A Good Fall (23 page)

Suddenly his stomach churned and sent up a chunk of scallop and a few rice grains that he hadn’t chewed thoroughly. Oh, they still tasted good! He swallowed the morsel while tears were trickling down his cheeks. He started running, up and up, until he hurled himself into the air. As he was falling facedown, somehow all the years of training in martial arts at once possessed him. His body instinctively adjusted itself and even his arms spread out, swinging to ensure that he wouldn’t hurt himself fatally. With a thump his feet landed on the ground. “Ow!” he yelled, thunderstruck that he had just cheated death. A tearing pain shot up from his left thigh while his right leg twitched.

“Ow, help me! Help!” he hollered.

How ludicrous this whole thing turned out! He kept yelling, and some people came over, most of them high school students playing basketball nearby. A man dialed 911 and another comforted him, saying, “Don’t move. Everything’s cool, man. I know this hurts, must hurt like hell, but help’s on the way.”

“Oh, let me die, let me finish myself!” Eyes shut, Ganchin was screaming and shaking his head, but nobody understood his Mandarin.

In addition to a broken leg, the doctors found, he also suffered from tracheitis. No wonder he was running a temperature and coughing nonstop. They kept him in the hospital for three days until his fever was gone. Meanwhile, his attempted suicide had become news in the Chinese communities across North America, reported by numerous small newspapers; a charitable organization offered to pick up his medical bills; and even the owner of Teng’s Garden got famous for a week, having appeared twice on local TV. Everyone knew that the master of Gaolin Temple had exploited young monks and pocketed their salaries. Many declared that they would never donate anything to the temple again. A pretty thirtysomething named Amy Lok, running for a seat in the state senate, paid Ganchin a visit and told him to contact her office if he needed any assistance. Several lawyers called, eager to represent him in a lawsuit against the temple. All the notoriety befuddled and unnerved Ganchin.

Cindy took him in after he was released from the hospital with a pair of crutches, and she persuaded him to let her speak with the attorneys on his behalf so that they might not take advantage of him. She urged him to use Jon Mah, an older man who spoke both Mandarin and Korean and was known for handling this kind of case. Ganchin was worried about the legal fee, but Mr. Mah told him, “You don’t need to pay before you get the damages from the defendant.”

Cindy said to Ganchin, “They’ll get a third of the money the court awards you.”

“This is America,” Mr. Mah resumed, “a land ruled by law, and nobody is entitled to abuse others with impunity. Rest assured, you’re in safe hands.”

After the attorney left, Ganchin was still antsy. He asked Cindy, “What will the INS do to me? If they deport me, can I get enough money for the debts back home?”

“Now there’ll be ways for you to avoid deportation—you can apply for political asylum, or marry a citizen or a legal resident. You know, you’ll be rich, but not filthy rich like a millionaire who doesn’t have to work.”

Amazed, Ganchin thought about her words, then sighed. “I guess I’m not a monk anymore, and no temple will ever take me in.”

“That also means you’re free to date a girl.” She giggled, rubbing her nose with a knuckle.

“Well, I hope that’s something I can learn.” He gazed at her and smiled.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I’m grateful to the American Academy in Berlin for the Mary Ellen von der Heyden Fellowship for fiction and to Boston University for a sabbatical leave. The generous support from both institutions enabled me to complete this book.

I would like to thank Dan Frank for his comments and suggestions and Lane Zachary for her enthusiasm.

A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ha Jin left his native China in 1985 to attend Brandeis University. He is the author of the internationally best-selling novel
Waiting
, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award and the National Book Award, and
War Trash
, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction; the story collections
The Bridegroom
, which won the Asian American Literary Award,
Under the Red Flag
, which won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, and
Ocean of Words
, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award; the novels
A Free Life, The Crazed
, and
In the Pond;
three books of poetry; and a book of essays,
The Writer as Migrant
.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental
.

Copyright © 2009 by Ha Jin

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto
.

Pantheon Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc
.

The following stories have been previously published: “A Pension Plan”
in Asia Literary Review;
“Children as Enemies” in
flatmanCrooked;
“In the Crossfire” in
Granta;
“The Beauty” in
Michigan Quarterly Review;
“The House Behind a Weeping Cherry” in
The New Yorker;
“Temporary Love” in
Shenandoah;
“Shame” in
Weber: The Contemporary West;
and “A Composer and His Parakeets,” “Choice,” and “An English Professor” in
Zoetrope: All-Story.
“A Composer and His Parakeets” also appeared in
The O. Henry Prize Stories 2008,
edited by Laura Furman (New York: Anchor Books, 2008); “The House Behind a Weeping Cherry” also appeared in
The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2009,
edited by Laura Furman (New York: Anchor Books, 2009)
.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jin, Ha, [date]
A good fall : stories / Ha Jin
.
p. cm
.
eISBN: 978-0-307-37869-9
1. Chinese—United States—Fiction. 2. Flushing (New York, N.Y.)—Fiction
.
I. Title
.
PS3560.I6G66 2009
813′.54—dc22
       
2009008638

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