Free A Map of Betrayal by Ha Jin Page B

oil-paper umbrella under her arm. A rickshaw caught up with her to see if she needed a ride, but she waved it off. As Gary was nearing a street crossing, a midnight-blue Rolls-Royce with chrome lights and bumpers emerged, honking petulantly while the pedestrians jumped aside to make way. Still, the sedan spattered muddy water on some people and on the stands selling hot soy milk, magazines, flowers, fruits, deep-fried fish balls. A middle-aged woman in green slacks and rubber boots waved her arms vigorously while yelling at the bulging rear of the car, “Damn you, foreign devils!”
    Gary had seen only the Chinese chauffeur and another Asian face in the Rolls-Royce, but he was sure it was a foreign car since it had a U.K. flag on its fender. This reminded him that he’d been engaged in fighting imperialism. China had to drive all the colonial powers off its soil, and he’d better stop indulging in self-pity and fretting about his personal gain and loss. He ought to be more devoted to the cause of liberating the whole country. He stopped to pick up the South China Morning Post , which he’d found had better coverage of international events than Chinese-language newspapers.
    During the rest of his vacation, he tried to enjoy himself and felt entitled to spend a bit of money. He dined at restaurants that offered northern food and frequented some bars, where he developed a taste for fruit juices, some of which he’d never had before. He liked mango puree, pineapple smoothie, kiwi slush, squeezed guava drinks. Restless with stirrings and with a knot of lust tightening in his belly, he even went to some nightclubs, where girls danced provocatively, their red flapper dresses flaring out from their waists. At one of the clubs he picked up a twenty-something, speaking only English to her, partly because he’d been instructednever to disclose his mainland background and partly because he meant to impress her with his U.S. affiliation. (Indeed, after he’d stayed more than four years with the Americans, his body language had changed enough that some people wouldn’t take him for a real Chinese anymore. He would shrug his shoulders and hold doors for others behind him.) The young woman of mixed blood, Brazilian and Cantonese, called him American Chinaman when they were both tipsy. She kept calling him that even in his hotel room.
    As if suddenly liberated, he felt a kind of transformation taking place in him, and during the rest of his vacation he didn’t hesitate to seek pleasure, as though he meant to drop a cracked pot again and again just for the madness of it. He knew that once he returned to Okinawa, he would become the tame, quiet clerk again. Aware that this kind of dissipation might deform his personality and lead to a disaster, he made a vow that after his thirtieth birthday, on March 12, he would stop indulging himself.
    Before Gary’s vacation was over, Bingwen gave him a lavish dinner at Four Seas Pavilion, a send-off attended by just the two of them. He told Gary that he should try to work his way up the ladder in the U.S. intelligence system. He needn’t collect every piece of useful information but should gather only what he considered vital to China’s interests and security. If possible, he should come to Hong Kong once a year so they could catch up and make plans. From now on he’d have an account at Hang Seng Bank, and the reward money would be deposited into it regularly.
    “You’re our hero on the invisible front,” Bingwen told Gary in total earnest.
    “A nameless hero,” Gary said with a tinge of irony. That was the glorious term used in the mainland media to denote a Red spy.
    “Brother, I can’t say how much I sympathize with you. But I know this: you must feel like you’re living in captivity all the time, like a caged tiger. If I were in your shoes, I would crack up or die of homesickness.”
    “Thanks for understanding,” Gary said. His comrade’s wordsdissolved his bitterness a little.