"A novel called Cold Mountain is very popular at the moment," Nan told Mengfei.
"Who wrote it?"
"A new writer named Charles Frazier, but I haven't read the book yet." Nan paused, then added, "I brought back a copy of American Pastoral for Danning."
The spare man with slanting eyebrows seated next to Mengfei spoke in a shrill voice. "Th-that's Philip Roth's ne-new novel!"
" Yes," Nan said.
Fanlong butted in, "I like Roth a lot, especially his Ghost Writer."
" I think Saul Bellow is better," mumbled the bespectacled man sitting next to Danning.
" Ah, Bellow is smart and funny," Mengfei said, and smacked his lips as if tasting his own words.
In addition to parading their knowledge of American literature, they also talked about Calvino, Kundera, and Duras, none of whom was familiar to Nan, though at present they were popular here. So when Mengfei asked his opinion, Nan said, "I don't read fiction very often. I read more poetry."
" Wonderful," the bright-eyed captain put in.
Fanlong added, "We just bought Derek Walcott's new book."
Nan was startled and realized that these men might be bureaucrats in the Chinese literary world. Now he should be more careful about what he was going to say. Probably they did indeed know a lot about American authors through translations.
The dishes came, loaded on a serving cart. Two young waitresses in pea green aprons began placing the courses on the table. "This is 'Trotting on a Country Path,'" declared one of them. Nan batted his eyes to look at the dish closely. Heavens, it was just braised pig trotters garnished with a few sprigs of parsley! Despite his bewilderment, he said nothing. Then together the waitresses lifted a large platter containing a fried flounder. There were also several cold cuts and sauteed vegetables. Finally the taller woman put the last plate on the table with both hands and said, "Here's your 'Whispers.'" Nan tried hard to stifle his laughter on looking at the dish, which was nothing but smoked beef tongues lying in aspic.
The waitresses had scarcely pulled the cart away when Nan burst out laughing, a bubbling sound in his nose. He said to the others, "Let's whisper, let's whisper." They got the joke and all cracked up.
"Lucky we still have our tongues," said Mengfei with a straight face.
They laughed more. As they were eating and chatting, more people appeared in the restaurant and most of the seats were taken. There were several gatherings in the room, but each group of diners paid little attention to the other tables. Nan liked the fish and ate several pieces of it. Everything else, though, tasted mediocre, but he tried to show his appreciation. By now he realized this place must be a kind of club for officials, businesspeople, and the cultural elite.
A moment later Nan mentioned to Fanlong, the senior editor, Dick Harrison's new book, Unexpected Gifts. The man looked blank, blinking his baggy eyes and saying, "I don't know enough about contemporary American poetry. Tell me more about this poet."
Without mentioning his friendship with Dick, Nan described him as a rising star in American poetry. He even recited the final stanza of Dick's poem "A Son's Reason," and they all laughed at the last lines-"Mother, I love you / only from far away."
"Dick Harrison just started teaching at the Iowa Writers' Workshop," Nan told Fanlong.
That soaked in. They all knew that workshop and the Iowa International Writing Program. The latter would admit two or three Chinese writers a year. The competition for such an opportunity was especially fierce among poets, because it was also a way to get a bit of money. After spending a semester at the University of Iowa, one could save $2,000 or $3,000 besides having the honor of attending such a prestigious program.
Danning declared to them, "In fact, Dick Harrison is a close friend of Nan 's."
The faces at the table changed visibly. Fanlong, who was also a published poet, began to listen to Nan more closely and went on asking questions about American poetry. He even said to Nan in an orotund voice, "I hope I can visit you in Georgia one of these days. Atlanta must be a big international city."
"Sure, you're always welcome." Nan felt like a fake, uncertain whether Pingping would like that. But he had to appear friendly.
Some people at the tables near a low platform started singing a song, following the karaoke machine that had just come on. Mengfei stood up and said, "Let's go have some fun." They all went over to watch the crowd.
Several young women who must have been on the waitstaff were among the singers. A moment before, everyone had been quiet and subdued, but all of a sudden the men and women were so clamorous that Nan wondered whether they were all depressed and desperate to vent their frustrations through singing. They belted out song after song-sometimes only one man and one woman sang together, and sometimes a number of people chorused at the top of their lungs. Fanlong went to the front and began to sing an old folk song with a woman with a bleached blond pageboy who wore a red cheongsam. They were singing:
In a distant mountain lives a beautiful girl. Whoever passes her cottage will turn, Hoping to catch a glimpse of her.
Her small pink face shines like the sun.
Her lovely eyes move
Like the moon in a cloudless night.
O I'm willing to give up all I have And just follow her flock of goats,
So every day I can see her small pink face And her pretty dress frilled with gold.
O I'm dying to be her little goat And always stay at her side, So she can flick her tiny whip To stroke my behind.
Having finished the song, Fanlong wagged his big ass and bleated twice, which set off whoops of laughter. He then held the woman's hands and did a little jig under the miniature chandelier, swinging his legs briskly while his cheeks glistened with sweat. The woman followed his steps, swaying her hips while holding her face up and straight. Despite the noisy audience, the two looked quite natural.
Nan was a little tired, but he thought he ought to keep his friend company. Danning was playing cards with Mengfei, the captain, and the journalist at their own table now. They had asked Nan to join them, but he had forgotten how to play One Hundred Points and just stayed around watching them.
Two girls, heavily made up, came over and sat beside the men. One of them said to Mengfei, "Colonel, don't you want some fun and comfort today?"
"Wait until I lose another five pounds." Mengfei rolled his bovine eyes. Except Nan, all the others cackled. Nan was puzzled by the colonel's answer, but said nothing.
The other girl turned to Danning. "Hey, big writer, you've forgotten me already? Where's the perfume you promised me?"
"Next time, Dailian, all right? I'm with my friend here." His chin jutted at Nan.
"Doesn't your friend feel lonely? He's so quiet."
"Ask him then."
The girl was all smiles. She scooted closer to Nan and asked coquettishly, "Don't you want to know me?" "Sure," Nan replied out of politeness. "Would you like to spend some time with me?" "For what?"
Mengfei gave a belly laugh and said, " Nan 's so innocent. Different from us. He's still uncorrupted."
"Just follow her," Danning told Nan. "She'll let you know for what."
"Who will pay for it?" Nan asked.
"You will, of course." Mengfei pointed at him. "Now I see that you're not so innocent as I thought. I pay for food and drinks but not for fellatio or sex."
The girl sitting near him pouted. "He's always so shameless and barbaric. "
Jokingly Nan said to the girl beside him, "I don't have money, unless you're willing to spend time with me for free…" "You don't have to pay now."
Danning intervened, " Nan, don't tease her. She knows you're from abroad. If you're not interested, just say you don't want it. She'll hold me responsible if you get anything free from her."
"All right." Nan turned to the girl. "I'm too tired today. I just flew all the way back from America, almost twenty hours, and I'm still jet-lagged."
" America? That's beautiful. Don't you want my phone number just in case?"
"I'm a married man."
That set the whole table roaring with laughter. "We're all married men," Mengfei said, and slapped his broad forehead three times with the heel of his hand. " Nan, please don't remind us of our depravity." He stared at the girls, who turned quiet at last. A moment later they both moved to a nearby table.
On their way back, lounging in the Audi, Nan asked Danning, "Why did Mengfei tell the girl to wait until he lost another five pounds?"
"Ah, he has a theory-the intensity of sexual pleasure is in proportion to the weight you have lost." "Strange. Do you believe him?"
"Too much body fat dulls the physical sensation, doesn't it?" " I see, you fellows are experts. By the way, why did the restaurant give those common dishes all the fancy names?"
"To get more business. Everybody wants to sell and sell and sell, to make money by hook or by crook. People don't call things by their names anymore."
Then Nan asked him what kind of place was that restaurant. "It's like a brothel," he said.
His friend laughed and told him that there were many bars, salons, and hotels like that in Beijing. Using women to attract business was common practice nowadays. Nan thought of asking him whether he had often spent time with the girls, but he checked himself. Without question Danning was a regular customer; so were his friends. Nan wondered whether he himself would have become one if he lived here.
AFTER a whole night's train ride, he arrived at Harbin in the early morning. The train station had been renovated, and, with a new veranda and a massive gateway, it looked more welcoming than it had twelve years before. People here were dressed more colorfully than Beijingers, though they had much less money. The city appeared dormant and aged; the old Russian buildings in the southeast looked gray and shabby in spite of their copper cupolas. In the square before the station a few boys and girls in sweat suits were practicing martial arts, jumping around, or kicking and punching air, or directing their energy to different parts of their bodies while standing still with their knees bent at a right angle. On the west side of the square stretched a line of food stands that sold fried dough sticks, soy milk, sugar pies, jellied tofu soup, roasted beans and peanuts. Several customers sat on canvas stools there, eating breakfast while palavering or reading newspapers; a woman had a beagle on a long leash that kept wagging its docked tail. Nan flagged down a cab and set out for Nangang District, where his parents' home was located.
The city hadn't changed much. Indeed, there were more cars on the streets, but unlike in Beijing, not many of them here seemed privately owned. Nan liked the new tall buses, which looked roomy, like tourist coaches. Five minutes later he asked the taxi to stop at Friendship Boulevard, about three hundred yards away from Wind Chime Street, on which his parents lived, because he wanted to walk a little. He gave the cabbie, a young man with a missing front tooth, twenty yuan and let him keep the change. Then he headed toward his parents' home, lugging his wheeled suitcase without looking at the street signs as if his feet knew where to take him.
When he entered the residential compound, he heard a man chanting, "Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out…" Accompanying those amplified singsong words was slow, dangling music that sounded ancient and listless. Rounding the corner of the first building, Nan caught sight of a group of old people, about thirty of them, doing morning exercises in the open space between two concrete tenements. They stepped around rhythmically, putting down heel first and swinging their arms left and right, all with their eyes half shut. They looked funny to Nan, as if sleepwalking or wrestling with shadows. Among them he saw his parents, who were swaying their shoulders indolently, his father wearing a flat brown cap while his mother was in purple slacks and a white short-sleeved shirt. To his amazement, neither of them had changed much; only their midriffs seemed thicker than before and their limbs looked a little stiff. All the people were expressionless, and their bodies moved in time with the male voice and the music as if they were in a hypnotized dance. Unconsciously Nan stopped in his tracks, his chest so full of feeling that he could hardly breathe. His eyes filmed over. Then he came around and decided not to address his parents, not to wake up the whole crowd. He went along and passed them with his face toward the wall of the building.
He climbed the stairs and reached his parents' apartment. The door was locked, so he leaned against the steel banister at the landing, waiting. His father and mother had retired several years ago with pensions equal to their full salaries, and they lived comfortably. Nan could see why, whenever he complained about the Chinese government in his letters, his father would write back upbraiding him and saying he was too naive and too rash. The old man, a staunch Communist, had never doubted the superiority of socialism to capitalism. He had once even condemned his son, saying that even though Nan lived in an American house, drove an American car, spoke American words, ate American food, and cut American farts, still all those privileges couldn't justify Nan 's "vituperation" against the Chinese government. Now Nan understood that his parents' livelihood depended on the support of the state.
"Who's there?" his mother shouted as she was climbing up the stairs.
"Mom, it's me."
" Nan! Are you really Nan?" She ran up, stumbled at a step and put out her hand to break the fall.
"Don't run." He hurried down to meet her.
She threw her arms around him and broke into happy tears. "Oh, my son, how I miss you! Are you back alone?"
In his arms, she was like a meatball with love handles. He said, "Yes, Pingping and Taotao couldn't come with me."
"Let me take a good look at you." She pushed him away a bit and observed him with creased eyes. " Nan, you're a middle-aged man now. You've changed so much. Life must be hard in America."