I produced my maroon-covered passport and opened it to show my photo. I said, “See, I’m not a foreigner.”
“Makes no difference. You’re not allowed to go in.”
My teacher intervened. “I’m staying here. Please let us in, comrade. He was my student. We haven’t seen each other for more than three years.”
“Have to follow the rule — no visitor is allowed to enter this building.”
My temper was rising. Just now I had seen a young woman, apparently a visitor, go in with a nod of her head at the geezer. I asked him, “Doesn’t this building belong to China? As a citizen, don’t I have the right to enter Chinese territory?”
“No, you don’t. Stop wagging your clever tongue here. I’ve met lots of gasbags like you.” His lackluster eyes flared.
“You make me ashamed of holding this passport,” I spat out.
“Get a blue one with a big eagle on it — as if you could.”
Mr. Meng said again, “We won’t go upstairs. There’re some chairs in the lobby; can’t we just sit over there for an hour or two? We’ll stay in your view.”
“No, you cannot.”
The entryway was so crowded by now that we couldn’t chat in there, so we went out in spite of the rain. We crossed Twelfth Avenue and observed for a while the aircraft carrier Intrepid exhibited on the Hudson, then turned onto Forty-fourth Street, where we found a diner set near a construction site, at a corner of which stood a pair of Porta Pottis. The place offered Italian fare. Mr. Meng ordered spaghetti with meatballs and I had a small pepperoni pizza. He confessed he’d never eaten pasta before, though he had come across words like “macaroni,” “tagliatelle,” “vermicelli,” and “linguini” in American novels and knew they were all Italian noodles. I was pleased that he enjoyed the food, especially the tomato sauce and the Parmesan cheese, to which my stomach was as yet unaccustomed. He told me, “This is so hearty and healthy. I can taste olive oil and basil.” I couldn’t share his enthusiasm, since I still ate Chinese food most of the time.
He went on, “New York is so rich even the air smells fatty.” He lifted his Heineken and took a gulp.
After reminiscing about some of my former classmates who had recently left China, he asked me, “How much can you make a month here?” His large nose twitched as a smile came on his narrow face.
“I’m paid by the hour, five-forty an hour.”
He lowered his head to do the sum. Then he raised his eyes and said, “Wow, you make at least twenty times more than I can back home. In a few years you’ll be rolling in money.”
I smiled without a word. He hadn’t considered that I had to spend more and pay taxes. He could hardly imagine how hard I worked. A stout waitress wearing an orange apron came over and handed us the dessert menu. I recommended that we both try the crème brûlée cheesecake, and he agreed. I liked desserts, which to me were the best part of American food. Sipping his coffee, he sighed. “What I wouldn’t give to be in your shoes, Hongfan.”
“I’m just a student. How can you say that?” I said.
“But you’re doing graduate work in the United States and will be a real scholar someday, not like my generation, ruined by political movements in our formative years. We’re a true lost generation.”
“But you’re already a professor.”
“That’s just a title. What have I accomplished? Nothing worth mentioning. So many years wasted, it’s impossible to make up for the loss.”
I remembered his translation of Jack London’s stories, which was a respectable effort, but I didn’t bring that up. I was moved in a way; few teachers at my alma mater would speak so candidly to a student. When the cheesecake had come, he asked me whether I’d like to accompany him to meet with Professor Natalie Simon at Columbia. I was reluctant, afraid I’d lose another afternoon’s work, but knowing that Simon was a famous scholar in modern American literature, I agreed to go with him. I assumed I could get permission from my boss again.
After dinner, I took Mr. Meng back to the consulate and promised to meet him at one thirty the following day. The rain had let up and the clouds were breaking, but the air was still as muggy as if it were rubbing your skin. Having seen him disappear in the entryway, I turned toward the subway station.
To my relief, my boss gladly allowed me another afternoon off, saying his daughter had graduated from Barnard College, so he liked the idea that I would accompany my former teacher to visit the university. My boss was in a jolly frame of mind these days, because his daughter had just passed her bar exam. When I joined Mr. Meng outside the consulate, he was holding a shoulder bag. I wondered if I should carry that for him, but thought better of it in case it contained something valuable. Together we took the No. 3 train uptown.
Columbia’s English department was easy to find, and the door of Professor Simon’s office was open. She welcomed us warmly and seated us on the only sofa in the room, which had tall windows. She waved apologetically, saying, “Sorry about such a mess in here.”
She was younger than I’d thought, in her late thirties and with a regal bone structure and sparkling eyes, but her face was heavily freckled and so were her arms. Mr. Meng was fluent in English, though he had studied Russian originally and switched to this language in the early 1960s when China and the former Soviet Union had fallen out. He began talking to Professor Simon about a bibliography of American literary works already translated into Chinese — a project that he had been in charge of, funded by the government. I listened without speaking. “In addition,” he told her, “we have been writing a U.S. literary history, a college textbook. I will contribute two chapters.”
“That’s marvelous,” she said. “I wish I could read Chinese. It would be interesting to see what the Chinese scholars think of our literature.”
I knew that six or seven professors had been working on that book, which would be nothing but a mishmash of articles based on the summaries of some novels and plays and on rehashing official views and interpretations. Besides the censorship that makes genuine scholarship difficult, if not impossible, some of those contributors were merely dilettantes. In most cases these people didn’t know American literature at all. Professor Simon had better remain ignorant of Chinese, or she would surely be underwhelmed. She lifted two books, both hardcovers, from her desk and put them on the coffee table before us. “These are my recent books,” she said. “I hope you’ll like them.” The top one was titled Landscapes in Modern American Fiction, but I couldn’t see the title of the other one.
Mr. Meng touched the books. “Can you sign them for me?” he asked her.
“I’ve done that.”
“These are precious. Thank you.”
To my amazement, he took a brown silk carton out of his shoulder bag and handed it to Professor Simon, saying, “Here’s a little present for you.”
She was pleased and opened the box. An imitation-ivory mahjong set emerged, glossy and crisp in the fluorescent light. “Oh, this is gorgeous.” Despite saying that, she seemed bewildered, and her jaw dropped a bit, as if her mouth were holding something hard to swallow.
“Do you play mahjong?” asked Mr. Meng.
“I don’t know how, but my mother-in-law often plays it with her friends. She’s retired, so this will be perfect for her.”
A sour taste seeped into my mouth as I observed my teacher putting the two books into his bag. His manner was as natural as if he were an old friend of hers. In fact, he’d told me they’d met only once.
We didn’t stay longer because Professor Simon was going to teach at three. She said she’d be delighted to visit Nanjing again if she was allowed to join the U.S. delegation that would go to China the next spring.