Nan had seen that some of the men had indeed grown feeble and trivial, yet they were all the more megalomaniac. As for himself, he felt he was a better man than before. On the other hand, he knew that most of the labeled men were lonely souls who suffered intensely here. It was said that if a foreigner or immigrant lived in America for five years without family or close friends, the person would develop emotional problems. If one lived here for ten years isolated like that, one would have a mental disorder.
Nowadays it was commonplace for a woman to insult a Chinese man by calling him a "small man." That meant the fellow was a hopeless loser all women should hold in contempt.
14
JANET came and told Pingping that Dave and she had decided to adopt a baby, but that they'd have to wait three or four months before they could get a definite answer from the orphanage in Nanjing. The waiting list was long because lately a lot of American couples had begun to adopt Chinese babies and thus overwhelmed the adoption system there. In the Mitchells' case, Janet and Dave weren't sure whether they should continue to work with their agent or find another way to get a baby sooner. Janet asked Pingping, "Do you have a friend or relative who lives in Nanjing or nearby?"
"I have a cousin in Nantong, in same province. But we are never close because he betray my father in Cultural Revolution to protect himself. He just want to join Communist Party. Why you ask?"
"Dave and I wonder if we can find someone in China who can help us adopt a baby quickly. The regular process will take forever."
"I can ask my cousin, but I don't trust him. Let Nan and I think about this, okay?"
"Sure. If you can help us find some inside connections, that'll make the whole thing easier."
Nan put in, "How much does an agent cawst?"
"Ten thousand at most. We paid three thousand up front."
"If I were you, I'd use zee agent instead of depending on personal pull, as long as your agent has a good reputation."
"Why? Don't most people use personal connections to get things done in China?"
"Yes, but you may end up paying more zan you pay zee agent, and there will be endless anxiety. Any petty awfficial can interfere and create trahble for you. Zee awfficial world in China is like a black hole, and few people can keep their bearings once they're sucked into it. Besides, your connections in China will have to bribe awffi-cials at every turn. You will pay for zer horrendous bribes, right?"
"I guess so. But we've been thinking of doing this both ways, using our agent and the inside connections at the same time."
"No, you should rely on your agent only."
" Nan has point," Pingping said. "There's a lotta trouble if you involve officials."
So the Mitchells continued working with a Chinese American woman based in San Francisco, who had successfully helped dozens of families adopt babies. Janet showed the agency's literature to Pingping and Nan, who both felt the woman was trustworthy. Ping-ping even talked to her on behalf of the Mitchells, saying they had been her friends for a long time and were a reliable, loving couple, who had just built their dream home, a big Victorian house in an affluent neighborhood. She also mentioned they would become Tao-tao's guardians should she and her husband die by accident. The agent, named Ruhua, was impressed and said in her Mandarin roughened by Cantonese, "Thank you for the information. That's very helpful. I'm going to schedule a home study of the Mitchells."
"You mean you'll come here?"
"Oh no, I'll contact a local person, a certified social worker, who will go interview Dave and Janet and make sure they're a responsible couple and financially capable of supporting a child. Also, they must have no history of child abuse and substance abuse. Both the INS and the Chinese side demand the information."
"I see."
Ruhua promised to try her best to help the Mitchells. At the request of Janet, Pingping wrote a reference letter for her and Dave, stating that they were virtuous, dependable, and compassionate. Nan put it into English because Ruhua wanted the translation attached to the original. Even though she could speak Mandarin fluently, the agent couldn't read the written characters. The Mitchells needed two more letters, and Janet asked another friend of hers and Susie, the salesgirl working at her jewelry store, to provide the other references.
15
THE SURFACE of the lake was glittering in the morning sunshine. In spite of the wintry weather, a flock of mallards was paddling in the water, which had grown drab due to the absence of green foliage. Nan had once liked observing the Canada geese, but he couldn't tolerate them anymore. To him they were robbers and gluttons. Whenever they came into the yard, they'd graze on the grass, each guarding an area for itself. If one of them wandered into another's territory, the other goose or gander would lunge at the trespasser with flapping wings, a stretched neck, and an open beak emitting ugly hisses. The lakeside was already naked, the grass eaten up by the waterfowl. Since the fall, the Wus' back lawn had been dwindling. The geese would browse closer and closer to the house. Sometimes they would even come below the deck, pulling and jabbing at the grass without pause. Pingping would chase them away whenever she saw them coming too close, but they'd soon return and resume grazing on the sward, always tearing the tender shoots first.
At the beginning of the previous spring, Pingping had planted some garlic and scallions in the semicircles formed by the monkey grass, but a few days after the sprouts pierced the loam, the geese had pulled them up and eaten them all. The backyard could have been cultivated into a vegetable garden, but the piggish waterfowl would have devoured all the seedlings.
To Nan 's amazement, when the sweltering summer set in, the geese didn't leave for the North as they were supposed to do. Instead, they perched in the shady bushes on the other shore and came out only in the evenings and early mornings. The families living on the lake fed them, mostly bread and popcorn, so there was always plenty of food for them. Nan realized that these Canada geese had grown fat, lazy, and comfortable, no longer possessed of the instinct for migration.
That thought irked him, and a trace of disdain crept over his face. Just for easy food, the geese had chosen to live a riskless, stranded life. Nan noticed that seldom would they fly off to another body of water nearby. To the north, just ten miles away, there spread Lake Lanier, which abounded in fish and algae. It was reported that a catfish named Little Bobbie, weighing at least eight hundred pounds, lived in there, and every fall the radio would urge people to go catch him so that the captor could win a million dollars at the catfish derby. What's more, that lake's water was clean and vast, but these Canada geese wouldn't go there and confined themselves to this pond as long as food was offered to them. They had grown heavy and clumsy, yet their appetite remained gluttonous, as if they were no longer wild birds that were supposed to spend a part of their lives in the air.
"What losers! These geese live like millionaires," Nan would say to his wife whenever he saw them paddling in the water.
Pingping would smile, saying he was just an angry man. Why couldn't he let the birds have an easy life? What was wrong with their inhabiting this lake?
"Nobody should feed them from now on," Nan continued. "Totally spoiled, they've lost their animal instinct. No wonder they're so fat."