"Oh, I was so stupid." He turned to his daughter. "You know, Hua, Manna will die soon. She's a goner. Ah, she isn't a bad woman, but her heart can't last long."
"Daddy, stop please!"
"All right, all right, I'll shut up." But he embraced Shuyu with one arm, touching her face with his free hand, and asked, "Is that you, Shuyu?"
"Yes, it's me, your wife Shuyu."
"Sweetheart, will you wait for me? I'll come back to you soon. We are still, still one family, aren't we? Don't leave me. Manna's going to die in a year or two. Oh what – what should I do about the twins?"
"Please, don't talk like this. Don't worry your head about that."
"Will you help me?"
"All right, we'll help you, I promise. Don't be so upset." She turned to Hua and ordered, "Get a bowl of vinegar, quick. Your dad is real drunk."
He went on, "My dear, I'm so sad. My heart is so full, about to burst. I can't stand this damn life anymore!"
They made him drain a bowl of diluted vinegar. He fell on the warmer end of the brick bed, and an instant later began snoring tremulously. Having covered him with a thin cotton quilt, Shuyu told Hua, "Go call the hospital and let that woman know your dad is too drunk to go back tonight."
Wrapping a scarf around her head, Hua rushed out into the rustling snow. She ran toward the guard office, which had a telephone.
After breakfast with Shuyu and Hua, Lin returned to the hospital, his footsteps still infirm because of the hangover. Manna was relieved to see him back, saying, "You should've taken care not to drink too much. You're no longer a young man."
"I'm sorry. " He put on the table the duffel bag, stuffed with hazelnuts and chestnuts.
"I only slept two hours last night. How I worried!" she said.
"I didn't mean to stay there. I left the fish and the garlic stems at their door, but Hua saw me before I could leave."
"How are they?"
"They're doing well, better than in the village."
"That's good to know."
Since the babies were sleeping, Lin and Manna began to prepare for the holiday. She stewed pork feet and a hen to make aspic, while he took their kettle out to do some scouring and descaling at the faucet. As the aluminum pot was boiling, Manna put roasted peanuts and sundry candies into two cookie boxes for the people who would come to pay them a holiday visit the next morning.
Hua came early in the afternoon. She looked so happy that even her eyes seemed to be smiling. While Lin and Manna were cleaning the home, Hua looked after the twins, humming a folk song to them and telling them the story of a big gray wolf and two little lambs, as though they could understand her. The room was filled with the babies' prattle and laughter. Hua cut a rooster and a prancing cat out of red paper, showed them to the babies, then pasted them on two windowpanes. Manna was pleased with the paper-cuts, which made their home more festive, especially to the eyes looking from the street.
With a broom tied to a bamboo pole, Lin was sweeping the cob webs off the ceiling. As he was passing by, his daughter patted his knee. Seeing Manna shaking a flour sack outside the front door, Hua said, "Dad, my mom is very happy at home. She said she'd wait for you."
Suddenly he remembered what he had babbled at dinner the night before. Embarrassed, he asked, "I made a fool of myself last night, didn't I?"
"No, no. We were so glad you came home. You should see Mom – she's a different person today. She said she'd come and see them in the spring." She referred to the twins, her forefinger pointing at the crib.
A miserable feeling arose in Lin. He pondered for a moment, then said, "Hua, your mother's getting old. Will you take good care of her?"
"Yes, I will, Dad." She smiled.
"Tell her not to wait for me. I'm a useless man, not worth waiting for."
"Don't be so hard on yourself, Dad. We'll always wait for you."
He felt a clutching in his chest and turned away to sweep the kitchen ceiling, trying hard to hold back his tears. He was upset and touched at the same time. Outside, Manna was cheerfully wishing "Happy Spring Festival" to someone passing by. She sounded so pleasant that Lin noticed her voice was still resonant with life.
Acknowledgments
The author wishes to express his thanks to Emory University for a grant that enabled him to complete an early draft of this book. He also wishes to thank his editor, LuAnn Walther, for her consideration and suggestions, and his agent, Lane Zachary, for her comments.
Ha Jin
Born in mainland China, Ha Jin grew up in a small rural town in Liaoning Province. From the age of fourteen to nineteen he volunteered to serve in the People's Liberation Army, staying at the northeastern border between China and the former Soviet Union. He began teaching himself the middle-and high-school courses since his third year in the army, which he left in the sixth year because he wanted to go to college. But colleges remained closed during the Cultural Revolution, which continued when he was demobilized, so he worked as a telegrapher at a railroad company for three years in Jiamusi, a remote frontier city in the Northeast. During this time, he began to follow the English learner's program, hoping that someday he could read Friedrich Engels' The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 in the English original.
In 1977 colleges reopened, and he passed the entrance exams and went to Heilongjiang University in Harbin where he was assigned to study English, even though this was his last choice for a major! He received a B.A. in English in 1981. He then studied American literature at Shandong University, where he received an M.A. in 1984. The following year he came to the United States to do graduate work at Brandeis University, from which he earned a Ph.D. in English in 1993. In the meantime, he studied fiction writing at Boston University with the novelists Leslie Epstein and Aharon Appelfeld.
After the Tianeman massacre, he realized it would be impossible to write honestly in China, so he decided to emigrate. Unlike most exiled writers already established in their native language, Ha Jin had no audience in Chinese, and so chose to write in English. To him, this meant much labor, some despair, and also, freedom.
Currently he is an associate professor in English at Emory University. He has published two volumes of poetry, BETWEEN SILENCES (University of Chicago Press, 1990), and FACING SHADOWS (Hanging Loose Press, 1996), and two books of short fiction, OCEAN OF WORDS (Zoland Books, 1996) which received the PEN Hemingway Award, and UNDER THE RED FLAG (University of Georgia Press, 1997), which received the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction and was a finalist for the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Award. He also published a novella, IN THE POND (Zoland Books, 1998), which was selected as a best fiction book of 1998 by the Chicago Tribune. His short stores have been included in The Best American Short Stories (1997 and 1999), three Pushcart Prize anthologies, and Norton Introduction to Fiction and Norton Introduction to Literature, among other anthologies. WAITING Ha Jin's first full-length novel, is the winner of the 1999 National Book Award for Fiction and the 2000 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award for fiction. He has also written a collection of stories called, THE BRIDEGROOM, published by Pantheon Books.
