by Qiu Xiaolong
“Qinghe Lane? Odd—the name does not sound so strange.”
“Well, it was mentioned in the well-known biography of Chiang Kai-shek by Tang Ren, but that may well be fictional rather than factual. At that time, Fuzhou Road, still called Fourth Avenue, was a red-light district, and Fubei Street was part of it. According to some statistics, there were more than seventy thousand prostitutes in Shanghai. In addition to government-licensed prostitutes, there were also a large number of bar girls, hostesses, masseuses, and guides engaged in clandestine or casual prostitution. “
“Yes, I have read that biography,” Chen said, thinking it was time to close the “encyclopedia.”
“All the brothels were closed in the 1951 campaign,” Mr. Encyclopedia droned on. “Officially, at least, there’re no prostitutes under China’s sun. Those who refused to change were put into reform-through-labor institutes. Most of them turned over a new leaf. I doubt any of them would have chosen to stay in the same neighborhood.”
“I doubt that, too.”
“Some sexual case in the lane?”
“No. Just looking for somebody living there,” Chen said. “Thank you so much for your information.”
Qinghe Lane turned out to be the one next to the grocery store. The lane looked decayed and dismal, with a glass-and-concrete-fronted kiosk attached to the first building, which made the entrance even narrower. Droplets from laundry festooned over a network of bamboo poles overhead presented an Impressionist scene in the May sunlight. It was believed that walking under the women’s lacy underwear like that streaming over the poles would bring bad luck for the day, but with the past associations of the lane in his mind, Chief Inspector Chen found it to be almost nostalgic.
Most of the houses had been built in the twenties or even earlier. Number 18 was actually the first building, the one with the kiosk attached. It had a walled-off courtyard, tiled roofs, and heavy carved beams, its balconies spilling over with laundry dripping on the piles of vegetables and used bicycle parts in the courtyard. On the door of the kiosk was a red plastic sign announcing in bold strokes: Public Phone Service. An old man was sitting inside, surrounded by several phones and phone books, working not only as a phone operator, but probably as a doorman as well.
“Morning,” the old man said.
“Morning,” Chen replied.
Even before the revolution, the house appeared to have been subdivided to accommodate more girls, each room containing one bed, of course, if not much else, with smaller alcoves for maidservants or pimps. That was probably why the house had been turned into a dorm building after 1949. Now each of these rooms was inhabited by a family. What might have originally served as a spacious dining room, where customers ordered banquets to please prostitutes, had been partitioned into several rooms, too. A closer examination revealed many signs of neglect characteristic of such dorm buildings: gaping windows, scaling cement, peeling paint, and the smell from the public bathroom permeating the corridor. Apparently each floor shared only one bathroom. And a quarter of the bathroom had been redesigned with makeshift plastic partitions into a concrete shower area.
Chen was not unfamiliar with this type of dorm. Dormitories in Shanghai could be classified into two kinds. One was conventional: each room contained nothing but beds or bunks, six or eight of them, each resident occupying no more than one bunk’s space. For these residents, most likely bachelors or bachelor girls waiting for their work units to assign them rooms so that they could get married, such a dorm space was just a temporary solution. Chen, in the days before he had become a chief inspector, had thought about getting a dorm bunk for himself, for it could well be that such a gesture would bring pressure to bear upon the housing committee. He had even checked into it, but Party Secretary Li’s promise had changed his mind. The second kind was an extension of the first. Due to the severe housing problem, those on the waiting list could find themselves reaching their mid-or-late thirties, still with no hope of having an apartment assigned to them. As a sort of compromise, a dorm room instead of a bunk space would be assigned to those who could not afford to wait any longer. They remained, theoretically, on the waiting list though their chances would be greatly reduced.
Guan’s room, apparently of the second kind, was on the second floor, the last one at the end of the corridor, across from the public bathroom. It was not one of the most desirable locations, but easy access to the bathroom might count as a bonus. Guan, too, had to share it with other families on the same floor. Eleven of them in all. The corridor was lined with piles of coal, cabbages, pots and pans, and coal stoves outside the doors.
On one of the doors was a piece of cardboard with the character Guan written on it. Outside the door stood a small dust-covered coal stove with a pile of pressed coal-cylinders beside it. Chen opened the door with a master key. The doormat inside was littered with mail—more than a week’s newspapers, a postcard from Beijing signed by someone called Zhang Yonghua, and an electricity bill which, ironically, still bore the pre-1949 address—Qinghe Lane.
It was a tiny room.
The bed was made, the ashtray empty, and the window closed. There was nothing to indicate that Guan had entertained any guest before her death. Nor did it look like a place in which someone had been murdered. The room appeared too tidy, too clean. The furniture was presumably her parents’, old and heavy, but still in usable condition, consisting of a single bed, a chest, a large wardrobe, a small bookshelf, a sofa with a faded red cover, and a stool that might have served as nightstand. A thirteen-inch TV stood on the wardrobe. On the bookshelf were dictionaries, a set of Selected Works of Mao Zedong, a set of Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping, and a variety of political pamphlets and magazines. The bed was not only old, it was narrow and shabby. Chen touched it. There was no squeak of bedsprings, no mattress under the sheet, just the hardboard. There was a pair of red slippers under the bed, as if anchoring the emptiness of the silent room.
On the wall above the headboard was a framed photograph of Guan making a presentation at the third National Model Workers Conference in the People’s Great Conference Hall. In the background of the picture sat the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party applauding with some other high ranking cadres. There was also a huge portrait of Comrade Deng Xiaoping on the other wall above the sofa.
In the wastebasket, he saw nothing but several balls of tissues. On top of the chest was a bottle of vitamin pills, the cap still unbroken. Several lipsticks. Bottles of imported perfumes. A tiny plastic-framed mirror. He checked the drawers of the chest. The top drawer contained cash receipts from stores, some blank envelopes, and a movie magazine. The second drawer held several photo albums. The contents of the third was more mixed. An imitation leather trinket box holding an assortment of costume jewelry. Some more expensive lotions and perfumes, perhaps samples from the store. He also found a gold choker with a crescent-shaped pendant, a Citizen watch with clear stones around the face, and a necklace made of some exotic animal bone.
In the cupboard fastened on the wall, he saw several glasses and mugs, but only a couple of black bowls with a small bunch of bamboo chopsticks. It was understandable, Chen reflected. It was not a place to which to invite people. She could have offered a cup of tea at the most.
He opened one door of the wardrobe, which revealed several shelves of tightly packed clothes: a dark-brown winter overcoat, several white blouses, wool sweaters, and three pairs of trousers hung in a corner, all of them demure and rather dull in color. They were not necessarily inexpensive but seemed conservative for a young woman. On the floor stood a pair of high-heeled black shoes, a pair of oxfords with rubber spikes, and a pair of galoshes.
When he opened the other door, however, it revealed a surprise. On the top shelf lay some new, well-made clothes, of fine material and popular design. Chief Inspector Chen did not know much about the fashion world, but he knew they were expensive from the well-known brands or the shop tags still attached to them. Underneath was
a large collection of underwear that women’s magazines would probably term “romantic,” or even “erotic,” some of the sexiest pieces he had ever seen, with the lace being a main ingredient rather than a trimming.
He was unable to reconcile the striking contrast between the two sides of the wardrobe.
She had been a single woman, not dating anyone at the time of her death.
Then he moved back to the chest, took the photo albums out of the drawer, and put them on the table, next to a tall glass of water containing a bouquet of wilted flowers, a pen holder, a small paper bag of black pepper, and a bottle of Crystal pure water. It seemed that the table had served as her dining table, desk, and kitchen counter—all in one.
There were four albums. In the first, most of the pictures were black-and-white. A few showed a chubby girl with a ponytail. A girl of seven or eight, grinning for the camera, or blowing out candles on a cake. In one, she stood between a man and woman on the Bund, the man’s image blurred but the woman’s fairly clear. Presumably her parents. It took four or five album pages for her to start wearing a Red Scarf—a Young Pioneer saluting the raising of the five-starred flag at her school. The pictures were arranged chronologically.
He snapped to attention when he turned to a small picture on the first page of the second album. It must have been taken in the early seventies. Sitting on a rock by a pool, one bare foot dabbling in the water, the other held up above the knee, Guan was piercing the blisters on her sole with a needle. The background showed several young people holding a banner with the words Long March on it, striding proudly toward the Yan’an pagoda in the distance. It was the da chuanlian period of the Cultural Revolution when Red Guards traveled all around the country, spreading Chairman Mao’s ideas on “continuation of the revolution under the proletarian dictatorship.” Yan’an, a county where Mao had stayed before 1949, became a sacred place, to which Red Guards made their pilgrimage. She must have been a kid, newly qualified as a Red Guard, but there she was, wearing a red armband, blistered, but eager to catch up.
In the middle of the second album, she had grown into a young girl with a fine, handsome face, big almond eyes, and thick eyelashes. There was more resemblance to National Model Worker Guan as shown in the newspapers.
The third album consisted of pictures from Guan’s political life. There were a considerable number of them showing her together with various Party leaders at one conference or another. Ironically, these pictures could have served to trace the dramatic changes in China’s politics, with some leaders vanishing, and some moving to the front, but Guan, unchanged, stood in her familiar pose, in the familiar limelight.
Then came the last album, the thickest: the pictures of Guan’s personal life. There were so many of them, and they were all so different, Chen was impressed. Shots from various angles, in various outfits, and with various backgrounds: reclining in a canoe at dusk, wearing a striped camp shirt with a fitted skirt, her face calm and relaxed; standing on her toes by an imported limousine in sunlight; kneeling on the muddy plank of a little bridge, scratching her bare ankle, bending forward over the railing, the weight of her body resting on her right foot; gazing at the misty horizon through a window, her face framed by her tangled hair, a cloud of velvety cattail blurred in a distant field; perching on the steps of an ancient temple, a transparent plastic raincoat over her shoulders, a silk scarf drawn over her hair, her mouth half-open, as if she were on the verge of saying something ....
It was not just that the pictures formed a sharp contrast to her “model worker” image in the previous album. In these pictures, she struck Chief Inspector Chen as more than pretty or vivacious. She looked radiant, lit from within. It seemed there was a message in these pictures. What it was, however, Chen could not decipher.
There were also a couple of more surprising close-ups: in one, she was lying on a love seat, her round shoulders covered only with a white bath towel; in another, she was sitting on a marble table, wearing a terry robe, dangling her bare legs; in yet another, she was kneeling, in a bathing suit, its shoulder straps off, her hair tousled, looking breathless.
Chief Inspector Chen blinked, trying to break the momentary spell of Guan’s image.
Who had taken these pictures, he wondered. Where had she had them developed? Especially the close-ups. State-run studios would have refused to take the order, for some of the pictures could be labeled as “bourgeois decadent.” And at unscrupulous private studios, she might have run a serious risk, for those entrepreneurs could have sold such pictures for money. It could have been politically disastrous if she had been recognized as the national model worker.
An album page was large enough for four standard-sized pictures, but for several pages, each held only one or two. The last few pages were blank.
It was about noon when he returned the albums to the drawer. He did not feel hungry. Through the window he thought he could hear the distant roar of a bulldozer working at a construction site.
Chief Inspector Chen decided to talk to Guan’s neighbors. He first went to the next door along the corridor, a door still decorated with a faded red paper couplet celebrating the Chinese Spring Festival. There was also a plastic yin-yang symbol dangling as a sort of decoration.
The woman who opened the door was small and fair, wearing slacks and a cotton-knit top, a white apron around her waist. She must have been busy cooking, for she wiped one hand on the apron as she held the door open with the other. He guessed she was in her mid-thirties. She had tiny lines around her mouth.
Chen introduced himself, showing his business card to her.
“Come in,” she said, “my name is Yuan Peiyu.”
Another efficiency room. Identical in size and shape to Guan’s, it appeared smaller, with clothes and other diverse objects scattered round. In the middle of the room was a round table bearing row upon row of fresh-made dumplings, together with a pile of dumpling skins and a bowl of pork stuffing. A boy in an imitation army uniform came out from under the table. He was chewing a half-eaten bun, staring up at Chen. The little soldier stretched up a sticky fist and made a gesture of throwing the bun toward Chen like a grenade.
“Bang!”
“Stop! Don’t you see he is a police officer?” said his mother.
“That’s okay,” Chen said. “I’m sorry to bother you, Comrade Yuan. You must have heard of your neighbor’s death. I just want to ask you a few questions.”
“Sorry,” she said. “I cannot help you. I don’t know anything about her.”
“You’ve been neighbors for several years?”
“Yes, about five years.”
“Then you must have had some contact with each other, cooking together on the corridor, or washing clothes in the common sink.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what. She left home at seven in the morning, and came back at seven—sometimes much later. The moment she got back, she shut the door tight. She never invited us in, nor visited us. She did her laundry in the store, with all the washing machines on display there. Free, and perhaps free detergent too. She ate at the store canteen. Once or twice a month, she would cook at home, a packet of instant noodles or something like that, though she kept her stove in the corridor all the time. Her sacred right to the public space.”
“So you’ve never talked to her at all?”
“When we saw each other, she nodded to me. That’s about all.” Yuan added. “A celebrity. She would not mix with us. So what’s the point of pressing our hot faces up to her cold ass?”
“Maybe she was just too busy.”
“She was somebody, and we’re nobody. She made great contributions to the Party! We can hardly make ends meet.”
Surprised at the resentment shown by Guan’s neighbor, Chen said, “No matter in what position we work, we’re all working for our socialist China.”
“Working for socialist China?” her voice rose querulously. “Last month I was laid off from the state-run factory. I need to feed my son; his father died several years
ago. So making dumplings all day is what I do now, from seven to seven, if you want to call that working for socialist China. And I have to sell them at the food market at six in the morning.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Comrade Yuan,” he said. “Right now China is in a transitional period, but things will get better.”
“It’s not your fault. Why should you feel sorry? Just spare me a political lecture about it. Comrade Guan Hongying did not want to make friends with us. Period.”
“Well, she must have had some friends coming to visit her here.”
“Maybe or maybe not, but that’s her business, not mine.”
“I understand, Comrade Yuan,” he said, “but I still want to ask you some other questions. Did you notice anything unusual about Guan in the last couple of months?”
“I’m no detective, so I do not know what’s usual or unusual.”