2
NAN had read and reread all the poetry books recommended by Dick. He liked them but felt Robert Frost and W. H. Auden were more to his taste, so these days he resumed reading Frost. In addition, he had been writing poetry in English whenever he could. Lately he had focused on a longish poem entitled "Heaven," which he planned to dedicate to Dick, as a surprise. Hard as he tried, he couldn't produce anything he liked. His lines were devoid of gravity and verve, and he could tell he was getting nowhere if he continued this way. He had to find a different angle from which he could recon-ceive his project, which had the ultimate goal of making his poems dark, luminous, and starkly elegant, a quality he vividly remembered from the paintings by Kent Philips. He knew that, living in Georgia, he couldn't possibly present that kind of landscape in his poetry, but he didn't have to avail himself of the physical world. What he should have was a restless soul from which vibrant lines might originate.
For months he couldn't feel excited about what he wrote, as if his mind hadn't wakened from a dormant state yet. He rented some movies and watched them late at night, but they didn't help create any poetic impulse either, and he got tired of them soon. He went to downtown Atlanta on a Saturday afternoon in April to attend a celebration of the imminent reversion of Hong Kong to China, but he felt more lonesome among the large crowd, though a soprano, singing at the proscenium with the curtain behind her, moved him to tears with two songs that brought back the memory of his childhood. He wondered whether this inert state of his mind might be connected to the fact that for many years he hadn't met a woman he loved wholeheartedly and with the passion from the depths of his soul. Of course there was Beina, who still bewitched him. But he had no idea where she was now, perhaps still in Harbin. If only he knew how to get in touch with her.
By now he honestly loved his wife, but in a steady and mundane way. With Pingping he felt peaceful. He took care of the restaurant and the yard work while she spent more time with Taotao, cooking breakfast for the boy and supervising him in his study. What's more, she kept their books, wrote checks, went to the bank to deposit or transfer money every day, and paid taxes by the end of each season. Their solitary life had strengthened their mutual dependence and emotional attachment, which had ripened into love and trust. Still, the marriage didn't offer the kind of excitement that Nan hoped could spur him into song. He imagined that what he needed was an overpowering emotion that could become an inspiration.
His desire for poetic stimulation often made him think of those women in literature who inspired poets and even became the subject of poetry, such as Petrarch's Laura, Dante's Beatrice, and Yuri Zhivago's Lara. If only there had been such a woman in his life! A woman just the thought of whom would set his soul on fire. He believed that if he had met such a woman, he might have written like a possessed devil and his mind could have turned into a fountain-head from which lyrical lines would overflow. Sometimes he realized this was silly, but he couldn't help himself and kept indulging in the illusion.
Out of this secret sentiment he rented the film Doctor Zhivago. He and Pingping watched the movie until two a.m. The picture touched them so deeply that they both felt sick for several days. They recommended it to Niyan and Shubo, who also enjoyed it. It reminded all of them of the life they had led in China, where, similar to the turbulent Russia, human lives had been worthless, where hatred and blind rage had run amok, and where the gun ruled the law. For days Pingping had a stuffy nose, and whenever they talked about the scenes in the movie the Wus would mist up a little.
Yet they were also moved by the beauty and strength of the film. Nan wished it had shown how Dr. Zhivago managed to write poetry when forced to serve the Bolsheviks. The poet in the story wasn't shown trying hard to develop his art. Once, in a deserted ice-clad mansion, he did take up his pen and write while Lara was sleeping and wolves were howling. Still, that couldn't explain how he became an accomplished poet.
Nan borrowed the novel from the town library. Fifteen years ago he had read it in the Chinese translation and had been underwhelmed, mainly because he couldn't grasp it structurally. This time he worked through it carefully and found it magnificent. Pasternak wrote as if no novels had existed before. The loose structure of the book seemed improvident, yet after finishing the last page, Nan felt everything hung together, uncannily unified. What an amazing book! Still, he wished it had shown how the protagonist struggled to write poetry, the development of which was hardly mentioned in the novel. He pondered over the poems at the back of the book and couldn't see how they were related to the content of the prose. He recommended the novel to Pingping. She read a few pages, then gave up. She didn't like the way the story was told, and preferred Steinbeck, whose books she would read whenever she had spare time. Sometimes even if she didn't understand a paragraph fully, she still loved to be lulled by that great author's natural, colloquial voice, just like listening to a wise friend talking.
Over the years Janet, a big fan of Stephen King and Anne Rice, had tried to persuade Pingping to join her book club, but Pingping wouldn't participate. She had very little time, and besides, she liked reading older books.
3
BOTH Nan and Pingping had gingivitis, a problem common among Asian immigrants because there was little dental care in their native countries. Without dental insurance, the Wus couldn't go to the dentist regularly. Ever since Taotao came to America, they'd had at most one dental cleaning a year. Recently two molars bothered Nan a lot, and the gums in the back of his mouth were inflamed, giving him a sore throat, though he'd had his tonsils out sixteen years before. He went to see Dr. Morell at Sunrise Square near the Lilburn public library, and the dentist suggested Nan have his four wisdom teeth extracted, or he might lose them and some other molars in the near future. The doctor told him, "They won't last, to be sure. All have deep pockets, seven or eight. We should take steps to save your other teeth."
"I don't have dental insurance."
"I'll charge you only two hundred dollars for it."
"Let me talk wiz my wife."
"Sure. Give me a call if you want to do it."
Nan didn't agree on the spot because Pingping disliked Dr. Morell, a pudgy man in his mid-thirties. In the beginning the dentist hadn't been good to the Wus. Once, right before he performed a minor surgery on Pingping's gum, he had said, "So, thirty-seven, eh?" He smirked, his face rippling with flesh. Apparently he'd gotten the information from the form she had just filled out. She angled her head in disgust but said nothing. Throughout the procedure she shut her eyes so she wouldn't have to see his ugly face. Despite that bad experience, she admitted that Morell was skilled, so she would let her family see him once a year.
This time Pingping urged Nan to have his wisdom teeth drawn without postponement. She feared he might fall ill, since the bad teeth often gave him a low fever. He went to the dentist a week later. The extraction wasn't very painful and took less than an hour. Dr. Morell told Nan that his teeth had unusually deep roots. That was why the last tooth alone had taken him almost twenty minutes to pull. Gingerly the tip of Nan 's tongue probed the holes left in the back of his mouth, each of which reminded him of a smoldering bomb crater or volcano. Before leaving the dentist's, he asked for his teeth, which a nurse wrapped for him in a wad of gauze.