by Qiu Xiaolong
In addition to those upstarts in the private business sector, Party officials or cadres also had begun to obtain these modern devices for their apartments. It was not hard for people to notice such widespread corruption, and they pointed angry fingers at the privileged few. Chen himself had complained about this.
But some things might take place in a “gray area,” Chen reflected. An emerging Party cadre like himself had to make connections for his work, connections like Mr. Gu. And with such connections came other things. In China, in the last analysis, connections meant everything. Guanxi.
He checked himself from speculating further along those lines. For the moment, he had no alternative but to concentrate on the New World proposal. Sometimes, we could be most productive under pressure. He dashed through two pages before he allowed himself to take a short break.
The heater had already started working with a light whirring sound. As in the New World, where, whatever the appearance of the exterior, modern luxuries inside would be necessary. His fingers seemed to be moving deftly over the keyboard with a new rhythm. Looking out the window, he saw another apartment complex looming up not too far away. A lonesome tung tree trembled in the chilly wind. He turned back resolutely to the text on the computer screen.
The New World could turn out to be like present-day China, full of contradictions. On the outside, the socialist system under the rule of the Communist Party, but on the inside, capitalist practice in whatever disguise.
Could the combination of the two really work?
Perhaps. No one was in a position to tell, but it seemed to have been doing fine so far, in spite of the tension between the two. And in spite of a price too—the ever-increasing gap between the poor and the rich.
The rich had already started to be concerned with Shanghai’s existential myth—the Paris of the Orient, the glitter and glory of the thirties—part and parcel of the superstructure to be erected on top of a socialist economic basis, the former justifying the latter, and vice versa, just like one of the Marxist principles Chen had studied in college.
For people like Gu, as well the consumers he anticipated, once the economic basis was established, a brave New World could, and perhaps should, exist. But what about the poor, who in the real world could hardly keep their pots boiling?
He was not meant to be a philosopher or economist, Chen reminded himself. He was nothing but a cop who happened to be translating a business proposal relating to the history of the city.
When the installer finally left, taking the cigarette Chen offered him and placing it behind his ear, Chen found the translation slowing down mysteriously. The new section dwelled on marketing plans in the context of globalization. He had no problem understanding the Chinese text, but he was not so sure about the exact English equivalents. Nor was it just a matter of looking up words in a dictionary, for it involved a number of new concepts, which had hardly existed in the Chinese language previously. Within the socialist state economy, for instance, “marketing” was a non-existent concept. State-run companies simply kept manufacturing in accordance with the state plan. There was no need or room for marketing. For many years, Chinese people cited a proverb: If the wine smells really wonderful, customers will come in spite of the length of the lane. Such an approach was not applicable to today’s business world.
Perhaps that was one of the reasons why—if Gu’s story was true—the first translator had failed.
Chen made himself a cup of tea. The room seemed cozy, almost intimate, with the heater purring next to the bookshelf.
White Cloud was scheduled to come in the afternoon. He looked in his notebook. She might help to find the definitions he needed in a new dictionary, but that would not be enough. As far as he knew, the latest English-Chinese dictionary had been compiled five or six years earlier, when a large number of these concepts had been far from common in China. So he’d better read some articles or books about marketing, not necessarily to get the exact meanings, but to able to convey roughly corresponding ideas in translation.
He skipped the marketing section and moved on to the part about the restaurant business in the New World. That section proved to be both pleasant and absorbing.
Around one, White Cloud arrived. She looked tired, even slightly haggard, with noticeable black circles under her almond-shaped eyes. Perhaps she had studied late the night before, as her day had been filled with her little secretary responsibilities.
She took off her jacket and draped it over the sofa. At once she noticed the change in the temperature of the room. She turned to him with a broad grin.
“Thanks for your suggestion to Gu,” he said.
“You should have had these things long ago. Don’t be so hard on yourself,” she said. “Oh, here is a tape of my interview with some of the staff members at the university.”
“You are a great secretary, White Cloud.”
“Little, not great,” she giggled.
He would have liked to listen to the tape at once, but her presence in the room made it difficult to focus on the investigation.
“Can I take a hot shower here?” she asked abruptly.
“Sure. But the installer was just here. I have not yet cleaned up.”
“You don’t have to worry about that,” she said.
Kicking off her shoes, she went into the bathroom with her bag and turned back with a smile before closing the door after her. He wondered whether this was a calculated gesture, inviting intimacy. Listening for the sound of the shower, he tried not to read too much into her status as a little secretary.
He began playing the tape. Its contents were not exactly interviews, more like a collection of various people’s observations. It was little wonder, since she had neither the authority nor the training of a cop. In fact, it was surprising that the interviewees had talked to her.
The first interview was of a senior professor at the college where Yin had taught: “She was an opportunist. Why do I say so? First, she saw an opportunity by becoming a Red Guard! And all of us turned into the targets of her ruthless revolutionary criticism. When her luck at being a rebel changed, she saw her opportunity in being with Yang. He was a brilliant scholar. Like a gold mine undiscovered. Like buying valuable stocks at the bottom. Sooner or later the Cultural Revolution would end, she must have foreseen that. Only she carried the romantic drama too far—at his expense. Still, she did not really lose, did she? The book, the fame, the money, what-not!”
The next one was of a retired lecturer named Zhuang who had worked with Yang for several years and met with Yin a few times: “He was just too bookish. Even in those years, he remained so idealistic, still reading and writing, something like Doctor Zhivago, I think. As for her, she was already a plain spinster, with problems in her political dossier. That was her last chance, and of course she scrambled to take it.”
The third was of a middle-aged researcher whose last name was Pang, who had read Yin’s novel, but had had little personal contact with her: “As a writer, she was not so talented. If the book attracted a lot of attention, it is more because of its autobiographical nature. Now that’s another shame. No big deal if the book was merely about herself. No, she was nobody without him. So the appeal really came from him. ...”
In these interviews, White Cloud did not pose questions. As she was not a cop, it was clever of her not to try to sound like one. But in the interview with Pang, she did ask “So you don’t believe she fell in love with him at the time; but didn’t she, too, take a great risk by having an affair?”
“I’m not saying that she did not care for him at all—she did, in her way,” Pang answered. “But I would say that, as far as she was concerned, there must have been other considerations involved.”
Generally, Chen reflected, that might be true—must be true.
It was difficult to draw a clear-cut line anywhere, yet not so difficult for others to make comments.
When he heard the slow turning of the bathroom doorknob, he had been so absorbed in his
thoughts that he was startled. He pressed the off button on his computer. He did not know how long she had been in the bathroom. There was not even a real bathtub, only a tiny space partitioned out in concrete with a shower head above, but she must have taken her time there. That was not surprising. A hot shower was still a luxury for most Shanghainese. He looked up to see her walking, barefoot, over to his desk. She was wearing his gray terry robe, which she might have noticed in the apartment at any time. The robe parted as she bent to look over his shoulder. He caught a glimpse of her breasts, her face flushed with the heat, her hair glistening with the beads of water, and he thought of several lines by Li Bai, a well-known Tang dynasty poet. They were from a poem that Yang had included in his manuscript:
The clouds eager to make
your dancing costume, the peony,
to imitate your beauty, the spring breeze
touching the rail, the petal glistening with dew. . . .
But he remembered having quoted them the first time White Cloud and he had met, when they danced together in that private karaoke room, she wearing a dudou, an ancient Chinese halter-like garment that had suddenly become popular, his hand touching her bare back. That might not be an appropriate scene to remind her of, so he did not recite these lines aloud now.
Li Bai, something akin to the Tang palace poet, had gotten into political trouble because of the poem. According to later critics, the imperial concubine was not pleased with the idea of being appreciated by a poet on behalf of the emperor. But the same later critics were laudatory of the poetry. The lesson seemed to be that a poet should never become involved in politics.
“What are you thinking?” she said as she stood behind him, drying her hair with a towel.
“It’s not easy for people to forget what happened during the Cultural Revolution,” he said. His gaze fell upon her slender ankle. No tattoo there, her red-painted toenails like fresh petals. Could he have imagined that tattoo the other day? “Nor is it easy for people not to judge from their own perspectives.”
“What do you mean, Chief Inspector Chen?”
“People cannot wipe out the impression of Red Guards that they formed during the Cultural Revolution.”
“Yes, I, too, was surprised that most of them seemed to be so biased against her, even some who hardly had any personal contact with her.”
“Well, there is a Chinese proverb, When three people start talking about seeing a tiger on the street, everybody else in the city believes it.” He added abruptly, “One of your interviewees, Mr. Zhuang, mentioned Doctor Zhivago. Do you have his phone number?”
“Yes. Is it important?”
“I don’t know, but I think I’ll look into it.”
“Here it is,” she said, handing him a small piece of paper.
“Now I have something else for you to do, White Cloud, but you looked a bit tired today.”
“I slept late. That’s nothing. The hot shower has helped.”
He explained to her the problem he was having with the marketing section of the business proposal.
“Oh, I happen to have read an introductory book on marketing. A very good introduction, concise yet comprehensive. I may have given it to a friend, but I can find it in the library.”
“Your major is Chinese, right?”
“The government still assigns jobs to college students, but there are no good jobs for Chinese majors,” she said. “No joint venture company will hire someone capable only of reading classical poems.”
“The water flows, flowers fall, and the spring fades. / It’s a changed world.”
“Why did you recite those lines from Li Yu?” she asked.
“I am thinking of my college days, when the government assigned me to my job in the police bureau. I was interested in nothing but poetry then.”
“But you have a marvelous job, Chief Inspector Chen,” she said, tugging at the robe belt tentatively. “I’m going to change. I’ll bring the book over today if I can get it. Don’t worry.”
Her departure made it possible for him to refocus on the homicide investigation. He decided to take a short cut, using his connections. Internal Security had not been helpful in providing essential information, so he would have to try to find out what they needed to know in his own way. He had a friend, Huang Shan, who was the director of the foreign liaison office of the Shanghai Writers’ Association. Chen had once been considered as a candidate for the position, but had recommended his friend Huang instead. Since Yin Lige had made the trip to Hong Kong as a member of the Shanghai Writers’ Association, the foreign liaison office must have kept a file on her. Her dossier should be available to Huang. Chen dialed Huang’s phone number; he readily promised to help.
As Chen expected, the information he had requested arrived by special courier that afternoon.
Chen saw that Yin had recently made an application for renewal of her passport. The formalities required that an applicant first be approved by his or her work unit. Yin had chosen to go through the Writers’ Association because of her membership in that group, rather than through her college. The application was based on an invitation from a small American university for a trip at the end of the coming summer.
In the past, an application of a dissident writer like Yin would have been denied at the outset. But the Party authorities must have come to the realization that the more they tried to keep dissidents at home, the more attention they attracted abroad. Once out of China, they were no longer the focus of attention, no longer even a nine days’ wonder. In fact, the Party authorities had believed that Yin would not return from her earlier trip to Hong Kong. Good riddance once and for all, they must have hoped. However, she had come back to Shanghai. So there was no reason to reject her current application for a passport renewal.
Nor did there seem to be anything suspicious about her application, according to Huang. Yin had been invited as a visiting scholar for the next school year and granted a fellowship, although it was only symbolic in terms of money. So a literary agency in New York had provided a financial support affidavit. With or without the affidavit, as a well-known dissident writer, Yin would not have had a problem getting a visa from the American consul in Shanghai.
But the information surprised Chen, for Yu should have been informed of her application, whatever political considerations Internal Security or the higher authorities might have had. For the first time, Chen seriously considered the possibility that the murder might have been politically motivated. Why else would they be so cagey even after her death? But, on the other hand, if the government had intended to prevent her leaving China, wouldn’t she have been denied a passport when she had applied to make the earlier trip to Hong Kong? “Murdered Before Her Trip to the United States”: such a headline would be internationally sensational, would have the potential to damage the new image the government was trying hard to present to the world.
Then something else in the file caught his attention. Yin had recently had her birth certificate and diploma translated and notarized through the Writers’ Association. This made no sense unless as a step toward emigration. Like so many others, she might have intended to remain in the United States. And there was something odd about the sponsorship affidavit too, although it was not exactly suspicious. For a lot of Chinese would-be emigrants, that financial affidavit served only for the visa application. The sponsoring individual had agreed beforehand with the applicant that he would not, in fact, be liable, despite signing and swearing to the document. But if an American company furnished such a financial affidavit, it might be different. Why should a literary agency have offered her financial support for a year? That was a lot of money. As far as Chen knew, Death of a Chinese Professor had not sold that well in the United States. The relatively small sum it had earned was out of proportion to what the literary agency had promised in the affidavit.
He made himself a pot of coffee. Whistling, he tapped lightly on the Brazilian coffee can. He hoped the cup of coffee would give him fresh ideas.<
br />
Was it possible that she had another book contract obtained by that agency? If so, they might have used her advance as the sum promised in the affidavit. There was no information, however, about Yin having written a new book.
Could it be money for Yang’s poetry translation? That might also account for the presence of the manuscript in the bank safety deposit box.
But there was no information about this either. Also, he doubted that a translation of Chinese poems into English would sell so well.
* * * *
Chapter 13
Y
u left for home early in the afternoon. He could not do any solid thinking in the neighborhood committee office, where people were constantly coming and going. Nor did he want to return to the police bureau. He was in no mood for another political lecture from Party Secretary Li.