A noise came from inside, and a svelte young woman in a pastel sundress came out. She looked familiar, but Nan wasn't sure if he had ever met her. "Who are you looking for?" she asked in a voice full of sleep, her eyes fixed on him.

"Beina Su. This is still her home, isn't it?"

" Sure. Do I know you?"

"I'm Nan Wu."

The woman's eyes widened with a dreamy light. "Oh, I heard of you. Come in. I'm Beiya, Beina's half sister."

She showed him into the spic-and-span living room. Once he had sat down on a chintz sofa, she asked what he'd like to drink, tea or beer. The latter was a household beverage in Harbin, enjoyed by both men and women, even by children. "Just boiled water will be fine," Nan told her.

Having placed a cup of tepid water before him, she sat down and said, "So you went with Beina for some time, didn't you? In fact, she often mentioned you. Didn't you go to America in the eighties?"

"Yes, twelve years ago."

Nan scrutinized her face. Her little nose and thick-lashed eyes didn't resemble Beina's at all. A baby boy in blue open-seat pants was playing with a rubber ball in the room. He wagged his fleshy buttocks as he crawled and toddled around, chasing the ball. Beiya lifted him up and sat him on her lap.

"Your sister men-mentioned me?" Nan 's voice caught. He lifted the cup and took a gulp, the water reeking of chlorine.

"Yes. She said you must be a rich man by now."

"I'm just getting by."

"So you haven't met Beina in America?"

"What? You mean she's in the States too?"

"Yes, in Illinois."

"She's there alone?"

"No, with her family."

"When did she leave?"

"About five years ago."

"Oh, if only I had known." Stupefied, he suddenly felt drained. A strange emotion overcame him, as if he had been taken in. He asked for Beina's address and phone number, which her half sister jotted down for him with a red fountain pen. By her manner and knowing smile he guessed she knew Beina had once turned down his proposal. In her voice there seemed a touch of sadness and sympathy.

"How is she doing in Illinois?" he managed to ask.

"She complains a lot. She's working hard to support her family."

"In the beginning it's always hard. You have to struggle to put down roots in America. Usually it takes ten years to settle down."

" So you already have a green card?" "I'm naturalized."

"That's awesome. My sister hasn't got her green card yet."

"That shouldn't be difficult for her." He grimaced.

He wanted to ask more about Beina, but restrained himself. The baby was hungry and wanted to suckle, so Nan seized the moment Beiya turned to give her breast to her son and got up to take his leave.

On his way back he felt dazed, dragging himself eastward absent-mindedly. His hand patted the trunks of the poplars lined along the sidewalk as he passed them. Some pedestrians turned to look at him as if he were a lunatic. Approaching home, he forgot to enter the compound through the back alley. Instead, he walked into the front gate and even nodded at the people sitting in the guard office. One man recognized him and pointed him out for the others in the room. A few men gathered at the opened window to observe Nan, who was an overseas Chinese now. They whispered, "Look at his face, so pink. He must've drunk cow's milk every day."

Nan pretended he hadn't heard them. However, the moment he rounded the corner of the first building, Uncle Zhao appeared, holding a galvanized kettle. The mousy old man, pock-faced and beetle-browed, froze midstride, then approached Nan, saying, "Big nephew, you don't remember me? No? You have such a short memory."

Nan recognized him, but also remembered his father's admonition to avoid this old codger. He forced a smile, his face blushing blotchily. "Of course I know you, Uncle Zhao. How are you?"

"I'm good. When did you come back? Why didn't your father breathe a word?" He looked upset, a frown gathering on his bulging forehead.

"I didn't tell him about my return either. I'm on a business trip and dropped in to see my parents." " Have you been home for days?"

"No, I arrived yesterday." Nan had to lie to exonerate his father. "Uncle Zhao, I've got to go. My mother's waiting for me."

"I understand." Despite saying that, the old man looked sour, his face a little crumpled as if Nan had slighted him.

Uncle Zhao phoned early that afternoon to invite Nan and his father over for dinner the next evening. Nan's father kept thanking him while apologizing for Nan 's inability to come. He said, "He's leaving tomorrow morning. He didn't plan to come home. He just took a break from his business engagement in Beijing…No, this evening is out of the question. We're going to Peacock Pavilion for a family gathering. Nan hasn't seen his nephew and niece yet.…You see, he's really in a hurry… Ahem, why did you say that? Of course he's grateful. Only because he doesn't have time to see anybody here. Listen, Old Zhao, he brought back something for you. I won't tell you what it is now…Don't work up your temper like this, all right?… I'll see you soon." He hung up.

Nan was uneasy about his father's promise to Uncle Zhao and said, "What are you going to give him?"

" That will be up to you. How much do you want to spend?" His father grinned, a tea leaf on his eyetooth.

"I don't have time to get anything for him."

"No problem. You can leave some money with me, and I'll buy a gift for him and say you brought it back."

"But he'll be able to tell it's a hoax."

"Don't worry about that. Give me two hundred dollars."

"For what?"

"I can buy a small air conditioner for him. It isn't much, really. You owe him-he gave you four of his best paintings. Any one of them could be worth that amount. This is cheaper than to arrange his visit to America, isn't it? He always dreams of holding a one-man show there."

"All right, all right."

Nan took out his billfold and gave his father four fifties. He felt this was a good arrangement, since he'd have to repay the debt to Uncle Zhao one way or another. If he had gone to the old man's home for dinner, he was sure that the geezer would have tried every way to make him promise to help arrange a show of his paintings and calligraphy in New York, or D.C., or Atlanta. He was afraid of meeting that monomaniac again.

13

AFTER a series of loud hisses, the train bound for Beijing thumped, threw Nan forward a bit, then began pulling out of the Harbin station. He waved good-bye to his parents and siblings on the platform. His mother and sister broke into tears while his eyes filled too. He felt he might never be back again.

He was seated in a sleeper compartment and rested his cheek against the frame of the window. Outside, the grassland slid by. The convex plain stretched into a mist wavering in the distance. Along the railroad track a low fog was gathering, so thick that the nearby fields seemed covered by a layer of fresh snow. A moment later a swarm of town houses emerged, surrounded by vegetable fields in which women and old men were squatting on their haunches, tending seedlings or spreading manure with bare hands. Nan could tell that the ceramic-tiled houses, before which were parked some cars of Japanese and German makes, were inhabited mostly by rich people. Satellite dishes stuck out of the roofs like huge mushrooms. If he had moved back to this city, he could have afforded to live in such a place, but he'd have felt uncomfortable about the sight of the poor peasants who toiled in the fields in the same way as their ancestors had done centuries before. It seemed that the harder they worked, the poorer these people would get.

Villages and hamlets came up and flitted away. They hadn't changed, and some showed little life in them except for a few columns of cooking smoke rising from the thatched roofs. In front of a schoolhouse a bunch of children chased a soccer ball, all wearing nothing above the waist. Nan guessed that perhaps most of the able hands in the villages had left to seek work in towns and cities.