The city hadn't changed much. Indeed, there were more cars on the streets, but unlike in Beijing, not many of them here seemed privately owned. Nan liked the new tall buses, which looked roomy, like tourist coaches. Five minutes later he asked the taxi to stop at Friendship Boulevard, about three hundred yards away from Wind Chime Street, on which his parents lived, because he wanted to walk a little. He gave the cabbie, a young man with a missing front tooth, twenty yuan and let him keep the change. Then he headed toward his parents' home, lugging his wheeled suitcase without looking at the street signs as if his feet knew where to take him.
When he entered the residential compound, he heard a man chanting, "Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out…" Accompanying those amplified singsong words was slow, dangling music that sounded ancient and listless. Rounding the corner of the first building, Nan caught sight of a group of old people, about thirty of them, doing morning exercises in the open space between two concrete tenements. They stepped around rhythmically, putting down heel first and swinging their arms left and right, all with their eyes half shut. They looked funny to Nan, as if sleepwalking or wrestling with shadows. Among them he saw his parents, who were swaying their shoulders indolently, his father wearing a flat brown cap while his mother was in purple slacks and a white short-sleeved shirt. To his amazement, neither of them had changed much; only their midriffs seemed thicker than before and their limbs looked a little stiff. All the people were expressionless, and their bodies moved in time with the male voice and the music as if they were in a hypnotized dance. Unconsciously Nan stopped in his tracks, his chest so full of feeling that he could hardly breathe. His eyes filmed over. Then he came around and decided not to address his parents, not to wake up the whole crowd. He went along and passed them with his face toward the wall of the building.
He climbed the stairs and reached his parents' apartment. The door was locked, so he leaned against the steel banister at the landing, waiting. His father and mother had retired several years ago with pensions equal to their full salaries, and they lived comfortably. Nan could see why, whenever he complained about the Chinese government in his letters, his father would write back upbraiding him and saying he was too naive and too rash. The old man, a staunch Communist, had never doubted the superiority of socialism to capitalism. He had once even condemned his son, saying that even though Nan lived in an American house, drove an American car, spoke American words, ate American food, and cut American farts, still all those privileges couldn't justify Nan 's "vituperation" against the Chinese government. Now Nan understood that his parents' livelihood depended on the support of the state.
"Who's there?" his mother shouted as she was climbing up the stairs.
"Mom, it's me."
" Nan! Are you really Nan?" She ran up, stumbled at a step and put out her hand to break the fall.
"Don't run." He hurried down to meet her.
She threw her arms around him and broke into happy tears. "Oh, my son, how I miss you! Are you back alone?"
In his arms, she was like a meatball with love handles. He said, "Yes, Pingping and Taotao couldn't come with me."
"Let me take a good look at you." She pushed him away a bit and observed him with creased eyes. " Nan, you're a middle-aged man now. You've changed so much. Life must be hard in America."
"It's not easy, but we've managed. You look great, Mom. I saw you and my dad outside just now, but I didn't interrupt you." They turned toward the door. Viewing her from the side, he found her more bent than before, but her hair was jet-black, apparently dyed.
"Oh, you should've stopped us," she went on. "We were doing this new breathing exercise. It's like magic and everybody feels better after doing it for a week. Hey, my old man, our son is home."
Nan 's father appeared in the stairwell. He saw Nan and hastened his steps. The moment he came in, he asked, "When did you arrive?"
"A few minutes ago."
"Why didn't you tell us beforehand?" He smiled, crinkling his weather-burned face and unable to contain his happiness.
Nan explained the raffle prize that had enabled him to fly back. His mother had already started making breakfast in the kitchen, from which the clatter of pots and bowls could be heard. Nan saw steaming water falling out of the faucet in there-that was something new.
The old man and Nan sat down on the sofas in the living room. He said to his son, "You were right not to come up to us when your mother and I were at the exercise. Uncle Zhao was right behind me. He's still unhappy with you."
"Because I didn't help him get his paintings exhibited in the United States?"
"Right."
"That was several years ago. He still bears a grudge?"
"Sometimes he complains that you're ungrateful, and I have to pretend to agree with him."
"But I'm nobody in America. How could I help him hold an art show?"
"I'm not blaming you, Nan. He's just pigheaded, but he's an old friend I don't want to lose. So don't go out during the day in case people in the neighborhood see you, because then Uncle Zhao will know you're back."
"All right, I'll remain indoors." Nan was tired and sleepy, preferring to stay home anyway.
" If you want to go out, use the back alley and wear sunglasses. Don't go by the front gate."
"You mean the alley is still there?"
"Yes, nothing really changed except for people getting older."
At breakfast Nan asked about his brother and sister. His parents said their family was lucky that neither of Nan 's siblings was out of work. There were so many unemployed people nowadays that pickpockets were everywhere in town. Nan had better be careful with his wallet on buses and in shops, especially in movie theaters, where the darkness could facilitate theft. His mother also told him that his younger brother, Ning, was addicted to gambling. Sometimes Ning would go out for a whole night. His wife griped about his bad habit all the time, but he wouldn't change. She had even threatened to leave him; still he wouldn't stop.
"Why is he like that?" Nan asked, remembering his brother fondly.
"Depressed."
"What? Depressed?"
"Yes. He just can't take heart from anything," chimed in his father.
Nan felt it strange that Ning, formerly a cheerful young man, had degenerated like that. Before he had left China, Nan had never heard the word depressed, which his mother now used like an everyday term.
Nan gave his parents each five hundred dollars, saying he'd had to leave Atlanta in a hurry, so was unable to bring them any gifts. At the sight of the green banknotes, his parents beamed. His father picked up a crisp twenty from the wad of cash and narrowed his weary eyes to observe it against the sunlight streaming in through the window, as if to ascertain its genuineness. "This is twenty dollars," he said. "I never saw American money before. " "It's real." Nan nodded.
"I've never thought the almighty dollar looks so ugly." His mother interjected, "What a silly thing to say. No money looks ugly."
The old man chuckled and sucked in his breath. "That's true. Just one of these banknotes can buy me a hundred noodle meals." He turned to Nan. "Now tell me, how much can your restaurant make on a good day?"
"Around a hundred?"
"Five of this!" He fluttered the twenty in his hand. "No wonder people say America is the richest land." The wrinkles around his snub nose turned into grooves as he grinned and clucked his tongue.
Nan didn't say more. Instead, he went to wash and brush his teeth. Then he undressed, got into bed, and slept eight hours on end.