Ha Jin: A Free Life

THE FALL SEMESTER would be starting in two weeks, and if he didn't register as a student Nan wouldn't be able to work in the university library anymore. For days he had been looking for a job but couldn't find one. He had liked his job as a custodian in the medical building very much; it was not demanding and gave him some time to read, though he was paid only $4.65 an hour, and though his fellow worker Nick, the maintenance man, often carried a dime bag on him and smoked a joint in their windowless office, mixed with tobacco to hide the scent. For years Nan had adhered to the principle that he would sell his brawn but not his brain. He wanted to save his mind for his study. Now graduate work was no longer his concern, so he wouldn't be too picky about jobs.

He responded to numerous ads, but no one was interested in a man without any employable skill. He went to several Chinese restaurants and they wouldn't use him either, because his accent betrayed that he was from northern China and because he couldn't speak any southern dialect. They didn't explain why, but he guessed the reason. At Nanking Village in Watertown, the owner of the place, an old woman with high cheekbones, told him, "If only you had come last week. I just hired a waitress, that fat girl." Apparently she liked Nan and showed him some respect, as if he were a poor scholar in dire straits but might ascend to a consequential post someday. Nan even wrote to several Chinese-language programs in local colleges, one of which did respond, but in a form letter, saying they couldn't hire him although they might rue that they had let "a pearl" slip through their fingers.

A pearl only your mother can appreciate! Nan sneered to himself.

Without any hope he phoned a factory in Watertown that had advertised for a night watchman. A man named Don told him to come in and fill out a form. Nan was not enthusiastic about the job but went anyway.

Don was a middle-aged supervisor with a bald crown who spoke English with an Italian accent. Seeing that Nan was a foreign student and over thirty, he seemed more interested. They sat in the factory's office, which stank of tobacco and plastic. The room, with its grimy windows facing west, was dim despite several fluorescent tubes shining. "Have you done this kind of work before?" Don asked Nan.

"Yes. I worked for one and a half years at zer Waltham Medical Center, as a cahstodian. Here's recommendation by my former bawss."

Don looked through the letter, which Heidi's sister-in-law Jean had written for Nan when she got fired and had to let her staff of three go. Don tilted his beetle eyebrows and asked, "Tell me, why did you leave that place?"

"My bawss was sacked, so we got laid all together."

"You got what?" Don asked with a start. A young secretary at another desk tittered and turned her pallid face toward the two men.

Realizing he'd left out the adverb "off," Nan amended, "Sorry, sorry, they used anozzer company, so we all got laid off."

"I see." Don smiled. "We need you to take a physical before we can hire you."

"What's zat? Body examination?"

"Correct. Here's the clinic you should go to." Don penciled the address at the top of a form and pushed it to Nan. "After the doc fills this out, you bring it back to me."

"Okay. Do you awffer medical care?"

"You mean health insurance?"

"Yes."

"We do provide benefits." "Cahver a whole family?" "Yes, if you choose to buy it."

Nan was pleased to hear that. Having left school, he was no longer qualified for the student health insurance and would have to find a new one for his family. But the idea of taking a physical bothered him. He was healthy and sturdy, and the job paid only $4.50 an hour; there should be no need for them to be so meticulous. On second thought, he realized that the factory, which manufactured plastic products, would be liable to lawsuits filed by its employees.

Nan went to the clinic on Prospect Street in Waltham. It was a small office that had opened recently and had only one physician; there wasn't even a secretary around, probably because it was lunch hour. Nan handed the form to the bulky doctor, who showed him into a room that wasn't fully furnished yet. The dark leather couch was brand-new; so were the floor lamps. In spite of his pale face and brown stubble, the doctor reminded Nan of a Japanese chef he had once seen at a restaurant in Cambridge. The man had a pair of glasses hanging around his neck and against his chest. As he was checking Nan's hearing, Nan wondered whether the doctor was far-sighted or nearsighted.

After listening to his breathing, tapping his chest, and palpating his stomach, the doctor said, "All right, open your pants."

Nan started. "You need to check everysing?"

"Yep." The man grinned, putting on a pair of latex gloves.

Nan unfastened his belt and moved down his pants and briefs. On the right side of his belly stretched a scar like a short engorged leech. The doctor pressed it with his index and middle fingers, saying, "How did you get this?"

"Appendix."

"Appendicitis?"

"Yes."

"That shouldn't have left such a big scar. Does it still hurt?" He pressed harder.

"No."

"Fascinating. It's healed okay, I guess." He spoke as if to himself. Next, to Nan 's astonishment, the doctor grabbed his testicles, rubbed them in his palm for three or four seconds, then squeezed them hard and yanked them twice. A numbing pain radiated through Nan 's abdomen and made him almost cry out.

"Any prawblem?" he managed to ask, and noticed the man observing his member intently.

"No. Genitalia are normal," the doctor grunted, scribbling on the form without raising his puffy eyes.

Nan was too shocked to say another word. Having buckled up his pants, he was led into the outer room. Rapidly the doctor filled out the form and shoved it back to him. "You're all set," he said with a smirk.

Stepping out of the clinic, Nan wondered if the doctor was allowed to touch his genitals. He felt insulted but didn't know what to do. Should he go back and ask him to explain what the physical was supposed to include? That wouldn't do. "Never argue with a doctor"-that was a dictum followed by people back home. Even now, Nan couldn't understand some of the terms on the form. If only he had brought along his pocket dictionary. Perhaps the doctor had just meant to find out whether he had a normal penis. Still, the man shouldn't have pulled his testicles that hard. The more Nan thought about this, the more outraged he was. Yet he forced himself to let it go. What was important was the job. He'd better not make a fuss.

A boy on a skateboard rushed by on the sidewalk and almost ran into Nan. "Watch out, dork!" shouted the teenager with an orange mohawk. That stopped Nan from brooding, and he hurried to his car, parked behind the clinic.

NAN liked the job at the factory. He worked at night and on weekends when all the machines stopped and the workshops were closed. There was another watchman, Larry, a spindly student majoring in thanatology at Mount Ida College. He and Nan rotated. On Nan 's first day Larry told him, "I can't hack it anymore, have to quit one of these days." Indeed the fellow looked sickly and shaggy, his face always covered in sweat, but he never missed his shift.

Once an hour, the watchman had to walk through the three workshops and the warehouse to make sure everything was all right. There were sixteen keys affixed to the walls and the wooden pillars inside the factory, and he had to carry a clock to those spots, insert the keys into it, and turn them, so that the next morning Don could read the record. As long as the clock showed enough of the hourly marks, Don would be satisfied.

Usually a round took Nan about fifteen minutes; after that he could stay in the lab upstairs, doing whatever he liked. A black-and-white TV sat on a long worktable strewn with pinking shears, large scissors, rulers, red and blue markers, and bolts of waterproof cloth of various colors. If he got tired of reading, he'd watch television. On weekends he could go up to the rooftop and stay in the open air. Behind the factory, close to the base of the two-story building, flowed a branch of the Charles. The green water looked stagnant; it was quite narrow, no more than a hundred feet wide, but it was deep. Sometimes one or two anglers would come fishing on the bank, and Nan, not allowed to leave the building, would sit on the rooftop and watch them. Most of the time they caught bass, bluegill, perch, pumpkinseed, and smelts, but the water was so polluted that they always threw their catches back, even a thirty-pound carp Nan once saw a man drag ashore, its rotund body motionless while its slimy tail kept slapping the grass.