say a word. Dick lifted the cup of tea Nan had poured, and sipped. “Hmmm, excellent tea. Thank you!” he said to her.

  She giggled and glanced at his pointy chin and hairy neck. “It’s Dragon Well, this year’s fresh leaves,” she told him.

  Pingping called to Tammie from the kitchen, so the waitress turned away. The two men went on talking about Emory, which Nan had heard was called “the Harvard of the South.” Dick said the university had received a lot of funding from Coca-Cola and paid him well. He also mentioned that the previous year he’d had a book of poems published, his second, which had garnered numerous positive reviews. That was why another college had also made him a job offer. Nan was impressed, glad Dick had moved here.

  Tammie came again with two plates, one loaded with spring and egg rolls and the other with fried fantail shrimp. The moment she placed them on the table, Dick picked up a spring roll and took a bite. “This is delicious, Nan. I’ve heard you’re an excellent chef. I’ll come and eat here every once in a while.”

  “You’re always welcome. Bring your friends too.”

  Dick went on to tell him about his move to Atlanta. He had already settled down, having bought a
n apartment in the Buckhead area. Today he had gone to Lake Lanier, and on his way back got off the interstate and drove through the suburbs. He was lucky to come into the Gold Wok, though he didn’t expect to find Nan so easily. He said, “What a miracle. I thought I’d be a total stranger in this redneck country.”

  “Now you have me here. In fact, Atlanta is not a bad place. Many people from southern China feel more at home here zan in New England.”

  “You’re kidding me—why?”

  “Zer climate is very similah to their home provinces, and houses are not expensive.”

  “I can see that. To be honest, this is the first time in my life that I can afford a condo. There are lots of restaurants and shops in Atlanta. Quite a convenient place to live.”

  “Have you been to a farmers’ market yet? I never saw so many fruits and vegetables before.”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “Go to zer Dekalb Farmers’ Market. It’s absolutely fantastic.”

  “Oh, I love this shrimp. Thank you, Mrs. Wu.” He waved at Pingping, who was clipping coupons at the counter.

  She replied, “I’m glad you like it. Just call me Pingping. I didn’t change last name after we marry.”

  “Sure. Thank you, Pingping,” Dick said loudly.

  They all laughed, Tammie included, and then the two friends resumed their conversation. They talked about Bao Yuan, the painter-poet and editor of the journal New Lines, which was defunct now. Dick said Bao was thinking of leaving New York, though his paintings had begun to sell. Actually, he had just held a one-man show in a gallery in Soho, which turned out quite successful and sold many pieces of his work. Still, Bao felt he couldn’t continue living in New York and had been looking for a job elsewhere. Nan knew that would be difficult, since that fellow spoke little English and would make no effort to learn it. It was a shame that he had lived with Wendy for almost a year and still couldn’t speak a correct sentence. As people believed, the best way to learn English was to do it in bed with a native speaker, but Bao had simply wasted the opportunity. If he refused to change, there would be no way he could survive in America. “He’s too smart,” Nan told Dick.

  “How do you mean?”

  “He had good opportunities, but his mind couldn’t focus. He depends too mahch on cleverness and doesn’t work hard.”

  Dick agreed. Then, as if remembering something, he said, “Sam told me you were still writing poetry. How’s it going?”

  “Oh, I haven’t done mahch lately, but I’ve kept lawts of notes. I’m still trying to figure out how to use zem.”

  “Do you write in Chinese or English?”

  “I haven’t written a lawt since I came here, to be honest.”

  “I remember Sam once urged you to write in English. You should try. Your English is excellent.”

  “I don’t think I can.”

  “Why can’t you?”

  “I don’t know anybody who has written significant poetry in an adawpted language.”

  “That’s not true. How about Charles Simic? He came to this country in his teens and became a marvelous poet.”

  “Who?”

  “Charles Simic.”

  “I have never heard of him, but I’m going to look at his work.”

  “Nan, you should be bolder. Fuck the bunk that says you can’t write poetry in your stepmother tongue. If nobody can, then you’d better try harder. That will put you in a unique position, to make yourself original. To tell the truth, I was quite amazed that your English has improved so much. You speak more fluently than before.”

  “Sanks for your advice. By zer way, what’s ‘bunk’?”

  Dick gave a belly laugh. “You’re so earnest. It means ‘nonsense,’ the abridged form of ‘bunkum.’”

  “I see,” Nan said, not knowing that word either. His lips stirred as if he were tasting his own words and reluctant to let them out.

  After three o’clock some customers came in, so Dick took his leave. He and Nan exchanged phone numbers, and he promised to come again.

  8

  DICK’S presence changed Nan’s life somewhat. Every week the poet would come to eat at the Gold Wok at least once. Nan always did his best in cooking whatever he ordered, and together they’d talk about news, poetry, books, movies, and Buddhism. Nan didn’t know much about the religion, while Dick had been studying a bilingual volume of the Lotus Sutra. He would bring along the book and ask Nan about the meanings of some Chinese phrases that he suspected might have been corrupted through the translation, though he respected the group of translators named Silent Tongues.

  Nan was happy whenever Dick came. He admired his carefree manner, his devotion to poetry, and his seriousness about meditation. But Nan wouldn’t try to write in English as Dick had advised, mainly because he was exhausted by his daily work, unable to gather his strength for such an endeavor. He was still unnerved by the lingering impact of the recession, which had lately forced another shop at the plaza out of business. The past summer his restaurant had made only $1,000 a month, and the Wus had had to withdraw money from their savings account to pay bills. Tammie had made much less than before too and complained a lot. Nan encouraged her to look for a more lucrative job elsewhere if she wanted, but she said things would come around, and she stayed. For that he was grateful. Although more people came to eat after the summer, the business wasn’t as good as it should have been. Pingping had asked Janet to let her make more necklaces and earrings, but the jewelry store was faltering too and couldn’t stock more inventory at the moment. What disconcerted the Wus most was that if someday they couldn’t come up with $1,000 for Mr. Wolfe at the end of a month, they might lose their home. The fear made them more determined to pay off the mortgage as early as possible. After that, even if their restaurant didn’t make enough, they could still have their home intact and manage to tide themselves over. Nan regretted having mailed Mr. Wolfe $1,500 a month for half a year. From now on he would send him exactly $1,000 each month and deposit more money in the bank. Once they saved enough cash, they would clear the mortgage with a lump sum. This way he could always have some savings for a rainy day.

  Whenever Dick was around, Tammie was noticeably excited. She seemed very fond of him. Usually she was reticent, but with Dick she’d become voluble, explaining to him how the dishes were made and plying him with questions about his family, his students, and his writing. Dick would take the opportunity to learn some Chinese words from her. He’d laugh casually even though he was aware of her glad eyes. Seeing the change in Tammie, Pingping would shake her head, believing the waitress was too easily smitten with that man. But she didn’t know how to broach the subject with Tammie, who sometimes still avoided speaking to her.

  After Dick left, Tammie would ask Nan questions about that red-faced man. How did they meet? Where did his folks live? Had he had a lot of friends in New York? Had he always been so funny and upbeat? Wasn’t it amazing that he had already become a big professor and published two books even though he couldn’t be older than thirty-five?

  Nan felt for Tammie, knowing what it was like when you fell for somebody, which often made you silly and act out of character. Love could be an addiction, if not a sickness. Nan and Pingping talked between themselves about Tammie’s infatuation and knew the poor woman might get hurt. So one day Nan told her bluntly, “Actually Dick is gay.”

  “You mean, he doesn’t like women?” She looked at him in disbelief, her large eyes glittering.

  “Yes. I saw him wiz some men in New York. Most of his friends were gay.”

  “That’s awful!”

  “I’m afraid he may catch diseases if he isn’t careful wiz too many boyfriends.”

  “He looks very healthy, though.”

  “Yes, I was just sinking aloud. He knows how to protect himself. Don’t make too much of what I said.”

  For the rest of the day Tammie looked absentminded and remained quiet. Nan felt sorry for her, but it was better to stop her from daydreaming before she got hurt.
Afterward, when Dick showed up, Tammie was no longer as vivacious as before.

  9

  “MOM, can you drive me to school tomorrow morning?” asked Taotao one afternoon the moment he stepped into the restaurant, carrying his heavy book bag on his back. Today he should have gotten off at Marsh Drive and stayed home, doing his homework.

  “Why can’t you take the bus?” his mother said.

  “I don’t want to.”

  “How come?”

  “I don’t like the bus anymore.”

  His parents knew there must be some reason he wouldn’t say, so they demanded that he be forthcoming about it. Pressed time and again, Taotao confessed that he was afraid of two boys, Sean and Matt, who would twist his ears and pull his nose whenever they saw him on the school bus.

  “Why do they do that?” asked his father.

  “They’re just assholes and won’t stop bugging others.”

  “Then why not ignore them?”

  “No,” his mother interrupted. “He can’t let others bully him like that.”

  “Mom, they do it to everyone.”

  “Then why aren’t the others scared?”

  “I’m new here.”

  “That’s not an excuse. You have taken that bus for more than a year. I won’t drive you, and you must help yourself.”

  The boy looked crushed, his mouth compressed and his eyes brimming with tears. His father told him, “You have to fight back by yourself.”

  His mother went on, “Do you want me to go with you on the bus tomorrow? I’ll question the squirts and find out why they keep picking on you.”

  “No, Mom! I don’t want you to do that. You’ll make me look like a crybaby.”

  “Then you’ll have to confront them by yourself. From tomorrow on, when they pull your ears, you do the same to them.”

  “But you mustn’t fight with them,” added his father. “Just show them that you’re not afraid. Understood?”