Fanlin sang one passage after another, as if the music were gushing from the depths of his being. He felt the blind musician, the hero of the opera, lamenting through him the loss of his beloved, a local beauty forced by her parents to marry a general, to be his concubine. Fanlin’s voice trembled with grief, which had never happened before in his demonstrations.
“Ah, it’s so sad,” said Elbert’s assistant. “It makes me want to cry.”
Somehow the woman’s words cooled Fanlin some. Then he sang a few passages from the first half of the score, which sounded elegant and lighthearted, especially the beautiful refrain that would recur five times in the opera.
Elbert said, “I’m pretty sure the second half is emotionally right. It has more soul — sorrow without anger, affectionate but not soft. I’m impressed.”
“That’s true,” the woman chimed in.
“What should I do?” sighed Fanlin.
“Make the whole piece more consistent,” Elbert suggested.
“That will take a few weeks.”
“We have time.”
Fanlin set about revising the score; in fact, he overhauled the first half. He worked so hard that after a week he collapsed and had to stay in bed. Even with his eyes closed, he could not suppress the music ringing in his head. The next day he resumed his writing. Despite the fatigue, he was happy, even rapturous in this composing frenzy. He ignored Devin entirely except to feed him. The parakeet came to his side from time to time, but Fanlin was too busy to pay him any attention.
One afternoon, after working for hours, he was lying in bed to rest. Devin landed beside him. The bird tossed his long blue-tipped tail, then jumped on Fanlin’s chest, fixing a beady eye on him. “Ha wa ya?” the parakeet squawked. At first Fanlin didn’t understand the sharp-edged words, pronounced as if Devin were short of breath. “Ha wa ya?” the bird repeated.
“Fine. I’m all right.” Fanlin smiled, his eyes filling.
Devin flew away and alighted on the half-open window. The white curtain swayed in the breeze, as if about to dance; outside, sycamore leaves were rustling.
“Come back!” Fanlin called.
The Beauty
AROUND MIDAFTERNOON, the snow thinned into sleet, and some umbrellas appeared on Kissena Boulevard. When the green lights came on, pedestrians skirted or jumped across the puddles gathering at the curbs. Dan Feng stood at the window of his office gazing down at the street lined with fruit and vegetable stands under awnings. The sight reminded him of a closing market fair when people were leaving. Just now his customer had called saying she couldn’t come because of the bad weather, and Dan had phoned the seller of the condo on Forty-fifth Avenue to cancel the appointment. The rest of his afternoon was free.
He looked at his watch—3:10. What should he do? Should he pick up his baby at the day-care center? No, it was too early to call it a day. He decided to drop in on his wife, Gina, at her jewelry store in Flushing Central Mall.
Main Street was bustling, the sidewalks swarming with people pouring out of the subway station, most of them bundled in coats and a few talking on cell phones. Two blond teenage girls, probably twins and each carrying a book bag, walked along hand in hand, wearing skirts that showed their lace-up boots and bare legs. A stink of rotten fruit pinched Dan’s nose, and he hastened his steps and veered onto Roosevelt Avenue. At Chung Hwa Bookstore he picked up World Journal, and with the newspaper under his arm, he entered the mall.
“Where’s Gina?” he asked Sally, the young sales assistant at the jewelry store.
“She’s having her midafternoon break,” she answered, her ponytail wrapped into a bun on top of her head.
“In the back?”
“No, perhaps downstairs.”
Several jade tea sets and pen pots were standing on the counter, and pink-cheeked Sally had been wiping them. Besides jewelry, the store dealt in some knickknacks. Behind her, the shelves displayed crystal horses, boats, swans, lotus flowers, goldfish, various kinds of parrots, cars, airplanes. Downstairs, on the first floor, was the lobby of the Sheraton Hotel, whose bar Gina frequented. With a seething heart Dan hustled toward the escalator, knowing his wife must be with Fooming Yu, the supervisor of the daytime staff at the hotel’s front desk. The lobby was quiet, and in its middle a huge vase of mixed flowers sat on a round, two-level table. The bar was in the back, its glass walls shaded by bamboo curtains. Dan stopped at the door to scan the poorly lit interior. About a dozen tables were each surrounded by chairs, and a petite young woman hunched over the counter, leafing through a magazine, probably Vogue. There they were — Gina was sitting with Fooming in a corner, a tiny table between them. They were the only customers, and they went on chatting without noticing Dan. Gina tittered and said, “That’s really something.”
Dan couldn’t make out what they were talking about. As he was deciding whether to enter, Fooming said to Gina, “Another nut, please, before I go.” He sounded loud and happy.
Gina tossed a cashew, which he caught in his mouth, munching noisily. They both laughed.
“Another,” he begged.
“Good dog.” She chucked a Brazil nut and he snapped up that one too.
Dan turned away, dragging his feet toward the front entrance. He was sure that before he and Gina married Fooming had courted her, but Dan hadn’t taken that flat-faced man as a serious rival at the time. Gina was a noted beauty in Flushing, and even now some men — Asians, whites, Latinos, blacks — would stop by the jewelry store just to look at her. Once in a while someone would offer to take her out, but according to what she had told Dan, she always declined, saying her husband would get jealous like crazy if he knew. Still, why wouldn’t she quit seeing Fooming Yu? “The damned beauty,” Dan muttered to himself as he stepped out of the building. “She cannot change her fickle nature. Well, serves you right. You shouldn’t have chased her that hard in the first place.”
Instead of returning to his office, Dan went to Sunshine Bathhouse on Union Street. The sleet was over, but the weather had become windy and colder, ice crusting on the edges of thawing snowbanks. A Boeing roared overhead, descending toward LaGuardia. The sky was darkening to indigo, and more cars appeared on the street, along which neon lights started flickering. The bathhouse, set in the basement of a two-story building, had recently opened, and it offered a sauna, a steam bath, hot-towel rubdowns, massages, pedicures. Dan paid twenty dollars at the desk, took a key, and went into the locker room. He picked up a towel and held it around his neck for a while. It had just come out of the dryer and was still warm.
Having locked up his clothes and newspaper, slipped the key on his wrist, and wrapped the towel around his waist, he made for the pool. Absentmindedly he got into the warm water. He sat on the submerged step for a moment to get used to the temperature, throwing water on his neck and armpits. He was alone and sank farther — his head rested on the rounded edge of the pool, which could hold seven or eight people and was made entirely of white tiles. He disliked saunas and worried that the dry heat could shrink his facial skin, so he took only a hot bath whenever he was here. It was so relaxing to lounge in the steaming water that he felt lazy, reluctant to scrub himself. His mind was clouded with questions and doubts. How he resented the intimacy between Gina and Fooming. Ever since the birth of their daughter, Jasmine, a year ago, he had harbored misgivings about his wife’s fidelity. Their baby was homely, with thin eyes and a wide mouth, and took after neither Gina nor himself. Gina was tall and lissome, having a straight nose, double-lidded eyes, a delicate mouth, and silken skin. Dan was also handsome. People often complimented him on his good looks, which boasted shiny eyes, a high nose, and a head of bushy hair. There were always envious glances at him and his wife when they were together at a public place. So how could their daughter be so plain? In his mind a voice would murmur, “She’s not mine, she’s not mine.” Sometimes he imagined that Fooming was Jasmine’s blood father; at least their small eyes and round chins resembled each other. That could also explain why Gina wouldn’t stop seeing the man.