"All right, all right."
Nan took out his billfold and gave his father four fifties. He felt this was a good arrangement, since he'd have to repay the debt to Uncle Zhao one way or another. If he had gone to the old man's home for dinner, he was sure that the geezer would have tried every way to make him promise to help arrange a show of his paintings and calligraphy in New York, or D.C., or Atlanta. He was afraid of meeting that monomaniac again.
13
AFTER a series of loud hisses, the train bound for Beijing thumped, threw Nan forward a bit, then began pulling out of the Harbin station. He waved good-bye to his parents and siblings on the platform. His mother and sister broke into tears while his eyes filled too. He felt he might never be back again.
He was seated in a sleeper compartment and rested his cheek against the frame of the window. Outside, the grassland slid by. The convex plain stretched into a mist wavering in the distance. Along the railroad track a low fog was gathering, so thick that the nearby fields seemed covered by a layer of fresh snow. A moment later a swarm of town houses emerged, surrounded by vegetable fields in which women and old men were squatting on their haunches, tending seedlings or spreading manure with bare hands. Nan could tell that the ceramic-tiled houses, before which were parked some cars of Japanese and German makes, were inhabited mostly by rich people. Satellite dishes stuck out of the roofs like huge mushrooms. If he had moved back to this city, he could have afforded to live in such a place, but he'd have felt uncomfortable about the sight of the poor peasants who toiled in the fields in the same way as their ancestors had done centuries before. It seemed that the harder they worked, the poorer these people would get.
Villages and hamlets came up and flitted away. They hadn't changed, and some showed little life in them except for a few columns of cooking smoke rising from the thatched roofs. In front of a schoolhouse a bunch of children chased a soccer ball, all wearing nothing above the waist. Nan guessed that perhaps most of the able hands in the villages had left to seek work in towns and cities.
Indeed, many of the fields looked disused, as if the people had abandoned the land, whose dark soil is so rich that the plain is known as China 's "granary."
In the same compartment sat two other passengers, a bulky old woman and a trim salesman. They were chatting about bureaucratic corruption while smoking a pack of Red Pagoda Hill cigarettes. The heavy-faced woman, who must once have been a ranking official, kept saying she missed the leadership of Chairman Mao, who had been not only concerned about common people's livelihood but also cleaner than any of the current national leaders. Her words put Nan in mind of the memoir by Mao's personal doctor published in the United States recently, which debunked the myth of the great man's integrity and honesty. Evidently these people here didn't have access to a book like that. They had no idea of the huge royalties Mao had reaped from his own books, particularly the little red one, during the time when in the whole country no one else received royalties and all writers had been paid merely small contribution fees. Neither did they know that the great leader had bedded women like changing clothes.
The squint-eyed salesman sighed and said one of his cousins' families was so impoverished that they hadn't been able to send their son, whose stomach was perforated by an ulcer, to the hospital and instead had hired a sorcerer to chant and dance around to exorcise the evil spirit said to have possessed the boy. As a consequence, they'd lost their only son. But in their local county many officials had used public funds to build houses for themselves, some even for their mistresses, and one bureaucrat had constructed a mansion for his grandchild, who wasn't even conceived yet.
The woman sighed and told the man, "I've seen so many poor people these days that I often wonder why we Communists started the revolution in the first place. My maid's brother in the countryside named his little daughter 'Color TV,' because he and his wife always dream of having a television set."
Reluctant to join them in their conversation, Nan climbed to the top berth and lay down to doze off despite the clip-clop-clip-clop drumming of the wheels. To some extent, he regretted having come back to see his parents and siblings, who seemed more distant from him than ever before. He wondered why so many overseas Chinese would retire to this mad country where you had to bribe and feast others to get anything done. Clearly a person like him wouldn't be able to survive here. Now he wanted all the more to live and die in America. How he missed his home in Georgia.
14
DANNING told Nan that Shaoya, Mrs. Liu, whose husband had passed away five weeks before, wanted to see him. Nan had liked Mr. Liu, though he didn't share his nationalistic zeal. He had always felt that the old man was partly blinded by his patriotism. Danning called a cab and together the two of them set out for the Lius'. Although the distance was less than three miles, it took them almost forty minutes to get there. The streets were jammed with traffic-automobiles, bicycles, tricycles, and even a few horse carts. Nan wondered why so many people wanted to buy cars in Beijing. He had seen a row of Cadillacs and BMWs parked before a multistory apartment building. Beyond doubt, some of the families had put more money into their vehicles than into their housing.
Shaoya received Nan and Danning warmly and brewed a pot of Puer tea for them. Wearing a puce tunic, she looked slightly older than she had eight years ago, but her face was sunny, as if she enjoyed living alone. She had a favor to ask Nan. Her husband's dying wish was to have his ashes taken to Canada, where their daughter was studying chemistry at the University of Alberta. Shaoya wanted Nan to help realize Mr. Liu's wish-once he took the ashes to the United States, he could mail them to their daughter from there.
The request surprised Nan and evoked mixed feelings in him. Mr. Liu had been a fervent patriot, but why would he want to have his cremains shipped out of their native land? Had he changed his mind about China? Didn't he love this country anymore? He must have been bitterly disillusioned. Nan 's mind was spinning with questions, yet he said to Shaoya, "I can take his ashes with me, but I can't guarantee you that they'll reach your daughter."
" China 's customs may confiscate them," added Danning.
She said, "I've thought about the risk too, but I can't mail them from here. Our mail is monitored."
"How about letting me take half his ashes?" Nan suggested. "Just in case the customs seize them."
"That's what my husband desired-he wanted a part of him to remain in China. I packed only half the cremains."
She got up and went into an inner room. Nan sighed and sipped the hot tea, which tasted a little grassy. Danning whispered to him, "Mr. Liu used to say he wanted to be buried in a clean place."
"Do you think he missed North America?"
"Probably. He once said he wanted to 'uncage' his soul."
Shaoya returned with a package the size of a brick, tightly wrapped with blue plastic cloth, a small envelope taped to its top containing a letter for her daughter, and she placed the parcel on the tea table. Nan lifted it with both hands. It was light, less than a pound. Carefully he put it into his shoulder bag.
They went on talking about some common acquaintances living in New York City. Shaoya said she wished she could have lived in America three more years so that she could have earned enough points to qualify for U.S. Social Security, but she'd had to return with her dying husband the year before. Now she depended on the remittances her daughter sent from Canada, because her salary was just enough for food and rent. She planned to leave China, but it looked as though she might not be able to do that in the near future. The police had kept her passport and wouldn't return it to her.