China Mountain Zhang

answer for question 6. I walk out despondent, knowing that I missed at least three questions completely, and parts of many others. For days I will not stop at the Professor's office and look at the grades posted on a flimsie on the door. But the Professor's office is next to my Practical Applications class (my tool handling class) so one day I simply go and look. And I have passed the engineering midterm with a score of 62 points out of 100 which on the grade curve is a 86%! I didn't know there would be a curve! I thought a 62 would be a failing grade!

Of course I go straight up to the arcade (the university is the base on which the four towers rest.) I take the lift to his flat and then stand outside his door in an agony of apprehension. I have never come on Haibao unannounced. And each day it is problematical as to whether Haibao will be pleased to see me or too despondent to care. Some days he is all wit and languid charm. Some days he is silent and withdrawn. Always he knows I am coming.

I imagine him opening the door smiling. Open the door frowning. Someone else there.

So I go back to the lift, take it back down and call from the arcade. I jack in and think the numbers in careful Chinese-the system will understand English, and thinking out the call in Chinese is not second nature yet, but it's good practice to do everything in Chinese. Then there is a wait so long that I think he is gone. Perhaps in a meeting with his thesis professor? Not that I have ever seen Haibao work on his thesis, but then I'm never there during the day.

'Wai,' he says, Chinese for 'Hey' and the way everyone answers the phone. No vid, sound only.

'Venerable teacher,' I say, 'this is your undeserving student.'

'Who?' he says, he sounds as if he has just woken up.

'Zhang,' I say. 'It's Zhang. Did I call at a bad time?'

'Zhang?' he says. 'No, you didn't call at a bad time. What is it? Something wrong?'

'No, I just wanted to tell you I passed my engineering midterm. And say thank you for your help.'

'Oh, you passed? Excellent.' He is trying to sound interested, pleased, but the effort is apparent in his voice.

'An 86%,' I say.

'An 86%?' he says, 'so high? When did you find out? I thought you weren't going to check.'

'I had to, better to know the worst than anticipate. I just wanted to tell you, I didn't want to disturb you. I'll see you tomorrow evening as usual?'

'Right, right.' A pause. 'Where are you now?'

'On the arcade,' I say.

'Oh,' he says, 'are you busy?'

'Oh, sure,' I say, 'there are all these incredible men lined up waiting to spend the afternoon with an engineering genius.'

He laughs and sounds a little more like himself. 'Tell them to go away and come up. No wait, tell them to keep you entertained, buy you lunch or something, and give me thirty minutes. Everything is, ah, let me think of the Zhang way to say this,' his voice changes, he speaks softly and mimics my American accent and northern pronunciation, 'things are a bit untidy, and if you do not mind, I must inconvenience you a little, respectfully request you wait.'

'Ta ma da,' I say, 'Your mother.' 'Just get dressed and come down to the coffee-bar. Go shopping with me. Show this poor confused foreigner what clothes to buy that will make him look less like he comes from a second-rate country.'

'Mao-Zedong and Lenin, I thought you'd never ask,' he says and breaks the connection.

But it is twenty-five minutes before he shows up. I am sitting in the coffee-bar nursing my coffee-or at least the sweetened syrup that passes for coffee in this country-when Haibao stops in the doorway. He scans the room, which is full of students. His gaze flickers past me a couple of times, although I wave. He is pale and lost; his hair looks as if he has run his fingers through it, his long yellow and green tunic doesn't match his tights. At last he sees me. He puts his head down and enters the crowd like a swimmer making a long dive.

'Do you want anything?' I ask him when he slides into the seat.

He shakes his head.

'What's wrong?' I ask.

'Nothing,' he says. 'Where do you want to go shopping?'

'I don't know, where do you go?'

'We don't want you to look too much like a fag,' he says, off hand. 'Why have you got your hair that way?'

My hair is tied back in a ponytail. I keep it shoulder length so there's not much tail. 'I had my tool handling class today, I like to keep it out of my eyes when I work.'

'It looks nice,' he says.

'It looks huaqiao,' I say. 'I think maybe I should cut it.

'No, don't,' he says. 'Please don't.'

The din makes it hard to carry on this conversation. Students call to each other in nasal, six-toned Nanjing dialect and shrill four-toned Mandarin. At home, my non-Chinese speaking friends say Chinese conversations often sound like arguments. I wonder how long it will be until I hear the liquid vowels of Spanish again. 'Yan Chun!' the young man next to me shouts, 'Yan Chun! Zouba!' 'Let's go.' Across the floor, a tall young man with an open face, dressed as if he just came off the gym floor, turns and smiles. 'Shemma?' 'What?' The mandarin word for 'a good time' is renao, hot-noisy.

'Let's go,' I say.

The arcade is busy, too. Haibao has his hands jammed in his tunic pockets, and moves with his head down.

I want to get out of this, to some place where it is quiet and private. Sometimes I take real pleasure in being with a person when there are all these straight people around and that person and I are just two people together. But right now Haibao and I aren't together, he is there and I am here and the physical space between us is not nearly so vast as the emotional distance. But I can't suggest we go to his flat, since he made a point of telling me it was a mess. I can't take him to my dorm because Xiao Chen might bring friends back from class and then we'd have no privacy.

So we walk down to the bus stop. 'Have you heard any more about your friend?' I ask.

He shakes his head. 'I talked to someone back home last night. He said my friend is still suspended from teaching, but nothing else. Everyone is still waiting.'

'How did they find out about your friend?' I ask.

'It's complicated,' he says.

Rebuffed, I say nothing.

The sun is hard on the street. Traffic is not heavy at mid-day, a street sweeper running off a power line raises and absorbs clouds of yellow dust. The window across the street is full of empty bird cages, in a square of sunlight, a white cat sleeps beneath them. It doesn't feel like home, the light is different or something. Maybe when I go back to New York I'll get a cat. Chinese people do not keep pets very much, it seems particularly Western to make an animal a member of the family.

'The District Superintendent of Education is a fag,' Haibao says. 'He hired my friend and I. He was arrested in a park. Then my friend was suspended. That's all anyone really knows.'

The District Superintendent must be how Haibao got to study engineering. It must be a big scandal that someone in education is gay, someone so important, a big person.

'Do you think they'll be looking for you? The school hasn't suspended you.'

'Not yet,' Haibao says. Chinese never say 'no'.

I see the bus, far up the street. Segmented buses look as if they are hinged in the middle, they bend a bit when they go around corners.

'I'm not feeling very well,' Haibao says. 'Maybe I'll go back and take a nap. You go on, celebrate your good mark.' He smiles tiredly, 'I forgot to say congratulations.'

'Don't go back,' I say. 'You'll just sit by yourself, that's bad, I know.'

'I'll take a nap,' Haibao says.