by Qiu Xiaolong
The coffee smelled fresh. So did the juice. She picked up the bottle and raised it to her mouth. Loosening the kerchief that secured her hair, she looked relaxed, her foot hooked over the horizontal bar of the chair.
He could not help wondering at the change in her face in the sunlight. Every time he met her, he would seem to perceive something different in her. One moment she appeared to be a bluestocking, nibbling at the top of a fountain pen, mature and pensive, with the weight of fast-developing world news on her shoulders; the next moment she would come to him, a young girl in wooden sandals, scampering down the corridor. But on this May morning, she appeared to be a typical Shanghai girl, soft, casual, at ease in the company of the man she liked.
There was even a light green jade charm dangling on a thin red string over her bosom. Like most Shanghai girls, she, too, wore those small, superstitious trinkets. Then she began chewing a stick of gum, her head leaned back, blowing a bubble into the sunlight.
He did not feel the need to speak at the moment. Her breath, only inches away, was cool from the minty gum. He had intended to take her hand across the table, but instead, he tapped his finger on the paper napkin in front of her.
A sense of being up and above the Bund filled him.
“What’re you thinking about?” he said.
“What mask are you wearing at this moment—policeman or poet?”
“You’ve asked that for the second time. Are the two so contradictory?”
“Or a prosperous businessman from abroad?” she said, giggling. “You’re certainly dressed like one.”
He was wearing his dark suit, a white shirt, and one of his few ties that looked exotic, a gift from a former schoolmate, an owner of several high-tech companies in Toronto who had told him that the design on the tie represented a romantic scene in a modern Canadian play. There was no point in sitting with her in his police uniform.
“Or just a lover,” he said impulsively, “head over heels.” He met her gaze, guessing he had made himself as transparent as water. Not the water in the Huangpu River.
“You’re being impossible,” she said, smiling, “even in the middle of your murder investigation.”
It did slightly disturb him that he could be so sensitive to her attractiveness when he should have been concentrating on solving the case. When she was alive, Guan Hongying might have been as attractive. Especially in those pictures in the cloud-wrapped mountains, Guan posing in a variety of elegant attire, young, lively, vivacious. All in such a sharp contrast to that naked, swollen body pulled out of a black plastic garbage bag.
They sat at the table, not speaking for a couple of minutes, watching an antique-looking sampan swaying in the tide. A wave shook the sampan near the parrot wall, bringing down a cloth diaper from a clothesline stretched across the deck.
“A family sampan, the couple working down in the cabin,” he said, “and living there too.”
“A torn sail married to a broken oar,” she said, still chewing the gum.
A bubble of metaphor iridescent in the sun.
A half-naked baby was crawling out of the cabin under the tarpaulin, as if to satisfy their expectation, grinning at them like a Wuxi earthen doll.
For the moment, they felt they had the river to themselves.
Not the river, but the moment it starts rippling in your eyes . . .
He was on the track of a poem.
“Your mind is on the case again?”
“No, but now that you mention it,” he said, “there is something puzzling about it.”
“I’m no investigator,” she said, “but talking about it may help.”
Chief Inspector Chen had learned that verbalizing a case to an attentive listener was helpful. Even if the listener did not offer any constructive suggestions, sometimes questions alone from an untrained—or simply a new—perspective could open fresh paths of inquiry. So he started talking about the case. He was not worried about sharing information with her, even though she was a Wenhui reporter. She listened intently, her cheek lightly resting on her hand, then leaned forward across the table, gazing at him, the morning light of the city in her eyes.
“So here we are,” Chen said, having recapitulated the points he had discussed in the special group meeting the previous day, “with a number of unanswered questions. And the only fact we have established is that Guan left the dorm for a vacation around ten thirty on May tenth. As for what happened to her afterward, we have discovered nothing—except the caviar.”
“Nothing else suspicious?”
“Well, there is something else. Not really suspicious, but it just does not make sense to me. She was going somewhere on vacation, but no one knew where. People are usually so excited about their vacation that they will talk a lot about it.”
“That’s true,” she said, “but in her case, couldn’t her reserve result from a need for privacy?”
“That’s what we suspect, but the whole thing seemed to be just too secretive. Detective Yu has checked with all the travel agencies, and there’s no record with her name registered either.”
“Well, she might have traveled by herself.”
“That’s possible, but I doubt that a single young woman would travel all by herself. Unless she had some other people, or one man as her companion, I think it unlikely. That’s my hypothesis, and the caviar fits. What’s more, last October she had made another trip. We know where she went that time—the Yellow Mountains. But whether she went there by herself, with someone, or with a group, we don’t know. Yu has researched that, too, but we have no leads.”
“That’s strange,” she said, her eyes half closing in thought. “No train goes there. You have to change to a bus in Wuhu, and to get from the bus terminal to the mountains, you have to walk quite a distance. And then to find a hotel for yourself in the mountains can be a headache. It saves you a lot of money, and energy, too, to go with a tourist group. I’ve been there, I know.”
“Yes, and another thing. According to the records at the department store, her vacation in the mountains lasted about ten days, from the end of September through the first week in October. Detective Yu has contacted all the hotels there. But her name did not appear on any of their records.”
“Are you sure that she went there?”
“Positive. She showed her colleagues some pictures from the mountains. In fact, I’ve seen quite a few in her album.”
“She must have a lot of pictures.”
“For a young pretty woman, not too many,” he said, “but some are really good.”
Indeed, some of the pictures appeared highly professional. Still vivid in his mind, for instance, was the one of Guan leaning against the famous mountain pine, with white clouds woven into her streaming black hair. It would do for the cover of a travel brochure.
“Are there pictures of her with other people?”
“A lot of them, of course. One with Comrade Deng Xiaoping himself.”
“Pictures from that mountain trip?” Wang said, picking up a grape with her slender fingers.
“Well, I’m not sure,” Chen said, “but I don’t think so. That’s something—”
Something worth looking into.
“Supposing Guan made the trip all by herself,” she was peeling the grape. “She could have met some people in the mountains staying in the same hotel, talked about the scenery, taken pictures for each other—”
“And taken pictures together. You’re absolutely right,” he said. “And some of the tourists would have worn their name tags.”
“Name tags—yes, that’s possible,” she said, “if they were traveling in a group.”
“I have looked through all the albums,” he said, stealing a glance at his wristwatch, “but I may do it all over again.”
“And as soon as possible,” she was putting the peeled grape into his saucer.
The grape appeared greenish, almost transparent against her lovely fingers.
He reached across to take her hands on the table. They h
ad a sort of mutual understanding that he appreciated: Chief Inspector Chen had to investigate.
She shook her head, looking as though she was about to say something, but changed her mind.
“What is it?”
“I’m concerned about you.” She withdrew her hand with a small frown.
“Why?”
“Your obsession with the case,” she said softly, standing up from the chair. “An ambitious man is not necessarily obnoxious, but you are going a bit too far, Comrade Chief Inspector.”
“No, I’m not that obsessed with the case,” he said. “In fact, you are just reminding me of two lines—‘With the green skirt of yours in my mind, everywhere, / Everywhere I step over the grass ever so lightly’.”
“You don’t have to cover yourself by quoting those lines,” she said, starting to move toward the staircase. “I know how much your work means to you.”
“Not as much as you think,” he said, imitating the way she shook her head, “certainly not as much as you.”
“How is your mother?” she was changing the subject again.
“Fine. Still waiting for me to grow up, get hitched, make her a grandma.”
“Work on growing up first.”
Wang could be sarcastic at times, but it might just be a defense mechanism. So he laughed.
“I am wondering,” he said, “if we can get together again—this weekend.”
“To talk more about the investigation?” she teased him good-humoredly.
“If you like,” he said. “I also want to have dinner with you at my place.”
“Fine, I’d like that, but not this weekend,” she said. “I’ll check my calendar. I’m not a gourmet cook like your ‘Overseas Chinese’ pal, but I can work up a pretty good Sichuan pickle. How does that sound?”
“It sounds terrific.’
She turned to him with an enigmatic smile, “You don’t have to accompany me to my office.”
So he stood, lit a cigarette, and watched her crossing the street, coming to a stop at the central safety island. There she looked back, the green skirt trailing across the long curve of her legs, and her smile filled him with a surprising sense of completeness. She waved to him before she turned into the side street leading to the Wenhui building.
Of late, he had been giving some thought to the future of their relationship.
Politically she would not make an ideal choice. Her future would be affected by her so-called husband’s defection. Even after her divorce, the stain in her file would remain. It would not have mattered that much if Chen had not been a chief inspector. As an “emerging Party member cadre,” he knew the Party authorities were aware of every step he was making. So were some of his colleagues, who would be pleased to see his career tarnished by such a union.
A married woman, though no more than nominally married, was not “culturally desirable,” either.
But what was the point of being a chief inspector if he could not care for a woman he liked?
He threw away his cigarette. One decision he had made: he was walking to Qinghe Lane instead of taking a bus. He wanted to do some thinking.
Crossing the safety island, he stepped over the green grass lightly.
* * * *
Chapter 12
T
his May morning was bright and despite the early heat the air was fresh.
The traffic wound itself into a terrible snarl along Henan Road. Chief Inspector Chen cut his way through the long line of cars, congratulating himself on his decision to walk. New construction was under way everywhere, and detour signs popped up like mushrooms after a spring rain, adding to the traffic problem. Near the Eastern Bookstore, he noticed another old building being pulled down. In its place, a five-star hotel would soon arise. An imported red convertible rolled by. A young girl sitting by the driver waved her hand at a postman late on his round.
Shanghai was changing rapidly.
So were the people.
So was he, seeing more and more meaning in his police work, though he stepped into a bookstore, and spent several minutes looking for a poetry collection. Chief Inspector Chen was not that obsessed with the case, nor with its political significance for his career.
There was, perhaps, one side of him that had always been bookish, nostalgic, or introspective. Sentimental, or even somewhat sensual in a classic Chinese version—”fragrance from the red sleeves imbues your reading at night.” But there was also another side to him. Not so much antiromantic as realistic, though not as ambitious as Wang had accused him of being at the Riverfront Cafe. A line memorized in his college years came back to him: “The most useless being is a poor bookworm.” It was by Gao Shi, a well-known general, successful in the mid-Tang dynasty, and a first-class poet at the same time.
General Gao had lived in an era when the once prosperous Tang dynasty was torn by famine, corruption, and wars, so the talented poet-general had taken it upon himself to make a difference—through his political commitment—for the country.
Today, China was once more witnessing a profound change, with significant challenges to the established systems and views. At such a historical juncture, Chen was also inclined to think that he could make a more realistic difference as a chief inspector than just as a poet. A difference, even if not as substantial as General Gao’s, which would be felt in the lives of the people around him. For example, by his investigation of this crime.
In China, and perhaps anywhere else, making such a difference would be more possible from a position of power, Chief Inspector Chen thought, as he inserted the key into the lock of Guan’s dorm room door.
To his dismay, the hopes that led him to make a second visit to Guan’s room were evaporating fast. He stood there under the framed portrait of Comrade Deng Xiaoping, musing. Nothing seemed to have changed in the room. And he could find nothing new in the photos, either, though there were several showing Guan in the mountains. He took these out and arranged them in a line on the table. Vivid images. Sharp colors. Standing by the famous welcoming pine, she smiled into the camera. Looking up at the peak, she lifted up her arms to the white clouds. Sitting on a jutting rock, she dabbled her bare feet in the mountain stream.
There was also one in a hotel room. Perching on the window sill, she was dressed rather scantily, her long, shapely bare legs dangling gracefully beneath a short cotton skirt. The morning sun shone through her thin cotton tunic, rendering it almost transparent, the swell of her breasts, visible beneath the material, suggesting the ellipse of her abdomen. Behind her, the window framed the verdant mountain range.
No mistaking her presence in the mountains. There was not a single picture, however, of her together with somebody else. Could she have been that narcissistic?
The idea that she’d made the trip by herself did not make sense, as Wang had pointed out at the cafe. But supposing she had, there was another question—Who had taken all the pictures of her? For her? Some had been taken at difficult angles, or from a considerable distance. It was hard to believe that she could have managed to have taken them by herself. There was not even a camera left among her few belongings. Nor a single roll of film, used or unused, in the drawers.
Comrade Deng Xiaoping himself appeared to be leaning down out of the picture frame, beneath which he stood, frustrated at Chen’s frustration.
One metaphor Chen had translated in a mystery came to his mind. Policemen were like wind-up toy soldiers, hustling here and bustling there, gesticulating, and chasing around in circles, for days, months, and even years, without getting anything done, and then suddenly they found themselves put aside, shelved, only to be wound up for another time.
Something about this case had been winding him up. It was a nameless impulse, which he suspected might not totally be a policeman’s.
Suddenly he felt hungry. He had had only a cup of black coffee at the Riverside Cafe. So he headed out to the shabby restaurant across the street. Choosing a rickety wooden table on the sidewalk, he once more ordered a porti
on of fried buns plus a bowl of beef soup. The soup came first with chopped green onion floating on the surface, but like the last time, he had to wait for the buns. The place had only one big flat wok for frying them.
There’s no breakthrough every day for a cop, he thought, and lit a cigarette, inhaling the fragrance of Peony mixed with the fresh air. Looking across the street, he became fascinated by the sight of an old woman standing close to the entrance of the lane. Almost statuesque on her bound feet, she was hawking ices from an ancient wheelbarrow, her shrunken face as weatherbeaten as the Great Wall in a postcard. Sweating, she was swathed in black homespun, like an opaque piece of smoke-darkened glass for watching a summer sun eclipse. She wore a red armband with Best Socialist Mobile Service Woman in Chairman Mao’s calligraphy. Perhaps she was not in her right mind, or she would not have worn that antique armband. Fifty or sixty years earlier, however, she could have been one of those pretty girls, standing there, smiling, her bare shoulders shining against the bare wall, soliciting customers under the alluring gas lights, launching a thousand ships into the silent night.