A good fall by Ha Jin

Author:Ha Jin
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: United States, Asian American Novel And Short Story, Chinese - United States, Chinese, Short stories, Short Stories (single author), Fiction, Fiction - General, Fantasy, Flushing (New York, Cultural Heritage, N.Y.)
ISBN: 9780307378682
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2009-11-24T08:00:00+00:00

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.

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