"Three hours ago." He shook her hand, which was small and soft.
" Well, what do you think of Beijing now?"
"There are more cars, more buildings, and more people."
The couple cracked up. "That's a very accurate observation," Danning said, turning to his wife. "I told you he's a sharp fellow. He's having the same kind of allergic reaction as you did."
"You are?" she asked Nan. "No wonder you look so pale. But don't worry. You'll be all right soon. It's just the process of getting readjusted. You'll feel normal within a month."
Nan thought of telling her that he'd be going back to the States the next week, but he refrained. He didn't feel like talking much and just enjoyed listening to them. The waitress came again and put a teacup before Sirong. Sirong ordered a wonton soup.
When the panfried noodles, the wontons, and the shredded beef tendons arrived, Sirong said to Nan, "I must confess I miss America, a lot."
"What do you miss most?"
" Things like big apples, big salmon, and big lobster," she said in all sincerity. "Also, I'm a chocoholic and miss all kinds of chocolates they have there."
Nan laughed and told her, "We serve salmon in our restaurant every day. You should come and visit us."
"I'd love to. Mmmm, I still remember the lobster and shrimp we had at a crab shack in Plymouth, near the Mayflower. You see, here fish are skimpy and fruit puny. We Chinese eat too much and have used up our land."
Danning added, turning to Nan, "Overeating is a big problem among children now."
Nan nodded. "I saw some big fat kids this morning, like in the States."
"Not just children who overeat, grown-ups too," said Sirong. " Danning goes to dinner parties at least four times a week. Look how fat he is now. Besides, he has high cholesterol and hypertension."
Indeed, Danning had gained at least thirty pounds. Nan said to him, "You've got to be careful about your health. You're no longer a young man."
"In fact," said Danning, "I'm doing better than most of my colleagues. Many of them have to battle diabetes and high blood fat levels, having eaten too much meat and sugar. My boss's triglyc-erides are over seven hundred. He often says he might have a stroke or drop dead anytime. Speaking of dinner parties, I'm supposed to attend one with a group of writers tonight. Nan, would you like to come with me? It'll be fun. You'll meet some important people."
"All right, I'll come."
Sirong had to return to work before one-thirty and left the moment she was done with her wontons. The two friends strolled back, Danning holding a thick pie stuffed with pork and chives for his daughter. At a clothing stand Nan bought a tartan skirt as a present for the girl despite her father's protesting, "She already has too much stuff."
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.
8
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.