Typical American (3 page)

Yet he dreamed about saving them anyway — of a simple ending, the missing lid found. The filial son, smashing apart the rock mountain prison. The filial son, talking things out with Mao. (Sure, Mao said, he understood, after all he had parents too.) The filial son, offering his wife Cammy in sacrifice, whispering I'm sorry as men drew their muddy fingers down her skirt.

Cammy, he dreamed. Still, after ail these months, Cammy.

This, when he could sleep. Other times he thrashed all night, thinking nothing, his body cramping, dry, racked, beside itself. He banged his ankles on the bed frame, his elbows and wrists against the wall; until, at daybreak, battered and exhausted, he could finally reflect on the whole sobering state of things — appreciating as if from a book how colossal his China was, how fragile his family's house, their garden, their little systems for keeping food from spoiling, for presenting his sisters to company in die very best light. Memories filled him — New Years' feasts, fireworks, chestnuts. His two sisters, a pair of not-boys. Know-It-Ail kept an all-white kitten; he itched just to think about it. His too large mother, his even larger father. He remembered second aunt with her cactus collection, fifth uncle with his beard, eighth uncle with that opium addict, socialite wife. His grandfather with all those spots on his face. The cousins with their bugs — those bugs — and that funny wooden bridge over the neck of the pond, collapsing once under their collective weight. A single warning creak; then there they all were, waist deep in mud and carp, laughing, their shoes unglued.

Of course, there were other sorts of times too. His first day of middle school, in front of everybody, he mixed up the strokes of his own name. Then he was coming home; then he was in

*5

the far back courtyard, with the servants, breaking a rooster's neck. He was lopping off its head with a cleaver — ruining the meat! the servants yelled. So much talk! The kitchen help chattering, chattering, chattering...

But here was a thing to be happy about. Now the servants chattering have become a choir in a silent movie, a line of O mouths — or a school of fish, blub blub. And his father striding up — underwater, he has turned boneless, a ballet dancer. His black gown clings, his shoes have been ruined.

Ralph, in New York, kicked one of his hard leather wing tips across the room.

His downstairs neighbor knocked his immediate protest with a broom handle. High-strung, this neighbor was. When Ralph tossed and turned, he did too, he said. He wanted Ralph to buy a rug. A rug! Ralph sent his other wing tip to join the first, and toed one of his slippers besides, imagining his father being tortured. Not that he hoped his parents were tortured. He hoped they weren't so much as touched, he hoped nothing happened, nothing. He saw a hairy Communist swagger into his father's study, belch, spit on the floor, pick up a scroll... and already Ralph was outraged. Fingerprints! The scoundrel's left fingerprints!

Ralph could also envision a different scene, though. The man swaggers in, belches, spits. Ralph's father goes on grinding his ink. Now the glint — a cleaver. Ralph's father quotes from the classics. The Communist is breaking Ralph's father's neck.

But that wasn't what has happened, that couldn't be.

This is what Ralph would have liked to think about instead: a chicken cooked and cooling. The servants stalking mosquitoes at twilight, crafty, pouncing on the window screens. As a result of their efforts, the screens bulge toward the courtyard. Ralph's father is always telling them not to hit so hard, all they need to do is press a bit. He demonstrates, elegant. Mosquitoes prove indeed delicate, easily overcome. Still the servants swat gustily. Thwack! Another down! It's as much power as they'll ever enjoy.

Outside, the cicadas whirr. Summer. The paddy fields have turned a feathery yellow. The lotus pads lift themselves huge out of the lake, plates for the gods.

What Ralph did think, though — that was many other things. And especially, strangely, this: he shouldn't have taken that watch from his mother when he boarded the boat in Shanghai.

Your father would like to give ...

Or did he steal it? He remembered that he didn't, but still wondered, somehow, just as he sometimes wondered if there weren't something inside it, if that ticking weren't some secret life she was passing him, some essential heartbeat, without which the rest of the family was wasting away, bloodless. He's stopped wearing the watch, thinking of them. They are ancient paper lanterns, translucent, unlit, strung across the courtyard, too fragile to move — though when he sees Ralph, his father, still a brave man, tries to speak.

We are alive. His voice is faraway, a sound heard through a wall; yet the corners of his mouth crease and tear with effort. Pained, he blinks. His eyelids crackle like candy wrappers. We are dead.

Ralph launched his slipper across the room.

More knocking, knocking.

Knocking. And the next thing Ralph knew, he was having visa trouble.

"Forgot?" said his friends. "Forgot the immigration office? Forgot to renew your visa?" They shook their heads, mystified.

How to explain it? Something about not wearing a watch, he ventured. And he hadn't been sleeping right.

But the only one who accepted his answer was Little Lou, who was like that, an absorber. As for the spouters, if they had a chief, it was Old Chao. "You should go to bed the same time every night." He knit his smooth brow. "Get up the same time the next day."

Sound advice for a formless time. Ralph, though, hung in his

*7

own time, in the many times he'd wanted more than anything to destroy his father's world. What son doesn't? But he wasn't supposed to succeed, that was the thing.

As mysteriously as he'd let his visa lapse, he found he could do nothing about it.

"Better go see the foreign student advisor," said Old Chao. "Better bring Fitt some candy."

As if a friend of Cammy's could risk going to Mr. Fitt with an expired visa! Rumor had it that Mr. Fitt had tipped someone off about Cammy's raises, and that as a result the dean had been forced to take a leave of absence. The chair of the Engineering Department was taking his place for now, some said. Others said he was taking it forever. Ralph imagined Mr. Fitt on the phone again. He imagined the deportation team arriving instantly, with snarling dogs, and ropes.

Xiang banfa. An essential Chinese idea — he had to think of a way. In a world full of obstacles, a person needed to know how to go around. What banfa did he have, though? All he could think of was how many stories he knew about people smarter than he was. The advisor in Three Kingdoms, for instance, who, needing arrows, floated barges of hay down an enemy-held river. It's night; the enemy shoots and shoots; downstream at dawn, he plucks from the hay arrows to last weeks. Now there was a Chinese man! Another story: the emperor despairs of finding a horse able to run a thousand li. Until his advisor tells him, just wait — and the next day returns with a dead horse he's bought. A dead horse? says the emperor. For five hundred pieces of gold? Replies the advisor, Ah, but when people hear what you've paid for a dead horse, they'll know what you'll pay for a live one. And sure enough, the emperor soon has so many to choose from that he easily finds the one he needs.

If only Ralph had an advisor like that! But he had to be his own advisor; and though he tried to think, tried to think, he could not find any banfa. Endlessly, the weeks stretched out,

like mile upon mile of ocean. What to do, what to do. What about just lying low, he thought finally, feebly. Having finished with his coursework that spring, he was only scheduled for thesis hours in the fall anyway. If he stayed out of the lobby, out of the halls, weren't chances good that people would forget about him? Except for the professor working with him on his master's thesis. But Pinkus, luckily, liked him.

Or at least used to.

"You mean you want me to lie?" Pinkus said now, stroking his scraggly gray beard. "When they ask, you want me to say I don't know where you are?" This was in Pinkus's narrow, paper-stuffed office.

"Probably that question no one ask it," said Ralph.

"But in case they do, you want me to lie."

It was the sort of afternoon when every car in the city seemed to be having trouble with its horn. The window was open only a crack, but still the din resounded. Eeeeep. Eeeeeep.

"Not that I don't wish you good luck," Pinkus said. "Good luck. But excuse me, I don't like to lie. Let me tell you, even if you don't lie, there are people who'll call you a sneak. On the other hand, if you lie, and they call you a sneak, it's worse." He paused. "I'm just telling you what I know."

Ralph bit his lip. "If I send home, Communists catch me," he said.

That at least made Pinkus stroke his beard again. His features bunched low on his face, as though shrinking with awe from his shiny domed forehead. Ralph explained how he could be put in prison, maybe even killed.

"Maybe they'll kill you, or definitely they will?"

Ralph hesitated. "Maybe."

Pinkus sighed. "Please excuse me for pointing this out," he said. "If you don't go to school, you won't get caught."

Ralph stood up.

"I'm sorry." Pinkus sounded tired. "But one thing I need to explain to you. Some men have to watch out for their reputations. You understand me?"

*9

"No," said Ralph.

"Even in their own countries, some men are not at home."

"Not home?"

"You read the newspaper?"

"Chinese paper. Once a while."

"Look. Maybe I'm paranoid. But the way things are going, pretty soon everyone's going to be a spy or a Commie or both. Do you know what I'm talking about?"

Ralph shook his head.

"You should read the newspaper. We all have to be a little careful." Pinkus explained how when times got ugly, things got uglier for some people than for other people.

"People don't like you?"

"It's a matter of religion."

"People don't like you because of your religious?"

"Where've you been, Antarctica?" said Pinkus. "The Germans, for example. The Germans don't like us. 'Because of our religious.'"

"Ah," said Ralph. "I get. You Jewish guy."

Pinkus worked his paper clip into a pretzel. "You should read the newspaper," he said again. "That's good advice, take it, you're going to need it, I can see." He tossed the paper clip onto his desk blotter; now he stroked his beard some more. "All right, all right," he went on, as if to himself. "If they ask, they ask. But for you, such an innocent..." He stood up from his chair, paced around, shut the window.

The month of September, Ralph held his breath. October. November. Then the snow came, burying everything. Even the pile of debris outside Ralph's rooming house window turned picturesque, its jagged rustiness tempered into drifts, swoops, and in one corner, a series of pretty balls, like a snowman laid down for a nap. Ralph drew back his window curtain, moved his desk so that the sun kept his tea warm. He had thought he would miss the library, and was glad he still cooked with everyone else; at least he saw people in the evening. But to his surprise, he

found that he liked working alone during the day, that in solitude he'd found a jet of concentration he'd never felt behind him before. His "Stress Analysis of Gears by Photoelastic Analysis" went better than he could have believed possible; and soon he found that despite the horror stories he'd heard about impossible research topics, and advisors who kept their students ten, twenty years, he actually looked forward to working on his doctorate. His doctorate! Just thinking about it made him feel like a man in possession of something. Every day he thought how lucky he was. Every day he thought how proud his family would have been to see him like this. What was the matter with his life all these years, that it had stood in anxious whitecaps? For once in his life, he thought, he was actually doing things the right way.

With the March mud, though, came notes. Would Ralph come see Mr. Fitt — that was the first. Immediately, added the second. And the third, signed by Mr. Fitt personally, in a curdling black hand — would Ralph please come or face the consequences.

Heavyhearted, Ralph pushed his desk back against the wall, shut the curtain, clipped together his equations and charts.

"Fitt never liked you" observed Old Chao, huffing loudly, as he set down a box of books. He killed a roach and showed it to Ralph.

And surely Ralph's new building was not like his old one. Now that he was moving he realized how fond he'd grown of the square brick apartment house, with its layers of windows and fire escapes, its hidden stack of predictable halls — how fond he'd grown of its schedules. The every so often it was mopped, the every so often sprayed. Order: not only were all its door numbers of the same font, a family, but the ones on the mailboxes were the door markers in miniature — kin. Even the tenants were a more or less matched set.

His new building, on the other hand, had at one point been turned into offices, and was now still mostly offices on the first floor, but with rooms and storerooms on the second floor, and rooms and more offices on the third. Everyone seemed to be

missing something. There was a family with no mother, a couple with no furniture, a man with no legs. The businesses seemed to have no business. What the various tenants did have, though, was visitors, lots of them, so that (as some of the doors were marked with numbers, some with letters, and some not at all) a day in residence was a succession of strange heads popping in, sometimes with bodies attached. At least until Ralph fixed his lock; and then it was the sound of his knob being tried, communication attempted. "Bruce? Bruce? You in there?" Bang, bang. Or, "Wouldja openitup, Jane, comeon, knockitoff."

Ralph, though, was in no position to be picky. Mr. Fitt, apparently, had mobilized. Now Ralph was receiving letters from the Department of Immigration. "It has come to our attention ...." And what about that strange man hanging around his Chinese friends lately? "Tall man/ 1 said Old Chao, "with a dogr