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.