Ha Jin - A Free Life

While they walked, they chatted about people they both knew. Danning mentioned that Mr. Manping Liu had died a month before and that only one small newspaper had printed a brief obituary, because the old scholar had refused to retract his statement about the necessity of democratizing the Communist regime and write the self-criticism the Party committee of his research institute had admonished him to do. Danning had gone to his funeral service, attended by only thirty people. The two friends also talked about Bao Yuan, whose paintings had been exhibited in a gallery in Beijing last fall, together with two other artists' works; Danning wasn't sure how well his work had been received here, but some of his colleagues had liked the show. A high-circulation weekly, Art News, even published a long article on Bao, written by an American art critic named Tim Dullington. Without commenting on that, Nan realized that as before, his own name as the translator must have been suppressed.

Exhausted and groggy, Nan slept for the rest of the afternoon in the guest room. He snored loudly, which fascinated the girl in the next room, who had never met anyone who made such thunderous noise in his sleep. On her dad's instructions, she lowered the volume of the TV, yet when Nan 's snores penetrated the wall, interfering with the voice of the math teacher on the screen, she turned it up again. But whenever she did this, her father would come out of his study and order her to keep it down. Besides not wanting to wake Nan, he couldn't think clearly with the TV blasting.

TOWARD EVENING, a midnight blue Audi with tinted windows came to pick Danning up. He and Nan got into the air-conditioned car, which rolled away noiselessly and headed for Haidian District. The chauffeur, wearing aviator glasses and a peaked cap, seemed savvy and apparently knew Danning well, but he was reticent while the two passengers in back were talking about Beijing 's real estate market, which had kept booming in recent years. The average home price had increased by twenty percent annually, and some people had unexpectedly become millionaires, having bought a couple of apartments for a song a few years before. Danning urged Nan to buy a pied-a-terre here, for which there'd be no realty tax, but Nan chuckled, saying he didn't have $30,000 to spare.

The chauffeur tooted the horn, urging a cyclist to make way for their car, which bucked again and again as if about to crush the bicycle, but its rider simply didn't respond. Not until the man rounded a corner could their car resume a normal speed. Dangling from the rearview mirror was a tiny oval portrait of Chairman Mao with a golden tassel. Nan wondered if that was some sort of amulet.

As they were approaching a crossroads, the light turned red, but their car didn't stop. The chauffeur signaled and drove left, ignoring the honking of other vehicles. A green motorcycle puttered up behind them, and a policeman in the side car shouted through a bullhorn, "Pull over to the side!"

"Fucking cops!" cursed the driver without moving his head. He clicked on the blinker, slowing down, and brought the car to a stop.

" Are they going to give you a ticket?" Nan asked him.

"Oh well, I've never paid a fine."

Nan turned around and saw the two policemen hop off the motorcycle and stride up to their car. But as they were approaching, one of them pointed at the rear of the Audi, then they both veered off to a newsstand as if to deal with a more urgent incident over there first. Nan was bewildered.

The chauffeur said in an undertone, "Bastards, they're not that stupid." He pulled away smoothly.

" Why did they change their minds?" Nan asked.

"This is an army vehicle," explained Danning. "They just saw the plate on the back." He pointed his thumb over his shoulder at the rear window.

"So army vehicles don't have to follow the traffic rules?" asked Nan.

The chauffeur said, "They can give me as many tickets as they like, but there's no way they can collect the fines."

Danning winked at Nan, then spoke in English so that the driver couldn't understand. "You see, power comes out of the barrel of a gun."

Nan said, "Zis is crazy, still like two decades ago." "Yes, things are basically the same."

They pulled into the yard of a medium-size hotel, and the chauffeur told them that he would come around nine-thirty to pick them up. Through a moon gate Danning and Nan entered the yard behind the building, where a two-story manor was half shaded by tall, dusty cypresses. In front of that house was a tiny pond, with a few mossy rocks erected in its middle and inhabited by orange carp and goldfish, whose tails and fins spread in the water like floating tulle. Dan-ning and Nan went into the house and then turned in to the restaurant on the first floor, in which sat only a few people. The dimly lighted room felt damp, four long-fluked ceiling fans revolving with a rasping sound.

"Welcome!" a roly-poly man cried at them. Obviously the host, he was wearing a herringbone suit and shiny oxfords. He showed them to a table in a corner where five men were already seated. At the sight of Danning, they all got up and stretched out their hands, which Danning shook one by one.

With pride he introduced Nan to them as his American friend.

They were all pleased to see Nan. On the table were two saucers containing condensed milk and a bamboo basket holding tiny steamed buns, both serving as an appetizer. They went on gossiping about some recent events in Beijing's literary circles: the nominations for this year's major prizes and what offices were involved; which one of the pretty young women writers had outsold the others; the two poets who had just been offered a trip to Paris the next spring; an editor who had been fired last week for publishing a book offensive to the authorities, which had changed the policy, punishing editors in place of authors; how there was going to be a conference on a first novel by a young man whose father was a high-ranking official in the State Council. Nan knew nothing about their world and just listened.

Mengfei, the loudest among them, was a lieutenant colonel in the air force and a well-known fiction writer. It was this fleshy-faced man with a bull's neck and shoulders who had sent the Audi to fetch Danning. Sometimes he taught literary theory and modern fiction at the Arts Institute of the People's Liberation Army. He had just published a novella in Flower City, a top-notch magazine, so he had gathered his writer friends here to celebrate. Among them there was another officer, a captain who was a poet, and the rest were all civilians. Nan vaguely remembered seeing in a newspaper the photograph of the bald man sitting across from him. The man had introduced himself as Fanlong, an editor in the Writers' Publishing House. Seated next to the colonel was a spare man who was a journalist specializing in reportage literature, but he didn't speak much because he'd stutter whenever he opened his mouth. Unlike them, Nan didn't touch the Luzhou whiskey, which was too strong for him; instead, he sipped Five Star beer from a tall glass.

A waitress came and handed them the menu. Nan was puzzled by the names of the dishes. There were so many unfamiliar items that he wasn't sure what to order. He asked Danning, "What is this- 'Parents and Children'?"

His friend grinned. "It's just pickled soybeans and soy sprouts."

"Then I won't eat the whole family." Nan chuckled but didn't ask about the other fancy names. The rest of the men didn't bother to open the menu and instead let Fanlong order for them. The man, well known for his ability to plan parties and dinners, mentioned a dozen dishes to the waitress and also asked for more liquor and beer for everyone.

"Nan, what are the hot novels published in the United States recently?" asked Mengfei, who seemed quite knowledgeable about contemporary American fiction. As a matter of fact, he had been to the States as a visiting scholar at Stanford, and in their conversation he often trotted out the phrase "when I was in America," which Dan-ning told him not to use just for this occasion, at which there was no need for him to impress others.