Coming out of the building with immense columns at its portals, I said half joshingly to Mr. Meng, “How many sets of mahjong did you bring along for this trip?”
“Six, but I have some sandalwood fans with me too. I give a set of mahjong only to an important figure.”
His tone of voice was so earnest that I didn’t know how to continue. He had no sense of irony and couldn’t see that I was troubled by the discrepancy between the two kinds of gifts exchanged between him and Natalie Simon. I remained tongue-tied as we headed for the front entrance of the campus. He knew how to get back to the consulate, saying he had a map and would like to stretch his legs a little on such a gorgeous day, so we said good-bye and I went down into the subway station alone.
• • •
June was soon over. During the day I delivered fabrics and finished garments, and at night I pored over Edward Said’s Orientalism. I thought that Mr. Meng had left with the delegation for Boston. Maybe he was in the Midwest now. But to my surprise, one evening I got a call from him.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“Still in New York,” came his soft voice.
“You mean you didn’t leave with the others?” I was astonished to realize that he’d left the delegation.
“Right. I don’t want to go back too soon,” he said flatly.
For a moment I was too stunned to respond. Then I managed to say, “Mr. Meng, it will be very hard for someone your age to survive here.”
“I know. My wife is ill and we need to pay for her medicines and hospital bills. I could never make that kind of money in China, so I decided to stay on.”
I was unsure if he was telling me the truth, but it was true that his wife had been in poor health. I said, “You may never be able to go home again.”
“I won’t mind. A human being should live like a bird, untrammeled by any man-made borders. I can be buried anywhere when I die. The reason I’m calling is to ask you to put me up for a few days.”
I knew that my accommodating him might implicate me in his defection, but he was my former teacher, someone I was obligated to help. “Okay, you’re welcome,” I said.
I gave him my address and the directions. I didn’t feel comfortable about sharing my tiny apartment with anyone. I hoped Mr. Meng would take my place only temporarily. Two hours later he arrived with a bulky suitcase and his shoulder bag. Since he hadn’t eaten dinner, I cooked a pack of instant noodles for him, adding to it two chicken legs, two eggs, and a bunch of cilantro. He enjoyed the meal, saying this was the best dinner he had eaten since he’d left home. “Better than the banquet food,” he told me. I asked him where he’d been all these days, and he confessed that he had stayed with a friend in the Bronx, but that man was leaving for upstate New York for a job in a casino, and so Mr. Meng had to look for lodging elsewhere.
In a way I admired his calm, though his round eyes blazed feverishly. If I were in his position, I might have gone bonkers. But he was an experienced man, toughened by a hard life, especially by the seven years he had spent on a chicken farm in the countryside. After the meal, it was already half past ten. We sat at the shaky dining table, chatting and sharing a pack of Newports and jasmine tea. We talked and talked, and not until around two a.m. did we decide to turn in. I wanted him to use my bed, which was just a mattress on the floor, but he insisted on sleeping on the sofa.
We both believed he needed to keep a low profile for the time being lest the consulate track him down. He shouldn’t go out during the day, and every morning I’d lock him in when setting out for work. I always stocked enough food and soft drinks for him, and he would cook dinner for both of us before I came back in the evening. He seemed very patient, in good spirits. Besides groceries, I also brought back Chinese-language newspapers and magazines. He devoured all of them and said he’d never thought that the news here was so different from that in mainland China. The articles revealed so many secrets of Chinese politics and gave such diverse interpretations of historical events that he often excitedly briefed me at the table about what he had read. Sometimes I was too exhausted to listen, but I wouldn’t dampen his excitement.
On my way home one evening I came across a barely used mattress dumped on a sidewalk. Together Mr. Meng and I went over and carried it back. From that day on he slept in the second bed in my room. He often jabbered at night, having bad dreams. Once he woke me up and kept sputtering, “I’ll get revenge! I have powerful friends at the Provincial Administration. We will wipe out you and your cronies!”
Despite that kind of disturbance, I was glad to have him here — his presence reduced my loneliness.
Two weeks later we began talking about what he should do. I had stopped locking him in and he often went out. So far, his disappearance had been kept secret by the consulate, and no newspaper had reported it. That might not be a good sign, though, and the silence unnerved us, so I felt he should remain in hiding. Yet he was eager to work to earn his keep. I advised him to wait another week, but he wouldn’t listen, saying, “We’re in the United States and mustn’t live in fear anymore.”
We both believed he shouldn’t apply for political asylum right away, since that should be a last resort and would mean he might never set foot in our motherland again. It would be better if he just lived here as an illegal alien to make some money. He could try to change his status when things cooled down — once he had the wherewithal, he could hire an attorney for that. Soon he began looking for a job in Flushing, which wasn’t like a city yet in the late 1980s; housing was less expensive there, and businesses had just begun moving in. Since he spoke English, it wasn’t hard for him to find work. A restaurant near Queens Botanical Garden hired him to wait tables, but he persuaded its manager, Michael Chian, who was a co-owner of the place, to let him start as a dishwasher on the pretext that he had no work experience at a restaurant. His real reason was that a dishwasher spent most of his hours in the kitchen, away from the public eye. The next day he started at Panda Terrace, making $4.60 an hour. He was pleased, although when he came back around eleven at night he’d complain he was bone-tired.
He was capable, and his boss and coworkers liked him. On occasion I went to the restaurant for a bowl of noodles or fried rice. I rarely ate dinner at that place, which I frequented mainly to see how Mr. Meng was doing. To my discomfort, the waitstaff called him “professor.” He’d been rash to reveal his former identity to his fellow workers, but I said nothing about it. He seemed at ease in spite of washing dishes all day long. He told me he’d been observing the staff wait tables and concluded that he could do it easily. In a month or two he might switch jobs, either working as a waiter at the same place or moving on to another restaurant.
One Sunday afternoon my coworker Ah Min and I went to Panda Terrace for a bowl of wontons. As we were eating, two white girls in their late teens pulled into the parking lot and came over to the front door. Mayling, the barrel-waisted hostess and also a co-owner of the place, went up to them and snapped, “You can’t eat here, no more.”
The girls stopped short in the doorway, one wearing a sky blue sarong and bra, hoop earrings, and mirror sunglasses, while the other was also in a sarong and bra, but a yellow one. They were both chewing gum. “Why? We have money,” the tall one in blue said, smiling spuriously and baring her flawless teeth.
The other girl grinned with her rouged lips, her kohl-rimmed eyes flickering. She said, “We love your eggplant fries. Mmm, yummy! Your dumplings are excellent too.”
“Go away. We don’t serve you,” said Mayling, who tended to speak English haltingly unless she was angry.