The Bridegroom (15 page)

The next spring Mr. Fang joined the Communist Party. I had some reservations about his induction, but I only represented the students’ voice and was among the minority in the Party branch. I couldn’t stop wondering whether he had been helpful and considerate to me because I was one of the few student Party members, and so could speak for or against him at Party meetings. In other words, by going to the dormitory to teach me, he might deliberately have curried favor with me so as to earn my support for his Party membership in the future. What a calculating man! But that was just a conjecture without any proof, so I couldn’t communicate my doubts to the other Party members.

My suspicion of him was deepened by another occurrence, which unsettled me greatly. At our graduation the next year, Mingchen, an archtroublemaker in Mr. Fang’s eyes, was assigned to a coal-mining company in Luomei County; that was the worst job assignment in our department that year. Mingchen got drunk at the graduation banquet and declared he would stab Mr. Fang to death. Lifting the bottom of his jacket, he showed us a bone-handled knife in his belt, which he had bought from an itinerant tinker for fifteen yuan. I turned to look at the table where the departmental leaders were dining. Lucky for Mr. Fang, he was not there, or he would definitely have seen his own blood that evening. When Mingchen collapsed in a stupor, I took the large knife from him. Surely he would have created a disturbance if he had kept the weapon handy. Two days ago his girlfriend, assigned to teach English at a military college in Shenyang City, had insinuated that they should split up. He believed her change of heart was another consequence of Mr. Fang’s vengeance.

Fortunately I had done well in the examinations for graduate studies and enrolled in the English Department at Harbin University; it meant I did not have to seek employment upon graduation, so that Mr. Fang could not punish me with a bad job assignment. Otherwise I might have ended in a situation as grim as Mingchen’s, for I was positive that Mr. Fang knew I had voted against his admission to the Party. Besides, he must have believed I had masterminded the strikes.

During my three years’ graduate work in Harbin, I was well informed about the happenings in this department, because my fiancée, after her graduation, remained here as an instructor in Japanese.

Mr. Fang went on prospering in the meantime. He founded a journal entitled
Narrative Techniques,
which you may have seen, since for several years it maintained a circulation of 90,000 and was quite popular among young people, especially among would-be writers. He lectured at colleges throughout the Northeast, mainly about stream of consciousness as the most advanced narrative technique in the West. He even tried his hand at fiction writing. One of his short stories, “Beyond the Raining Mountain,” about a tragic love triangle, won the first prize in a provincial contest. It has been anthologized several times. To be fair, he is a capable fiction writer. In his stories, you often can perceive a kind of primitive passion and peasant cunning that you rarely find in fiction written by academics. In truth, sometimes I cannot help thinking that he might have become an accomplished novelist had he concentrated solely on fiction writing. He spent a great deal of time editing the journal. His energy was dissipated, and he could not sustain the momentum generated by the initial success of his short fiction. Perhaps he has suffered from the absence of an artistic vision, or having misplaced his ambition, satisfied merely with getting ahead of his peers and with temporary fame. He has never planned to follow the masters’ way—writing a hefty novel, a monumental chef d’oeuvre, something intended to revise and rejuvenate the genre. Apparently he no longer has the strength for such a book. He always worked on small, minor pieces. In brief, although he was a promising late bloomer, he has not blossomed fully.

My relationship with him began to improve as I contributed to his journal regularly. He treated me well and always published my papers and reviews, often giving me top-rate contribution fees. Besides translations and criticism on foreign literature,
Narrative Techniques
also carried a section of short stories and poems by Chinese authors. I was baffled by this format. Why would such an academic journal publish original poems? Never had Mr. Fang studied poetics. Why did he include a dozen pages of poetry in each issue? No doubt he was aware of the incongruity. He must have been up to something.

In the summer of 1984, I finished my graduate work and returned to my alma mater, where my bride was teaching as a lecturer. I heard that Professor Fang’s journal had been suspended because a number of young women, both students and faculty, had accused him of sexual improprieties. A few said he had published their writings in exchange for their favors, while some claimed he had turned their works down because they had resisted his advances. To be frank, I suspect that some of the women might have entered into a relationship with him of their own accord. Of course this is not to deny that he must have taken the initiative. His wife had been ill for years, and sex was out of the question in their marriage. He must have been lonesome and quite concupiscent. Yet one of these affairs was absolutely beyond forgiveness, to wit: he had gotten a student pregnant, which was technically due to the substandard quality of a condom. An old nurse, who had been present at the abortion, spread the scandal, and within a week the student’s pregnancy had become a household topic. I knew the girl, who was a fledgling poet and a gracious person, I must say. I had been her older brother’s friend for years. She was two grades below me. One of her poems, which she had once recited in our auditorium, had moved me almost to tears and instantly made her the object of numerous young fellows’ attentions. It was entitled “The Love I Have Is All You Can Have,” such a wonderful poem that our school’s radio station broadcast it twice a day for a whole week. In appearance she was demure and blushed easily, with dimmed eyes like a lamb’s. I couldn’t imagine that such a fine girl would allow an old man like Mr. Fang to explore her carnally, while there were many young men who would be happy to serve her in any way she desired. Later I learned from her brother that Professor Fang had published many of her poems under the pen name Sea Maiden and had promised her that he would help her get accepted, with a scholarship, by the Comparative Literature Department at Indiana University—Bloomington, with which Mr. Fang had claimed to have powerful connections. Oh, a young girl’s heart so easily overflowed.

Although Mr. Fang was in disgrace—having received a disciplinary action from the Party Committee and lost his vice chairmanship—I did not shun him. One day I invited him to a simple dinner in my apartment. My bride had left to teach summer school in an oil field south of Tsitsihar. I had just made some money from translating a play by Eugene O’Neill, so I bought a braised chicken, two pounds of beef sausages, tomatoes, a packet of white sugar, salted duck eggs, and ten liters of draft beer. I did not invite anyone else, because other faculty members were reluctant to mix with Mr. Fang at the time. As he and I were drinking and eating, he turned loquacious. He told me that his wife suffered from a cardiovascular disease and that his son had just graduated from Nanjing University, specializing in international trade, and was going to work for a German auto company in Shanghai. His wife was upset by their son’s lucrative but faraway job, for she had expected him to come back to Muji City, to marry and settle down near home.

I noticed Mr. Fang had not aged much. His hair was still dark and bushy, and his facial muscles looked quite elastic. Behind the front of his white short-sleeved shirt, his belly seemed firm and flat. You could easily take him to be in his early forties. Half jokingly I asked him how come he was so well preserved. To my amazement, he replied in earnest, pressing his hand on his chest, “First, you must have a large heart and never be depressed by anything, eat well, and sleep well. Second, you must exercise every morning in any kind of weather, hot or cold.” He smiled with a shrewd twinkle in his eye. He knew I was a night owl and always went to bed in the wee hours, never bothering about morning exercises. Again I expressed my admiration for his good health.

Soon he was inebriated, and his tongue went unbridled. He sighed and said, “I’m fifty-three already. My life has come to a dead end.”

“Don’t be so down,” I said.

“I’m going to die soon. Ah, to die without achieving any-anything. How sad!”

“Come on, have a larger heart.”

He looked tearful and pathetic. I tried to comfort him by pointing out that he was a reputable scholar, at the peak of his powers, and still had a long, bright journey ahead. But the more I said, the more heartbroken he was. “After I graduated from college,” he declared as though to a roomful of listeners, “I dreamed about going to Russia to study esthetics. Then Russia became our enemy, and I was made—made to study damned English, which I didn’t like until I could read D. H. Lawrence in the original. Now our country is finally o-open, but I’m too old to go abroad to do gra-graduate work. I’m no match for you young people, too old.” He dissolved into tears, wiping his cheeks with the back of his short-fingered hand. “Oh I should’ve had a Ph.D., or at least an M.A., like you!” He patted my forearm.

That was inane. He was already an associate professor. To sidetrack him, I said, lightheartedly, “Stop crying, all right? You’ve been a lucky old man here, so many girls were around you. Who ever had such luck as you?” I was being slightly ironic, but he took my words as a compliment, or a cue. He grinned and poured another glass of beer.

Then he began talking about the young women he was involved with in recent years. I was surprised that one of my former classmates, who used to be seeded number two in badminton in our province, was among them. She had married an officer, a dog handler, who was often away from home. How could Mr. Fang match that amazon in bed? It made me giddy just to think it. I felt embarrassed by his disordered talk, yet I was fascinated and eager to hear more. What amazed me most was that one of the women had even been willing to marry him, provided he divorced his wife, which he would not do. He explained to me, “I’m not heartless, Young Zhao. I can’t abandon my sick wife. When I was in the countryside, she came to see me every two months. Another woman would have divorced me under the circumstances. She alone suffered with me and never complained. Now our son’s far away from home, and I’m the only family she has here.” His eyes, misty with tears, gazed at me.

I couldn’t help wondering what had contributed to his apotheosis in those young women’s eyes. His knowledge? His power? His vitality? His pen? His tricks? His optimism? What was the magic wand with which he had held so many of them in thrall? I thought of my friend’s younger sister, the lamb-eyed girl, who had been banished to a county town to teach middle school. Before departing for the countryside, she was so distraught that she had almost defenestrated herself, pulled back just in time by her parents. Had Mr. Fang ever felt guilty about her ruin?

“Ah, how I adore those girl poets!” he confessed, rubbing his broad nose.

“Why poets?” I asked.

“You don’t know how sweet and innocent girl poets can be. They all have a te-tender heart. Just give them a few words they want to hear, you-you can sweep them off their feet and set their hearts flying like ca-catkins.” He giggled.

“So, no fiction writers, only girl poets, eh?”

He grinned. “Yeah. If I come back to this life again, I’ll try to be a poet myself. Young Zhao, one of these days you should get to know a girl poet.”

“No, I want a nymphet,” I said. He reminded me of Nabokov’s lecherous Humbert.

“Okay, a nymphet poet then.” He burst into laughter.

You see, Professor Pan, that was the advice he gave to me, his former student. I would not try to know a girl poet. My wife is good enough for me, although she is not an extraordinary beauty. Besides, I am in poor health and ought to save my energy and time for completing my book on the Oriental myths in Eugene O’Neill’s plays. After that dinner, whenever I ran into Mr. Fang, he seemed evasive and often hurried away as though I were carrying hepatitis, which had broken out in our city that summer. Apparently he regretted having divulged his secrets to me. But I never held that talk against him. Even three years later, when I became the chairman of this department, I wouldn’t allude to that talk. No, I did not change my feelings about him because of the secrets he had let slip.

After the suspension of
Narrative Techniques,
our department was pestered by thousands of letters from its subscribers. They demanded a refund. Because the money had been shared out by the faculty as a holiday bonus long ago, all we could do was promise the subscribers that a new issue of the journal would reach them soon. Nobody here was able to edit the journal at the time except for Mr. Fang. So in the fall,
Narrative Techniques
was reinstated, with him as the editor-in-chief again, but now he was ordered to eliminate the section of creative writing. This time the journal turned out to be more focused and more impressive, each issue having a glossy cover and a photograph of a modern master novelist on its back. Gradually, Mr. Fang’s fame rose once again. He worked hard and even published a volume of short fiction,
At the Blossoming Bridge,
which he dedicated to Ernest Hemingway as if the American writer were still alive and in correspondence with him. Probably he meant that Hemingway had been a source of inspiration. The book garnered a good deal of critical acclaim and got him ranked among the better contemporary authors for a while. He was promoted to full professor the following year, the first one in our department. He seemed destined to become a minor man of letters, but few people can remain coolheaded on the merry-go-round of success.

His fall occurred on our trip to the United States, in the early summer of 1987. He and I were both chosen for the provincial cultural delegation that was to visit four American cities. I was selected because I could speak English fairly well and was somewhat knowledgeable about American literature. Mr. Fang joined the group as a fiction writer and literary scholar. The trip was partly sponsored by Wellington University in Connecticut, which was eager to become our sister school. That was why half the delegates were from our college.