Fortress Besieged

by Qian Zhongshu

  While he was speaking, Miss Sun came up and said she was living in the women’s dormitory and sharing a room with the women’s adviser, Miss Fan. She too flattered Li Mei-t’ing about the reception. Li smiled flippantly and said, “Miss Sun, you should change your field. Don’t go to the Foreign Languages Department office. Be my teaching assistant instead, and tonight we can go to the party together.”

  While the five of them had dinner at a small restaurant near the university’s main gate, Li Mei-t’ing listened without hearing and ate without noticing the taste. They all teased him, saying he was preparing his speech for the reception. Li emphatically denied it, saying, “Nonsense! Why do I need to prepare for that!”

  At about nine o’clock that evening Fang Hung-chien was talking with Hsin-mei in the latter’s room and yawning repeatedly. He was about to return to his room to sleep, when Li knocked on the door and came in. They were both about to tease him when they noticed by his face that something was wrong and asked, “Why did the reception end so early?”

  Without a word, Li sat down on a chair, his nostrils blowing out air like a locomotive getting ready to pull out. They quickly asked him what had happened. He pounded the table, calling Kao Sung-nien a scoundrel, and declared that even if he had to take his case all the way to the Ministry of Education he would never lose. He also said that the president had gone off to have dinner with someone and wasn’t back yet, and there wasn’t a sign of him anywhere, maintaining that anyone that negligent of his duties should be damned to hell. As it turned out, the reception had been arranged by Wang Ch’u-hou in accordance with the famous precept from The Art of War:2 “Launch a frontal assault before the enemy has a chance to catch his breath.” The four lecturers and the teaching assistants in the Department of Chinese Literature who had arrived at the school some time ago had already become his friends, and the students, in general, had also been obedient. Knowing that Kao Sung-nien had made a prior agreement with Li Mei-t’ing, he had taken advantage of Li’s absence and usurped Li’s position. Being a department chairman is just like getting married: “The one installed three days earlier becomes the wife.” The party for Li turned out to be more like the new concubine’s First Meeting ceremony than a reception. The moment Li Mei-t’ing walked in the meeting room with a student representative, he sensed something was wrong, and when he heard his colleagues and the students say “Chairman Wang” once or twice, Li grew suspicious and alarmed.

  When Wang Ch’u-hou saw him, he fervently took Li’s hand in both of his, rubbing it for some time without letting go as though clasping the hand of a mistress. At the same time he said with mixed fear and admiration, “Mr. Li, you really kept us waiting on tenterhooks. We’ve been expecting you every day—Mr. Chang, Mr. Hsüeh, weren’t we just this morning talking about him—we were just this morning talking about you. Did you have a rough journey? Rest up for the next two days before going to classes. There’s no rush. I’ve arranged all your courses. Mr. Li, we’ve really been soul-brothers for a long time. When President Kao called me in Ch’engtu asking me to organize the Chinese Literature Department, I thought to myself, I’m getting old, and the journey is a difficult one. Much better to stick with the old rather than try something new. That’s why I really didn’t want to come at first. But President Kao really could go on! He asked my nephew—”

  Mr. Chang, Mr. Hsüeh, and Mr. Huang all said at once, “Mr. Wang is Vice-minister Wang’s uncle.”

  “He asked my nephew to keep persuading me, and I couldn’t refuse an old friend. My wife’s health isn’t very good, and she felt like getting a change of air. When I arrived here and learned you were coming, I was quite overjoyed. I think the department will certainly be well run. . . .”

  Li Mei-t’ing’s speech to have been delivered as chairman was locked up inside and left unsaid. Controlling his anger, he made a few offhand remarks, drank a cup of tea, then left the party early, complaining of a headache.

  Hsin-mei and Hung-chien consoled him for a while and urged him to go back to his room and get some sleep. The next day he could go to Kao Sung-nien and speak his piece.

  On his way out, Li remarked, “If in spite of our friendship Old Kao can still deceive me like this, he must have some tricks up his sleeve for you two as well. Just watch. As long as we adopt a unified stance, we have nothing to fear from him!”

  After Li left, Hung-chien turned to Hsin-mei and declared, “That’s outrageous!”

  Hsin-mei replied with a frown, “I think there must be some misunderstanding. I don’t know the story behind it. Maybe Li’s love is all one-sided. Otherwise, it’s ridiculous! But then for someone like Li Mei-t’ing to be chairman is a joke in itself. Those fancy cards of his with the printed titles can’t help him now. Ha, ha.”

  Hung-chien said, “This is my unlucky year in any case. I’m prepared to be disappointed wherever I go. Probably tomorrow Kao Sung-nien won’t even recognize this lousy professor.”

  “There you go again!” said Hsin-mei impatiently. “It’s as if you couldn’t really be happy unless you were unlucky. Well, let me tell you something. You can’t believe everything Li Mei-t’ing says. And besides, you came on my recommendation. Whatever happens, I’m here.”

  Although Hung-chien was determined to be pessimistic, when he heard this, he decided it wouldn’t hurt to put off his pessimism for another day.

  Next morning Hsin-mei told Hung-chien that he would see the president the first thing and get Hung-chien’s case straightened out, instructing Hung-chien to wait until he came back before going to see Kao Sung-nien.

  After more than an hour, Hung-chien became impatient. I am really being oversensitive, he thought. Kao Sung-nien cabled me directly. Could someone who is the head of an organization be so flippant with his promises? Hsin-mei has already done his duty as a reference. Now I’ll have to pay Kao a formal call myself. That would be the most straightforward way.

  When Kao saw Fang Hung-chien’s pleasant, smiling face, he thought Fang was either a very good-natured or conniving sort of fellow. He quickly asked, “Did you see Mr. Chao?”

  “Not yet. I thought I should come see you. It is only appropriate.” Fang Hung-chien was certain that he had spoken very properly.

  Hell! thought Kao Sung-nien, Hsin-mei must have gotten tied up with Li Mei-t’ing and been unable to get away. Now I’ll have to do a lot of fast talking with this Fang fellow. “Mr. Fang, Mr. Chao was going to talk with you—there are several things I’ve already spoken to him about—”

  Hung-chien sensed something was wrong from the way Kao spoke, but for the moment he could not withdraw the smile from his face, and so it lingered on rather awkwardly. Looking at Fang’s face, Kao wished he could have picked off the smile with his fingers.

  “Mr. Fang, did you get my letter?”

  When most people lie, their eyes and mouth will not cooperate. While the mouth is boldly prattling on, the eyes are timidly avoiding the other’s gaze. Kao Sung-nien was skilled at dealing with people, and furthermore, while studying biology, he had learned the wisdom handed down in the West: If your gaze meets that of a lion or tiger and you glare at each other, the wild beast will be so hypnotized by your stare he won’t dare attack. Of course, before he starts eating you, a wild beast won’t necessarily dart bewitching glances at you, but then Fang Hung-chien wasn’t a wild beast either. At the most he could be called a house pet.

  Kao Sung-nien’s three-hundred-watt glare made Fang so uncomfortable that Fang began to feel as though not having received the letter was his own fault and that he had been too presumptuous in coming here. Trusting Kao Sung-nien had in fact written a letter retracting his appointment, Fang, at the same time, felt a certain expected satisfaction and exclaimed in agitation, “No, I didn’t! I really didn’t get it! Was it important? When did you send it?” as though he were the one lying and had received the letter but was now denying it.

  “Ai! How could you not have gotten it?” Kao sat up straight, his look of feigned surprise car
ried to perfection and far more natural than Fang’s genuine dismay. That Kao hadn’t become an actor was a misfortune for the stage and a blessing for the actors. “That letter was very important. Ai! Wartime postal service is simply abominable. But now that you’re here, splendid. I can tell you everything directly.”

  Hung-chien relaxed somewhat and said obligingly, “There’s always trouble with mail between the interior and Shanghai. The incident in Ch’angsha probably affected it too. A lot of mail could have gotten lost. If your letter to me was sent early—”

  Kao Sung-nien made a gesture of not attaching any importance to the letter, grandly forgiving the letter which he had never written and which Fang Hung-chien had never received. “No use talking about the letter. I’m very much afraid that if you had read the letter, you would not have condescended to accept the appointment. But now that you’re here, don’t start thinking about running off. Ha, ha! It’s this way. I’ll explain everything. Though I’d never met you before, when I heard Hsin-mei speak of your scholarship, character, and so on, I was quite delighted and immediately sent you a telegram asking you to come help. The telegram stated that—”

  Kao Sung-nien paused a moment to see how good a negotiator Hung-chien was, for a good negotiator would never at this point recite the promised terms for him. But like a fish swallowing bait, Fang Hung-chien was hooked at once, and quickly went on, “Your telegram appointed me professor, but didn’t say in which department I was to teach, so I’d like to ask about that.”

  “I originally intended to ask you to be a professor in the Political Science Department since you had been recommended by Hsin-mei, who said you had a doctorate from Germany. But according to your own resumé, you have no degree—”

  Hung-chien’s face flushed as red as a sick man with a temperature of one hundred three degrees.

  “And you hadn’t even studied political science. Hsin-mei was completely wrong. Your friendship with Hsin-mei isn’t really very deep, is it?”

  The temperature registered on Hung-chien’s face rose another degree Fahrenheit, and he was unable to answer. Seeing this, Kao Sung-nien grew even bolder.

  “Of course, I won’t quibble about a degree. I’m only concerned with true talent and learning. But the regulations set down by the Ministry of Education are very strict. According to your academic credentials, you could at the most be a full-time lecturer. If I petitioned for a professorial salary, it would be denied for sure. I’m confident Hsin-mei’s recommendation couldn’t be wrong, and so I’m making an exception and appointing you as an associate professor with a salary of two hundred eighty dollars a month and a raise next school year. This was all explained in the express letter I sent you. I assumed you had received it.”

  Hung-chien could only declare for the second time that he had not received the letter, feeling at the same time that his demotion to associate professor was already a blessing from above.

  “As for your contract, I just asked Hsin-mei to take it with him. What you teach is now the problem. We still have no philosophy department for the time being, and there are already enough professors in the Chinese department. There’s just one class of logic required of all freshmen in the College of Letters and Law and that is three hours. That seems a bit too little. I’ll think of something else later on.”

  Hung-chien left the president’s office feeling as if his soul had been run over by a steamroller. Not a breath of spirit left in him, he felt like some poor abandoned creature to whom Kao Sung-nien had given shelter in an act of great mercy. Filled with shame and hate, he had no one on whom to vent his feelings. When he got back to his room, Hsin-mei hurried over, saying that he had more or less helped Kao Sung-nien solve Li Mei-t’ing’s case and was ready to discuss Hung-chien’s. When he learned that Hung-chien had already spoken with Kao Sung-nien, he said quickly, “You didn’t flare up with him, did you? It’s all my fault. I was under the impression you had your doctorate. When I first recommended you, I was just hoping to get it settled quickly—”

  “So you could have Miss Su all to yourself—”

  “You don’t have to bring that up. I had my salary—all right, all right, I won’t, I won’t.” Clasping his hands and smiling apologetically, Hsin-mei praised Hung-chien for his forbearance, and told him how Li Mei-t’ing had come barging in, blustering disgracefully while he was talking in the president’s office. Hung-chien asked what happened with Li.

  Hsin-mei smiled sardonically and said, “Kao Sung-nien asked me to try to reason with him, so after prattling on about it for a long time, he said that unless the school buys the Western medicine he brought at his price—Ai, and I still have to go give Kao Sung-nien the reply. Your case was weighing on my mind, so I hurried back to see you.”

  Hung-chien had calmed down by then, but when he heard that Kao Sung-nien was to buy for the school the contraband goods that Li had brought at the price Li was asking, his anger surfaced again. Now that Li had received compensation, he thought, he was the only real loser. When Kao Sung-nien gave a party that evening in honor of the newly arrived professors, Hung-chien fussed and refused to go but was unable to withstand Hsin-mei’s earnest entreaties, and when early that evening Kao Sung-nien came by to pay a call, he felt he had sufficiently recovered face and went after all.

  While Hsin-mei had no extracts of elixirs like Li Mei-t’ing, who traveled with the essence of Chinese literature all stored up in his cards, he had brought along a dozen or so reference books. Fang Hung-chien, on the other hand, never had any idea he would be teaching logic, and none of the books on the history of Western society, primitive culture, the collected books of historiography, and so on, which he had brought along, was of any use to him. When he seriously thought about his teaching assignment, he became so nervous that he had no time to stay angry and just hoped Kao Sung-nien would let him teach the history of comparative cultures or the history of Chinese literature instead. But there was no need for the former course now, and someone was already teaching the latter. A beggar has to take what he gets; it’s not up to him to choose the dishes.

  Hsin-mei consoled him, “Students nowadays aren’t as advanced as they used to be—”

  It seems that in this great age of rubber tires, the level of the students and the moral standards of the times are the only two things that have regressed.

  “Don’t panic. You’ll manage somehow.”

  Hung-chien went to the library to look for books. The library had fewer than one thousand books, most of which were old, battered, torn textbooks of Chinese, relics of schools that had been suspended during the war. A thousand years hence these books would be as priceless as the manuscripts from the Tun-huang caves. Now they were ancient without being rare. Shortsighted, shallow-minded book collectors still did not have sense enough to buy them up. All libraries, like the brains of a drudge at examination time, are graveyards of learning. This library, however, was like an old-fashioned charitable organization which cherished the written word. If heaven knew of it, those in charge in this generation would never be struck by lightning and in the next life would surely all be intelligent and influential.

  Hung-chien browsed around for a long time, then to his surprise found a Chinese translation of An Outline of Logic. He checked it out and went back to his room, as happy as T’ang San-tsang returning to Ch’angan with the sutras.3 After reading a few pages of An Outline of Logic, it occurred to him that since no textbooks were available, perhaps he should make this one available to all, by mimeographing and distributing it to students. Then he reflected that wouldn’t be necessary. Professors used to keep other reference books, which served as “secret pillow treasures,” and so they were willing to use textbooks. Now that there were no reference books, and he was solely dependent on this one textbook to instill knowledge and spread culture, he could not possibly share it with everyone. He’d better let the students remain mystified by it all and take notes on his lectures. After all, he was nothing more than an associate professor. It wasn’t w
orth knocking himself out for that. At the first meeting of the class he would express his sympathy for the students, lament the difficulty of finding books in the unoccupied area, and say that under such circumstances the professor was no longer a useless appendage. Having a professor lecture was an emergency measure instituted in the days before the invention of printing, he would go on, and since it was no longer the Middle Ages, everybody had books to read and logically speaking shouldn’t have to come to class and waste each other’s time. He was sure these comments would be very well received and at the thought of how the students would react, he was so elated that he could hardly sit still.

  Hung-chien and the rest of the group arrived at the school on Wednesday. Kao Sung-nien let them rest until the following Monday before starting classes. During those few days, Hsin-mei was the president’s man of the hour, having received the most calls from his colleagues, while Hung-chien was seldom so honored. Small in size, the school had been put together haphazardly. Except for the women students and a small number of faculty members with families, everyone lived in a large compound. This arrangement clearly showed each person’s status at the school.

  On Sunday afternoon Hung-chien was busily preparing his lecture material when Miss Sun came, looking more ruddy than she had on the trip. Hung-chien was about to get Hsin-mei, but she said she had just come from Hsin-mei’s place, that the professors in the Political Science Department were holding a conference there, and the room was filled with smoke. When she saw that they were all busy, she did not sit down.

  Fang Hung-chien said with a grin, “Whenever politicians congregate, there’s bound to be heavy pollution.”

  Miss Sun laughed and then said, “I came today to thank you and Mr. Chao. Yesterday afternoon the comptroller’s office reimbursed me for the traveling expenses.”

  “It was Mr. Chao who got that for you. I had nothing to do with it.”