A Song Everlasting

by Ha Jin

  “Don’t let that bother you. You can find employment in other cities easily if you come back. Some cities in the south have already abolished the system of residential status. It will be obsolete pretty soon. Your bosses know that you’re their cash machine.”

  That must be true, his ability to make money for his ensemble, and he ought to stay put. “Does Tingting know I won’t be coming back soon?” he asked.

  “Of course, she knows everything now.”

  “Can I have a word with her?”

  “She went to bed at two in the morning and is still sleeping. Do you want me to wake her up?”

  “Never mind. Just tell her I love her.”

  He realized that this was the beginning of a long tussle between him and his superiors—a psychological duel from across the world. He must not allow them to intimidate or dissuade him. Now clearly he might have to live in America for a long time, so he’d better find some way to support himself. He had been here for two months already; fortunately, his visa allowed him to stay for a year. He liked it here and enjoyed the free, uneventful life, even though he had realized that freedom was contingent on the ability to accept solitude and isolation. You can live honestly here, he often said to himself. Perhaps he should learn to view himself like a prospective immigrant from now on.

  But, not having sung publicly since his arrival in New York, he was beginning to feel out of sorts, irritable, unable to concentrate. Now that he no longer appeared onstage or went to rehearsals, he even neglected his personal hygiene and sometimes didn’t shave or shower for days. He realized he couldn’t continue like this, so he spoke with Yabin about singing opportunities. His friend patted his own forehead, then assured him that he could help him. There were all kinds of gigs that Tian could do—celebratory gatherings and school reunions and evening parties. Tian interrupted him, saying he wouldn’t do private events. Yabin seemed to have sensed the reason for his objection. He smiled and said, “I wouldn’t make a distinction between public events and private ones. If I were you, whoever paid me more would get my service. You are in a capitalist society now.”

  “At the very least, I won’t sing at weddings,” Tian insisted.

  “All right, I’ll keep that in mind.”

  With Yabin’s help, he soon began to receive offers. They were easy jobs—usually he sang two or three songs and was paid between seven and fifteen hundred dollars. Of course, he had to shift his repertoire—his new patrons wanted mostly folk songs and pop songs from Taiwan and Hong Kong. Most immigrants and expats disliked the revolutionary songs, which he had tried to weed out of his repertoire over the years anyhow. He was invited to take part in some celebratory events in local communities, at some churches, even at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Two music departments at local colleges also invited him to give lectures as well as sing some songs, but he didn’t like talking to an audience. He preferred just to sing. He practiced daily, learning new songs and improving his artistry, using sheet music as well as the rich audio and video collections in the Queens Public Library branch in Flushing.

  It was midwinter now and the cold wind often gave him a sore throat; at times his voice got a bit raw, but he could manage. On the whole, he liked the climate of New York, milder than Beijing’s, perhaps because it’s on the ocean. From time to time someone would demand he sing a red oldie that would bring back their revolutionary memories—“A Little Boat Floating East” or “A Happy Song Flying from the Green Fields.” The former had been a movie theme song, his first success, but as a young singer he hadn’t been able to see that it was merely propaganda trash. For years he’d sung it at every performance—audiences had been crazy about it. Then it went out of fashion almost overnight, and he couldn’t sing it anymore. Now he would wince at the memory of the lines: “My revolutionary spirit is welling up like waves / And driving me to follow the Party without fear. / Let us smash the old evil world / So our rivers and hills will shine with marvels.”

  His performance at NYU was for an event that celebrated Chinese culture on New Year’s Eve, organized by a group of faculty members and graduate students in Asian studies there. They also invited two exiled poets to read. One of them was an older man who recited his poems in spite of his misshapen mouth and wrinkled face. He’d lost some of his memory due to a brain thrombosis, but some in the audience knew his poems by heart. Whenever he got stuck, someone seated in the front would prompt him. Tian was touched by his reciting. When Tian’s turn came, he sang his heart out, delivering his three folk songs with everything he had. After his set, a movie was shown—it was a love story set in China’s western region, produced by an independent filmmaker but banned on the mainland. The program went over three hours, but the audience remained in their seats from start to finish. The next day several Chinese-language newspapers ran reviews that praised Tian’s singing, saying it was “virtuosic and heartfelt.”

  Soon more news about him appeared in the media. Some said he’d fled China for freedom in America and that his defection spoke of the insufferable conditions for artists. He was disturbed by such reports with an anti-communist slant, though the publicity did bring him more bookings. A host at Radio Free Asia contacted him and offered to interview him on the air, but he declined, knowing the station was viewed as a hostile media agency by the mainland government. He had better appear less political for the time being.

  In addition to the rumors about his defection, other stories were also circulating about him, which, false or true, often sounded extraordinary. One went that former President Jiang Zemin had once invited him to share a drink in Zhongnanhai, the compound of the headquarters inhabited by China’s top leaders. This was partly true. Tian had indeed eaten a snack with President Jiang one night after a performance, but at a different location. Jiang loved songs and pretty female singers, and every once in a while he himself would sing in front of an audience, even playing along on the piano. Tian had to admit he was a man of culture, knowing several foreign languages, very proud of his calligraphy. On this occasion, President Jiang invited Tian and two women singers to a provincial center in the Great Hall of the People after their performance. With him they ate dumplings stuffed with date paste and sesame seeds and coconut mash. It was plain fare. Jiang was amiable and talked at length about the old songs he loved. He even hummed the Russian wartime song “Katyusha,” which none of the singers knew well enough to sing along to. His hair was dyed glossy and jet black, combed back neatly, and he gave off a faint perfume of acacia blossoms and eucalyptus. One of the women complimented him, saying he must have had a wonderful voice when he was a young man. Jiang’s thumb and index finger adjusted his square-rimmed glasses. He said, “I once dated a beautiful Russian girl when I worked at an automobile factory in Moscow. From her I learned many Russian songs.” The other woman asked him if he had enjoyed his time there. Jiang replied, “I liked Russian girls and Russian culture, but their food was awful, atrocious. Every day it was bread and potatoes and cabbage soup.” He sucked his breath as if suffering from indigestion. They all laughed.

  As Tian recalled that strange occasion, he couldn’t help but feel a tide of nostalgia. Perhaps he cared too much about the public perception of him. To most people, a moment like that—a private snack with the most powerful man in China—embodied the peak of an artist’s career. But never had Tian thought much of it until he was reminded of it by a Chinese-language newspaper in Toronto.

  He ignored all the clamor about his “defection.” But after Christmas he received a formal letter from the leadership of the People’s Ensemble. It was mailed to Shuna first, who scanned it for him. The tone of the letter was unequivocal. Evidently his superiors had received orders from above for how to handle his case, probably directly from the Ministry of Culture. The letter informed him that they had fired him and that from now on, he was completely on his own. It concluded:

  Since you have ignored our persuasion and are
resolved to stay in the United States, we have no option but to terminate our ties with you. You are a disgrace to us, to your parents, to our country that raised and nourished you. However, please bear in mind that it is still not too late for you to change your dangerous stance and return to the arms of our motherland. Like everyone else, here you will have freedom enough for you to grow and thrive.

  From Shuna he learned more about how his superiors had reached the decision. Originally the Party committee of his work unit had planned on a regular denunciation meeting to criticize and condemn him. The leaders didn’t want to expel him right away, but they had to do something in case the higher-ups accused them of negligence. Yet once the meeting started, some attendees, who were all his colleagues, mostly non-Party persons, couldn’t hold themselves back, condemning him roundly. Some even called him a traitor to their country and said he deserved serious punishment. One insisted, “Yao Tian must do time in jail if he comes back.” Another declared, “We must make an example of him or more people might betray our motherland.” A third, an older woman about to retire, added, “Yao Tian prefers to be an American dog. Let him. We can continue without him.” In the end they voted to fire him. In their eyes, he was an egotistical man, thoroughly corrupted by the Western outlook. Tian finally understood that some young men must be eager to replace him and take over the role of the principal male vocalist, also the solo singer, and that his position in the ensemble would thwart their development. Now his permanent removal could give them more room and hope. Never had he thought that his presence in their ensemble could be an obstacle to so many people.

  The official letter made him feel as if he’d been tried and sentenced in absentia. It became clear that from now on he was a free man through and through. This was quite scary, because freedom also meant he was on his own, responsible for himself body and soul. Such a state of existence felt odd and alien to him. He would bet that given a choice between freedom and security, most Chinese would choose the latter. In this regard he could have been similar to them if he were still in China. Freedom had finally been dropped on him, and whether he was ready for it or not, it had become his.

  6

  To Tian’s surprise, Professor Wu, his former mentor at the Beijing Conservatory of Music, also wrote to urge him to return. Mr. Wu was retired now and too feeble to leave home. He didn’t know how to use a computer, so his letter was handwritten in wobbly script. Tian’s leaders may have demanded that Mr. Wu help them bring him back. Not having his address in America, the old man sent his letter to Shuna and asked her to pass it on to Tian. She scanned it and emailed it along.

  Mr. Wu wrote: “Tian, you are too willful and self-centered. I pointed out this defect in your character several times when you were studying with me. You must have a broader mind and think more about others. Each of us, no matter how talented and how accomplished, is no more than a drop of water, which can disappear easily, but which will not dry or vanish when it joins a river or sea. Our country is an ocean in which we all must find our destinies. Only when we serve our motherland can we realize the meanings of our lives. Tian, as your teacher and friend, I only have your best interests in mind. Please come back without further delay.”

  If the letter had been from someone else, Tian would have deleted it and put it out of mind. But Mr. Wu was his benefactor, to whom he was still grateful. He printed out the letter in the public library so he could carry it with him and read it over and over. Whether he liked Professor Wu’s words or not, he felt obliged to reply properly.

  Unlike his fellow graduate students at the conservatory who had either been vocal majors at a university or graduated from a music school, Tian had had no professional education in music before enrolling in the MFA program. At college he had been a foreign language major and didn’t begin to sing until the first semester of his third year. Even that was due to a coincidence. At their annual sports meet in the early spring, they, the juniors, competed with the seniors in a tug-of-war. They had two teams, of men and women, each composed of twelve people. The rest of the students in both classes gathered around them to spectate and cheer them on. At the men’s tug-of-war, the juniors lost to the senior team, who ridiculed them as “a bunch of cats” because most of the junior men were scrawny and wore glasses. But the women’s contest was different. Their team crushed the seniors, and this was partly thanks to Tian.

  Their coach figured that their men’s team had lost because of poor synchronization. So he assigned Tian the task of synchronizing their female team, because he knew Tian had a powerful voice. Tian had no idea how to do it, but the coach said, waving a Diamond cigarette, “Just cry out ‘Junior Team’ so our girls can pull in unison. We’ll organize the rest of the juniors to respond to your calls.” Compared to the seniors, their team was smaller, especially their anchor, the girl gripping the big knot at the end of the rope. She was chubbier and shorter than her teammates, and her thick hair was unkempt. A couple of women on the senior team pointed at her and laughed, saying she looked like a giant turnip.

  The instant the match began, Tian shouted at the top of his lungs, “Junior Team!”

  “Pull—pull—pull!” the junior class cheered in one voice while their twelve women pulled—three powerful tugs for every cry from the cheering crowd.

  “Junior Team!” he boomed again.

  “Pull—pull—pull!”

  “Junior Team!”

  “Pull—pull—pull!”

  The senior team was taken by surprise and fell into disarray, their arms flailing and their feet sliding forward and sideways. One of them fell on her rear end and was dragged along on the grass. They also had a cheerleader, who was wildly brandishing a tiny red triangular flag, but her voice was thin, and Tian easily shouted over her. They simply couldn’t resist the Junior Team’s explosive bursts of tugs. Within one minute the junior women dragged them over the line, and the anchor girl tied the end of the rope around a poplar trunk as if to make sure that the victory was irreversible.

  Despite the seniors’ protests that Tian, a man, shouldn’t have been involved in the women’s event, the victory went to the junior women. Some of them came up to him and thanked him for his help. One said, “What a magical voice you have! You unified us like one person.”

  Soon Tian became known on campus for his big, magnetic voice. Their college chorus approached him and invited him to try out. They were an active group of students under the supervision of a young teacher of French and often represented their college in competition with other schools in Beijing, but they didn’t have a strong tenor. Most times they performed popular songs, but as a chorus from a college of foreign languages, they also attempted to sing some opera snatches to make themselves different from others. Tian liked singing and could sing a few folk and movie songs, but he didn’t know how to pronounce Italian words and couldn’t possibly sing arias from Turandot or La Traviata. Yet they convinced him to come to an audition anyhow, saying nobody among them knew Italian and they sometimes performed opera melodies mainly to impress the audience, most of whom were ignorant of foreign operas anyway. Moreover, he wouldn’t perform alone, since they’d usually sing a duet or chorus. They could practice together and put on something that sounded Italian. So he agreed to try. At the audition he sang a few popular songs and impressed them enough that they offered him a spot. Thus his performances onstage began. His fellow singers often said that he’d been studying the wrong major and should have attended a conservatory. They joked that their college was too small a puddle for a big frog like him. In his senior year he became their lead tenor and once in a while sang off campus with some of them to pick up a bit of cash.

  Toward graduation, many of his classmates were preparing to take the exams for graduate school. A few lucky ones were about to go abroad to study toward MAs and PhDs. As usual, the Beijing Conservatory of Music was admitting MFA students, and Tian’s friends urged him to give it a try. He was int
rigued and sent in his application and a tape of his singing, including some Italian operatic melodies, such as “The Mountain of the East” and “Let’s Drink from the Joyful Cups.” But he was halfhearted with his attempt, believing it was a long shot and that his performances, especially of the opera snatches, were awful. To his surprise, in June he was instructed to report to an audition at the conservatory, where Professor Wu Chuan would personally view his performance.

  Mr. Wu was a leading expert in vocal education and had been the mentor of numerous successful singers. His specialty was operatic singing, which he had studied in Warsaw in the late ’50s and the early ’60s. But he hadn’t performed much after he came back to China, his career disrupted by one political movement after another. Later during the Cultural Revolution he was banished to the countryside to feed pigs and grow vegetables and grind soybeans at a tofu mill at night. Eventually he was summoned back to the capital and became a professor and a legendary vocal educator. Tian was overwhelmed by the official notice, which he kept looking at incredulously, since he couldn’t sing opera in Italian at all and the samples he had sent in were just bad imitations of Luciano Pavarotti. Professionally he was an absolute tyro.

  Fearful of failure and humiliation, he didn’t tell anyone about the audition, to which he planned to go alone. Above all, he had to keep the news from his parents, who wouldn’t want him to become a singer, a mere entertainer. His father was an engineer in a textile plant and his mother a clerk in a tax office. They were intent on him finding a real, stable job, but they were far away in Dalian and he didn’t have to obey them. At the audition, he came to know that some of the other applicants would sing operatic arias by Western masters like Puccini, Mozart, Rossini. They made him feel intimidated and inadequate. When his turn came, he just let himself go and belted out two folk songs, one fishing song and the other praising the immense Mongolian prairie. He sang them with gusto and total abandon. When he was done, he had to kick his right leg to stop it from shaking. One of the faculty members, a young woman, tittered and covered her mouth with her bony fingers.