The Hamlet Murders

by David Rotenberg

  “In this place? Are you kidding, sir? Luckily, she has a credit card.”

  Fong nodded and approached the lady who was swaying to the music that came from the speakers over the bar.

  He sat beside her. The alcohol made her sweat and induced her perfume to release its scent. Fong turned to her but before he could open his mouth she spoke to his image in the mirror behind the bar, “You ever been in love, Detective?”

  Fong was so surprised by the question that he almost answered, “I loved my first wife more than the air that sustains my being,” but caught himself and said simply, “Yes.”

  She looked more closely at his image in the mirror. “You have, haven’t you?”

  He nodded.

  “He was a lot older than me.”

  “Bob?”

  She nodded. “He was going to marry me.” She wagged an elegant finger at her drunken self in the mirror and corrected herself. “He told me he was going to marry me.” Without warning, her control abandoned her and she yelled, “He promised me!” and threw her highball glass at her image in the mirror. The sound of the crashing shards of glass was drowned out by her screaming. Then there was an unnatural silence. As if the world held its breath. Then quiet words tumbled from her lips and her tears fell on the bar and Fong almost reached over to comfort her.

  But he didn’t. Instead he arrested her for the murder of her boss, whom she loved, who had promised to marry her.

  He didn’t get back to his rooms on the grounds of the Shanghai Theatre Academy until almost three in the morning. Usually he entered from the west gate and went directly home. But that night, the tears of the woman he’d arrested for killing the man she loved seemed to have opened a wide hole inside him. The image of her crying at the bar wouldn’t go quietly into his mind’s storage vault. Instead it grabbed the sides and fought. Screamed and shrieked and refused to go into the darkness. So he walked the long way around and entered the far gate. The heat of the day had finally abated a few hours back and the scent of the sea tinged the gentle easterly wind.

  Fong’s city was quiet. Shanghai was never fully asleep but it got quiet from 2:30 to 5:30 in the morning when the 18 million souls finally allowed today to become yesterday. Fu Tsong had loved this time – after today, before tomorrow.

  A moment of vertigo passed through him. He leaned against the cool mud wall of the nearest building to stop the world from spinning – if only for a moment – and felt as alone as he’d ever been since he cast his wife’s body into the quick-drying cement of the huge construction pit deep in the Pudong, almost seven years ago. He shook that thought from his head and stood up straight. He was getting too old for late nights – and young love. Looking over his shoulder, he realized he was leaning against one of the old theatre’s side doors. Naturally it would be the theatre. The poster to his right announced that the place was playing Geoff Hyland’s production of Hamlet. Fong noticed that the poster art was better than usual. Then he noted that the fabulous Hao Yong was playing Gertrude – “Was she already old enough to play Hamlet’s mother?” he wondered. Fong still remembered her incredible performance as the young Indian girl in Geoff’s first production in Shanghai, The Ecstasy of Rita Joe. And now she was playing the melancholy prince’s mom. Fong nodded and said to the air, “I guess she is.”

  Fong remembered the rehearsal he had sat in on two weeks earlier and Geoff’s hand on his shoulder. And the business card with the plea. Nonsense. Just more Western paranoia about working in the Middle Kingdom.

  Fong reached into his pocket and felt the key to the theatre on his key ring. He remembered the night Fu Tsong had given it to him. Images raced through his mind. Fu Tsong’s face became Hao Yong’s and that became the face of the woman-who-killed-theman- she-loved.

  When he finally found sleep that night, he dreamt of women’s tears falling and him trying to catch them before they disappeared into the dense richness of the Chinese earth.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  A DEATH, A MEMORY AND A NOTE

  The next day was about paperwork. Not Fong’s favourite thing, although he was pleased to be able to pawn some of it off on Shrug and Knock. That night Fong picked up his toddler daughter Xiao Ming at Lily and Chen’s rooms as he did every Wednesday. They had dinner outside on Good Food Street, surrounded by the savoury smells of the cooking mixed with the human smell of thousands of people and the gentle hint of Yangtze’s saltwater tang on the evening breeze. Xiao Ming sat on Fong’s lap as they ate. Her dexterity was incredible and she would try anything Fong ordered. As the waitress cleared the last dish, Xiao Ming let loose with a really loud belch. Many other diners looked at her. Several applauded. A smile crinkled her face followed by a rolling laugh that came all the way from her belly. Fong threw his arms around her and gave her a big hug.

  She responded by grabbing his arms in her little hands and whispering, “Daddy.”

  They hustled through the throngs on Good Food Street and Fong hailed a cab. He had managed to get two tickets to the theatre for them. Xiao Ming was enchanted by the whirling, dancing, juggling, singing thing that was Peking Opera. It gratified Fong, who had always loved it.

  They fought their way through the crowd and took their seats near the front of the balcony. As soon as the lights went down, Xiao Ming climbed up on his lap. As the performance unfolded, he explained the magic of what was taking place. “When she carries the stick with the tassels it indicates that she is riding a horse. See how her posture changes as well and her gait. As if she is being carried, as if she no longer has her feet on the ground.” Xiao Ming smiled and imitated the posture while still on his lap. The scene ended as cymbals crashed and the actress struck a stunning pose on one foot. Xiao Ming clapped her small hands and shrieked “Hao” along with the rest of the crowd. As the performance proceeded, she held her father’s hand tight, eyes bright with excitement. And he watched her. Fell into her eyes. Remembered his own joy. How odd it was. The one thing he regretted was that his first wife would never meet his child. How odd.

  Another loud clash of cymbals brought him back to the theatre. The lead actor struck a pose, lifted a foot parallel to the ground then reached up and pulled the feather on his headdress down into his mouth. The horns sounded. The actor shrieked. The crowd “Hao’ed” until they were hoarse.

  Fong explained the meaning of the juggling and dances to her, just as his father had explained them to him. Then he added new ideas that his father wouldn’t even begin to understand. “This is something that is of us, Xiao Ming. It’s not like McDonald’s or computers that come from faraway. We must keep alive such things as this.” She nodded then turned her eyes back to the stage, to the stylized miracle that is Peking Opera.

  Six hours later, the phone on Fong’s night table awoke him from a deep sleep. It took Fong a few short moments to understand that the terrified voice he heard belonged to the janitor of the academy’s theatre. It took a few longer moments for Fong to pull on his clothing and race over to the old theatre. But it took many, many, much longer moments before Fong could believe the information his eyes were sending to his brain.

  A body – sirens in the distance – at the end of a rope – sirens louder – dangling from the ceiling or the flies or whatever theatre people called them. Still swinging. Perhaps the earth was in motion. Something important was falling into the caverns of Fong’s troubled heart. His enemy, his rival, the Canadian theatre director Geoff Hyland was no more.

  “Something ends but something else always begins,” an old voice whispered inside Fong’s head.

  The doors of the theatre crashed open. Police officers. Something infinitely profane in a sometimes sacred place.

  “Sir?” Fong had forgotten that he had called Captain Chen before he ran to the theatre. Forgotten that this was a crime scene. “You knew him, didn’t you sir?”

  Fong remembered the weight of Geoff’s hand on his shoulder and the writing on the back of a business card – which he had ignored out of anger, folly – jeal
ousy. Fong’s wife had died on an abortionist’s table carrying a child that could well have been fathered by this man, by Geoffrey Hyland.

  “Yes. He was my first wife’s lover.”

  Fong didn’t wait for an answer. What answer could poor Chen give? As Fong climbed the stairs to the stage to take a closer look, a voice from the darkness stopped him, “Stay off that. This is a crime site. And this time at least we are going to follow procedures.” It was Li Chou, the head of Crime Scene Unit. He didn’t wait for Fong’s response. He waved a fleshy paw and his team of six technicians hopped up on the stage. They taped off the area, set up harsh arc lights and began their work. Fong felt like a child looking in a store window at a toy he knew he’d never be able to touch. Suddenly Li Chou was right there in front of him, on the other side, the right side, of the tape. “You stay there. Don’t even think about coming across.”

  The man’s voice was unnaturally loud. For a brief moment Fong wondered why, then he got it. Fong’s subordinates were there. He had embarrassed Li Chou in front of his people and now Li Chou was returning the favour.

  “You!” Li Chou shouted to Captain Chen. “I want a word with you.” Chen waited for Fong’s approval. Fong nodded and Captain Chen moved toward Li Chou. As he passed, Fong whispered, “Tell him whatever he wants to know.” Chen stopped. Fong said it again with stronger emphasis, “Whatever he wants. It’s time for you to deal with the politics of the department if you want to stay with Special Investigations. You’re married now; think about that sometimes. Now tell him whatever he wants.”

  Captain Chen gave Fong an odd look then ducked beneath the tape and hopped up on the stage. Fong retreated to the back of the theatre, where only two weeks ago he had sat with the man who was now swinging gently from the rafters of the stage. A man who had left a business card beneath his collar, on the back of which were the words Help me, Fong.

  Captain Chen disappeared into the wings of the theatre with Li Chou as the CSU technicians meticulously laid out a grid on the stage floor with string. It always seemed to come back to this. To a theatre. To the darkness – and of course to his first wife, the actress Fu Tsong, whose image seemed to emerge from the seats, from the smells, from the very darkling light of this place.

  This stage on the campus of the Shanghai Theatre Academy had been his wife’s favourite theatre though she had performed all over Asia. Its seats were a wreck. Its lighting system was so archaic that it tripped breakers all over the neighbourhood almost every time they turned it on. Its damp mustiness was so intense it entered your mouth and nose, tainted any food or drink you brought in with you, and left a marked odour on the clothes you wore. It was inescapable. So was this place’s history. “That’s what makes a theatre a place of ghosts, dear Fong,” her sweet voice whispered beside him in the dark. It was a voice he knew so very well. He was going to turn to her but he knew she wasn’t there. Dead people were dead. They did not whisper sweetly in the darkness or hold hands or soothe the yearning of the heart.

  He had sat in the exact same seat two weeks before, the ghost of Fu Tsong beside him. Geoffrey Hyland, his wife’s lover, had been on the stage. “Naturally, in a place like this he’d be directing Hamlet. It’s a play about ghosts,” Fong had whispered to the darkness.

  Geoffrey’s elegant frame had moved across the stage, his homely translator at his side. For the briefest moment, Geoff stopped as if suspended in space then he was on his frenetic way again. Opening night was only two days away and Geoffrey was jumpier than Fong had ever seen him. He called over the actor playing Rosencrantz and loudly asked for the satchel he carried. The young actor gave the large leather thing over to Geoff, who thanked him, then yelled some instruction in his childish Mandarin all the way to the other side of the stage. His translator quickly corrected his Mandarin without Geoff knowing it and she warned all those within earshot to watch their manners when it came to criticizing Geoff. It struck Fong that the woman was quite protective of Geoff. It made him smile. Then wince.

  Geoff called the fight director onstage and spoke to him in a whisper. The fight director called the actors playing Hamlet and Laertes, who entered from stage left. Geoff nodded then headed off into the wings. The fight director set the two actors in their starting positions then dropped a handkerchief. When it hit the stage, the two drew their swords and Laertes lunged at Hamlet. Fong didn’t know this fight director, but he was immediately concerned because the actor playing Laertes seemed to be all anger and little skill. His lunges at Hamlet seemed truly intent upon hurting the other actor. The fight director stepped in just as Laertes seemed about to take a swing at Hamlet’s head.

  Geoff returned from the stage-right wings and flipped the large satchel to Guildenstern saying, “Give this to your better half.”

  “It contains the letter, sir?” asked Guildenstern.

  “Indeed it does. The death letter!” Geoff said in his best booga-booga voice. Guildenstern moved offstage with the satchel, then Geoff turned to the actors playing Hamlet and Laertes, “Fight fixed, boys?”

  Hamlet gave a nod but the actor playing Laertes glowered and stomped off. “What’s his beef?” asked the fight director.

  Before his plain-faced translator could interject, Geoff responded in his ghastly Mandarin, “I broke his rice bowl, I guess” or it could have been “dog go bowl puke” – it was hard to tell since Geoff completely ignored the tones of the words. He had the sounds right, but without the tones who could tell what he was trying to say? The translator quickly clarified Geoff’s meaning while the fight director laughed out loud. The translator glowered him into silence.

  Geoff, oblivious to all the linguistic comings and goings, moved gracefully across the stage touching a set piece here, giving a word to an actor there, and finally turned toward the auditorium.

  He stopped – as if in mid-air, again.

  The assuredness that gave him such elegance evaporated and he reverted to being the fifty-yearold man that he was. He put a hand up to his eyes to shield them from the stage light and stared out into the darkness.

  “Could he see me?” Fong wondered. He didn’t know, but it made him squirm. This man had known his deceased wife in a way that he had not, on a plane to which Fong could not ascend. They had met on the field of art and created something that endured for many years in the minds of all who had seen it.

  “Who’s there?” Geoffrey’s voice was raspier than Fong remembered. Then something struck Fong.

  “Isn’t that the opening line of this silly play?” Fong called back from the darkness.

  “Fuck me with a stick!”

  It took Fong a moment to translate that, although he couldn’t begin to guess what it meant.

  “What is your sorry ass doing here?” Geoff called out.

  That Fong got, but he was surprised. Was it possible that Geoffrey Hyland was happy to see him?

  “I repeat, what is your sorry ass doing here?”

  “Haunting you, I guess.”

  “Well, you got the right play for it.” Geoffrey turned to the actors and then called out into the house, “Let’s start at the top.” Geoff hopped off the stage followed at a respectful distance by his translator. Fong wondered why the phrase “at a respectful distance” had such a strong whiff of the hated phrase “no dogs or Chinese” which was common parlance in much of Shanghai before the liberation. He looked at the woman.

  In the Chinese theatre, where female beauty was everywhere, this middle-aged woman stood out for her profound blandness. Her features were hard to describe. Plain was the wrong word for them. Homely was better. He looked more closely at the woman. He’d seen, and to be honest, ignored her for years. Although she gave her name to foreigners as Deborah Tong, she actually had the unlikely name of Da Wei. She’d been Geoff’s translator since the first time Geoff directed in Shanghai almost ten years ago. Fong had traded only a few words with Da Wei over all those years. Her English was perfect and up to date with all the colloquialisms that drive any new Eng
lish speaker mad. She also, apparently, had a good working knowledge of the theatre – an essential for anyone translating for Geoff. No doubt she had to deal with the ostracism ladled out by Chinese to one of their own who dealt with Westerners, but it didn’t seem to weigh heavily on her. But that’s all Fong knew about her – not where she came from, not where on the academy’s campus she lived, not even her marital status – although at her age he assumed she’d be married – not even where or how she learned her English.

  Geoff headed toward Fong. The translator stayed “at a respectful distance” from both of them. Fong made a mental note to check on Da Wei’s background then promptly forgot it when Geoff took the seat directly behind him. The work lights dimmed, but just before they were completely out Fong noticed a young Chinese man in a suit slip off the stage and follow Geoff and another, older, man rise from his seat near the stage and move back toward them.

  A lengthy silence followed. Then a simple table lamp sitting on the floor near the edge of the stage came on. The dim light revealed a raised roughly hewn wooden platform that was slanted toward the audience. On it was a near-naked figure, face down – screaming. A single violin note came from the back of the auditorium. The figure turned toward it – toward the audience, toward us – and began to silently plead: No, no, please no.

  Dark figures approached. One put his hand over the man’s mouth while the other two dressed him – dressed him for his job – to lead us through the dark alleyways of Hamlet’s heart.

  “He dies for us every night,” said Geoff from the darkness. Something slithered up Fong’s spine. “Like Prometheus. Those with special gifts must suffer for our edification. It has always been thus.” Then as if conducting he said, “And in just a moment . . . ”