by Ha Jin
I looked into Niya’s eyes. The limpid honesty in them convinced me of the truth of her words. “Do you think Haili will file more lawsuits?” I asked. “Could that be what she’s talking about?”
“She said litigation was useless against a pauper. She seems to have given up on trying to attack you legally.”
“Then what’s going on?”
“She sounded euphoric,” Niya said cynically. “Something bad must have happened to you to have brought her that much joy.”
“But you don’t know anything beyond what she said?” I cried. “Why did you even come here?”
“Don’t be angry that I don’t have the full story,” Niya protested. “And I didn’t come just to spoil your trip. I also came to see my friend.”
“I’m not mad,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady, “just worried. Thanks for letting me know what you’ve heard.”
“There is one other thing,” she said slowly. “Larry seems to be involved now.”
“How is he involved?”
“Haili said Larry had given her a big loan. She was so happy she nearly burst her seams. But I don’t know how much she got from him.”
“With money she can do a lot.” I gave a little moan as I thought about it. “She can use a hotshot attorney, she can hire hacks to write articles, she can bribe more officials—”
“I guess so.” Niya sighed and looked a little plaintive.
“Come on, help me think. What can they do to me?”
“I tried—I’ve been trying the whole way here. I truly can’t figure out what’s going on. Before leaving New York I called Haili again to see if she could tell me anything else, but she wouldn’t divulge a thing.”
The dusk deepened, and a breeze swept by and shook the sailboats in a nearby dock, many of them covered with tarps of various colors. Their masts tilted and wavered, the riggings tinkling fitfully, while gentle waves lapped the concrete blocks of the bank. A large flock of waterfowl—mallards, white-billed coots, geese, swans, even a mandarin duck—paddled over. They seemed hungry, looking at us inquiringly. I wished I had some bread or popcorn or chips for them. Winter would be hard for these birds. Where would they find food? I wondered. Why hadn’t they flown south? How were they going to survive the cold weather? There must be an island close by where they nested.
“I like swans,” Niya said. “The way they always stay in pairs, male and female. What’s that one?” she asked, pointing.
“A mandarin duck,” I told her.
“I never saw a mandarin duck before,” Niya said thoughtfully. “Don’t they always live in pairs too?”
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “Maybe only in folklore. Summer must be nice here.”
“It’s gorgeous in spring and summer,” Niya said, her voice lifting. “Sailboats, birds, flowers, and kids everywhere. Down there the beach is open for people to swim in the lake. You should come again.”
“Are you hungry, Niya?” I asked, suddenly feeling restless.
“Famished.”
I offered to take her to the restaurant I’d mentioned in my email, but she wanted to try an Indian restaurant that Aylin particularly liked. Together we headed west along Königstrasse toward that place. Niya said she was leaving with Aylin for Dresden the next morning. She was captivated by pictures of the castle there, and had been wanting to see it for a long time.
The Indian restaurant was a long walk from the lakeside. I strolled in the reddish path on the sidewalk, along the curb. Finally Niya pulled me out of it, saying that it was for cyclists. I began to see that indeed all bicycles ran in the five-foot-wide strip paved with terrazzo squares. Few Germans that we passed were overweight, and they all followed the traffic rules strictly, waiting for green lights when they crossed streets, even if there was no car in sight.
The restaurant was a fine place, clean and quiet, with a faint smell of incense. The space was well illuminated but not too bright, offering an intimate atmosphere. On each table were a candle and a small vase of striped mums surrounding a tiny sunflower. A slim waiter led us to a corner table and lit the candle. As I was ordering a Heineken, Niya stopped me, saying, “Let’s have draft beer. In Germany you ought to drink draft beer.”
So we each had a tall glass. The beer was excellent, sharp and fresh with a mellow aftertaste. We ordered fish masala and basil chicken, which came with two small salads and naan. Niya said that portions in German restaurants were big, so we shouldn’t order anything more for now.
She was right—the two dishes were enough for us. I liked the way they were served, each in a stainless-steel pot sitting on a metal supporter like a tiny stove that had a votive candle burning under the dish to keep it warm. The naan, puffed up in a shallow wicker basket, was delicious. Our mood was lifting.
“This is so good,” Niya raved. “I haven’t eaten basmati rice in so long.”
“I’m glad you like it,” I said. “Tell me, Niya, did your parents starve you when you were little?”
“What a question!” She looked at me in shock. “Are you trying to make fun of me?”
“Not at all. Most women from the northeast are tall and sturdy,” I pointed out. “But you’re so cute and petite, like a beauty from south of the Yangtze.”
“You’re messing with me again,” she said, relaxing, accepting the barbed compliment. “You know, my parents actually urged me to eat more when I was in my early teens, but I could never finish what they gave me. ‘You’re eating like a bird and won’t grow tall,’ they kept warning me. But I was too stubborn to listen, and my cousins always ribbed me, saying I was starving myself because I wanted to look like a ballerina. It wasn’t until I was eighteen that I began to enjoy my food. By then it was too late for me to grow any more.”
“I’m happy you like this rice. I often cook basmati back home.” That was true, though I couldn’t make it perfectly al dente like what was served here.
“I don’t believe you. We don’t have this rice in China.”
“I mean in New York.”
“Are you kidding me? Katie can tell basmati from Nishiki or jasmine rice?”
“It’s not that hard to taste the difference,” I said, laughing.
“Lucky woman. Haili told me that the Chinese officials had taken Katie away from you. She said, ‘Danlin lost his bride. Serves him right.’ Is that true?”
“Not really,” I said, though Niya’s words stung. “Katie and I never planned to marry—we knew we’d go our separate ways sooner or later. And now, since she’ll be leaving for her fellowship, the sooner we say good-bye the better. Drawing things out could just become painful.”
“You’re a good man, Danlin,” Niya said, “but you seem always to have bad luck with women. In Katie’s case, perhaps you tried too hard.”
“What do you mean?”
“You wanted to save face after Haili left you, didn’t you?”
“That was part of it,” I admitted. “There was more to it than that.”
“Don’t try to conceal your vanity,” Niya pressed, teasing.
“Honestly, in the beginning I had other concerns.”
“What were they?”
“I thought that life might be easier for me if I lived with an American woman. At least my English would improve. In fact, Katie has learned a lot of Chinese from me, in bed. Don’t smile like that. I’m telling you the truth. Men are the same as women in most ways—we all look for mates who will improve our lives.”
“So, like for Haili, for you marriage was an opportunity?”
“I didn’t think of marriage at all, but I did date Katie with an eye to some practical gains. Now I can see I was wrong. She helped me a lot in the beginning, and her warmth loosened me up, but on the whole I’ve given more than I got.”
“I like your honesty, Danlin—you always talk straight. Like I said, I’ve avoided Chinese men in general, because so many of them feel superior to others, especially to people from provincial places who do menial work.”
&
nbsp; “So I’m not a typical Chinese man?” I smiled.
“At some level you’re not. We’re two of a kind.” She pointed at herself. “I’m a good woman but have no luck with men. I always meet cheaters, spongers, and sleazebags, so I’ve realized that I need to be prepared to remain single for the rest of my life.”
“You’re sure you’re a good woman?” I couldn’t help asking.
She considered the question seriously. “Well, I’m honest and kindhearted, and I’m capable in the kitchen, in the bedroom, and in the living room.”
“The last one I don’t get—why in the living room?”
She tittered, wiping her lips with a pink napkin. She said, “I’m good at giving parties. No, I shouldn’t say that. I don’t like parties that much, but I know how to make guests comfortable—how to be a good hostess.” She let out a faint sigh. “If only I could fall head over heels in love again. I’d give an arm for having that feeling back, even just for a week.”
I was tempted to say that we’d both outgrown that hormone-crazed phase. But instead I asked her, “What if you could start life over? Would you want to have the same life you’ve been living?”
“No way!” She shook her head ruefully. “I would’ve married the boy who first fell in love with me when we were teenagers, but I was so stupid I turned him down out of hand.”
“If you go that route,” I cautioned, “you might be stuck in a provincial town forever.”
“I wouldn’t mind,” Niya said firmly. “How about you? What would you change?”
“I would want to be born outside of China and to have never set eyes on Yan Haili.”
Niya’s eyes widened. “She really traumatized you!”
“So did Old China.”
The waiter returned to our table and asked how we were enjoying the meal. We answered with praises. His name was Vivek, and he was from Jaipur. He had come to our table time and again, because he said he didn’t often get to speak English. He was handsome, slightly frail, and in his mid-twenties, already a father of two. I asked him how often he went back to India. “I go home for a month every winter,” he said. “It’s cold here.”
Unlike Vivek, the other South Asian men working here were all quite burly, and some joked and passed along their orders in booming voices. One had a shaved head and looked rather fierce.
I left two euros for a tip, wondering as I did so if it was too little. “Eleven percent is more than enough,” Niya assured me. “Tips are included in the checks here. People just leave a bit of cash as a token.”
Once we stepped out of the restaurant, she added, “Aylin said this place was ruined by Americans being too openhanded.”
“You mean Americans tip too much? Then I suppose I am American in that sense. Why not be happy to see others happy?”
“You’re a good-hearted man.” She clutched my upper arm with both hands and leaned in, pressing her chin against my shoulder.
I wrapped my arm around her to shield her from the chilly wind. We walked like this all the way to her friend’s place.
To my amazement, despite her Turkish name, Aylin looked more like an archetype of the fair German woman, with blue eyes and flaxen hair. Her figure was elegant, like that of a model, in her aubergine-colored dress and taupe stockings. She wore opal earrings and silver bracelets. We sat in her perfume-drenched living room and chatted over Rize tea, brewed in a porcelain pot. Aylin said airily that she missed New York, but Berlin was her hometown and she was surrounded by friends and family here—she had gone to the States only to do graduate work. Besides, she had a good managerial job at a hospital now. She spoke English with a soft, melodic accent and lapsed into a German word or phrase from time to time. She talked about her father, who had just returned to his own home city of Istanbul. When she was growing up, the man had kept telling his children that when they were no longer his responsibility, he’d go back to his homeland, but none of them had believed him. When Aylin’s youngest brother had graduated from college the year before, their father uprooted himself and made good on his word, despite the family’s objections. Aylin’s mother had no choice but to follow him.
“Is he happy to be back in Turkey?” I asked.
“He seems to be. He always felt like a foreigner here.”
“How long did he live in this country?”
“Twenty-seven years.”
I nodded. It was a long time to be away from home. “But how could he readapt after living away from Turkey for so long?”
“The first few months were difficult,” Aylin confirmed, “but he and my mother both feel at home now.”
“To some extent they’re lucky,” Niya put in. “They have a homeland they can return to.”
“Now my siblings and I will have to go back to visit them at least once a year,” Aylin said.
Around nine o’clock I took my leave because the two of them would need to get up early in the morning for the train. Niya came out with me, wrapped her arms around me, and kissed my cheek. “Think of me sometimes, okay?” she asked, her eyes shimmering in the dark.
“I will,” I said. “Have a wonderful trip.” I turned and headed to the train station, beyond which the moon dangled, a great shining crescent.
The nippy air felt a little damp because of the lake nearby. I whistled a little as I walked—I noticed that I’d been in a better frame of mind since leaving New York. I felt calm and enjoyed meeting people. I didn’t drop the unsettling remarks that seemed to have become my trademark. Was Berlin so different from New York? I reflected. Probably not. It must have been due to the absence of those three crooks I’d been fending off day and night. My fight with them must have been affecting me within. The constant struggle had been leaching into my heart, threatening to warp my personality. I wished I could spend more time away from the crush of New York. There had to be better ways to live a life.
TWENTY-ONE
I returned to New York fraught with anxiety. When I went in to work the next morning, slightly groggy from the six-hour time difference, I found GNA nearly empty—even the cork bulletin board in the hallway was bare. A thin fluorescent tube flickered above it. Only the door of Wenna’s office was open; I could hear her clacking on her keyboard. Puzzled, I went into the break room and found a pot of coffee waiting, just like every morning. I poured myself a cup, about to head to my office, when Kaiming stepped in. He said, “Danlin, can I have a word with you?”
I downed a mouthful of coffee, then followed him to his office. My stomach was tightening—had there been layoffs? The instant I sat down in the chair before his desk, he said, “Our company has changed hands. We all have to go.”
“What?” My heart was in my throat. “What do you mean?”
“Jiao Fanping has bought GNA,” Kaiming said clearly. “He’s the owner now.”
I stared at Kaiming, at a loss for words. He repeated, “Jiao has bought our company.”
“But how could you let this happen? You invested so much of your life in GNA—we were the only independent Chinese-language news agency left in the West.”
“Don’t forget I’m also a businessman.” He frowned and sucked his teeth as if to soothe a toothache.
“What happened to your dream of becoming a modern-day Joseph Pulitzer? Don’t you want to be remembered as a pioneer figure in the history of Chinese journalism?” As I was speaking, bile rose in my throat and I swallowed.
He puffed out a sigh, his cheeks swelled and his eyes dim. “What could I do?” he said lamely. “I owned only forty percent of the company’s shares. Jiao managed to buy the rest of the shares from the other holders. As a result, he owned more than I did of this company, and I could do nothing but sell him my shares. I’m sorry about the turnover, Danlin, but this is the reality we have to accept.”
“Damn it, didn’t you already accept the deal before you dispatched me to Germany? Why did you keep me in the dark? I was such a moron to trust you!” I knew Jiao couldn’t have made the buyout without the cooperation of K
aiming and some other shareholders. My boss could have easily taken countermeasures to prevent Jiao from acquiring so many shares. Kaiming must have gotten greedy and sold everything for cash. Perhaps all the trouble I’d been making for the Chinese government had helped enhance GNA’s value in its eyes. It was a chilling thought, which I had no way to prove.
Kaiming went on, “There was no way we could overcome all the odds against us. The turnover was finalized and will appear in the news today. To some extent, I also came out a loser.”
“So we’re all fired? Why? Won’t they still need staff?”
“Everyone’s being replaced by new hires from Beijing. Except for Lucheng,” Kaiming said. “He’ll stay. Jiao offered me the position of vice director, but I declined. I want to spend a year traveling and reading, to recharge myself and figure out what to do.”
“But who are these new reporters?” I sputtered. “Government lackeys?”
“You know the editor Gu Bing?”
“What about him?”
“He was supposed to head the new team, but he changed his mind because he has an important project at hand, editing a large volume of the Party’s history as a gift for the sixtieth anniversary of the People’s Republic, so someone else will come and run the editorial office.”
“I guess this is it.” I took a mouthful of the brackish coffee and believed I finally understood what Niya had told me about Larry’s loan to Haili.
“I’m sorry about the situation you are in.” Kaiming slid open his drawer, took out his checkbook, and ripped out a check already written. “Here’s a token of my thanks for the yeoman work you did for more than three years. I hope this can help tide you over till you find a job.”
I thanked him and took the check for two thousand dollars, his personal gift to me. Clearly, nobody had been given severance pay. The check felt light in my pocket as I walked back to my office.
Before I collected my things, I talked with Wenna and found out more about the takeover. The agency had been sold for more than $16 million, and Kaiming was offered $6.5 million. It was impossible for him to resist such a deal. But how could Jiao Fanping have so much capital? Did he get it from Haili?