Nan stopped at a quotation from Faulkner. It stated: "The writer must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed- love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice."
The first part of the sentence jolted Nan, who suddenly understood the real cause of his predicament. For all these years he had bumbled around and shilly-shallied about writing because of fear: the fear of becoming a joke in others' eyes, of messing up his life without getting anywhere, of abandoning the useless, burdensome part of his past in order to create a new frame of reference for himself, of moving toward the future without looking back. It was this fear that had driven him to look for inspiration elsewhere other than in his own heart. It was this fear that had misled him into the belief that the difficulties in writing poetry in English were insurmountable and that he couldn't possibly write lines that were natural and energetic. Now this realization overcame and disgusted him. He read Faulkner's words once more. His mind hardly registered the meaning of the second part, but the first half again astounded him. Tears were rolling down his cheeks. How he hated himself! He had wasted so many years and avoided what he really desired to do, inventing all kinds of excuses-his sacrifice for his son, his effort to pay off the mortgage, his pursuit of the American dream, his insufficient command of English, his family's need for financial security, the expected arrival of a daughter, and the absence of an ideal woman in his life. The more he thought about his true situation, the more he loathed himself, especially for his devotion to making money, which had consumed so many of his prime years and dissolved his will to follow his own heart. A paroxysm of aversion seized him, and he turned to the cash register, took all the banknotes out of the tray, and went to the alcove occupied by the God of Wealth, for whom they had always made weekly offerings. With a swipe he sent flying the wine cups, the joss sticks, and the bowls of fruit and almond cookies. Around him were scattered pistachios and salted cashews. The three women in the booth stopped chatting to watch him. He thrust a five-dollar bill on the flame of a candle and instantly the cash curled, ablaze.
"My God, he's burning money!" gasped Janet.
They all got up and rushed over. Niyan clapped her palm over her mouth as Nan was setting aflame a whole sheaf of banknotes. "What are you doing?" his wife cried, and yanked his shoulder from behind.
His fell on his bottom, the cash still blazing in his hand. He looked entranced and dewy-eyed. Pingping yelled again, "Don't burn our sweat money!"
Niyan wrenched a few unburned banknotes out of his other hand, and he tossed the rest at the smiling God of Wealth. Pingping shoved him aside and tried to save the flaming bills while Nan flung up his hands and cried, "I want to burn it all, all zis 'dirty acre.' "
"He must be having a breakdown," Janet said.
"I hate this mahney, this 'dirty acre'!" he yelled in a voice verging on a sob. His eyes gave a flare.
"What he talking about?" Pingping asked Janet, who shook her head, having no clue either.
Nan had meant to say "filthy lucre," but in the throes of frenzy he got the idiom wrong. He picked himself up from the floor and stamped on the half-burned cash, saying through his teeth, "Dirty acre! Dirty acre!" His face was misshapen, his eyes smoldering with pain.
The women were too confused to respond. He turned and stormed away to the kitchen. Pingping was wiping her eyes while Niyan clucked her tongue and said as if to herself, "Why he hate money so much?"
Janet wagged her chin. "Maybe his mind just snapped. It often happens to people who have too much stress."
"He's really crazy," Niyan said, as if out of schadenfreude.
"He's just sick man," Pingping wailed, and doubled over, her face twisted. "Now you see this is real Nan. He always want to torture me."
Nan thundered from the kitchen, "Yeah, I'm sick, sick of every-sing here, sick of myself, sick of every one of you, sick of zis goddamned restaurant!"
They were stunned. None had expected he had such a harsh, menacing voice. "Maybe he should go see a shrink," suggested Janet, patting Pingping on the back as she continued to convulse with sobs.
Nan went out the back door to traipse around the shopping center awhile, his mind still whirling. The sun was scorching overhead, and in no time perspiration soaked the back of his T-shirt. The walk calmed him down some, though he still couldn't focus on any thought. Near the entrance to the photo studio toward the east end of the plaza, a mottled gray pigeon that had to be a crossbreed of a pigeon and a dove limped over, walking on the back of its crippled left foot. Its head kept bobbing at a cockeyed angle as it tottered toward Nan, who had often fed it. Nan fished in his pockets but found only a handful of coins, so he stepped aside to avoid obstructing its path. Before the pigeon passed by, it paused to flutter its wings, which suddenly gleamed in the sunlight. If only Nan had had some crumbs or leftovers on him. He liked this lone bird, which was tough, unafraid of people.
When Nan went back to the Gold Wok twenty minutes later, he became himself again, and without a word set about cutting a basket of eggplants, which were all tender and seedless, handpicked by Pingping at the Cherokee farmers' market. For the rest of the day he was very quiet and did everything he was supposed to do.
21
PINGPING was still angry with Nan for burning the money. For three days she'd avoid rubbing elbows with him at work, and neither would she speak to him. However hard he tried to induce her to talk, she'd compress her lips. At most, she'd give a faint smile if he said something funny or silly.
On Monday morning the truck that delivered groceries came as usual and left two crates of celeries and napa cabbages and a bucket of tofu at the back door to the restaurant. Without telling Nan, who was supposed to move them, Pingping began carrying them in by herself. As she was lifting a crate, suddenly a tearing pain shot through her back and her knees buckled. She fell on the cement doorstep, unable to pick herself up. " Nan, come and help me!" she called out. Two flies, startled, took off from the tofu, whirling around at a high pitch.
Nan rushed out with a towel over his shoulder and saw his wife lying on her side. Her face was contorted while her hand covered the small of her back. "What happened?" he panted, bending over her. "Why didn't you use the hand truck?"
"Oh, I broke my back!"
"Can you move?"
"I can't. My back snapped." On her eyelashes tears glistened.
As Nan tried to help her get up, she gave a loud moan, which frightened him. He left her there and hurried to the parking lot to fetch their van. He wasn't sure if she had really broken her back, but she looked partly paralyzed. He must take her to the hospital immediately. He told Niyan to ask Shubo to come in and help. If her husband was unavailable, she could just close the restaurant for the morning.
Pingping was rushed into a small room in the ER at Gwinnett Hospital. A lanky male nurse said she couldn't have broken her back. "Maybe she slipped a disk, you know," the fellow told Nan.
Then a tall, rugged-faced man stepped in and introduced himself as Dr. Gritz. He looked at the bruise on Pingping's elbow, already bandaged by the nurse, and then began pressing her back here and there. "Does it hurt here?" he kept asking in a soft voice.
The injury was on her spine, just above the small of her back, but to the naked eye there seemed nothing abnormal. The doctor said to Nan, "I'm going to give her an X-ray to see if there's any bone injury."