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PARTISAN REVIEW
pumping ink. I pumped in the ink, took a piece of paper, and
wrote down some popular Chinese classical poetry in columns
and the few English words I had just learned in rows. I fondled
and looked at the pen, disassembled and assembled it, put it in
my left chest pocket and took it out, then looked, wrote and ad–
mired it again. That night I put the pen beside my pillow and
touched it several times to reassure myself that it was indeed the
very pen I had wished for.
My mother did not instruct me in how to care for the pen.
But I knew it would be bad judgment to proudly display it.
My
anxieties were justified, for just a few days after my father left
home, one of our creditors came to the door and claimed to be
broke. I flushed with embarrassment for my mother. The rent
collector, who lived at the end of our row and had been a small–
time detective for the mining bureau, was also a source of annoy–
ance to us. He had lost his left arm when he jumped from a run–
ning train during one of his smuggling operations. The women
in the neighborhood called him "One Arm" behind his back
and "Chief Detective" to his face. Although he was no longer a
frightening hero with a pistol and dagger, he was still a powerful
man in our town because of his connection with the authorities
and the gangs. He always wore a short gown of decorated
Guangdong gauze and was always hanging about, humming a
salacious tune of which I could distinguish only the first words:
"Holding a whore in January, it's a nice New Year. .. "
I once heard him tell a housewife, "My boss has decided to
take back all the houses soon. I tried very hard to postpone the
deadline in your favor, but you had better look for a new place."
As a result, the threatened families gave him greens, cloth, and
money wrapped in red paper and said: "Chief Detective , thank
you for your charity. " Then, those families would be rewarded
with peace until next time, when it appeared that a family had
received money or bought a valuable object. Under the circum–
stances, a new fountain pen might draw the attention of creditors
or induce the one-armed detective to make trouble. I recognized
that I had better not hang the pen in my chest pocket as other stu–
dents did.
The third evening after I received the pen was a lovely au–
tumn night. The moonlight was as mild as water flooding over
the field, the feather-like clouds floated, and the fireflies were
