Waiting

"Dad, don't drink too much. You'll get drunk," his daughter said.

Shuyu glared at Hua, as if saying, Shut up, girl!

"I'll be all r-right," he said, raising his cup again.

Soon he was unable to control his emotions. He felt pathetic, eager to say something that could make them understand him, but his tongue seemed no longer his own.

He grabbed Shuyu's hand and said tearfully, "Sweetheart, I didn't mean to hurt you. Can, can you forgive me?"

"All right."

"I'm a bad, bad man, sweetheart."

"No, you're a good man."

"Oh, I don't want to be a good man. I just want to be a normal man. "

"All right, you're not a good man then." Shuyu couldn't stop her tears by now, because this was the first time he had ever said an endearment to her.

"Don't, don't cry, dear," he went on. Somehow his vision blurred, and he saw Ma

"I'm so happy, Lin, at last you came home," Shuyu said and glanced at their daughter, whose eyes were traveling between her parents' faces. Shuyu believed that now he was showing his true feeling about her, because a man would speak his heart when drunk.

"Oh, I was so stupid." He turned to his daughter. "You know, Hua, Ma

"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. Ma

"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. Ma

"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 Ma

Hua came early in the afternoon. She looked so happy that even her eyes seemed to be smiling. While Lin and Ma

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 Ma

Suddenly he remembered what he had babbled at di

"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, Ma

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, LuA

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 Fla