I spoke to Kaiming about the attack in Flushing, and he was outraged. I admired him for his anger—there weren’t many Chinese immigrants here whose hackles could still be raised like his. Just a few weeks ago a young woman had been assaulted on Maple Avenue in Flushing by a complete stranger, a man who’d slashed her face with a knife, but though many pedestrians heard her screaming for help in the dark, not a single person had intervened. They might have thought that the attacker was her husband or boyfriend. It was hard to persuade immigrants that domestic violence was unlawful assault, not a family’s private matter. Kaiming told me to report on the Falun Gong incident, but not to antagonize the Chinese consulate overtly.
I reported the attack for GNA under a pen name, Elegant Brother, that I had used a number of times and grown attached to. In my account, I emphasized that only by chance had I run into the man who was directing the six thugs from a side street. As they’d attacked the demonstrators, I had tried to intervene and question them, but they’d only cursed at me. I wrote about this now not only to report the facts but also to condemn this kind of lawless intimidation. “We are in the United States,” I concluded, “where any act like this will have legal consequences. The victims have already reported the attack to the police.”
The article was posted and picked up by many Chinese-language websites and newspapers as part of their daily news aggregations. Though I’d used the pseudonym, I was startled to find that some people identified me as the author and even wrote me directly, posting their comments on my column. “We need more of this type of on-the-scene journalism, Feng Danlin,” one reader wrote. “Let those hoodlums know they broke the law and will face charges.” Messages like that disquieted me, because it showed my style of writing bore some signature that could not easily be disguised.
The Chinese consulate called us the next afternoon. I was in Kaiming’s office when he took the call and let the official rant at him, insisting that we had distorted the facts and that no one on their staff had heard of the incident until it appeared in the news. My boss denied that he had known anything about the report prior to its publication. “Mr. Tao, we publish about a hundred pieces of news a day,” he said calmly, “and I can’t personally check every one of them before it’s posted. But I can assure you that the writer of this article is not our employee. Elegant Brother is a pseudonym used by several of our freelancers.”
Although it was Lucheng who approved pieces for publication, Kaiming as the boss could publish anything he wanted to. He had read my article before it was put out. Kaiming paused to listen. The caller, Vice Consul Tao, must have been demanding to know the author’s name, for my boss said, “No, it’s not by Feng Danlin at all. If it were, it would have appeared in his regular column—he’s been too busy to write anything else. As I said, this writer happened to come upon the scene when the attack took place. Please read the article carefully—you can see that the author hardly expressed any personal opinion. He or she just recorded the incident and quoted the victims.”
Seated in a swivel chair and chewing the inside of my bottom lip, I tried to guess what the caller was saying. Kaiming spoke again after a small chuckle. “How could we have known something like that would happen and dispatched a reporter beforehand? Like I said, the author of the article stumbled upon the scene by accident….All right, I hear you, Mr. Tao. We’ll be more careful and won’t rush to publish anything like that again.”
Hanging up, Kaiming heaved a sigh. “We might be in a pickle. Bastards, they’ll never leave us alone.”
I didn’t know what to say and felt I’d done what I ought to do.
I GOT SOMEWHAT CARRIED AWAY and wrote my next column about my meeting with Larry. I reported that even Haili’s husband couldn’t trust her and had himself been completely unaware of her novel, even as he was depicted as the saintly husband within its pages. “In fact,” I continued, “I had coffee with Larry Clements last Friday. He is congenial and unassuming, forty-something, five foot eight, his hair scattered with gray. He was dumbfounded when I told him about his wife’s newfound literary stardom. Then he said I mustn’t take her seriously. ‘She can be nuts sometimes,’ he told me. But everyone can see that this hoax of a novel was not due to absentmindedness. Yan Haili is a liar. Granted, she might have been inveigled into the scheme by her publisher, Jiao Fanping, and her editor, Gu Bing. It is time the three of them admitted their wrongdoing publicly; otherwise, we won’t let them off the hook.”
This article put new pressure on the threesome, but what shocked me was that Haili, without warning, turned up at my place the next evening. Katie happened to be there. I was unsettled to see my ex-wife’s figure, double her normal size, through the peephole, but I braced myself and undid the door chain. As soon as Haili stepped in, Katie said to me, “I should leave.”
“No, please stay,” I urged, winking at her. I needed her to see and hear everything.
Haili glared at me but made no comment and just nodded at my girlfriend, so Katie stayed. She poured a cup of jasmine tea for our guest and placed a bowl of spiced fava beans beside the teacup. Haili glanced at the snack contemptuously. With a fistful of the beans, Katie retreated to the papasan chair near the window, about ten feet away from the two of us.
Haili appeared a little haggard; probably she’d been unable to sleep well lately. “You’ve become more and more petty. Why did you go to Larry behind my back?” she asked.
“Didn’t you publicly threaten to take me to court? I had to do something. Honestly, I was shocked you’d kept Larry in the dark about your novel.”
“So? That doesn’t justify bringing him into this.”
“Of course it does. What would you have me do? Kiss your ass and just sit tight waiting for annihilation?” I attempted a light tone but must have sounded quite desperate.
Katie tittered, then stopped short.
“I know you,” Haili said. “You’re vindictive and want to destroy my marriage.”
I nearly burst out at her: Didn’t you dump me like a bag of trash? Didn’t you drive me to the brink of suicide? But I told her instead, “Your husband is wealthy. If he and you joined resources to bring a suit against me, I could lose everything. I’m scared shitless by just the thought of it.”
“Now you know. Larry won’t be involved. Actually, we just had a row. He’s mad at me. It was you who lobbed a bomb into my marriage.”
She sounded hurt, which softened me some. I said, “Larry seems to be a reasonable guy who won’t give you a folder of divorce papers. That would cost him too much.”
Haili smirked as if mocking herself. She glanced at Katie, who was leafing through my Entertainment Weekly. Haili looked hesitant, then resumed. “Larry’s a shrewd man. Before our wedding, he convinced me to sign a prenuptial agreement. He always guards his secrets. I won’t say he’s cheap, but we have to split the household expenses.”
I was a breath away from reminding her that when we had been together I would share my last steamed bun with her. Hadn’t we eaten a bowl of lamb soup together outside the main entrance to my alma mater because we, two college students, didn’t have enough money for two bowls to go with the wheaten cakes held in our hands? Though unable to afford a piano, didn’t I buy her a keyboard? Was I ever stingy about anything she wanted? Didn’t I promise to build a house of our own, a bungalow with a wraparound porch like the waterfront one in the postcard she had sent me from Vancouver? My eyes were welling up, and I averted my face. Haili had made this thorny bed of her own free will and ought to lie in it. It was no use for her to attempt to invoke my empathy—she couldn’t make me cave anymore. A sadness mixed with a modicum of satisfaction stirred in my chest.
“Danlin,” she continued, “I didn’t come to quarrel with you. I came to beg you to stop meddling with my affairs, for your own benefit. You don’t know what you’ve been up against.”
“Is this another threat?” I asked.
“You can take it that way if you wish.”
“Well then, cold or hot, sour or bitter, rare or well done—bring it on.”
She smirked faintly. “You’re still a dog that can never kick the habit of eating shit and garbage.”
“You’re right—I’m not going to give up.”
“If you keep harassing us, we’ll have to stop you.”
“Who are ‘we’?”
“The people involved in producing my book.”
“You know what? If we were still in China, I might listen to you, but here I have to do my professional duty and report the truth.”
“Truth depends on how you shape and present it.”
“Let’s say facts then. I’ve got to stick to facts.”
“Don’t give me that professional crap.”
“You can’t make me stop reporting.”
“You’re so naïve and stubborn. I guess that’s why I liked you when we first met. You’re still the same puppy at heart. The same young boy.”
I wasn’t sure whether that was a compliment or an insult. I said, “Yes, I was so naïve that I couldn’t see how fickle and heartless you could be. If only I had known you would aspire to become a grand novelist as well as a big diplomat. Then I would’ve stayed away from you and—”
“Don’t work yourself into a temper again!”
“If you apologize openly, even just one sentence, I’ll get out of your way. It would be easy for you.”
Her face clenched, twisted with annoyance. “Okay,” she said, flinging up her hand, jade bangles rattling. “I’ve had enough of trying to talk to you. You can remain a truculent son of bitch and keep rocking our boat, but don’t say I haven’t warned you.”
With that, she got to her feet and waved good-bye to Katie. Then to my surprise, Haili lifted her hand, her thumb raised and her index finger aimed at my forehead. “Bang!” she let out. “I’m not afraid of paparazzi.”
Before I could respond, she made for the door. When the clicks of her footsteps had receded, Katie said, wide-eyed, “She’s tough, isn’t she?”
“She’s crazy,” I said. “God, how I hate her. My hatred for her makes me more human.”
Katie laughed.
I stepped over to the window, and looking down, I saw Haili hurrying away toward Kissena Boulevard. She was wiping her face, then blew her nose into a tissue. Her shoulders were slightly hunched, shaking now and again. Perhaps she hadn’t erased all her warm memories of me. My eyes grew hot, misting. Not wanting Katie to catch sight of my face, I turned and went into the bathroom.