A Good Fall (13 page)

He then handed me a bundle of cash, more than $1,100, and asked me to send it to his wife. I promised to mail her a check in my name.

He sighed and said our paths would cross someday. He stood, then went into the bathroom to brush his teeth and wash before going to bed. The next day would be a long day for both of us.

I’ve never seen him again since, nor do I know where he is now. For two decades I’ve moved from one state to another and never returned to China. Eventually I lost those Hemingway papers. But I remember that it was on the day Mr. Meng left New York that I sat down at night and began my first novel in English.

An English Professor

FINALLY RUSHENG TANG COULD RELAX
, having turned in the materials for his tenure evaluation—three large files, one for research, the second for teaching, and the third for service. To get the promotion after being an assistant professor for seven years, he had to be excellent in one of the three areas and very good in the other two. Among the three, research was the most important, though his school was basically a teaching college. He was neither an exceptional teacher nor had he done a lot of service. He’d sat on two departmental committees and each spring helped run the students’ writing contest. In research he didn’t excel either, but he was lucky because a manuscript of his had recently been accepted by the SUNY Press. The monograph would be a slender volume on some divisions between male and female Asian American writers. It was not a substantial piece of scholarship, but the editor at the press had written to assure him that they would bring out the book the next spring—a year from now. Rusheng made a copy of the official letter and included it in his research file. He had already started on a second book, which was about the use of cultural heritages among Asian American authors, and he had even placed the first chapter of this project with a journal. Some of his tenured colleagues, especially the few who had begun teaching three decades before, had never published a book, and so Rusheng felt he was was in decent shape—his case should be solid.

He went to Whitney Hall, where he was teaching his immigrant literature course this semester. On this day, a Thursday, the class was discussing
America Is in the Heart
, by Carlos Bulosan. Rusheng spoke at length about the problems involved in choosing the form of fiction or that of nonfiction. Bulosan originally wrote his story as a novel, but the press persuaded him to publish it as a memoir. The same thing happened to other books by Asian American authors—for instance, Maxine Hong Kingston’s
The Woman Warrior
. That was why the writer Frank Chin claimed: “The yellow autobiography is a white racist form.” To what extent can Chin’s assertion be justified? Rusheng asked the class. And what are the fundamental differences between the memoir and the novel? What are the advantages and disadvantages of publishing in either form? The students were stimulated by the questions and even argued with one another.

A good class was gratifying to Rusheng, but this didn’t happen very often. Most times he felt as frustrated as if he were singing to the deaf. Sometimes he couldn’t help but smirk cynically in class. At the end of the previous semester a student had written in a course evaluation: “Professor Tang seemed to despise us. He often laughed at us when we said something he disliked.” This semester Rusheng had been more careful about his demeanor and refrained from chuckling in front of his class. He understood that a professor was like an entertainer, obliged to make his students feel good, but he had yet to learn how to please them without revealing his effort. However, he was pretty sure that his course evaluations would be better this time around. That would demonstrate to the senior faculty that he’d been making progress in teaching.

After the class, nobody showed up during his office hours, so he left work at four p.m. On his way to the subway station he ran into Nikki, a popular teacher and an advocate for his promotion in the department; a tall black woman, she always wore a checkered headscarf and gemstone earrings at work and spoke and laughed in a hearty voice. Rusheng told her that he had just submitted his materials.

“Wow, you’re quick,” Nikki said. “If I were you, I would’ve waited until the last day. But it doesn’t matter, I guess. Did you go over everything a couple of times before you handed them in?”

“I did.”

“No typos, no inconsistencies?” she asked half jokingly. Two dimples appeared on her cheeks.

“I proofread everything.”

“Now you can relax and wait for good news.”

“Thank you for all the help, Nikki.”

Although he assured her that he had carefully reviewed his materials, he felt a little uneasy. He’d gone over the research and the service files three times, but he had proofread the teaching file only once. He hoped there weren’t any typos or slips in it. The deadline was the next Monday, March 31, and Nikki was right about keeping everything in his hands until the very last moment. He should have waited a few extra days. After dinner, Rusheng felt more agitated. While his wife was watching a Japanese show,
Under the Same Eaves
, he retreated into his study and put on a jazz CD. The tumbling music floated up. He flicked on his computer, accessed his teaching file, and began reviewing it. Everything was fine—the writing was not terribly brisk, but clean and lucid; he should feel confident about it. But coming to the end of the long report, he noticed the phrase “Respectly yours.”

With a sagging heart he pulled one dictionary after another from his bookcase. None of them listed “respectly” as a word.
Webster’s
gave “respectfully” as the right usage, and so did the
American Heritage
. How about “respectedly”? he asked himself. Can you put “Respectedly yours” at the end of a letter? That must be all right. He vaguely remembered seeing such an expression in a bilingual dictionary—but which one? He couldn’t recall. That must have been the source from which he had inadvertently derived “respectly.” Oh, how silly the error looked on paper!

What to do? Should he inform Nikki of this mistake? No, that would amount to advertising his stupidity and ineptitude. But what if the whole department, not to mention the college tenure committee, saw the blunder? People wouldn’t treat it as a mere typo or slip. It was a glaring solecism that indicated his incompetence in English. If he were in science or sociology or even comparative literature, the consequences of the mistake would have been less dire. But for an English professor, this was unforgivable, regardless of his sophisticated use of various methodologies to analyze a literary text. People would shake their heads and say that an English professor must at least be able to write decent English.

Worse was the thought of what a spiteful colleague might do. Rusheng knew some of the other professors had had misgivings about his ability all along. He spoke English with a heavy accent and didn’t know how to praise a book or an author that he didn’t like. He had once offended Gary Kalbfelt, the Melville expert in the department, by saying
Moby-Dick
was as clumsy as a deformed whale. Peter Johnson, the chairman, had never liked him, perhaps because Rusheng had been hired when Johnson was on sabbatical. He had expressed his doubts about Rusheng’s adequacy as a teacher at his fourth-year review. Fortunately, Nikki had stuck up for him and convinced their colleagues that he’d been making a name in the field of Asian American literary studies. That was true to some degree, since he had often given talks at conferences. But this time it would be different—Nikki was just an associate professor, not powerful enough to sway full professors in the matter of awarding tenure. Rusheng was worried that Johnson might exploit his mistake to ruin him.

He paced up and down his study for a long time, thinking about how to make amends. The jazz had stopped a while ago, but he wasn’t aware of the silence. Try as he might, he couldn’t come up with a solution. When he finally went into the bedroom, his wife, Sherry, was already asleep, with a comforter over her belly and her right leg on his side of the bed. Carefully he lifted her foot, with its henna-painted toenails, straightened her leg, and moved it back to her side. Then he got into bed. He exhaled a deep sigh, and she murmured something and smiled, licking her lower lip. He observed her round face, which was still youthful, her small mouth ajar. The moment he switched off the light, her hand listlessly landed on his chest. She mumbled, “Let me try that blouse on, the flowered one. So beautiful.”

He removed her hand and went on thinking about his mistake. He decided to go to the department first thing the next morning to retrieve his teaching file. It should still be there. Unlike his research materials, which had to be duplicated for the many outside reviewers, the teaching file would stay in the department, because that evaluation was to be done only by his colleagues. He shut his eyes in hopes that sleep would come soon.

Sherry sensed Rusheng’s gloominess the next morning. She put a bowl of steaming oatmeal before him and asked, “What’s wrong? You look so down.”

“I had a bad night.”

Sometimes he was insomniac, so she didn’t ask further. “Take a short nap in your office before you go to class, dear,” she told him.

“I’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”

“I’ll be back late this evening. Molin’s gonna play at Four Seas Pavilion, and I’ll have to be there.”

“All right. I’ll pick up something for dinner for myself.”

Molin was Sherry’s younger brother, a clarinetist in a local band that often performed at hotels and restaurants. He was only twenty-six, five years younger than Sherry, and still trying to figure out what to do with his life. Born in Hawaii, sister and brother had grown up in Hong Kong but came to New York four years earlier, in 1993. Sherry had been instructed by their parents to take care of him. Rusheng didn’t mind his wife’s spending a lot of time with Molin. He liked his brother-in-law and often went to his performances, but today, even though it was Friday, he had no appetite for the wild music Molin’s band played.

Done with breakfast, he set out for work. On the train he forced himself to go over his notes for the composition class, which he’d taught so many times that he could do it without much preparation. Despite his effort to concentrate, his thoughts kept moving beyond his control. He was anxious to get to the department office before the others.

But upon arriving, he found Carrie, the secretary, and Peter Johnson already there. Rusheng hurried into the small reading room where the evaluation materials were kept for the tenured professors to check out. To his horror, nothing remained on top of the metal cabinet. He came out and asked Carrie what had happened to his files. With an eye screwed up, she said, “We made copies of them for the senior faculty.”

“You mean they have started reviewing them?”

“Yep. They have to do that for the meeting, you know.”

A swoon almost made him fall down, but he collected himself. At this point Johnson stepped out of his office. He was a Victorianist, spindly-legged with a small paunch hanging over his belt; a colossal pair of steel-rimmed bifocals sat on his hooked nose, covering almost half his face. He greeted Rusheng and winked quizzically, but before the junior professor could say anything, the chairman was already out the door with a thick anthology tucked under his arm. Apparently he was heading for a class, yet his odd manner unnerved Rusheng, who watched the man saunter away down the hall. Rusheng’s stomach fluttered. Why wouldn’t Johnson speak to him? The chairman must have noticed his use of “respectly”!

Rusheng hurried to his own office and locked the door. Except for when he had to teach his composition class, he stayed in the cell-like room all day, brooding about his predicament. Now the whole department must have seen that hideous word, and he had become a laughingstock for sure. Even Nikki might not be able to defend him anymore. What should he do? Who could help him? Never had he felt so powerless.

In recent years he’d been writing a column for the Chinese-language
Global Weekly
on English grammar and usage. If denied tenure, he would become a joke, not only in the college but also to the Chinese community that knew him as an expert. His reputation would crumble. People would gloat over his misfortune, especially those who resented his negative view of contemporary Chinese arts. If only he hadn’t been so careless and so impatient. How true the saying was: “Nothing but your own stupidity can undo you.”

Unable to hold in the secret any longer, on Saturday he confessed to Sherry. She was unsettled, because by nature Rusheng was a careful man, sometimes even overcautious. They were seated on the sectional sofa in their living room. Molin was also there, and he was lounging on a bamboo chair in a corner. He wore cutoff jeans and a red undershirt. He was reading a comic book and eating chocolate-coated raisins. Rusheng asked Sherry, “Do you think I should talk to Nikki?”

“She must have seen it.”

“I’ve never felt this low in my life. If only I had changed fields in ′89.” He was remembering the summer when he had wondered if he should abandon his dissertation and go to law or business school like many of his fellow Chinese graduate students.

“Rusheng, you worry too much,” Molin jumped in, combing his dyed yellow hair with his fingers. “Look at me—I’ve never had a full-time job, but I’m still surviving, breathing like everyone else. You should learn how to take it easy and enjoy life.”

“I’m in a different situation, Molin,” Rusheng sighed. “So many people know me that it will be a scandal if I get fired. I wish I could play an instrument like you, pick up cash wherever I am.”

“I just don’t believe your career will be over,” Sherry said. “How many people have degrees from both Beijing University and Harvard?”

“In America a degree from a top school can help you land a job or join a club, but beyond that you still have to prove yourself and work hard to succeed.” He wanted to add that his degrees were in the humanities, hardly worth anything, but he checked himself, knowing that she had agreed to marry him largely because he was a rising scholar in her eyes, and that her parents had approved their marriage thanks to his two glittering diplomas, which could have been worth a lot indeed if he were in Hong Kong or mainland China.

“Look at it this way,” Sherry went on. “What’s tenure? It’s just a work permit that allows you to make fifty grand a year.”

Rusheng frowned, then conceded. “Right. I should be able to do something else for a living.”

He remained preoccupied for the whole weekend, often imagining what other kind of work he might try. When he considered how he might explain his failure to his Chinese friends, who held him in respect, he found himself at a loss. Maybe the truth was best, no matter how humiliating.