by Qiu Xiaolong
The way Judge Dee was discussing the case in the prison cell, in the company of Xuanji, if ever reported to the ‘people high above,’ could have landed him in no end of trouble.
‘So I was sort of torn between the two scenarios,’ he said, almost losing his voice with his throat so dry. He had been doing most of the talking in the prison cell, not to mention the prolonged discussion with Mayor Pei earlier. ‘After all, what about the evidence for the second scenario, as you have asked? You have denied knowledge of the yellow silk underrobe found on Wei’s body. True, whatever the secret, he took it into the grave.
‘But last night, another poem of yours tipped the scale toward the second scenario.’
‘What kind of a poem are you talking about now, Your Honor?’
‘Last night, the flower girl Zhang, in whose company you composed the poem “To a Girl in the Neighborhood,” delivered to me a new poem you wrote just last month. It’s titled “The Fading Peony” – a brand-new piece I have never read or heard about before.’
‘Oh, it’s nothing but some lines I dashed out at random in the flower garden, where I picked a bouquet of peonies marked for sale. The peonies were perhaps two or three days old, fading a little, but all the more touching.’
‘It is a touching poem, full of lofty aspirations that totally become a beautiful, talented poetess like you.’
He stood up, spread the poem out on the stool in front of Xuanji, and sat down on the ground beside her.
The Fading Peony
So many blossoms falling,
falling in the wind, I am sighing,
with the fragrance fading,
failing in the disappearance
of yet another spring.
The peony proves to be too expensive
for the close-fisted customers,
and its sweet scent, too strong
for the flirting butterflies.
The royal palace alone deserves
such a blaze of red petals.
How can the green foliage
endure the dust and dirt
by the roadside?
Only with its transplantation
into the grand imperial garden
will those young dandies
come to regret.
‘It’s in your elegant handwriting, no question about it. I happened to have with me a scroll of another poem in your own calligraphy – “To a Girl in the Neighborhood,” which you “copied out for Wei as well.”’ He produced the scroll out of the bag before he added emphatically, stroking his beard, ‘So evidently.’
She stared at him, ripples of fear reflecting in her eyes.
‘It’s a common practice for poets and poetesses to write about flowers or trees to project their own feelings, whether in terms of symbolism or objective correlative. In this piece, you compare yourself to the unappreciated peony – too expensive for those cheap customers, and too strongly fragrant for the flirting butterflies. The image of its enduring “dust and dirt by the roadside” makes a vivid description of the life, as you see it, in the midst of those depraved parties in the nunnery. But what more than shocks me is the extended metaphor of transplanting the peony into the royal garden. It’s such a daring figure of speech. So you’re moving out – into the imperial garden, which is metonymy here, mind you. In other words, you’re moving into the company of the man whose very home is the royal palace of the Tang Empire. When that happens, those short-sighted, cold-hearted dandies who have not appreciated you will surely come to regret it.
‘In short, the poem showed a so-far-unseen side of you – a secret side, and an ambitious side.’
‘Peony is just a metaphor in the poem,’ she said, without looking up to meet his eyes. ‘You know better than to make such a far-fetched interpretation of it.’
‘You don’t have to worry about my interpretation. I’m a big fan of your poetry. But what about the interpretations made by others? You must have heard of the political debate about the peony being named the national flower. Her Majesty is adamantly against it, as her new empire needs to name a different national flower. And you write not only about the peony, but in association with the royal palace as well. Absolutely a matter of political crime. The barely educated flower girl might not have grasped the political implication of the poem, but people like Minister Wu will not miss it for anything.’
‘So you’re going to show this poem to Minister Wu?’
‘I don’t think too highly of Minister Wu, as you probably know. Nor am I a judge officially assigned to the case. But I’m under a lot of pressure from Minister Wu and others.
‘So I have to be frank with you, Xuanji. As long as your account fails to convince others, and the case drags on like that with more and more collateral damage for reasons known only to those at the very top, Mayor Pei and those people high above will have to bring pressure to bear upon you with the ongoing investigation and interrogation, and the horrible tortures in prison as well. Soon another trial, and then still another. All the possible aspects of the case will be examined and re-examined.
‘As for me, Minister Wu wants me to look into your case with a special authorization letter, which has probably been approved by Her Majesty. Without any breakthrough, I think I have to tell him what research I have done, and what possible evidence I have found. For instance, the yellow silk underrobe was discovered on Wei’s body, so there’s probably no withholding it. And then the black fox spirit costume. And the peony poem, too. For a celebrated poetess like you, it’s natural for people to study your poems for all the imaginable clues. If I could succeed in getting hold of “The Fading Peony,” it’s only a matter of time before others do so, too.
‘Eventually, the mysterious guest in the yellow silk underrobe who came to the nunnery that evening will also be discovered and dragged into the mire. It’s not inconceivable.
‘So let me repeat it just one more time, Xuanji: the investigation will have to continue the way I have just described, I am afraid, unless you come up with a more convincing confession. A more acceptable one, if you know what I mean.’
Instead of making an immediate response, Xuanji seemed to be tucking the black fox spirit costume tight around her hardly covered groin, as if she had been reincarnated through the posture.
It was absurd of him to think so, he knew. A weird, ominous shroud of silence reigned over the darksome prison cell.
‘I’m overwhelmed, Your Honor,’ she finally said, biting her lower lip so hard that it started bleeding. ‘But you’re an honest and capable judge of the Tang Empire. You surely can do something about the case, can’t you?’
‘I don’t know about that. The way Minister Wu brought me into the case, as it seems to my assistant Yang, could be a devious trap. Not just for me, but for who Minister Wu believes is the one involved in it – in the yellow dragon-embroidered underrobe – in the background. You are an intelligent woman, Xuanji, I believe you know I don’t have to say more.’
What cannot be said has to be passed over in silence.
‘And I don’t think I’m cut out for a judge’s role anymore. I’ve not spent a very long while talking to you here in the cell, but I already feel worn out; my tongue is dry and I’m losing my voice. I’m getting too old.’
She looked puzzled by his abrupt shift to self-pity.
‘So I have to go out for a cup of hot tea, and I’ll bring a cup back for you. You need to have a short break, too, Xuanji. In the meantime, you may think about what I’ve just discussed with you – about the dire consequence for the continuation of the investigation and interrogation.’
He rose, stretched his legs, and made his exit shakily as Xuanji remained in nonplused silence.
Again, it took a while before Judge Dee carried a pot of fresh hot tea back into the cell. She was sitting still with her back against the sordid wall, her head hung low, her face even paler than before, half covered by the long black hair.
‘Have a cup of fresh hot tea, Xuanji.’
Sh
e took the cup of tea he had poured out for her, but she placed it on the floor, and without taking a sip, she sat up straight and said, ‘Why people call you Judge Dee, I think I now can really understand. So ingenious, so honest, and so infallible. What you have said about Wei is vividly true, as if you yourself had witnessed everything from the very beginning.’
He waited for her to go on, without trying to make any comment in response as she lightly touched the black fox costume again.
‘About Wei, I think I can guess why he had the black fox costume made for himself in secret. From time to time, he came to my place at night – you know that. In fact, I might have said something to him about the neighbors pointing fingers at his back, and cursing like a bunch of self-righteous moralists. It was unpleasant, to say the least, to both me and Wei. He wanted to scare them away. He had said to me more than once that he did not want those prying neighbors to cause me any trouble.
‘Wei’s a good-for-nothing man – I knew that long ago – but it was not that easy for him to stay on with my fiery temperament. And to give the devil his due, he cared for me in his way. His wearing the black fox spirit costume proved it. I’m an ill-starred woman, and I’m finished. I knew that only too well in the courtroom. I did not mention him in the statement because, after all, it was he – not the other people – who helped me with the burial job in the backyard despite the fact that I killed Ning, a younger slut who had just slept with him. So why should I have dragged him into the mire because of me?
‘Now he’s dead, I don’t think I have to worry about it anymore, and I will make a truthful confession, however hard and humiliating for me, to admit my relationship with an unworthy man like Wei, and to admit killing my maidservant Ning out of a fit of insane jealousy.’
She was literally taking over the first scenario Judge Dee had represented to her without saying one single word about the validity of the second, though she mentioned that ‘he – not the other people’ helped with the burial job in an implied negation of the presence of the special guest in the yellow silk underrobe. She was a clever one.
To his consternation, she then re-combed her hair with her fingers, wetted her cracked lips with her tongue, edged down from the heap of straw, knelt in front of him, and slowly unfastened the belt of her wrap.
With the wrap falling down from her body, she prostrated her naked self at his feet.
It presented a shocking, surreal scene.
Despite having washed herself earlier, her naked back was smeared greenish again through contact with the moss-covered cell wall, and a layer of loose straw was stuck to her bare, bruised buttocks.
The posture kept the front of her body partially out of sight, but he could not help glimpsing her white breasts flattened hard against the cold cell floor.
It was not a gesture to show her gratitude, nor likely an attempt to seduce him. In those glamorous nights of her fashionable poetry parties, ironically, such a dramatic tableau could have overwhelmed a bookish old man like Judge Dee. But not here, not at this moment, not with her torture-ravaged, cell-sullied body groveling in the dust.
What was the point of her choosing to make such a degrading gesture at this moment?
He was struck with a vague, inexplicable, uneasy sense of déjà vu. Somewhere he might have seen or read about the strange pose, but for the moment, the meaning of her prostration at his feet eluded him.
‘I’m putting myself at your mercy, Your Honor. There is no point having the case drag on like this; you’re surely right about it. I have suffered more than enough in prison. With this truthful confession, you may put an end to the investigation.’
So it was a gesture begging for mercy – but why should she have made it in such a self-humiliating way?
In a shaft of light penetrating through the rusted iron bars of the cell, his glance fell on the shining yellow silk underrobe beside her on the ground, and he saw her clutching its sleeve – perhaps subconsciously – in her trembling hand.
He felt his heart sinking at the connection of it.
What had been worrying him from the beginning turned out to be true. The posture on her part made a subtle yet unmistakable acknowledgment of the identity of the man she had been seeing in the yellow silk underrobe.
She did not have to say his name – Prince Li, her secret lover from the Tang royal family.
To those Li loyalists, the crown prince was entitled to such a piece of imperial clothing with dragons embroidered on it. Prince Li himself must have believed it, too.
So Xuanji’s pose came like an echo from a fallen empire in the ancient time. Judge Dee was hit with the recollection of it – a defeated king, along with his queen and imperial concubines, surrendered themselves to the conqueror outside the surrounded city, kneeling with their bodies stripped naked to the waist, groveling in utter submission in the dust.
For the present moment, Xuanji was literally imagining herself into the one beside the prince, begging for mercy nakedly like a queen, or an imperial concubine, with the same pose, even though the prince was not there, prostrating himself alongside her in the dust.
To his consternation, Judge Dee became disoriented at the sight of something like a fly stuck on her white bare sole – or merely a smudge in spite of the wash she had taken in the cell. He was getting too old, he thought.
‘You are known as one of the most loyal, capable Confucianist officials of the Great Tang Empire, Your Honor. But for you, the country could have been irreparably ruined by unscrupulous conspirators like Minister Wu under Her Majesty. I’m so grateful for what you have been doing for the empire all these years. And this time, like other times, you’ll do the right thing for the Great Tang Empire, I believe.’
The message for mercy became even clearer. The degrading posture was made, not for herself, but for the prince.
For the Great Tang Empire of the Li family.
She was begging Judge Dee not to have the prince implicated in the conclusion of the case.
That night, it was the prince, not Wei, who came to the nunnery, and who had helped with the burial in the backyard.
The way the investigation was going, it would most likely be a matter of time for people to trace it to the prince, as Judge Dee had supposed.
Even the role of an accomplice could turn out to be too much trouble for the prince, who had been recently exiled from the capital. Were it to be found that the prince, instead of staying out of the capital as ordered by the empress, had become involved with a notorious courtesan in the nunnery on the outskirts of Chang’an – possibly a reminder of the empress in her younger days in a Daoist nunnery – the disastrous consequences could be easily imagined.
But it was not the moment for Judge Dee to think too much about all this, with Xuanji still groveling and kowtowing in the dust at his feet.
‘Please get up, Xuanji. I do not have the final say in this case, as you know, but I’ll try my best to do the right thing, I give you my word,’ he promised vaguely, though he could not help wondering what the right thing could possibly be, and how he could possibly do it.
‘I totally understand, Your Honor. In your first scenario, your analysis of the murder case is really thorough and well founded about Wei’s affair with the maid, about my fit of insane jealousy that led to her death, about Wei’s help with the burial job that night, and about my initial unwillingness to make a clean breast of it. Finally, you have helped me see the light. I have no other choice, I know, but to sign a new, truthful confession to the murder.’
‘If you want to make a new statement – a more admissible one with all the convincing details, you need to talk to Mayor Pei. And I think you can give him the black fox spirit costume. That may explain a lot of the inscrutable things in the case. Of course, I’ll talk to Mayor Pei, and perhaps to Minister Wu, too, and they, anxious for a speedy conclusion of a high-profile case, may be willing to listen to me.’
‘Thank you so much. And I know what I shall say to Mayor Pei.’
‘As for the peony poem, Xuanji, it may not be too good an idea for me to put in this edition of your poetry collection, but perhaps later, in a revised edition.’ He then rose, putting into his own bag the piece of paper with the peony poem written on it, the yellow silk dragon-embroidered underrobe, and the scroll of Xuanji’s calligraphy.
It was an unmistakable hint that he would not give them to others, provided Xuanji held on to the scenario she had given him.
‘I really appreciate it. I know how much I owe you for the speedy conclusion of the case. Oh, Judge Dee – can I call you Judge Dee?’
Emerging out of the prison cell, Judge Dee felt another wave of weariness – closer to sickness – washing over him.
Huang, the prison guard, was hurrying over, carrying a tray of wok-fried sticky rice snacks in his hands, and looking up at Judge Dee with a ludicrous, obsequious grin.
Judge Dee decided not to go back to Mayor Pei. He did not know what he could tell Pei. Xuanji would have to tell Pei first, and then Judge Dee would corroborate Xuanji’s version, adding his comments like a poetry collection compiler. The ‘new confession’ would, he hoped, not differ too much from the first scenario he had described to her inside the prison cell.
On the spur of the moment, he dashed off a couple of lines on a scrap of paper.
She’s willing to talk to you now, I think. Wei was connected, but not the flower girl Zhang. I have to start preparing for my trip early tomorrow morning.
It was not his case. There was no point Judge Dee putting his finger into Mayor Pei’s pie. Whatever the outcome now, it would not be his problem, nor would he want to take any credit.
Nor was it a matter of his being too modest for the possible ‘breakthrough.’ On the contrary, it would not do him any good to get caught in the cobweb of all the dirty, high-stake politics behind the murder case.
He wondered whether Mayor Pei might have already reported to Minister Wu about his visit to Xuanji in prison, but he did not really care.