Ha Jin - A Map of Betrayal - A Novel

Nellie wouldn’t buy that nonsense. One evening at dinner when the topic of sex came up again, she asked, “What if your pregnant wife is still in heat?” Her voice was full, a bit gravelly.

Gary stared at her in disbelief. “That’s just an assumption, isn’t it?”

She went on with a teasing smile. “By your Chinese standards such a woman must be abnormal, a shameless broad, right?”

“Oh, come on, let’s not talk like this. After our baby is born we’ll sleep together again.”

In fact, she wasn’t eager for sex either and was also afraid of damaging the baby. Nellie was just anxious about his avoiding her bed at night. Worse, seldom did he spend time with her during the day. If she could, she’d have smashed his study, which was becoming his bedroom. She continued, “My obstetrician said sex is okay during pregnancy as long as we’re careful.”

Gary’s eyes blazed, widening at her. He couldn’t believe she had discussed such a matter with Dr. Nelson, that dumpy man wearing a thick gold band on his tapering finger. Gary remembered the obstetrician’s smirk while the man was assuring him that the baby was healthy after he had examined the young mother privately, as if to insinuate to the husband that he’d just had fun with his wife alone despite the clean johnny wrapped around her body. Gary spat out at Nellie, “I don’t believe him. I don’t trust that quack. He’s a schmuck!”

“Jeez, you’re such a crank. You always have a chip on your shoulder.” She stood and returned to the living room while he rose to clear the dining table. They had divided the kitchen work: she cooked and he washed dishes. He took out the trash every morning as well.

Nellie was also afraid that Gary might go after other women during her pregnancy, especially those Asian females at Voice of America. He often freelanced there, translating articles from English into Chinese for broadcast. She knew he rubbed elbows with them. Whenever they were together, Gary’s rear end would turn too heavy to get up from a chair — he’d gab with those women for hours on end. Nellie had seen a handful of them, who were attractive and had suave, syrupy voices. Unlike other Chinese men, who spoke little English and preferred to live on the West Coast or in Chinatowns, Gary blended well with Americans. That made him stand out, and he was probably more attractive to those Asian women. The more Nellie chewed over his aloofness from her, the more embittered she got.

The baby was born on July 16, 1957. Nellie was a bit disappointed when a nurse told her it was a girl, because she had bragged to Gary that she’d give him husky sons who would make him proud. But this was just the first child; there’d be the second, the third, and maybe the fourth. She shouldn’t feel hopeless or afraid of facing her husband. To her relief, he looked genuinely happy and held their daughter in his arms, cooing and rocking her gently. Like Nellie, he believed that the baby was only his firstborn, which partly accounted for his happiness. Yet in the back of his mind lurked a vague thought he avoided clarifying: if the baby were a boy, Gary might have cherished him more, and it would be harder for him to pull up stakes when he was ordered to retreat from the States. The arrival of the baby girl was good and appropriate because she might not tie him to this place.

At home Nellie and Gary talked about what to name the child. They both liked Lilian, though he suggested Yu as her middle name, claiming that was his mother’s maiden name. It was actually the first character in “Yufeng,” as if by his adhering to the traditional Chinese custom, his first wife could somehow own a part of this American baby. Knowing Gary didn’t like her parents that much, Nellie agreed to let Yu stand between Lilian and Shang. (Three decades later, the daughter had Yu replaced with McCarrick on her own.)

Meanwhile, Gary followed international events closely. So many things happened in the USSR that 1957 could be called the “Soviet year,” the year the number one socialist power triumphed over the West. The Soviets had succeeded in firing an intercontinental ballistic missile that could deliver nuclear warheads. (They possessed both atomic and hydrogen bombs by then.) They sent into orbit two satellites, the second one carrying an animal passenger, a dog named Laika. In December the Soviet Union launched its first nuclear submarine. In contrast, the United States, having suffered the recent setback on the Korean Peninsula, seemed on the defensive. In late May in Taipei a large mob broke into the American embassy after the U.S. military court acquitted an American officer who had murdered a major of the Nationalist army. The mob breached a safe in the embassy and made off with the classified documents that laid out the U.S. plan to replace Chiang Kai-shek with a new puppet leader. It was widely believed that Chiang’s son Jingguo had a hand in the attack on the embassy. Chiang immediately apologized to the White House, emphasizing that this was not an anti-American act condoned by the Taiwan government. As a gesture of reconciliation, he allowed the U.S. military to deploy surface-to-surface missiles that could launch nuclear strikes on most cities in mainland China.

Through handling the information, Gary could see that his motherland was an underdog compared to the two superpowers. Although in 1957 China produced its first bomber and jet fighter, modeled on the MiG-17, the country was largely in a shambles. The rural collectives could not increase food production as expected, and the common people’s standard of living was deteriorating. Many things were rationed now — grains, cooking oil, meat, cloth. In south China each urban resident was allowed to buy ten feet of cloth a year, whereas in the northeastern province Heilongjiang, each person could get twenty-four feet because they needed more for winter clothes. The scarcity was so severe that throughout the country even some basic necessities, such as tofu, matches, cotton thread, wool, cigarettes, tea, sugar, soda, eggs, and soap, required coupons. All the bad reports saddened Gary, though from time to time there were snippets of heartening news. One piece that excited him quite a bit was about a Chinese swimmer who’d broken the world record in the one-hundred-meter breaststroke (1′12″7, held by a Czech) by one second. Somehow that man’s accomplishment touched Gary and reassured him that sometimes it took only one individual to make a difference and bring honor to the country. This sentiment was bolstered by his reading of Nietzsche. He began to believe in the superman, though he never succeeded in mastering his own life or outgrowing the herd values ingrained in him long ago.

Gary didn’t go to Hong Kong that year, having little valuable intelligence to deliver. In his letter to Bingwen, he said he couldn’t leave his postnatal wife alone at home and it was “business as usual” here. His handler wrote back that everything was in tip-top shape in Hong Kong, where it was uncomfortable for summer vacation anyway, so Gary needn’t come. Bingwen promised to “keep an eye on the old folks.” By that Gary knew he meant to look after his family back home. He felt vaguely dubious about his handler’s words, but he stifled his misgivings. The man represented the Party and the country and couldn’t possibly have promised anything they could not deliver. As long as they took care of his family, Yufeng and his parents should be able to live decently. That was the only way of helping them for the time being, so he’d better trust his superiors. After reading the letter once more, Gary flicked his lighter, set the sheet aflame, and dropped it in a jade-green porcelain bowl, which he kept under the window in his study for this purpose.