Zhang Mingchen, a willowy fellow with curved eyes and caterpillar brows, who was the monitor of Class Three, stood up and said smilingly, “Professor Fang, this is ludicrous. You’ve made us feel as if we were all retarded. Why do we have to remain always the same? Why can’t we develop? Even you — haven’t you added some stature and weight to yourself?”
We exploded into laughter. Glowering at Mingchen, Mr. Fang thumped the lectern and bellowed, “Stop pretending you’re Mark Twain! You should know who you’re talking to.” He turned his head slowly, glaring at us.
More laughter rose from the students. Abruptly Professor Fang wrapped up the meeting and stalked out of the room with a white cotton thread dangling from the hem of his black herringbone blazer. I had not expected he would take so much umbrage. He seemed to have become a different man, no longer the humble, conscientious teacher, as though he had been a high-ranking official all his life. In fact, besides his brand-new vice chairmanship, he had held only one official title — as president of the Regional Bridge Association, which consisted of about two dozen members, mostly old intellectuals.
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.