Typical American

by Gish Jen

  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

  Ralph moved again, this time to a building with fleas. Then he moved once more, to a former hotel, after a tall man started walking a dog on his block; and yet again, after a dream about Mr. Fitt poisoning his water with lead. And now what about these phone calls? He had of course stopped using the phone, as his Chinese friends all knew; his landladies too he'd instructed never to admit they'd ever heard of him, much less that they knew where he lived, or how he could be reached. Yet someone had called twice, asking for him by name.

  "So I sez go blow." This was Mrs. Ritter, his current landlady. "I sez, I don't rent to no Chinks. So far's I'm concerned they bring bugs."

  Ralph moved. Ten days later, the calls started again.

  "Listen," said Mrs. Bellini. "I don't care what kinda trouble you in, no funny business in my house, or I kill you."

  they could sit for a quarter hour at a time in complete silence. This, with all their friends to draw on for conversation. Something was just not right. Ralph would eat and play with his hat. Litde Lou would watch, blank.

  And yet Ralph appreciated his visits. They were something solid to stand on, anyway. Respite. They were a breakwater against some black undertow in himself that could any moment snatch him away to its killing home. He felt himself to be small, barefoot, lacking friction. Nearsighted. Everyday events seemed magnified another power. Little Lou's dropping by became the concern of a boddhisatva. A pigeon corpse on his doorstep was Ralph's true self come to rot at his feet
. Everything signified, everything blared and reverberated as though some adjustment was off, some knob turned all the way up. Exhausted, that's what he was. Gone out. Looking to the future, he saw no future; and who doesn't hurt when he sees his life fizzling, his life that should have climbed and burst, blooming, a fire-flower in the sky? Once Ralph could imagine his parents watching, breathless, amazed, but now ...

  And then there was another pain too, quieter, weightier, its roots in what everybody knows — that one day a person looks back more than forward, that one day he'll have achieved as much as he was going to, loved as much as he was going to, been as happy as it was granted him to be. And that day, won't he have to wonder — was it enough, what he's lived? Can he call that a life and be satisfied?

  So it was that Ralph felt not only his future to have failed, but with it his past, the twin engine that might have sustained him. He missed his home, missed having a place that was home. Home! And yet his life there, no; it didn't begin to fill the measure of his hopes for a life. It was no golden time. He might gild it, but in truth it was lacking. Lacking what? Something, everything, he didn't know exactly. But he did know this — that the world he had lost had waxed valuable in the losing, like an unwon love. How perfect Cammy had become in his memory, how much

  more desirable for having stepped behind a locked door! He saw all of this now, with the terrible lucidity of a strained mind; and seeing it, wondered what there was to live for. His new job?

  His new job. Being Chinese, he had thought the safest place to work would be in the Chinese restaurants scattered like toys in around the legs of the el on 125th Street. Weren't people needed to wash dishes, wait table, make noodles? Ralph had no experience, it was true, but everyone started with no experience.

  And as it turned out, his lack of experience didn't matter.

  "Please, may I speak to your boss/' he'd say in Mandarin.

  "What you say?" the answer would come back; or at least that's what he guessed, not understanding a word of Cantonese. "Whaatr

  Once or twice he tried asking in English, but it was no use. Talking wrong, he might as well have been a barbarian invader; the town gates were closed. Still he knocked, until finally a tiny girl perched on a stool in the fresh-killed meat store said, "Yes?"

  In perfect English, this was. Off the stool she barely cleared the countertop, but she knew where her father was, and her father — also American-born, it seemed, a gum chewer — guessed Yeah, he could use someone. Sure.

  Ralph's non-life began. At dawn he would get up, wash, put on his bloody clothes, and walk to the store basement, where by the light of a yellow forty-watt bulb, crates of animals surrounding him — pigs and rabbits against one wall, pigeons and snakes against another — he would kill and clean and pluck hours upon hours of chickens. The first week he vomited daily from the stench of the feces and offal and rotting meat. But the second week he only blanched, and by the third he worked as though indigenous to this world. Instinct — first the most sickly or troublesome of the birds. A practiced look through the ranks; he'd snap the victim's neck, bare its jugular, slit it. Into the barrel, still kicking, to drain. Later, a roll in hot water, to loosen the feathers. Then he would pluck and dress the body, working with such speed and authority that his boss no longer came muttering

  down the stairs, but only shouted from the landing for a count.

  That meant, most of the time, that some restaurant was ready for a pickup. The times it didn't mean that were a disappointment. The times it did, the animals would nose at their wire walls. Ralph would wash his hands, a ritual. Scraping noises; and then, like the gates of the Western Paradise, the trap door would open, lowering into the basement an almost intolerable beam of light. The rabbits would freeze, eyes glowing red; the pigs would squeal. Ralph would compose himself, at the ready. A figure would appear — shadow, penumbra; and Ralph like a priest would proffer up through the unearthly shaft, through the snow of sun-spangled dust, his mute communication to the outside world — placing carefully in the hands of another human being, stooped down to receive them, these — his chickens, his doing.

  Then the door would clang shut, and he would sit back down to work, seeing nothing — spinning halos, that was, spots of light, shapes — until his eyes readjusted.

  How long did this go on? He couldn't have said. Ages. Until one evening Little Lou came to visit with news. Pinkus had been named chairman of the department.

  "Go," he advised.

  Now Ralph knew better than to let his hopes swell but still they surged like a rain-drunk river. He got his books out, studied a few days, called. Pinkus agreed to see him. Ralph dressed carefully for the visit, in clean clothes. He was there, on campus, an hour early. How beautiful it was! He had forgotten. He admired the columned buildings, august even in the rain. He admired the herringbone brick paths. He admired the sycamores, rising like important ideas from pedestrian plots of short grass. He admired the statue in front of the engineering building, though it was not of an engineer, but only a miner, with something that looked like a washcloth on his head.

  Still he was early. He tried to relax.

  Until he was late. Why hadn't he worn his watch?

  A clean-shaven Pinkus glanced at his; but when he saw that Ralph noticed, said, "So you're a few minutes late, forget it. What are we, railroad trains, we have to run on time?"

  He said this quickly, though, like a man on a schedule.

  Ralph stared at Pinkus's new office, twice the size of his old one, with five big windows spread over two walls.

  "So is there something I can help you with?" Pinkus said.

  Over his head hung a clock.

  Pinkus tried again. "Is there something you'd like to ask me? Something you'd like to tell me?"

  What could Ralph have said then? He shook his head, shamed.

  "What is this, twenty questions?"

  "I like," managed Ralph, "finish my Ph.D."

  "You'd like to finish your Ph.D."

  "I ... I ... "

  "But your visa. How'd I know that? Your visa, right?"

  "Visa."

  "Please explain to me one thing," said Pinkus. "Please explain to me how this happened, with your visa."

  Ralph shook his head.

  "You don't know?"

  "Don't know."

  "You don't know, or you won't say?"

  "Don't know."

  Pinkus scratched his chin. "I tell you who to call. The Foreign Student Office ..."

  "Cannot do."

  "You've asked them already?"

  Ralph hesitated. "Yes."

  "You've asked them?"

  "Yes."

  "And they said what?"

  When Ralph couldn't answer, Pinkus swivelled in his chair and looked out each of his five windows, one after another, right to left. Then again, left to right.

  "Listen," he said finally, slower now. "I don't like to tell lies and, excuse me, neither do I like to hear them. Let me tell you something. The best way to handle your problem is the honest way. I know, in China, everything's through the back door. You think I don't know? I have ears, I listen, I know. But China is China, this is America, and you see?" He waved his hand at his windows, his desk, his shelves of books. "Through the front door. Listen to me. You want to get somewhere, don't sneak around. And don't ask other people to sneak around for you." He looked thoughtful. "I don't mean I don't want to help."

  Ralph didn't know what to say.

  "You're a good man. I'm going to help you."

  Ralph nodded.

  "What I'm going to do is call up the Foreign Student Office."

  Ralph said nothing.

  "What I'm going to do is call up George Fitt and get him to straighten you out."

  "Don't like me," managed Ralph.

  "Who doesn't like you?"

  "Mr. Fitt."

  "George? Doesn't like you?" Pinkus looked out the window. "George is a man, he doesn't like a lot of people."

  Ralph nodded.
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  "Give me some time, I'll give him a call. Not today, today is ..." He looked at his watch. "But tomorrow, I'll give him a call, I'll get back to you."

  Ralph hesitated. Should he risk it? "No phone."

  "No phone? Then give me your address."

  Against his better judgment, Ralph dictated.

  "You reading the newspaper like I told you?"

  "Sure," lied Ralph.

  "Good," said Pinkus.

  Every day Ralph ran to his mailbox, only to find it empty. Sometimes after he looked, he'd lift up the metal flap and feel

  inside, to be sure he hadn't missed anything; but all he ever felt were the heads of screws. In one way, he wasn't surprised. Pinkus had a big office, but Mr. Fitt was still Mr. Fitt. How could Pinkus stand up to him?

  Yet still, each day, Ralph found his hope rising. In his mind he'd replay the scene, Pinkus's office growing larger and larger. At work he'd see signs of his luck turning — a run of placid chickens, a mistake in his wages to his favor — every time something new to fuel him. And each day he'd come away from the mailbox disheartened. This went on for one week, two weeks.

  Finally, he stopped running. Little Lou thought he ought to go see Pinkus again, but Ralph knew it was no use. This was what happened when a son left his family in the hands of barbarians. It was what a skirt chaser deserved.

  Or so he said. When the phone calls started again, though — again — he looked in the phone book, found out where Pinkus lived, and took a room as nearby as he could afford.

  "Only six blocks away!" he told Little Lou.

  Pinkus, Pinkus, Pinkus. When Ralph thought about him now, it was in a kind of fever. Sometimes at work, he'd see Pinkus step out from behind the chicken crates, apologetic. He'd see Pinkus kneel down beside him, offer to help with the plucking.

  No, Ralph would insist. No, no, no. You're a professor, this sort of work isn't for you.

  But there Pinkus was, rolling up his sleeves, watching Ralph's hands. So show me.

  And now Ralph spent whole evenings admiring Pinkus's house, a handsome three-window-wide brownstone on a clean street. A big lit globe shone on either side of the doorway, above twin frost-tipped yews, which in turn set off a short, wide staircase. Up and down this tripped three teenaged children; a well-fed-looking wife; and Pinkus himself, who, Ralph discovered, carried an ivory-handled walking stick.