"I tried to personally take the pot filled with ice into the compound, but the guards blocked me. One of them shouted, 'No taggy, no entry, Mama-san.' Damn that camel! Do I look like an old Korean woman?"
Nan quenched his impulse to laugh. "So you dumped the soup, didn't you?"
"Yes, I'm sorry. I couldn't follow the pot."
"I want it back. I spent nineteen dollars for it."
"I'll see what I can do."
After that conversation, Mei Hong stopped coming to fetch food, so Nan gave up cooking lunch for the athletes. The Wus were glad that finally the woman seemed to have disappeared from their lives.
18
DICK'S book, Unexpected Gifts, came out in August and was well received. These days he was busy reading at colleges and libraries and seldom came to the Gold Wok. Nan saw a brief but positive review of the book in the Sunday New York Times, which he often bought at Kroger. He could tell that Dick was now taken more seriously by critics. He phoned his friend, who was not in, so he left a congratulatory message. Dick didn't return his call. He was traveling a lot lately.
Nan wondered whether his friend had abandoned him. Then one afternoon Dick showed up, the same disheveled man in an unbuttoned denim jacket. He didn't look happy and told Nan, "My book is doing well, but the press won't reprint it."
"Why? Don't zey want to sell more books?"
"I don't know. They've never planned to make money from poetry. Once a book has sold out, it's dead." "Dead in just two mons?"
"Well, not yet. They still have three hundred copies in stock, but once those are gone the book will be out of print." He let out a sigh. "Zat's terrible."
"See, whenever I finish a book, I'll go through a big crisis, not knowing who will publish it. Whenever my book is doing well, it will create another crisis, because it means the book will be gone soon. It's very hard to keep a book of poetry in print for up to three years."
"Man, you have depressed me," Nan said gravely.
"Don't get upset. We write poetry because we love it. To tell the truth, if I didn't write, I don't know if I could have lived so long. I don't regret doing it."
That baffled Nan, who felt Dick could easily live without making poems. Dick might just have wanted to sound theatrical. Look at Nan himself-he hadn't written anything for a long time, and still he was breathing normally, in the pink, as it were. So he had his doubts about Dick's confession. Not until several years later did he fully understand the truth of his friend's words.
19
THE BERNSTEIN GALLERY in Atlanta was going to hold its fall show, at which some painters in the Southeast would be featured. Bao mailed Nan a card that bore a painting from his Shanghai series and the information on the exhibition. He wrote that he hoped to see Nan there and that he had invited Dick as well. Nan knew Dick wouldn't be there, for these days his friend was always out of town giving readings, except when he had to come back and teach.
Nan managed to go to the show on the opening day. He arrived ahead of the crowd in the afternoon, as he'd have to leave early before the busy hours started at the restaurant. Bao wasn't there yet, so Nan was able to walk around and look carefully at the works by all twenty-three artists. He found only a few of them remarkable. He noticed the prices for the paintings were not as high as he had expected; the most expensive piece was marked for $6,000. Among these paintings, Bao's didn't stand out at all. Most of his works were priced around $3,000; evidently Tim and Brian had overstated the case when Nan had met them. He wasn't impressed by Bao's new works either. The whole Shanghai series looked like an imitation of van Gogh, dull and even clotty in places, without the master's brightness and vibrations. The Hunagpu Bund was presented like a streetscape; without the title, few people could have related it to the Shanghai waterside. The view of a thoroughfare in one painting lacked specifics, as if it were a scene of nineteenth-century Paris. Below Bao's central piece sat a large bin containing numerous smaller objets d'art made by him: a still life of chrysanthemums, a pencil drawing of a Himalayan cat, a gouache of a dancing girl, a miniature seascape. These were priced between $150 and $300.
They reminded Nan of a Chinese buffet that offered numerous choices, none of which was refined or sumptuous. Obviously Bao, cashing in on his success, had diffused his energy and lost his creative center. This troubled Nan.
Ian Bernstein, a thickset, swarthy man and the owner of the gallery, greeted the early arrivals with a tumbler of mimosa in his large, veined hand. Nan talked with him while they stood in front of his friend's works. "What do you sink of Bao's new paintings?" he asked Mr. Bernstein, who was also Bao's agent.
"I'm not bowled over by them." The host screwed up his left eye.
"Not as good as his Venice series, right?"
"Who would buy these? They don't have enough life in them. Even the colors are too dull for me." "I agree."
Bao appeared in the entryway. Mr. Bernstein went up to him and they hugged warmly. Then Bao came over and shook hands with Nan. He was fatter than five months before and looked stiff and rustic in his dark green three-piece suit and canary yellow necktie. Nan was determined not to praise his new works, so he asked about his health and his family. Bao was not only married but also an expectant father; his wife was due the next spring. After the birth of their baby, mother and child would come to join him here. "I'm going to buy a piece of land in a suburb of Atlanta and build my home on it," Bao told Nan proudly.
"That's great. Have you decided in what area yet?"
"Probably somewhere in Cobb County."
"It has a good school system."
"So I have heard."
Frank, Bao's lawyer student, emerged from behind. He had brought along his family, his wife and two sons. Bao turned away to greet them.
Seizing this opportunity, Nan disengaged himself. He was afraid his friend would ask him to comment on the Shanghai series. Part of him wanted to tell Bao the truth, which would have been embarrassing to both of them. He moved around to look some more and came upon a set of landscapes by a Floridian painter named Kent Philips. Unlike the other artists, who each had at least half a dozen paintings on show, this man had only three pieces here, none of which was fancy. But Nan liked them very much, fascinated by their dark, luminous quality. In these landscapes, every stream, every tree, every animal, every rock possessed a shimmering spirit that seemed transcendental and mysterious. The paintings had depth and a kind of darkness that reminded Nan of the forests in New England. Nan greeted the short, pudgy artist who stood beside his works as if unable to mingle with others, though his three pieces were all priced above $5,000.
"I love your work," Nan said sincerely.
"Thanks. That means a lot."
"Is zis someplace in Florida?" He pointed at the middle piece. "No, I painted them in Montana."
"No wonder zer vegetation wasn't lush. So no everglades and gators, huh?"
"No." Kent Philips chuckled, rather shy. "I wanted to make the landscape sparse but infused with light."
"Zat's clear. These pieces don't blaze but shimmer. Zat's what I like most about zem. Zey're full of a quiet dignity."
"Thanks! Do you paint?" Obviously he regarded Nan as a fellow artist.
"I write," Nan said reluctantly. "What kind of work do you write?" "Poetry."
"Wow, I can't imagine doing that, although I like poetry too. You must give me the titles of your books so I can get a copy at the bookstore in my town."
"I haven't pahblished a book yet." Nan was slightly embarrassed.
"I know poetry is hard, but don't give up. When you reach a certain point, good things will happen, as long as you persevere."
"I'll remember zat."
A young waiter came over holding a tray of green olives stuffed with pimento, which they both passed up. Kent gave Nan his card and invited him to come visit if he was ever in Florida. Nan was pleased and felt a kind of warmth rising in him, though he knew it was unlikely he'd see this man again. It was odd that he felt so uncomfortable to be with Bao despite having known him for years, whereas with Kent Philips, a stranger, he was at ease, not having to weigh his words or resort to social rhetoric.
Before leaving the show, Nan looked around for Bao to say goodbye. In the section of handcrafted works, he saw his friend conversing with a delicate black woman dressed in red silk and holding a flute of champagne. She was the artist who had made the gorgeous, menacing masks hanging on the wall behind her. As Nan approached them, he overheard Bao praise the lady's work, "Beautiful hand-job, very special."
"Handiwork!" she corrected.
"Yes, I mean everything done by hand."
Nan edged away while fighting down the laugh rising in his throat. He slipped into an anteroom and went out of the gallery. A chilly wind swept up a few dead leaves, which were rattling and scuttling before a Dumpster on which perched half a dozen crows. The moon looked bloody, like a giant rotten orange. Nan sank into thought on his drive back, and wondered if Bao would be displeased by his French leave. For the rest of the evening in the kitchen he couldn't stop imagining a kind of dark poetry that possessed a luminosity similar to that in Kent Philips's paintings.