A Free Life Read online

  He wished he could hold on to his current job. Just a few years more would give him a period of apprenticeship, during which he could read many books and learn more about literature besides the craft of poetry writing. But that was just a fantasy. He had to find another job soon. He went to a steakhouse in Watertown and told the manager that he had waited tables at a Chinese restaurant. The balding man looked askance at him, twisting his swallow of a mustache with his long fingers. Apparently Nan couldn’t lie without blushing. He was relieved two days later when the man told him they couldn’t hire him. He had been daunted by their menu, which contained many Italian words. Just a glance at it gave him a headache, let alone the long wine list on which almost all the names were unfamiliar to him. Nan turned up at a drugstore near Harvard Square in Cambridge; its owner, a portly gentleman, was interested in hiring him as an evening-shift supervisor, but first the applicant would have to show him his green card. Nan produced his work permit, but the man wouldn’t accept it, saying he’d be fined thousands of dollars if the INS caught him. He’d take nothing except a green card, which Nan had applied for but couldn’t get until the next year. Then Nan entered a used bookstore with a HELP WANTED sign leaning against a stack of moldy, leather-bound tomes in the window. A fortyish woman wearing pince-nez said they needed someone to work at most twelve hours a week, not a full-timer.

  At last, a week before Christmas, a security guard’s position opened up at Hampden Park, a condominium complex in Newton, just off Route 9. Sandy, the manager, told Nan to come in and fill out some forms. He went there the next morning. The place consisted of three connected buildings, behind which were a swimming pool and a parking lot shaded by two long sheds. There were altogether about 120 condominiums, all sharing the same front entrance, and most of the residents were retirees.

  Sandy was a stocky man of around forty, with salt-and-pepper hair, a squarish face, pale skin, and narrow eyes. Nan sat in the manager’s office in the basement, a metal desk between him and Sandy. After describing the job and asking Nan a few questions, Sandy said, “You’ll make good money here.”

  Nan grinned incredulously.

  “You have a cynical smile, young man. You don’t believe me?” asked the manager.

  “Honestly, no. How can I make good mahney eef you pay me jahst five dollars an hour?”

  “Well, I can’t do better than that.”

  “I know I cannot make a lot of mahney here, but I need zer jawb and medical insurance.”

  “Believe me, for this kind of a job you won’t get any benefits elsewhere.”

  “Zat’s true.”

  “I like your honesty, though.”

  “The troos is that no matter how hard I work, I can never be more zan a Social Security nahmber.” Nan blurted out the sentence that had echoed in his mind for days.

  Sandy stared at him in amazement, then his face relaxed. He said, “I can’t either. You’re a smart guy and I know what you mean. Here’s a uniform. Always put it on when you come to work.”

  Usually there were two security guards working on the same shift at Hampden Park. One serving as a concierge stayed in the office at the front entrance, which was so tiny that it could contain only one chair, while the other patrolled the parking lot behind the buildings. Nan was pleased to take charge of the backyard, because the guard at the front office had to pay attention to the people passing by, since every visitor must be announced. The guard in the parking lot was less busy. Nan could walk around, but was not permitted to sit down. If it snowed or rained, he could remain under either of the two long, wall-less sheds that covered the entire parking lot. But he couldn’t read while standing below so many windows—the residents would have reported him to Sandy if they saw him do that. So he carried a pocket English-Chinese dictionary with him. Now and then he’d take it out and go over a few word entries he had marked in pencil.

  The guard in the parking lot was also supposed to help the residents load and unload their cars. If they returned from shopping, he was supposed to give them a hand, carrying the grocery bags to their apartments. This was no problem for Nan; besides, most times people would tip him a dollar or two. If it was a good shift, he could make an extra ten dollars. Some middle-aged people avoided using him, reluctant to waste money on tips, especially those who drove cheap cars. A Hispanic woman named Maria, around thirty, always asked him to carry stuff for her. She was very close to Ivan, another guard who usually worked the night shift, and she tried to be friendly with Nan too, calling him “a great guy.” But she’d never tip him. At most she’d offer him a drink, which he always declined. She had thick auburn hair and a fine figure, and would wave at Nan whenever she came to the parking lot.

  Besides the day shift, Nan occasionally worked at the front office at night. He hated to be seen by everyone at the entrance and dared not look at his pocket dictionary before ten p.m. There were four other guards, but he was scheduled to work mainly with Ivan and Tim. Tim was a spare black man from Canada, around sixty, and wore a gray mustache and a lumpy ring though he was single, divorced long ago. He often talked to Nan about his retirement plan. He was working another job too, driving a shuttle bus between Logan Airport and downtown Boston. With a mysterious look and some pride he told Nan that he had to hold two jobs to make enough money for a mansion he had been building in a suburb of Toronto. That was his dream home, which he’d retire to and which would cost him more than half a million dollars.

  “When are you going back to Canada to live in your big house?” Nan asked Tim one afternoon, standing at the glass door of the tiny office.

  “As soon as I’m through with this job, in a year or two. I don’t like it here.”

  “You mean Hampden Park or Boston?”

  “I mean the United States.”

  “But zere’s a lawt of snow in Canada, right?”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “Don’t you have better jawbs here?”

  “Give me a break!” Tim cackled. Then he rolled up the sleeve of his pale blue shirt. “Look here.” He pointed at his forearm.

  “What? You mean you have hair on your skin?” Actually, Nan found Tim’s arm as smooth as his own.

  “No. Pigmentation.”

  “Oh, you are cahlored,” said Nan.

  In fact Tim wasn’t very dark, his skin at most mocha. “That’s right. Blacks are treated like trash in this country.”

  “But you make more mahney here.”

  “Yes, plus I’m busting my ass.”

  “How much more do you make here zan in Canada?”

  “It’s not the number but the purchasing power of the U.S. dollars that counts. For example, for a pack of toilet paper you pay three bucks here, but you have to pay four in Canada.”

  “Is Canada a better place for blacks to live?”

  “Yes, that’s why I’m a Canadian citizen and proud of it.”

  “So minorities are tritted equally there?”

  “No, of course not. Still, Canadians are more open-minded than Americans.”

  “How do they trit Chinese?”

  “Similar to blacks, I would say.”

  Nan remembered something. “I have a question for you, Tim.”

  “What?”

  “Is a Chinese also cahlored?” Nan had seen some job ads that encouraged “people of color” to apply, but he wasn’t sure if he was considered colored. How odd that term was. Wasn’t white also a color? Why were whites viewed as colorless? Logically speaking, everybody should be “colored.”

  “I’m not positive about that here,” said Tim. “In Canada people don’t call me ‘colored’ to my face.”

  “Come on, you have dark skin.”

  “Why should I lie to you? I’m black, but not colored. ‘Colored’ is a bad word in Canada.”

  “I wish I were cahlored, zough.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “If you are cahlored here, you can have better employment.”

  “That’s baloney, Nan! Blacks only have th
e shitty jobs nobody wants.” Tim’s bleary eyes stared at him, their corners wrinkled in rays.

  Nan didn’t respond, wondering if that was true. Ads for government jobs and teaching positions almost always urged “people of color” to apply, and he wondered if he should try for one. He’d be happy if he could work as a fireman or postman. Any stable job would be great. It wasn’t just for the pay, but for the benefits and the sense of security—some peace of mind. On the other hand, Tim might be right—Nan had never seen a black postman or fireman in Woodland.

  Later Nan pondered his conversation with Tim. Although he admired the old man’s hardiness, it made him uneasy. Despite his age, Tim held two full-time jobs, running like a machine without respite. People here worked too hard, obsessed with the illusion of getting rich. Americans often disparaged workaholism in Japan, but most of them worked as hard as the Japanese, if not harder. In this place if you didn’t make money, you were a loser, a nobody. Your worth was measured by the property you owned and by the amount you had in the bank. On the radio, the host of Money Matters would ask callers blatantly, “What’s your worth?” You couldn’t answer “I hold two master’s degrees” or “I’m a model worker” or “I’m an honest guy.” You had to come up with a specific figure. On TV, jolly old men would declare, “I feel like a million bucks!” Nan once saw in a lonely hearts section of the Boston Herald that a man seeking women described his profession as “millionaire.” Money, money, money—money was God in this place.

  14

  THE OTHER GUARD often paired with him was Ivan, a man in his mid-thirties, a recent immigrant from Russia. Ivan was a squat fellow, broad in the shoulders and thick in the stomach, and often wore a knowing grin on his face, whose rugged features showed a good deal of strength and cunning. He drove a white pickup that had a short body but four seats in the cab. Every night he brought along a laptop and typed away on it. Nan hadn’t seen such a small computer before and was impressed by Ivan’s dexterity in using the machine, for which Ivan said he had paid more than $4,000. One night when most of the residents had turned in, the two guards talked. Ivan claimed he was already wealthy, though he’d come to America only six years before.

  “What are you doing wiz your computer here?” Nan asked him.

  “Business.”

  “What kind?”

  “Transport oil.”

  “To anozzer country?”

  “To Europe.”

  “Have you been in zis trade for long?”

  “Yes, very many years.”

  “So you’re a rich man?”

  “Yes, I am.” Ivan smiled, and his fleshy cheeks broadened, reminding Nan of a giant owl.

  “Zen why are you working at Hampden Park?”

  “Look, I’m making money just sitting here while I can work with Russian companies for big deals. This way is better to use my time. Time’s money.”

  “Zat’s true.” Nan remembered that back in China, where you had nothing but time, no one was paid by the hour but all by the month. But here you made money by selling your hours. He asked Ivan again, “You don’t work during zer day?”

  “Of course I do. I visit people for business. That’s why I work here at night most the days.”

  “Do you already own a house here?”

  “No. My wife and I lease an apartment in Dorchester.”

  “Why didn’t you buy your own house?”

  “What’s a house? It’s just shelter. Like a car, it’s just a vehicle. There’s no need for fancy products. Why should I let a house waste my capital? Tell you what, we own a very expensive apartment in Switzerland.”

  “Reelly?”

  “On Lake Geneva, beautiful place. Did you ever visit Europe?”

  “No. How mahch does it cawst? I mean zee apartment.”

  “That’s classified information. We bought it to invest. Real ’state was skyrocking over there, you know.”

  “How come you got rich so quickly here?”

  “I followed my ways.”

  “You don’t share your expertise?”

  “All right, let me offer you one advice, Nan,” Ivan harrumphed, his large eyes gleaming in the dimly lighted room. “In America there’re only two ways to acquire riches. First, use others’ money; second, use others’ labor. I’m doing both.” He hee-hawed.

  Although Nan knew what Ivan said was true, he felt discomfited. He had once spent a year and a half poring over Marx’s Das Capital, and he understood how capitalists accumulated their wealth. In theory, all profits resulted from surplus labor, the blood and sweat of workers. Evidently Ivan had intuitively grasped the essence of capitalism. But how could he—Nan—act like a capitalist? Besides having no capital to invest, he simply couldn’t imagine himself using others’ money or labor. That would amount to exploitation, wouldn’t it? Yet to succeed in this place, shouldn’t he do something like what Ivan had been doing? Maybe he had to, but how?

  In a way the situation at Hampden Park was quite unusual. If what Ivan said was true, then the boss, Sandy Tripp, was poorer than some of the guards he supervised. Sandy must have known that. That might be why he was polite to Tim and Ivan. He didn’t interfere with Ivan’s working on the computer at night even though some residents had complained about it. Nan liked his boss better than his fellow workers. Sandy wasn’t strict with his staff and was often absent from the premises, leaving the place entirely to the care of the guards.

  15

  IN LATE FEBRUARY, a letter came from the Chinese consulate in New York, informing Nan that they couldn’t renew his passport because he hadn’t attached the approval from his former work unit, Harbin Teachers College. The official letter told Nan to write to the school’s personnel office and obtain their permission to let him continue studying in America. Only then could the consulate renew his passport. Nan was outraged. None of his former leaders, all jealous of his being in America, would ever grant him such an approval. Worse, he had quit graduate school here, and if they knew his current non-student status, they’d demand he return with dispatch. Nan wasn’t sure whether there was official contact between Harbin Teachers College and the Chinese consulate, which seemed determined to make things difficult for him. Probably so—officials were always in cahoots to bully and torment people. He called Danning, who had heard that recently several people couldn’t get their passports renewed on account of their involvement with the student movement the summer before.

  What should Nan do? He couldn’t write to the head of the personnel office at his former college. That devious man had once asked Nan to buy him a refrigerator, but Nan, disgusted, hadn’t answered his letter. Perhaps he should appeal for help from the chairwoman of his former department, pretending he was still registered at Brandeis. That could be a long shot, though, for he had never been close to her and hadn’t written her a word since he was here. He wasn’t even sure if she’d bother to respond. How miserable he felt as he walked around in the back lot of Hampden Park, brooding about his predicament. Why should he trouble so much about his passport if he’d get his green card soon? Why let himself remain in the clutches of those invisible hands? Why shouldn’t he break loose and set out on his own? What a misfortune it was to be born Chinese, for whom a trifle like a passport renewal would be tantamount to an insuperable obstacle! If you were Chinese, any petty official could torment you and make your life unbearable. And wherever you went, the powers-that-be would demand your obedience. If only he were an American.

  With those thoughts on his mind, Nan returned from work in the evening. He was hungry, but couldn’t go into the kitchen to eat until the Masefields finished dinner.

  Pingping cleared the table and took out of the oven the meal she had cooked for her family—a whole chicken, Tater Tots, and rice porridge. To this she added a salad of cucumber and lettuce. Taotao didn’t like the roast chicken and wouldn’t eat the drumstick his mother had cut off for him. He complained about the porridge too and left half a bowl unfinished.

  Nan always hated t
o see food wasted, never having forgotten the hunger pangs he’d had during the three famine years in the early 1960s. “We should send you back to China! Totally spoiled,” he said to his son.

  “Bullshit!” the boy grunted in English.

  “What did you say?” Nan sprang up and grabbed at him.

  “Please don’t!” Pingping wedged herself between them. “We’re not in our own home, please!”

  Nan sat down, glowering at Taotao. He demanded, “Where did you learn that word?”

  The boy, stunned, looked tearful. Pingping ordered, “Apologize to Daddy.”

  But Taotao wouldn’t say anything. This incensed Nan more. He blasted, “Such a heartless brat! I’ve lived in this country slaving away just for your sake. Instead of being grateful, you hold me in contempt and insult me at every turn. Let me tell you, if not for you, I’d go back to China tomorrow.”

  “That’s not true,” Pingping said. “We can’t go back because of our own doings. You shouldn’t have mixed our decision with his fault.”

  “Of course it’s true. I can always go back, but I want to waste my life here, for him!” He pointed at their son.

  “Then why wouldn’t the consulate renew your passport? Stop blaming others. We decided to live here, and we must cope with all the difficulties. Come, Taotao, apologize to Daddy.”

  The boy muttered, “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry is not enough, too late,” said Nan.

  Pingping got up and held the boy’s arm. “Let’s go. Leave him alone.” She took him away.

  “If you use foul language again, I’ll send you back to China by the express mail,” Nan shouted after Taotao.