by Ha Jin
With his elbows on the desktop splotched with blue ink, Banping began reading earnestly with a rustic accent: “All Party branches in the local schools must propagate this document among the faculty, staff, and students. From now on, every school must strengthen its disciplines and regulations, and must educate its students to abide by the law. Every Party member must act as a model for maintaining unity and stability, and must vigorously fight against any activities that instigate disorder and undermine the Party’s leadership. . . .”
Weiya Su was seated across the table from me. Since the dinner at Banping’s place a week before, I had run into her only once. Today she seemed under the weather, her eyes red, rather watery, and an anemic pallor was on her cheeks. Her youthful outfit, an apple-green ruffled skirt and a white shirt with ladybugs printed on it and with a shawl collar, didn’t add much life to her. I noticed she glanced at me from time to time. When Ying Peng bent down to sneeze, Weiya tossed a tiny paper ball toward me—it landed on the table. Immediately I put my palm over it, but Yuman Tan’s small round eyes caught my hand and glowered at me. Disregarding him, I undid the paper ball below the table and saw these words: “Can we talk after the meeting?” I nodded yes to her.
During the rest of the meeting she looked preoccupied. We, the eighteen graduate students, were asked to promise the Party branch that we’d stay clear of any political activities against the government. One by one we vowed not to be involved. When it was Weiya’s turn to pledge her word, she spoke rather absently.
The meeting lasted just fifty minutes, uncharacteristically short. After it, Weiya and I went behind the classroom building, where a footpath stretched along the back wall and led to the swimming pool, whose water shimmered faintly beyond the high, pointed paling. Two female undergraduates were strolling back and forth along the path, chatting in low voices and giggling intermittently. So Weiya and I chose to stand under a streetlamp whose lightbulb had burned out. A dog yapped from the yard of the school’s guesthouse, about two hundred feet away in the north. The roof of that ranch-style house was partly obscured by young sycamores and a bamboo grove, and some rows of the ceramic tiles, still wet with rainwater, glistened in the moonlight.
“What’s happened?” I asked Weiya.
“What do you think of Yuman Tan?” Her voice was slightly hesitant.
“As a colleague?”
“No, as a man.”
I frowned. To me that dapper fellow was merely a truckler, “an anus-licker,” as some people called him behind his back. “Well,” I said, “I don’t think he’s impotent, though he never impregnated his ex-wife.”
“Come on, I’m serious.”
“Why are you so interested in him?”
“Secretary Peng has introduced him to me.”
“She wants you to date him?”
The angry edge in my voice must have startled her; she lifted her face, her eyes flickering. She answered, “More than that, she asked me to be his fiancée.”
“What? Do you like him?”
“I don’t dislike him, to be honest.”
“Can you imagine yourself loving him?”
“That’s an irrelevant question. It doesn’t matter if I can love him or not. Most marriages aren’t based on love anyway. As long as a couple are compatible, their marriage may work.”
I was nonplussed. Never had I thought she could be so practical.
“To be honest,” she said after a feeble sigh, “I’ve already outgrown love. When I was a teenager, I believed I was born to love and would die for love. Romantic, wasn’t I? Some years later, on the rubber farm, I fell in love with a man who taught me how to paint propaganda posters on billboards. But after he went to college, he stopped writing to me. He was a clever fellow, too clever to be serious about a girl’s heart. He thought I got stuck in the wilderness forever.”
“All right, but do you think you’re compatible with Yuman Tan?” I asked. She had told me before about her life on a rubber plantation in Yunnan Province, where she had worked for several years, so there was no need for me to hear the story again.
“Well,” she said, “I don’t know him well enough to say that. Probably nobody really knows who he is. He seems to have different faces. But he’s talented and writes well.”
“So are some other men.”
“He’s a decent essayist, don’t you think?”
“All right, he is. But we’re talking about the man, not his pen. I can’t comprehend why you’re so interested in him. Believe me, Weiya, he’s not worthy of your attention.” I wanted to say, To me he’s just an unbearable horsefly that can’t bite but is always annoying. You mustn’t demean yourself this way. But I checked myself.
She said with a drawn smile, “I’m already thirty-one, tired of being an old maid. If I don’t get married soon, I’ll become a childless woman all my life.”
“So you want a home?”
“Yes. It’s a shame to hear this from me, isn’t it?”
“No, I don’t think so.” Pity rose in my chest as I realized that like me, she too must be a lonely creature in spite of her confident appearance. She too must have been starving for companionship, longing to rest in a pair of reliable arms. Nevertheless, I pleaded, “Don’t do this to yourself, Weiya. I’m sure you’ll find a better man.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Understand what?”
“Secretary Peng can hurt me. If I don’t obey her, there’ll be disastrous consequences.”
“In what way can she hurt you?” It felt odd to hear her say that; never had I seen her so apprehensive.
“Hmm, let me just say this: she can kick me out of the department easily.”
“So?” I wasn’t convinced. Why should she barter herself for a teaching position? This would ruin her life.
“I’m not like you,” she said. “If I were a man, I wouldn’t be afraid of her, and I’d go anywhere after graduation. I wouldn’t even think of marriage at all.”
I felt all at sea about what she was driving at. She was a well-educated woman, not only independent but also thoughtful. Why did she sound so timid? She went on, “Tell me, Yuman is just a scoundrel to you, isn’t he?”
“Not only that. If you marry him, he may not be able to give you a child.”
“You mean he may have physical problems?”
I nodded, unsure how to explain, though I knew for a fact that his ex-wife had never gotten pregnant.
“Well,” she said, “I’m quite sure that physically he’s fine.”
“Did you check him out?”
Ignoring my mockery, she replied, “He entered college in 1977, after the entrance exams were reinstated. This means he had to pass the thorough physical screening in order to get admitted to college. Let me tell you a secret: one reason that most young women want to marry college students is that the men are healthy and unlikely to have major physical problems. For us it’s a safer bet.”
I was amazed by such a shrewd answer, yet I told her, “Whether Yuman Tan is physically all right or not, you deserve a better man.”
“That’s not a reasonable thing to say. We all deserve a good marriage, a happy family, and a great career, but those blessings are not for everyone. I used to dream of having a bunch of kids and a white bungalow like the one my grandparents once had, but that was just a fantasy. Besides, where could I find a better man?”
“There must be one if you look hard.”
“Tell me where to find such a man.” She gave a sly smile and went on, “To tell you the truth, recently I’ve begun to believe the feminist argument that most Chinese men have degenerated.”
Without much thinking, I patted my chest and said almost flippantly, “Well, have you ever thought of someone like me? Of course I can’t give you a bungalow.” Although I kept my tone of voice nonchalant, my heart began pounding. My impromptu offer shocked me. Yes, I was attracted to her, but I had never intended to go this far.
Surprised, she looked me in the face, then t
urned away laughing as if in hysterics. “You’re crazy,” she said. “This isn’t a novel or a movie, and I’m not a young heroine who needs a prince or a knight riding a white horse to her rescue. You’re already engaged, so you can’t be serious about what you just said. You probably mentioned yourself only out of pity, but I don’t need your compassion in this situation. Even if you meant to help me, what made you think I’d do Meimei such a nasty turn? Besides, you’re five years younger than me.”
I was abashed but managed to counter, “Well, Karl Marx was four years younger than his wife Jenny, but they had a great marriage.”
She laughed again, this time ringingly. “You’re so funny. We’re in China, and we’re average people.”
I realized what a fool I had made of myself, yet I said in self-defense, “Then why did you bother to ask me about Yuman Tan?”
“If Mr. Yang were not ill, I’d ask him. Other than him, you’re the only man here I can trust. You’re like a younger brother to me.”
That shut me up. I was somewhat irritated by the word “trust,” of which I had had an earful. When I was an undergraduate at Jilin University, quite a few young women had said the same thing to me: they found me honest and trustworthy. But none of them had ever thought me loveworthy. That was why they often talked to me and even confided in me. I felt like a wastebasket into which they dumped whatever they had no place for. This made me think that a harmless man must be more unfortunate than a charmless woman.
“How’s Mr. Yang doing?” she asked a moment later, her voice full of concern.
“Crazy as ever.”
“How bad is he now?”
“He’s not himself anymore. Sometimes he blabbers like an imbecile, and sometimes he speaks like a sage. I wonder if he has some kind of dementia.”
“You think he’ll recover soon?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“I’ll come to see him.”
I wanted to say, Makes no difference, but I held my tongue. We walked to her dormitory, which was about three hundred yards away to the east, beyond a shallow pond overgrown with lotus flowers. From the murky water a lone frog croaked tentatively. All the way we remained silent. I was sulking, because it seemed to me she should never have considered Yuman Tan as a possibility. That man had divorced his wife the summer before; to be exact, she had run out on him. She used to be a singer in the Provincial Song and Dance Ensemble and always wore lipstick, eyeliner, and mascara. She left for the United States to join an American man, Alan Johnson, a widower from Chicago with muttonchop whiskers, who had taught linguistics in the Foreign Languages Department here. Alan Johnson had begun carrying on with her after a mutual acquaintance introduced them in a teahouse downtown. They often went to restaurants and the movies. Most of the time they had to meet off campus, because the old guards at the front entrance to the compound where the foreign experts lived would not let any Chinese visitor go in without official permission. One night last spring, the two of them were picked up by a police patrol in Golden Elephant Park while they were making out on a bench there. The affair was the first one in our school involving a foreigner, so a good number of officials got reprimanded for negligence, particularly those in the university’s Foreign Affairs Office and the heads of the song and dance ensemble. Later the Provincial Education Department revoked its two-year contract with Alan Johnson, and he had no choice but to return to the United States at the end of his first year here.
After his wife left him, Yuman Tan wept every night for a week. Then he filed for a divorce, which was granted him within five days, so that he could legally go about wife hunting. He soon began to dress foppishly—a three-piece suit, checkered ties, patent leather boots. He even wore a pocket watch with a gilt chain. He bought a Yellow River moped, which was so expensive that only two or three faculty members in our university owned one, and he rode that thing to school every day. On this account some people called him “Little Running Bug.” Rumor had it that his ex-wife had left him a tidy sum as a divorce settlement; this would explain why he had suddenly become rich.
To be fair, to many women he wasn’t a bad match. Dozens of them were introduced to him. One was just nineteen, a technician in a gasworks, healthy and normal and without any family burden. Yuman Tan bragged that he had once seen three women in a single night, though we remarked behind his back that he could meet them each just for a few minutes and only in the presence of their parents or friends, under “special chaperonage.” Unlike most marriage-oriented men, he had a two-bedroom apartment, which enhanced his worth considerably. Many newly married couples, without a place of their own, lived separately in their dormitories or at their parents’ homes. Recently the university Party Committee had promised to give every married couple at least a room, which was an urgent measure to prevent young faculty members from leaving for other schools that would offer them better housing. I couldn’t tell whether Weiya also had Yuman Tan’s apartment on her mind. She might, considering she loved painting and must have longed for a room as a studio, which she had never had in her life. In addition, she wanted a home, which a man without housing could hardly give her. Some of the young women who were interested in Yuman Tan might have been impressed by his lectureship and writing, just as conventionally a man’s learning amounted almost to a virtue, a virtue that would lead to a respectable position and yield more income. Besides his study of philology, Yuman Tan published personal essays regularly in reputable journals, so he had a name.
Yet to my mind, Weiya shouldn’t have degraded herself by being one of his choices. It must have been the she-fox Secretary Peng who had set this trap for her. Weiya was too smart not to see through it, but why would she throw herself into the trap?
Approaching her dormitory building, I broke the silence. “Weiya, Ying Peng just wants to destroy you. Please don’t play into her hands.”
“It’s not so simple,” she said thoughtfully.
“Why plunge into the trap she laid for you? You mustn’t do that.”
She looked at me steadily and said, “You’re a good-hearted man, Jian. Sometimes you’re a bit too emotional, perhaps because you’re not experienced in life yet. Meimei’s lucky to have a man like you who hasn’t lost his innocence. My situation is too complicated for me to explain in detail. Please don’t get involved, or you’ll only be hurt. Forget what I said about love just now. Keep in mind that whatever I did in my life, I’ve always been a virgin in my heart and I will always cherish our friendship. Good night.” She turned and strode away.
I was somewhat bewildered by the sentiment she had expressed, which contradicted the pragmatic way she coped with Yuman Tan’s interest. Why did she think me too green? What did this whole thing have to do with the virginity of her heart? Why was she so reluctant to tell me everything?
To be honest, I felt lucky that she had brushed aside my silly offer of myself as a potential man for her and hadn’t taken me to be a jerk. How foolishly I had acted! If she had accepted my self-recommendation, I’d have found myself in a dilemma—having to choose between her and Meimei, whom I couldn’t imagine jilting. Hotheadedness was my main problem; too often I was ruled by my impulses.
The wind was rising, tugging at the trees and the electric wires. It threatened rain, a peal of thunder rumbling in the northwest, followed by slashes of lightning, so I hastened back to my dormitory.
13
As I was reviewing my notes on political economics, Mr. Yang, sitting on the bed, broke out singing. He sang in a spirited falsetto:
Gallantly we are crossing the Yalu River.
To defend peace and guard our country
Is to protect our hometowns.
The good sons and daughters of China and Korea,
Let us unite closely—to defeat
The vicious American wolves!
To defeat the vicious American wolves!
He bellowed the whole thing out as if he were among a large crowd of people on a platform in a railroad station to see the Chinese
People’s Volunteers off to Korea to fight the American army. I wasn’t interested in the song, which had become obsolete long ago. He might just want my attention, but I wouldn’t give him any. Instead, I kept perusing my notes. He seemed frustrated and lapsed into silence.
I had thought of wearing earphones during my shift, but decided not to, afraid of negligence when he really needed me. Besides, once in a while I wanted to listen to him, to glean secrets from his opened mind.
“What are you doing, Jian?” he asked calmly.
“Reading.”
“Good. Have you brought me my books?”
“What books?” I was bewildered, as he hadn’t asked me to bring him anything.
“All those on my bookshelf.”
“Which shelf are you talking about?”
“The one next to my desk.”
“I don’t have the books here.” He was crazy! There were at least a hundred volumes on that shelf in his office.
“Why?” he asked peevishly. “You’re reading, but what am I supposed to do? Sit here idle like a turnip? Go fetch them, please.”
For a moment I didn’t know how to deal with this madness. Dr. Wu, a graying fat-faced man, had instructed Banping and me, “Absolutely no reading material for your teacher.” Even if Mr. Yang were allowed to read, how could I have gone back to get his books while I was on duty here?
“Do you hear me?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“For goodness’ sake, go pronto!”
I made no reply, then hit on an idea. “You’re too tired, Mr. Yang. Let me read to you, okay?” I thought I could use some paragraphs from my notes to beguile him.
“No, I want to study my books by myself. A good scholar mustn’t be a sluggard, letting others read to him, just as you can’t ask others to eat for you. Do you un-der-stand?” He stressed every syllable of the last word.
“I do, but I don’t have any of your books here,” I blurted out.
“What!” he cried with a vacant look on his face. “You mean you’ve lost them? Oh heavens, what can I do without my books?” He broke into tears, genuinely aggrieved.
