by Qiu Xiaolong
“I’m fine, except that I’m doing nothing.”
“Take a break. You’ve just come back.” Leaning over to pick up his thermos bottle, Li added under his breath, “Have you found what we talked about the last time?”
“What?”
“After you have found it,” Li said, “come to my office.”
Li had already turned toward the stairs, taking with him the filled thermos bottle and the last word.
The motive.
That was what Li had asked for the last time they met in his office. Chen had to find it. There was no point discussing anything more in the boiler room. Politics aside, justification of further investigation depended on discovery of Wu’s motive.
Chen went over it again. If Wu had wanted to part with Guan, she was in no position to stop him. She was a third party—the other woman—a notorious person in China’s ethical system. She would have found herself in a socially condemned position. Furthermore, revelation of an extramarital affair would have been political suicide. Even if she had been desperate enough to make such a disclosure, she probably would not have got anywhere. Wu had had an affair with her, but he wanted to end it. So what? As Party Secretary Li had pointed out, an affair would not have been considered too serious a political lapse now. With his family background and connections, Wu could have gotten away with it easily.
She could not have presented a real threat to Wu, even at a time when people were talking about Wu’s promotion.
On the other hand, Guan was a national celebrity—not some provincial girl. Wu would have to have known that her disappearance would be investigated, which could lead to him, secret as their affair had been. Wu was too smart not to have realized this.
So why should he have taken such a risk?
Guan must somehow have posed a much more serious threat to him, a threat Chief Inspector Chen had not yet discovered.
And until he did, Chen could only occupy himself in reading the latest Party documents delivered to his office. One was about the ever-increasing crime rate in the country and the Central Party Committee’s call on all Party members to take action. He also had various forms to fill out for the coming seminar of the Central Party Institute, though he doubted if he would be able to attend after all.
In frustration, he dug out his father’s book. He had not read it since the day he had bought it. It was a difficult one, he knew. He turned to the end of the book, to an epilogue in the form of a short fable entitled, “A Jin Dynasty Goat.”
Emperor Yan of the Jin Dynasty had many imperial concubines, and one favorite goat. At night, the emperor let the goat amble before him through a sea of bedrooms. When the goat stopped, the Emperor took it as a sign from Heaven to spend the night in the nearest room. More often than not, he found the goat halted in front of the three hundred and eleventh concubine’s pearl-curtained door. She was wrapped in white clouds, in anticipation of the coming rain. So she bore him a son who became Emperor Xing. Emperor Xing lost the country to barbarian aggressors through his thirst for a sea harbor. It was a long, complicated story, but the three hundred and eleventh concubine’s secret was simple. She sprinkled salt on her doorstep. The goat stopped there to lick the salt.
The late professor used the fable to illustrate the contingency of history. But for a chief inspector, everything about a criminal case should be certain, logical.
It was almost three. Chief Inspector Chen had skipped lunch, but he did not feel hungry. He heard a knock on the door.
“Come in,” he said.
To his surprise, Dr. Xia stood in the doorway carrying a huge plastic bag in each hand.
“My shoes are wet.” Dr. Xia shook his head, showing no inclination to step in. “I’m bringing you a Beijing roast duck from the Yan Cloud Restaurant. Last time you generously treated me. As Confucius says, ‘It is proper and right to return other people’s kindness.’”
“Thank you, Dr. Xia,” Chen said, standing up, “but a whole duck is too much for me. Better bring it back to your family.”
“I have another one.” Dr. Xia lifted up the other plastic-wrapped duck. “To tell you the truth, a patient of mine is the number-one chef there. He insisted on giving them to me—free. Here is a small box of their special duck sauce. Only I don’t know how to prepare green scallions.”
“As Confucius says, ‘It is not proper and right to decline a senior’s gift.’” Chen tried to imitate Doctor Xia’s bookish style. “So I have to accept it. Have a cup of tea in my office?”
“No, thank you, I can’t stay. “But Dr. Xia remained in the doorway, fidgeting, then half turning to the main office.“But I have to ask a favor of you.”
“Sure, whatever I can do,” Chen said, wondering why Dr. Xia chose such a moment to approach him for a favor.
“I want you to introduce me into the Party. I’m no activist, I know. There’s a long way for me to go before I can prove myself to be a worthy Party member. Still, I’m a honest Chinese intellectual with minimum conscience.”
“What?” he was astonished. “But—haven’t you heard the news here?”
“No, I haven’t,” Dr. Xia raised his voice, waving his hand, adjusting his gold-rimmed glasses. “Nor do I care. Not at all. Listen, you are a loyal Party member, that’s all I know. If you are not qualified, no one else in the whole bureau is.”
“I don’t know what to say, Dr. Xia.”
“Remember the two lines from General Yue Fei? ‘I will kowtow to Heaven / when the land is set in order.’ To set our land in order, that is what you want, and what I want.”
With this dramatic statement, Dr. Xia raised his head higher, as if defying an invisible audience, and walked off, not bothering to take a look at the surprised faces in the large office.
“Bye, Dr. Xia,” someone said belatedly.
Chen closed the door after himself with one hand, the duck in the other.
He knew why Dr. Xia had paid him this unexpected visit. It was to show his support. The good old doctor, who had suffered such a lot during the Cultural Revolution, was far from ready to join the Party. The visit—together with the rehearsed statement and the roast duck—was a stance Dr. Xia felt impelled to take as an honest Chinese intellectual—with “minimum conscience.”
And it was not just for him, Chief Inspector Chen realized.
It might be a losing battle, but Chen saw he was not alone in it. Detective Yu, Peiqin, Old Hunter, Overseas Chinese Lu, Ruru, Wang Feng, Little Zhou . . . and Dr. Xia, too.
Because of them, he was not going to quit.
He resumed reading Guan’s file, making notes until it was long after office hours. Then he ate a small portion of the roast duck. The sight of its golden, crispy skin had revived his appetite. Dr. Xia had even included a couple of pancakes. The duck, rolled in the pancake with the special sauce and green onion, tasted so delicious. He stuffed the remaining duck into the refrigerator.
At about nine o’clock he left the bureau. It did not take him long to arrive at Nanjing Road. It appeared less crowded at that late hour, but the ceaseless transformation of the neon signs infused the scene with fresh vitality.
Presently the First Department Store came in view. A middle-aged man who was gazing into one of the store’s windows moved away at Chen’s footsteps. Chen, too, came to a stop, catching himself in front of a display of summer fashions, his own reflection faint against the glass. The lights illuminated a line of mannequins in a dazzling variety of bathing suits—skinny strap, tulip-cup neckline, brief-and-halter combination, bikini bottom, and black-and-white trim. The plastic models looked alive in the artificial light.
“A stick of ice sugar haw!”
“What?” Chen was startled.
“Sweet and sour ice sugar haw. Have one!”
An old peddler had approached with a red wheelbarrow sporting sticks of haw, sugar-glazed scarlet, shining, almost sensual. An uncommon sight on Nanjing Road. Perhaps because it was late, the peddler had been able to sneak into the area. Chen boug
ht one. It tasted rather sour, different from those his mother had bought for him. He would have been no more than five or six, sucking at the stick, and his mother, then so youthful, was wearing her orange Qi skirt, holding a floral umbrella in one hand, and his hand in the other . . .
Things had changed so fast.
Would these models in the window age too?
A silly question. More silly than a chief inspector in his impressive uniform sucking a stick of haw, wandering along Nanjing Road.
It was nonetheless a fact that plastics could wear out. A cracked plastic flower, dust-covered, on the windowsill of an out-of-way hotel room. An image that had so touched him, inexplicably, during a trip in his college years. Probably left there by another traveler. No longer lustrous, no longer beautiful—
No longer politically attractive—in others’ eyes.
Models, plastic or otherwise, would be replaced.
A model worker in the early nineties, Guan might have had more realistic worries. While on display, young, vivacious, she could admire her reflection in the ever-changing window of politics, but she must have been aware that her charm was fading. The myth of the model worker, though still honored in the Party newspapers, now appealed to few. Intellectuals got media attention. Entrepreneurs got money. TOEFL test takers got passports. HCC got positions. A model worker got less and less.
No reversing time and tide, Guan knew. The way things were going, in a few years, to be a model worker would literally be a joke.
For her, however, it had never been a joke. It had been the meaning of her life, and her life had not been an easy one. She’d had an obligation to be a model at all times: to say the right words, to do the right things, and to make the right decisions. A model—it was, and was not, a metaphor. That’s where she had found her life’s worth—at the moment of being admired, and emulated by others . . .
Once more his thoughts were interrupted by footsteps coming from behind him. He seemed to hear a young girl’s giggle. Chief Inspector Chen must have presented a sight —a police officer gazing at the window full of glamorous mannequins in scanty swimming attire. He did not know how long he had been standing there. He took one more look as he started to move on.
Across the street, a small fruit store was still open. He was familiar with it because his mother had used it as a shortcut to a lane where one of her close friends had lived. The lane had several entrances. One, facing Nanjing Road, had at first been partially blocked by a fruit stall, which had then been converted into the fruit store, totally blocking the access. Behind those tall shelves of fruit, however, there still was a back door opening from the inside, and the store employees used it for their own convenience. He had no idea how his mother had discovered it.
Chief Inspector Chen had not used the shortcut before, though the owner greeted him warmly like an old customer. He stepped behind the first row of shelves, examining an apple like a fastidious customer. The back door was still there. He pushed at it and it opened into a half-deserted lane. He cut through the lane with quick steps. The other end led out to Guizhou Road, where he stopped a passing taxi, and gave the driver directions. “Qinghe Lane, on Hubei Road.”
He made sure he was not being followed.
Chapter 36
The stick of sugar haw was as yet unfinished when the taxi pulled up at Qinghe Lane.
Chief Inspector Chen threw the stick into a trash bin. A few feet away, an idiot stood tittering all by himself, holding a plastic bag above his head like a hood. He did not see anybody else near Guan’s dorm building. The Internal Security people were probably stationed under his own window.
On his way up to Guan’s room he met nobody. It was a Friday night. People were watching a popular, sentimental Japanese soap opera that showed a young girl losing a battle to cancer. His mother had told him about it; everybody was enthralled.
Not Guan.
At her door, the lock remained unchanged. He still had the key. Once inside, he locked the door behind him. He did not turn on the light; instead, he took out a flashlight. He stood in the middle of the room. There was something he wanted to find. Something crucial to the conclusion of the case. If it had ever been there, it might have vanished by now. Wu might have been to the room, found it, and made away with it—hadn’t one of the neighbors mentioned a man who might have come from Guan’s room? Perhaps he should have searched more thougroughly, should have borrowed a forensics expert. But they were so understaffed, and it had not seemed worthwhile. The small room could not conceal much.
If Guan had intended to hide something from Wu, where would she have put it?
Any searcher would have looked in the desk, and the drawers, tapped on the walls, turned over the bed, combed through every book and magazine . . . Chief Inspector Chen had already checked these obvious places.
He let his flashlight sweep around the room without consciously directing it: An effortless effort, as advocated in Tao Te Ching. The light finally came to a stop at the framed portrait of Comrade Deng Xiaoping hanging on the wall.
He did not know why the light had stopped there. He stared at the now illuminated portrait. It was a huge picture for the room, but such a size was not uncommon for a national leader’s portrait. In fact, it was the standard size. He had a similar one in his own tiny office.
He had thought highly of Comrade Deng Xiaoping. Whatever might be said against the old man, it was undeniable that China had made great progress under Deng’s guidance in economic reform and, to some extent, in political reform as well. The last decade had witnessed tremendous changes—in various aspects of people’s lives.
Even in the way people hung their leader’s portrait.
During Chairman Mao’s time, it had been a political necessity to hang a huge portrait of Mao and to say morning prayers and evening prayers under it. There were those familiar lines he remembered from one of the modern Beijing operas, “Under the portrait of Chairman Mao, I am filled with new strength.” So the frame had to be specially designed too. A golden frame for the godlike Mao. Not so with Deng. After his retirement, Deng had called himself an “ordinary Party member”— at least the newspapers so reported. Deng’s portrait in the living room was not a political necessity. The frame in Guan’s room was of a light pink color, showing some delicate embossed design. Possibly it was one originally selected for herself, but then used for Deng. He was shown sitting in an armchair, deep in thought, wearing a high-buttoned gray Mao suit, holding a cigarette, an enormous brass spittoon at his foot, a map of China behind him, his forehead deeply lined. There was no seeing through to what was going on behind the deep lines on the old man’s forehead.
Chen moved a chair against the wall and climbed onto it. He removed the framed portrait from the wall, laid it on the floor, and turned it over. Several clips secured the frame to the board. They were easily bent. He removed the board cautiously.
A stack of pictures wrapped in tissue paper was revealed. He unwrapped them and spread them out on the table.
He stared at them, or they stared up at him.
The first few showed Guan in intricate poses, nude or seminude, her body cleverly composed to heighten various effects— her long hair covering her breasts, or her body partially wrapped in a towel, or even more shockingly, in the newspaper showing her picture as she was awarded the title of national model worker. There was one of Guan lying naked on a brown rug in front of a fireplace. The crackling fire illuminated the curves of her body, her hands handcuffed behind her back, her mouth gagged, and her legs spread wide apart. He recognized the fireplace. It was the one in Wu’s living room, the green marble fireplace.
The next few were of Guan with Wu, both stark naked. The pictures must have been taken with some time-delay device. One showed Guan in Wu’s lap, smiling nervously at the camera. Her arms were around his neck, and his hands on her nipples. In the next, she had turned over, showing a pair of buttocks cupped by his hands, her pubic hair T-shaped from that angle, and her bare feet enormou
s. The rest were of various acts of sexual intercourse: Wu entering her from behind, his part vanishing in the curve of her ass, and his free hand steadying her pear-shaped breasts; Guan arching herself up under Wu, her arms clasping his back, her face turning aside on the pillow, taut in orgasm, Wu with her legs over his shoulders, entering her . . .
To Chen’s astonishment, there was also a picture of Guan with a different man on top of her, posing in a gesture of studied obscenity. This man’s face was partially obscured, but it was not Wu. Guan lay spread-eagled on her back, her eyes closed, as if in ecstasy.
Then came some pictures of Wu with other women—on the bed, on the rug, in front of the fireplace, or on the floor, in various poses ranging from the erotic to the obscene. One showed Wu having sex with three women.
Chen thought he recognized one of them, a movie star who had played a talented courtesan of the Ming dynasty.
Then he noticed some small words on the back of those pictures.
“14 August. Somewhere between ecstasy and fainting out of fear. Slipping off her panties in five seconds. Entering her vaginally from behind.”
“23 April. A virgin. Naive and nervous. Bleeding and screaming like a pig, and then writhing like a snake.”
“A saint in the movie, but a slut off the screen.”
“Passing out in her second climax, literally. Dead. Cold. Did not come back until two minutes later.”
The last picture was of Guan again: wearing a mask, manacled to the wall, but otherwise stark naked, staring into the camera with a mixed expression of uneasiness and wantonness.
A model for a mask.
Or a mask for a model.
On the back of the picture was small printing: “A national model worker, three hours after she delivered a speech at the city government hall.”
Chief Inspector Chen felt sick. He did not want to read any more.
He was no moralistic judge. In spite of the Neo-Confucian principles the late Professor Chen had instilled in him, he did not consider himself traditional or prudish. However, the pictures, with these comments, were too much for him. He had a sudden, vivid picture of Guan lying on the hard board bed, moaning, arching herself up to the man’s thrust and writhing, beneath the framed portrait of Comrade Deng Xiaoping, who was seated, musing over the future of China.