Nan drank more tea to soothe his throat; still he couldn't breathe easily, his windpipe tight. Danning called his wife at work to see if she'd like to join them for lunch at a cafe. She was delighted and said she would. Before they set out, Nan finally told his friend, "My throat feels dry and funny. Something is wrong."
"So you have trouble breathing, don't you?" Danning smiled quizzically.
"Yes, like having asthma."
"You know what? You must have an allergy."
"Really? An allergy to what?"
" To the air, the smog. When my wife came back from America she had the same problem. It took her a month to get used to the air here, to become a Chinese again." He tossed his head back and laughed. "Let me see if we still have some Benadryl." He went into a bedroom and came out with a brown bottle. "Here, take this." He shook out two caplets into Nan 's cupped palm.
Knowing the pills might make him drowsy, Nan swallowed them anyway. Then together they headed out. Weiwei, watching a movie on TV didn't come with them. She asked her father to bring back a meat pie for her.
7
FOREVER LOVE CAFE was a very small place. Its side windows looked onto a man-made lake, which, ringed with white sand, was more like a pond, without any trace of fish or waterfowl in it. Two teenage boys were swimming near the opposite shore, their red and white caps bobbing on the green water. Danning knew the owner of the restaurant, a handsome, lean-faced man, and introduced Nan to him as his friend from overseas. "Welcome back," the man said warmly, waving the cigarette held between his fingers.
They sat at a table beside a window. The room had a faintly vinegary smell, emanating from the cold dishes contained in the enamel basins in the glass display case. A waitress with squarish shoulders came and put a porcelain teapot and two cups between them. "Their specialities are braised pork tripe and beef tendons," Danning told Nan. "They also serve panfried noodles and rice for lunch. But their offerings may be far below the standard of your restaurant, so please bear with them."
"Come on, you think I'm rich and finicky about food?"
"You're a businessman now."
"I'm still struggling to survive there."
"Yet you're rich."
" Only by Chinese standards. "
"That's what I mean."
Sirong, Danning's wife, appeared, a petite woman smiling with a broad mouth and bulging eyes. She reminded Nan of a giant goldfish, though she looked good-natured and carefree. She held out her hand to him and said, "It's so nice to meet you finally. Danning often mentioned you. When did you arrive?"
"Three hours ago." He shook her hand, which was small and soft.
" Well, what do you think of Beijing now?"
"There are more cars, more buildings, and more people."
The couple cracked up. "That's a very accurate observation," Danning said, turning to his wife. "I told you he's a sharp fellow. He's having the same kind of allergic reaction as you did."
"You are?" she asked Nan. "No wonder you look so pale. But don't worry. You'll be all right soon. It's just the process of getting readjusted. You'll feel normal within a month."
Nan thought of telling her that he'd be going back to the States the next week, but he refrained. He didn't feel like talking much and just enjoyed listening to them. The waitress came again and put a teacup before Sirong. Sirong ordered a wonton soup.
When the panfried noodles, the wontons, and the shredded beef tendons arrived, Sirong said to Nan, "I must confess I miss America, a lot."
"What do you miss most?"
" Things like big apples, big salmon, and big lobster," she said in all sincerity. "Also, I'm a chocoholic and miss all kinds of chocolates they have there."
Nan laughed and told her, "We serve salmon in our restaurant every day. You should come and visit us."
"I'd love to. Mmmm, I still remember the lobster and shrimp we had at a crab shack in Plymouth, near the Mayflower. You see, here fish are skimpy and fruit puny. We Chinese eat too much and have used up our land."
Danning added, turning to Nan, "Overeating is a big problem among children now."
Nan nodded. "I saw some big fat kids this morning, like in the States."
"Not just children who overeat, grown-ups too," said Sirong. " Danning goes to dinner parties at least four times a week. Look how fat he is now. Besides, he has high cholesterol and hypertension."
Indeed, Danning had gained at least thirty pounds. Nan said to him, "You've got to be careful about your health. You're no longer a young man."
"In fact," said Danning, "I'm doing better than most of my colleagues. Many of them have to battle diabetes and high blood fat levels, having eaten too much meat and sugar. My boss's triglyc-erides are over seven hundred. He often says he might have a stroke or drop dead anytime. Speaking of dinner parties, I'm supposed to attend one with a group of writers tonight. Nan, would you like to come with me? It'll be fun. You'll meet some important people."
"All right, I'll come."
Sirong had to return to work before one-thirty and left the moment she was done with her wontons. The two friends strolled back, Danning holding a thick pie stuffed with pork and chives for his daughter. At a clothing stand Nan bought a tartan skirt as a present for the girl despite her father's protesting, "She already has too much stuff."
While they walked, they chatted about people they both knew. Danning mentioned that Mr. Manping Liu had died a month before and that only one small newspaper had printed a brief obituary, because the old scholar had refused to retract his statement about the necessity of democratizing the Communist regime and write the self-criticism the Party committee of his research institute had admonished him to do. Danning had gone to his funeral service, attended by only thirty people. The two friends also talked about Bao Yuan, whose paintings had been exhibited in a gallery in Beijing last fall, together with two other artists' works; Danning wasn't sure how well his work had been received here, but some of his colleagues had liked the show. A high-circulation weekly, Art News, even published a long article on Bao, written by an American art critic named Tim Dullington. Without commenting on that, Nan realized that as before, his own name as the translator must have been suppressed.
Exhausted and groggy, Nan slept for the rest of the afternoon in the guest room. He snored loudly, which fascinated the girl in the next room, who had never met anyone who made such thunderous noise in his sleep. On her dad's instructions, she lowered the volume of the TV, yet when Nan 's snores penetrated the wall, interfering with the voice of the math teacher on the screen, she turned it up again. But whenever she did this, her father would come out of his study and order her to keep it down. Besides not wanting to wake Nan, he couldn't think clearly with the TV blasting.
8
TOWARD EVENING, a midnight blue Audi with tinted windows came to pick Danning up. He and Nan got into the air-conditioned car, which rolled away noiselessly and headed for Haidian District. The chauffeur, wearing aviator glasses and a peaked cap, seemed savvy and apparently knew Danning well, but he was reticent while the two passengers in back were talking about Beijing 's real estate market, which had kept booming in recent years. The average home price had increased by twenty percent annually, and some people had unexpectedly become millionaires, having bought a couple of apartments for a song a few years before. Danning urged Nan to buy a pied-a-terre here, for which there'd be no realty tax, but Nan chuckled, saying he didn't have $30,000 to spare.
The chauffeur tooted the horn, urging a cyclist to make way for their car, which bucked again and again as if about to crush the bicycle, but its rider simply didn't respond. Not until the man rounded a corner could their car resume a normal speed. Dangling from the rearview mirror was a tiny oval portrait of Chairman Mao with a golden tassel. Nan wondered if that was some sort of amulet.