Ha Jin - A Free Life

Bao told him more about Min Niu. Min had been an English major at Hunan Normal University. He wrote to Sam to express his admiration for his poetry, and then a relationship developed between them through correspondence. As his sponsor in the United States, Sam helped him get his visa and even paid tuition for him at NYU. Min came and lived with Sam, working as the manager of his home. In fact, he also cooked for Sam and sometimes served as his secretary. Bao had once eaten dinner in Sam's apartment, and Min had made four dishes and a large bowl of soup within an hour. And everything he cooked that evening was delicious. Sam also paid Min a decent salary.

Nan was impressed, saying, "What a lucky fellow Min Niu is."

"I think you can replace him if you want." Bao winked at Nan.

"No, I'm dying to work for a pretty woman poet as famous as Sam Fisher. Do you happen to know anyone?"

"What makes you think I'll provide the information gratis?"

They both laughed. An old woman walking by turned to look at them. They stopped laughing and went on chatting about the poetry world in New York.

PINGPING phoned Nan at Ding's Dumplings and begged him to come back immediately. She had bickered with Heidi and was thinking of moving out. What had happened was that Nathan couldn't find his new calculator and suspected that Pingping had taken it upstairs for Taotao to use. Heidi went up and asked Pingping, "Do you have Nathan's calculator?" "No," Pingping said. She took Heidi to Nathan's room on the second floor and found the calculator lying on the windowsill behind his desk. Then she told Heidi to her face that however poor she was, she wouldn't steal.

Her words rendered Heidi speechless, for she knew that was true. Many times Pingping had come upon banknotes and coins when laundering their clothes, and without fail she had given the money back to Heidi, sometimes even thirty or forty dollars. Yet as Ping-ping's boss, Heidi wouldn't apologize and just went away without a word. That angered Pingping more, and she planned to quit, though she hadn't mentioned it to Heidi yet.

Nan told her on the phone not to think of moving out right now, because Taotao couldn't find a better school. They could not afford to leave Woodland until the school year was over. "I'll come back soon, all right?" he said to her.

" How soon?"

"I've got to make arrangements before I go back. I can't just leave without notifying my boss."

"All right, come back as quickly as you can."

For a whole afternoon Nan was absentminded at work and even nicked his fingertip while dicing a cucumber. He was angry with Heidi, who seemed to have mistreated Pingping because he wasn't around. Probably she feared that his wife and son might stay at her home forever, so she created some difficulties for them to chase them out.

Toward the end of the day, Nan told Chinchin that he wouldn't come for the rest of the week because there was an emergency at home and he had to go back. His fellow workers all thought he was just taking a few days off and would return the next week. He wanted them to think that way too, since he wouldn't burn his bridges.

But he decided to quit his job at New Lines. He didn't enjoy the editorial work and was afraid that sooner or later, Bao would ask him to translate his entire memoir if he continued editing the journal.

The next morning he went downstairs to explain his decision to Bao. As he was approaching the door of their bedroom, he heard Wendy berating her boyfriend. She sounded furious today. "You're just a sponge!" she cried.

"Don't cawl me that!" yelled Bao.

"You live like a parasite. I can't stand you anymore. Get out." "It's just couple dollars."

"A couple of dollars? I only get seven hundred a month from Social Security, but you spent more than two hundred on alcohol, not to mention the phone bills you ran up. How dare you call that amount just a couple of dollars?"

"But you have rent money."

"That goes to the mortgage. Stop arguing with me. I've made up my mind and want you to move out." "Okay, okay, I go out your house." "Good. Bring your gay friend along." "Damn you, Nan not gay!" "Don't tell me that. I know what he is." "You don't want to marry me no more?"

"I'm sick of you. You've just been using me to get a green card. I can't help you with that anymore. Get out."

"Okay, I don't carry old bag like you," he said calmly.

Nan knocked on their door. He was incensed by Wendy's remark and glared at her. She was taken aback by his fierce eyes and turned to the bay window. Outside, a few blackbirds were fluttering on the crown of a sycamore, and one of them was holding a strip of toilet tissue in its beak. Nan noticed a reddish patch rising on Wendy's cheek. She used to be friendly to him, and he had helped her repair the front door and put up the picket fence in the backyard, but all of a sudden she had begun bad-mouthing him. This hurt him to the quick.

"I'm going home," he told Bao. "You mean for good?"

"Yes. My family has some trouble, and I have to go back without delay."

"Well, I'm going to move out soon. Sick of this rotten cunt." He pointed at his girlfriend.

Nan glanced at Wendy, who didn't understand Bao's curse. Then the two of them talked briefly about the journal. Bao hadn't gotten the funding for the next issue, so this might be the time for Nan to leave after all. In his heart Nan couldn't help but despise Bao. If he was going to become an artist, he would be a different type. He'd be a self-sufficient man first. Now it was high time for him to start his life afresh. New York wasn't a place for a man like him; he had to return to his family and struggle together with them.

ON THE PHONE Pingping hadn't told Nan the whole story, which involved Taotao and Livia as well. A few days earlier the two children had been doing homework together in the kitchen while Pingping was outside the house, fixing the lid on the wooden trash bin. The girl and the boy were quite close by now, and Livia often claimed that Taotao was one of her best friends, though he still wouldn't join her pals when they were over. Several times Pingping told her son not to get too attached to Livia, yet the boy couldn't help but turn ebullient whenever the girl was around. Heidi didn't like Taotao that much, though she admitted he was bright and handsome. Bending over the trash bin, Pingping hammered two nails into the holes on the hinge affixed to the lid, then opened and shut it a few times to make sure it was no longer loose. The job done, she turned to go back into the kitchen. But then she overheard the two children and stopped to listen.

"I just don't think he'll come back," Livia said in a serious tone of voice.

"That's not true. My dad is just working in New York."

"Tell you what, grown-ups always lie."

"My dad isn't a liar."

"How do you know he isn't?"

"My mom told me so."

"He lies to your mom too. He walked out on both of you, that's what I heard." "You're a big liar!"

"Don't be mad at me. I don't want you to lose your dad just because I don't have my dad." "You're not my friend anymore."

"C'mon, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. I just told you what my mom and her friends said."

Pingping stepped in and said to the girl, "They're just buncha miserable rich ladies, have nothing else to do. They just want everyone else have bad luck."

Livia gasped and winced. Pingping went on, "Don't believe that kinda crap. Nan is learning to be chef. Don't you eat the wonton he cooked?"

"I did. It was delicious, better than anything I ate in any Chinese restaurant." Livia seemed to relax a little. "He's away just for short time."

"He told me so too," Taotao added. "He said we'd open our own business in the future."