A Good Fall (12 page)

“I won’t mind. A human being should live like a bird, untrammeled by any man-made borders. I can be buried anywhere when I die. The reason I’m calling is to ask you to put me up for a few days.”

I knew that my accommodating him might implicate me in his defection, but he was my former teacher, someone I was obligated to help. “Okay, you’re welcome,” I said.

I gave him my address and the directions. I didn’t feel comfortable about sharing my tiny apartment with anyone. I hoped Mr. Meng would take my place only temporarily. Two hours later he arrived with a bulky suitcase and his shoulder bag. Since he hadn’t eaten dinner, I cooked a pack of instant noodles for him, adding to it two chicken legs, two eggs, and a bunch of cilantro. He enjoyed the meal, saying this was the best dinner he had eaten since he’d left home. “Better than the banquet food,” he told me. I asked him where he’d been all these days, and he confessed that he had stayed with a friend in the Bronx, but that man was leaving for upstate New York for a job in a casino, and so Mr. Meng had to look for lodging elsewhere.

In a way I admired his calm, though his round eyes blazed feverishly. If I were in his position, I might have gone bonkers. But he was an experienced man, toughened by a hard life, especially by the seven years he had spent on a chicken farm in the countryside. After the meal, it was already half past ten. We sat at the shaky dining table, chatting and sharing a pack of Newports and jasmine tea. We talked and talked, and not until around two a.m. did we decide to turn in. I wanted him to use my bed, which was just a mattress on the floor, but he insisted on sleeping on the sofa.

We both believed he needed to keep a low profile for the time being lest the consulate track him down. He shouldn’t go out during the day, and every morning I’d lock him in when setting out for work. I always stocked enough food and soft drinks for him, and he would cook dinner for both of us before I came back in the evening. He seemed very patient, in good spirits. Besides groceries, I also brought back Chinese-language newspapers and magazines. He devoured all of them and said he’d never thought that the news here was so different from that in mainland China. The articles revealed so many secrets of Chinese politics and gave such diverse interpretations of historical events that he often excitedly briefed me at the table about what he had read. Sometimes I was too exhausted to listen, but I wouldn’t dampen his excitement.

On my way home one evening I came across a barely used mattress dumped on a sidewalk. Together Mr. Meng and I went over and carried it back. From that day on he slept in the second bed in my room. He often jabbered at night, having bad dreams. Once he woke me up and kept sputtering, “I’ll get revenge! I have powerful friends at the Provincial Administration. We will wipe out you and your cronies!”

Despite that kind of disturbance, I was glad to have him here—his presence reduced my loneliness.

Two weeks later we began talking about what he should do. I had stopped locking him in and he often went out. So far, his disappearance had been kept secret by the consulate, and no newspaper had reported it. That might not be a good sign, though, and the silence unnerved us, so I felt he should remain in hiding. Yet he was eager to work to earn his keep. I advised him to wait another week, but he wouldn’t listen, saying, “We’re in the United States and mustn’t live in fear anymore.”

We both believed he shouldn’t apply for political asylum right away, since that should be a last resort and would mean he might never set foot in our motherland again. It would be better if he just lived here as an illegal alien to make some money. He could try to change his status when things cooled down—once he had the wherewithal, he could hire an attorney for that. Soon he began looking for a job in Flushing, which wasn’t like a city yet in the late 1980s; housing was less expensive there, and businesses had just begun moving in. Since he spoke English, it wasn’t hard for him to find work. A restaurant near Queens Botanical Garden hired him to wait tables, but he persuaded its manager, Michael Chian, who was a co-owner of the place, to let him start as a dishwasher on the pretext that he had no work experience at a restaurant. His real reason was that a dishwasher spent most of his hours in the kitchen, away from the public eye. The next day he started at Panda Terrace, making $4.60 an hour. He was pleased, although when he came back around eleven at night he’d complain he was bone-tired.

He was capable, and his boss and coworkers liked him. On occasion I went to the restaurant for a bowl of noodles or fried rice. I rarely ate dinner at that place, which I frequented mainly to see how Mr. Meng was doing. To my discomfort, the waitstaff called him “professor.” He’d been rash to reveal his former identity to his fellow workers, but I said nothing about it. He seemed at ease in spite of washing dishes all day long. He told me he’d been observing the staff wait tables and concluded that he could do it easily. In a month or two he might switch jobs, either working as a waiter at the same place or moving on to another restaurant.

One Sunday afternoon my coworker Ah Min and I went to Panda Terrace for a bowl of wontons. As we were eating, two white girls in their late teens pulled into the parking lot and came over to the front door. Mayling, the barrel-waisted hostess and also a co-owner of the place, went up to them and snapped, “You can’t eat here, no more.”

The girls stopped short in the doorway, one wearing a sky blue sarong and bra, hoop earrings, and mirror sunglasses, while the other was also in a sarong and bra, but a yellow one. They were both chewing gum. “Why? We have money,” the tall one in blue said, smiling spuriously and baring her flawless teeth.

The other girl grinned with her rouged lips, her kohl-rimmed eyes flickering. She said, “We love your eggplant fries. Mmm, yummy! Your dumplings are excellent too.”

“Go away. We don’t serve you,” said Mayling, who tended to speak English haltingly unless she was angry.

“This is America and you can’t throw your customers out, d’you know?” the shorter girl kept on.

“You’re not our customer. You two didn’t pay last time. I follow you to parking lot, and you saw me, but you just drived away.”

“How can you be so sure it was us?”

“Get outta here, thief!”

“Don’t be so nasty, China lady,” the tall one said, smirking while her tongue wiped her bottom lip. “How can you prove we didn’t pay you? You’re barking up the wrong tree.”

“Don’t call me dog! Go away!” The hostess flung up her hand, rattling the jade bangles around her wrist.

The girl in yellow put in, “You can’t accuse us like this. See, I have money.” She took out a sheaf of singles and fives and waved them in front of Mayling’s face.

Purple with anger, the hostess warned, “If you don’t leave now, I call police.”

“Oh yeah?” the tall girl shot back. “We’re the ones who can use a cop. You accuse us of theft with no evidence. D’you know what this means in America? It’s called slander, a crime. We can sue you.”

“Yeah, we’re gonna sue your pants off,” added the one in yellow.

Mayling looked confused, but Mr. Meng strolled up to them, his hands clasped behind his back. In an even voice he said to the girls, “Ladies, you mustn’t take advantage of us again. Please leave.”

“God, I’m so hungry! Why can’t we just have a little bite?” persisted the shorter one in yellow.

Mayling roared, “Get the hell outta here, you robber! We don’t want to serve you.”

“How dare you call us that?”

“You are robber. You rob us. What else you are? If you want to eat here again, give us thirty-seven dollars you didn’t pay.”

“C’mon. Like I said, you’re talking to the wrong people.” The tall girl put on a suave smile. “Did you ever see this pair of sunglasses before?”

“No, but I remember your earring.”

“Give me a break. Lots of women wear this type of earrings. You can get these at Macy’s for eighteen bucks.”

Mr. Meng said again, “We have kept a record—your car’s plate number is 895 NTY, right?”

“Yes,” Mayling picked up. “If you don’t go away now, I call Officer Steve again, and you can’t see your mama tonight.”

The girls both gave a gasp. Observing them from where I sat, I wanted to laugh but checked myself. The one in yellow grasped her friend’s elbow and said, “Come, let’s get out of here. This is nuts.”

They both went out, teetering in wedge heels toward their scarlet coupe, their purses flapping. As they were pulling away, both Ah Min and I stood to look at the license plate, which matched the number Mr. Meng had declared.

“Bravo!” my coworker cried.

“Wow, that was extraordinary,” I told my teacher.

Michael Chian, Mayling’s husband, had witnessed the scene, but was unable to put in a word the whole while. Now he kept saying to Mr. Meng, “Amazing. You remembered their plate number, tsk tsk tsk. I can never do that, not even if you beat me to death.”

Later Mr. Meng told me in private that he had just snuck out and looked at the license plate while Mayling and the girls were quarreling. That cracked me up. Indeed, he was a clever man, worldly wise.

His resourcefulness impressed his boss so much that Michael offered him the manager’s position at the new place in upper Manhattan that the Chians were about to open, but Mr. Meng said he was too old for a job like that.

One night in the following week he returned with a copy of
Big Apple Journal
, a local Chinese-language newspaper, and slapped it on the dining table. “Damn Michael, he blabbed to some reporter about the two shameless girls!”

I looked through the short article, which gave a pretty accurate account of the incident and described Mr. Meng as “Professor Liu.” Lucky for him, he’d been using an alias all along. I put down the paper and said, “It’s no big deal. Nobody can tell you’re the wizard with an elephant’s memory.” I knew he feared that the consulate might pick up his trail.

He said, “You don’t know how long the officials can stretch their tentacles. I’ve heard that this newspaper is financed by the mainland government.”

“Still, it’s unlikely they can connect ‘Professor Liu’ with you.”

“I hope you’re right,” he sighed.

But I was not right. Three days later the phone was ringing when I came back from work. I rushed to pick it up, panting a little. The caller, in a mellifluous voice, said he was Vice Consul Gao in charge of education and cultural exchanges. He wanted me to come over to the consulate. Flabbergasted, I tried to keep a cool head, though my temples were throbbing. I told him, “When I was there last time, I was not allowed to set foot inside the building and someone on your staff even called me a gasbag. I was so mortified I thought I’d never go there again.”

“Comrade Hongfan Wang, I personally invite you this time. Come and see me tomorrow.”

“I’ll have to work.”

“How about the day after tomorrow? That’s Saturday.”

“I’m not sure if I can do that. I’ll have to speak to my boss first. What’s this about, Consul Gao?”

“We would like to know if you have some information on your teacher Fuhua Meng’s whereabouts.”

“What? You mean he disappeared?”

“We just want to know where he is.”

“I don’t have the foggiest idea. The last time I saw him was at Columbia, where we visited Professor Natalie Simon.”

“That we know.”

“Then I have nothing else to report, I’m sorry.”

“Comrade Hongfan Wang, you must level with me, with your motherland.”

“I told you the truth.”

“All right, let me know when you can come.”

I said I’d phone him after speaking to my boss. Hanging up, I couldn’t stop fidgeting. Whenever I had to deal with those officials, I felt helpless. I knew they might view me as an accomplice in Mr. Meng’s case and might give me endless trouble in the future. Perhaps I wouldn’t be able to get my passport renewed.

That night when I told my teacher about the phone call, he didn’t show much emotion. He merely said, “I knew all along they were on my trail. I’m sorry to have dragged you into my trouble, Hongfan. You must be careful from now on.”

“I know they may have put me on their list as well. But they can’t do much to me as long as I live here legally. What are you going to do?”

“I can’t stay in New York anymore. In fact, I’ve been in touch with a friend of mine in Mississippi. He opened a restaurant there and asked me to go down and work for him.”

“That’s a good idea. You should live in a remote place where the officials can’t find you. At least stay there for a year or two.”

“Yes, I’ll live in complete obscurity, dead to the world. I won’t go to Panda Terrace tomorrow. Can you return my uniform for me and tell Mayling and Michael that I’m no longer here?”

“Well, I shouldn’t do that because they could easily guess I know where you are, and then the consulate might demand a tip from me.”

“Right. Forget about the uniform, then.”

He decided to leave for the South the next day, taking the Greyhound directly to Jackson. I supported his decision.

To my surprise, he pulled his suitcase out of the closet and opened it. He took out a big brown envelope stuffed with paper. “Hongfan,” he said with feeling, “you’re a good young man, one of my best students. Here are some articles on Hemingway I brought out with me. I planned to translate them into English and publish them as a book with a title like
Hemingway in China
, and to be honest, also as a way to make some money and fame. Now I’m no longer in a position to work on this project, so I’m leaving these papers with you. I’m sure you can make good use of them.”

He was tearful as he placed the envelope in front of me. I put my hand on it but didn’t pull out the contents. I was familiar with most of those articles published in the professional journals over the years and knew they were poorly written and ill-informed. Few of them could be called scholarly papers. Had Mr. Meng rendered them into English, they’d have amounted to an embarrassment to those so-called scholars, some of whom had never read Hemingway in the English, except for the bilingual edition of
The Old Man and the Sea
. They’d written about his fiction mainly in accordance with reviews and summaries provided by official periodicals. Few of them really understood Hemingway. Before I read
The Sun Also Rises
in the original, it had never occurred to me that Hemingway was funny, because the wordplay and jokes were lost in translation. I was positive that no publisher in the United States would be interested in bringing these useless articles out in English. It was foolish for Mr. Meng to have conceived such a secretive project and to assume that one could make fortune and fame with it. All the same, I told him, “Thank you very much for trusting me.”