Ha Jin - A Map of Betrayal - A Novel

I invited Ben to join us for Independence Day, but his girlfriend Sonya’s parents would be in Boston for a short visit that week. He arrived on July 8 instead, and we went to pick him up at the train station, driving my two-year-old Toyota Prius. This was his first trip to DC, and at the sight of me and Henry, Ben waved spiritedly. He hurried over, beaming, with a blue suitcase in tow. He hugged me, then my husband. The two of them had spoken on the phone.

Stepping out of the station, Henry asked him about the train ride, and Ben said, “Everything was splendid except for Baltimore.”

That made us laugh. On our drive home, Ben was impressed by how quietly and smoothly my Prius was running. He said that his Mustang, with 230,000 miles on it, was noisy and jerky whenever he accelerated, but he’d just found a used engine and would have his old one replaced soon. He’d never trade his Mustang for another car unless it was a Chinese model. Too bad China hadn’t produced safe, quality cars yet.

“How about a new Volvo?” I asked. “A Chinese company acquired Volvo from Ford last year.”

“Hope they won’t bungle the product,” Ben said. “But a Volvo is not for a bachelor like me. It’s more like a family car, isn’t it?”

“Why d’you say that?” Henry asked him.

“If I had kids I might consider a Volvo.”

“It’s expensive,” I put in.

“Sure, assuming I can afford it,” said Ben.

We ate at home that evening, mixed greens salad and boiled dumplings stuffed with shrimp, pork, and chives, which I’d bought ready-made at Maxim Super Market in Silver Spring. Ben liked red wine, so we uncorked a bottle of Merlot. As we were eating, all using chopsticks and mashed-garlic sauce mixed with balsamic vinegar, Henry asked Ben, “Don’t you miss home?”

“Sometimes I do,” Ben said, smiling with his top lip curled a little, as if the food were too hot. “But New England is quite similar to northeast China in climate and landscape. It could have been worse if they had sent me to Miami or Houston. I’m a northerner and not used to the hot humid weather. I lived in Alabama for half a year, and my first American summer down there was pretty miserable.”

“So you feel at home in Boston?” Henry pointed his chopsticks at his own plate as he spoke.

“Not really. I must learn to be detached, because at any moment my company might call me back or transfer me elsewhere.”

“If you had your druthers,” I said, “would you like to settle down in the States?”

“Absolutely, I like America. Life’s good here.”

“What d’you like most about American life?” asked Henry.

“Believe it or not, I like the order and peace you can have as long as you’re law-abiding.”

“And can pay your bills,” I said.

“Of course. For that matter, I’ve found Americans work too hard, harder than the Chinese, perhaps because there’re too many bills to pay here. I have friends who are doing two or three jobs at the same time. That’s crazy. They all believe that only by working hard can they get rich. I don’t see how they can get out of money troubles by making ten or eleven dollars an hour. On the other hand, this shows another positive aspect of American life — hard work is always rewarded more or less.”

Henry and I chuckled, amused and impressed by his remarks. After dinner, we retired to the living room and resumed our conversation. Both Ben and Henry loved hockey, so, teacups in hand, they turned to watch a rerun of the final match between the Canucks and the Bruins, while I retreated to my study in the basement to revise a paper on the depiction of Asians in Hollywood Cold War movies. There was a hard deadline for the submission, so I’d have to complete the piece within three days.

BEN TOLD ME I ought to avoid talking about politics when I phoned Juli, because her line was definitely tapped by Chinese National Security. In addition, I should be careful about what I wrote to her. The Internet police there monitored the online traffic and could break into your email to gather evidence against you. Recently they had banned a good number of bloggers and shut down their accounts because those users had grown too outspoken, their voices gaining too many readers. Whoever could hold the attention of the multitude might be suppressed sooner or later. Ben was worried about his twin sister, who could easily get carried away.

After breakfast the next morning Henry and I gave Ben a brief tour of our property. We took him through the three floors of the building and then to the grounds behind it. On the boughs of a sycamore hung two transparent bird feeders filled with mixed grains and sunflower seeds. We stopped to watch some goldfinches, red crossbills, and robins eating the feed. A handful of birds, already done with breakfast, were chattering while bathing and grooming at a granite birdbath next to a kidney-shaped flower bed, but most of the other birds stood quietly on the maples and hornbeams nearby, waiting for the two at the feeders to finish and fly away — then another two would go over to the plastic tubes and eat. They’d mostly been standing in line patiently, though a few scudded from branch to branch.

“Gosh, they’re more polite than the subway riders in Beijing,” Ben quipped. A red-breasted robin fluttered its wings as if in response.

Henry laughed. “They know each other.”

I joined in, “They’re not as tough as birds in China for sure, poor competitors.”

This time it was Ben who broke into laughter. He said, “They’re blessed without the need to compete.”

On the eastern side of the backyard spread a tennis court surrounded by a high chain-link fence; a few balls dotted the green court, some tattered and mildewed like overripe fruit. “Wow, you two are real landlords,” Ben blurted out at the sight of the court.

For a moment I was at a loss for words. Then I said, “Henry keeps everything in order. We take care of the property by ourselves.”

“You know I’m pretty good with my hands too,” Ben said and then turned to Henry. “If someday you want to retire, please hire me. I can do carpentry and plumbing. Last fall I helped my friend Deon fix his roof.”

“Can you really do those things?” I asked.

“Sure I can. I can do basic masonry too. You saw the floors in my parents’ home, didn’t you?”

“I did.”

“I laid the bricks in all the rooms.”

“That’s impressive. Tell me, why didn’t you use grout instead of cement to seal the bricks?”

“That was too expensive.”

No doubt Ben was a handyman of sorts, but I wasn’t sure he knew how to do all the maintenance jobs here. It wouldn’t matter — he always could learn.

After rush hour, Henry took Ben into DC to visit some museums, while I returned to my study to finish the paper on Cold War movies. These days I had also been perusing my father’s diary, on which I’d spent hundreds of hours but which I still had to read time and again, especially some fragmented sentences, to connect all the dots, though by now I had grasped his story on the whole. Today, however, I had no time for my father’s journal, having to provide dozens of endnotes for the paper. That would take several hours.

Late in the afternoon Ben and Henry came back. My nephew couldn’t stop raving about the museums on the National Mall, which were all free to the public. He told me, “We even saw many original pieces by Rodin — they all stand in the sculpture garden, in the open! Amazing. I can imagine how privileged the people living in that area must feel. All those great museums must be like amenities in their lives. This is unbelievable. I wish I could live in DC so I could take friends to those museums when they come to visit me.”