"Zis is too much for me. Let me think about it, okay? I will let you know my decision soon, very soon."
"All right. Keep in mind that you have talent, but you need to give up a lot in order to develop your talent."
"I can see your lawgic, but I cannot rush to a decision."
"I understand. Some of our students had good jobs before they enrolled in our program. Remember the black guy with a mustache?"
"Yes. He's smart too."
"He used to be a physician in Milwaukee, with an M.D. from Duke. He came to the workshop because he wants to be the next Langston Hughes."
"Well, he would be better awff if he worked as a sailor or waiter."
Dick didn't seem to catch the irony. Yet at his own word "sailor" Nan 's lungs constricted. Before he met Pingping and after Beina had jilted him, he had dreamed of joining the merchant marine and sailing around the world, just as Langston Hughes had once worked on freighters. As a sailor he could have had a lot of time to read and write, which would have been a good way of becoming a writer. He sent query letters, together with his one-page vita, to several marine shipping companies, but none of them bothered to write back. People must have thought he was a freak, since they never expected applications for jobs, which were all assigned by the state regardless of personal preferences.
Dick offered to take Nan to a French place that evening, but Nan preferred not to dine out. He was tired of restaurant food and wanted to have something simple and wholesome. There was some long-grain rice in Dick's cupboard, so Nan boiled porridge and scrambled four eggs with diced tomatoes and panfried a pack of Polish sausages. Dick enjoyed Nan's cooking, which he said was the only thing he missed about Atlanta. They drank two bottles of wine between them and talked deep into the night.
17
DRIVING back by I-74, Nan got off at Red Cedars, Illinois, where Beina was living. On entering the town, he stopped at a food mart and bought a bag of beef jerky for Taotao. He asked a saleswoman for directions, and she said Huron Road was in the north, about half a mile away and close to a cemetery. Without further delay he drove into Red Cedars. It was almost midmorning, yet the town, more like a big village, seemed still asleep, white clapboard houses wet with rainwater and some partly obscured by gray bushes. After Nan passed a traffic light, a cafe appeared, but it looked empty inside despite four cars parked before the yellowish cottage. In some front yards of the homes along the streetside, apples and pears were strewn under trees, half eaten by birds and animals, and yellow jackets buzzed into or exited from the holes in the fruit the birds had made. With little difficulty Nan found Beina's place, a pinkish house with peeling paint and an overhanging second story. It sat on a slope at the end of the narrow street. His heart was thumping. Would she be in there? It was Thursday and she was probably out at work. He went up to the front door and rang the doorbell, but it was either broken or disconnected, no sound coming from inside. So he clanked the brass knocker shaped like a horseshoe, hoping her husband wouldn't be the one to come out.
An old Chinese woman in a powder blue housedress appeared, holding the door ajar. "Who are you looking for?" She sized Nan up, her eyes glassy and shrewd.
"Does Beina Su live here?" asked Nan.
"Yes. You are…?"
"I'm a former classmate of hers, back in China, I mean. Is she home?"
"No." Her face didn't change. "She's at her office, at Fifty-seven Chauncy Street, near McDonald's. Go down the road and take a left at the second light. That's Chauncy. You won't miss it." She pointed at a large orange sign in the south that claimed amazing bargains!
Nan was surprised that she treated him as if he lived nearby. He asked, "Aunt, are you her mother-in-law?"
"Yes. I'm taking care of their kids. My son is in-he's correcting his students' homework. Won't you come in and talk to him?"
" No, no need to trouble him. I have to go along without further delay."
He thanked her and drove away slowly, feeling lucky that he hadn't run into Beina's husband, that rabbit-faced man, who might have been able to guess who he was.
Having taken two turns and passed a few stores and a McDonald's with a fenced-in playground for children, Nan found 57 Chauncy Street, which was a two-story brick building housing several business offices. He regretted not having asked the old woman what kind of work Beina was doing, but looking through the directory in the vestibule, he saw "Oriental Healing Arts Studio" and "Yoga Workshop." He decided to go to room 206 first, where the studio was. As he climbed up the stairs, the wooden steps edged with cleated iron sheets, sharp creaks shot up from under his feet. He tried to walk lightly; still the noise wouldn't go away. He looked up and could tell that the building must once have been a factory, the ceiling at least fifteen feet high and massive wooden pillars visible in places.
For some reason his heart was calm, as if this were a regular visit to an insurance agent or a physician. Beside the frosted-glass door of room 206 stood a small artificial pear tree in blossom, planted in a plastic pot. Nan knocked on the door, but no one answered. He turned the handle and went in.
At the sound of the door chime, a woman cried from an inner room, "I'll be with you in a minute." Nan recognized Beina's voice, which sounded lively but a little forced, neutral in the tone adopted for business use. She then asked someone in a subdued tone, "How do you feel when I twist this needle?"
"The tingling is gone," said a man.
"And this?"
"Don't feel a thing."
"Good. I can take out the needles now."
Wordlessly Nan sat down on a high-backed bench like the kind in a train station and closed his eyes, his legs crossed at the ankles. On the right-hand wall hung an old oil painting of a windjammer surrounded by rowboats, and on the desk near the window stood a lamp capped with a white metal shade. Again Nan tried to imagine what Beina looked like, but somehow he couldn't conjure up a clear image. He put his thumb on his wrist to feel his pulse, which was unrushed, about seventy a minute. He wondered what was wrong with him.
A tall whiskered man in a flannel shirt, jeans, and work boots ambled out of the inner room while saying over his shoulder to Beina behind him, "This really helps me relax. I can sleep much better now."
"I told you so" came her sugary voice.
At the sight of Nan the man called out, "Howdy."
Nan returned the greeting and stood up as the patient made for the door. Beina saw him and came over, stretching out her hand, smiling as if she were expecting him. She wore a pink dress that gave her a flattish figure, and on either of her wrists was a jade bangle. It dawned on Nan that her half sister must have informed her of his appearance at their home in Harbin, and that her mother-in-law must have called her just now; otherwise Beina couldn't possibly have been so at ease. Still, he was puzzled. Hadn't she played fast and loose with his heart? Didn't she feel bad for the wound she had inflicted on him? Didn't she assume he might hate her? Why was she so placid?
" Come sit here," she said with a smile that revealed her tiny canines, and patted the back of a chair next to her desk. After making two cups of tea, she proceeded to sit down in her swivel chair. "What brings you to Red Cedars?" she asked.
"I went to visit a friend at the University of Iowa," Nan said, seated beside the desk. On its mahogany top spread a trapezoid of sunlight. He observed her closely. She was almost a middle-aged woman now, her face slightly sallow, and her bangs had begun to gray. A few thin wrinkles appeared on her neck as she lowered her head. Despite her smiling eyes, despite her full lips, somehow she seemed subdued-the fire, the coquetry, and the insouciance that had once set his entire being aflame were no longer there. Even her voice had lost its crisp, bright timbre. She was just an ordinary woman with listless eyes and an incipient double chin.