by Qiu Xiaolong
Express mail from Beijing. It might be critical. Comrade Liang should have called him. There had been no message at his office; Chen had checked his voice mail everyday. Perhaps the old man, like everybody else, had heard that Chen had ruffled feathers high up. Since the chief inspector was going to be removed soon, why bother?
He signed for the envelope without saying a word.
“Comrade Chief Inspector,” Comrade Liang said in a low voice, “Some people have been looking over others’ mail. So I wanted to give this to you personally.”
“I see,” Chen said, “Thank you.”
Chen took the envelope, but he did not open it. Instead, he returned to his office, closing the door after him. He had recognized the handwriting on the cover.
Inside the express packaging was a small stamped envelope, which bore the letterhead—The Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. The same handwriting was on this envelope.
He took out the letter.
Dear Chen Cao:
I’m glad you have written to me.
On receiving your letter, I went to Comrade Wen Jiezi, the head of the Public Security Ministry. He was aware of your investigation. He said he trusted you wholeheartedly, but there were some people in high positions—not only those you have crossed in Shanghai—very much concerned about the case. Wen promised that he would do whatever possible to keep you from harm. These are his words: “don’t push on with the investigation until further signal, be assured that something will be happening shortly.”
I think he is right. Time can make the difference. And time flies.
How long since we last met in the North Sea Park? Remember that afternoon, the white pagoda shimmering against the clear sky in the green water, and your poetry book getting splashed? It seems like ages.
I have remained the same. Busy, always busy, with the routine business of the library. Nowadays I work at the foreign liaison department; I think I’ve told you about it. In June, there will be a chance of accompanying an American library delegation to the southern provinces. Then we may see each other again.
There is a new phone installed at home—a direct line for my father. In an emergency, you can use this number: 987-5324.
Yours
Ling
PS. I told Minister Wen I was your girlfriend because he asked about our relationship. You know why I had to tell him this.
Chen put the letter back into the envelope, and then into his briefcase. He stood up, gazing out at the traffic along Fuzhou Road. In the distance, he saw the neon Volkswagen signs shining with a halo of violet color in the night: the “violet hour.” He must have read the phrase somewhere. It was the time when people hurry back home, throbbing taxis wait in the street, and the city becomes unreal.
He took out Guan’s file and started writing a more detailed report, compiling all the information. He was trying to confirm the next step he was going to take. He would not turn in the report; he was making a commitment to himself.
It was not until several hours later that he left the bureau. Comrade Liang had gone, and the iron gate looked strangely deserted. It was too late for Chen to catch the last bus. There was still a light in the bureau garage, but he did not like the idea of requisitioning a bureau car to take him home while he was unofficially suspended.
A cool breath of summer night touched his face. A long leaf, heart-shaped, fell at his feet. Its shape reminded him of a bamboo divination slip which had fallen out of a bamboo container—years earlier, at Xuanmiao Temple in Suzhou. The message on the slip was mysterious. He had been curious, but he refused to pay ten Yuan for the Taoist fortuneteller to interpret it. There was no predicting the future in that way.
He did not know what would happen to the case.
Nor what would happen to him.
He knew, however, he would never be able to repay Ling.
He had written to her for help. But he had not expected that she would give him her help in this way.
He found himself walking toward the Bund again. Even at this late hour, the Bund was dotted with young lovers whispering to each other. It was there that he had thought of writing the letter to her, as the big clock atop the Customs Tower chimed. A new melody.
The present, even as you think about it, is already becoming the past.
That afternoon in the North Sea Park. Remember that afternoon, the white pagoda shimmering against the clear sky in the green water, and your poetry book getting splashed? He remembered, of course, but since that afternoon he had tried not to. The North Sea Park. There he had first met Ling near the Beijing Library, and there, too, he had parted from her.
He had not known anything about her family when they first met in the Beijing Library. In the early summer of 1981, he had been in his third year at the Beijing Foreign Language Institute. That summer he chose to stay in Beijing since he could hardly concentrate in his Shanghai attic room. He was writing his thesis on T. S. Eliot. So he went to the library every day.
The library building had originally been one of the numerous imperial halls in the Forbidden City. After 1949, it had been converted into the Beijing Library. It was declared in the People’s Daily that the Forbidden City no longer existed; now ordinary people could spend their days reading in the imperial hall. As a library, its location was excellent, adjacent to North Sea Park with the White Pagoda shimmering in the sun, and close to the Central South Sea Complex across the White Stone Bridge. It was not ideal, however, as a library. The wooden lattice windows, refitted with tinted glass, did not provide enough light. So every seat was equipped with a lamp. The library had no open-shelf system either. Readers had to write the book names on order slips, and the librarians would look for them in the basement.
She had been one of the librarians, in charge of the foreign language section, sitting with her colleagues in a recess against a bay window, separated from the rest of the room by a long curving counter. They took turns explaining the rules in whispers to new readers, handed out books, and in the interval, worked on reports. It was to her that he handed over his list of books in the morning. Waiting for her to retrieve them, he began to notice her more and more. An attractive girl in her early twenties, she had a healthy build and moved briskly in her high heels. The white blouse she wore was simple, but it looked expensive. She wore a silver charm on a thin red string. Somehow he took in a lot of details, though most of the time she sat with her back to him, speaking in a low voice with other librarians, or reading her own book. When she talked to him, smiling, her large eyes were so clear, they reminded him of the cloudless autumn sky over Beijing.
Maybe she noticed him, too. His reading list was an odd mixture: Philosophy, poetry, psychology, sociology, and mysteries. His thesis was difficult. He needed those mysteries to refresh himself. On several occasions, she had reserved books for him without his asking, including one by P.D. James. She had a tacit understanding with him. He noticed that on his order slips, which stuck out from between the pages of the books, his name was highlighted.
It was pleasant to spend the day in the library: to study under a green-shaded lamp beneath the tinted glass, to walk in the ancient courtyard lined with bronze cranes staring at the visitors, to muse while strolling along the verandah, to look at the tilted eaves of yellow dragon tiles woven with white clouds ... Or to simply wait there, watching the lovely librarian. She, too, read with complete absorption, her head tilted slightly toward her right shoulder. Occasionally she stopped to think, looked up at the poplar tree outside the window, propped her cheek on her hand and then resumed reading.
Sometimes they would exchange pleasant words, and sometimes, equally pleasant glances. One morning, as she came toward him wearing a pink blouse and white skirt, holding the pile of his reserved books in her bare arms, he was inspired with an image of a peach blossom reaching out of a white paper fan. He even started dashing down lines but the noisy arrival of several teenage readers interrupted him. The following week, he happened to have a poem publis
hed in a well-known magazine, and he gave her the usual list together with a copy of the magazine. Blushing in her profuse thanks, she seemed to like it very much. When he returned the books in the late afternoon, he mention the uncompleted poem by way of a joke. She blushed again.
Another inconvenience was that the canteen in the adjacent building was open only to the library staff. Convenient, small, inexpensive privately-run restaurants or snack booths were nonexistent in those days. So he resorted to smuggling in steamed buns in his rucksack. One afternoon he was chewing a cold bun in the courtyard when she happened to bike past him. The next morning, she handed over his reserved books along with a suggestion: She would take him to the staff canteen, where he could buy lunch in her company. He accepted her offer. The food was far more palatable, and it saved him time, too. On several occasions, when she had to attend meetings somewhere else, she managed to bring him food in her own stainless-steel lunch-box. She seemed to be quite privileged; no one said anything about it.
Once, she even led him into the rare book section, which had been closed for restoration. It was a dust-covered room, but there were so many wonderful books. Some were in exquisite cloth cases from the Ming and Qing dynasties. He started leafing through the books, but she, too, stayed. There must have been a library rule about it, he thought. It was hot. There was no air conditioning in the room. She kicked off her shoes, and he felt a violent wonder at her bare feet beating a bolero on the filmy dust of the ancient floor.
Soon he had to resist the temptation to look at her over his books. In spite of his effort to concentrate by turning his chair sideways, his thoughts wandered away. The discovery disturbed him.
Most of the time he read till quite late and soon he found himself leaving the library with her. The first couple of times, it looked like coincidence. Then he saw that she was standing by her bike, under the ancient arch of the library gate, waiting for him.
Together, they would ride through the maze of quaint winding lanes at dusk. Past the old white and black sihe style houses, and an old man selling colorful paper wheels, the sound of their bike bells spilling into the tranquil air, the pigeons’ whistles trailing high in the clear Beijing sky, till they reached the intersection at Xisi, where she would park her bike, and change to the subway. He would watch her turn back at the subway entrance, to wave to him. She lived quite far away.
One early morning as he was riding toward the library, he stopped at Xisi subway station, where he knew she would emerge to find her bike. He bought a ticket and went down to the platform. There were so many people milling about. Waiting there, he lost himself gazing at a mural of Uighur girl carrying grapes in her bare arms. The Uighur girl appeared to be moving toward him, the bangle on her ankle shining, infinite light steps, moving. . . Then he saw her moving toward him, out of the train, out of the crowd. . . .
They talked a lot. Their conversation ranged from politics to poetry and they discovered remarkable coincidences in their views, though she seemed a bit more pessimistic about the future of China. He attributed the difference to her long working hours in that ancient palace of a library.
And then came that Saturday afternoon.
The library closed early. They decided, instead of going home, to visit the North Sea Park in the Forbidden City. There they rented a sampan and started paddling on the lake. There were not many other people there.
She was leaving for Australia; she had just told him the news. It was a special arrangement between the Beijing Library and the Canberra Library. She was going there to work as a visiting librarian for six months, a rare opportunity in those years.
“We’ll not see each other for six months.” She put down her oar.
“Time flies,” he said. “It’s only half a year.”
“But time can change a lot, I’m afraid.”
“No, not necessarily. Have you read Qin Shaoyou’s ‘Bridge of Magpies’? It’s based on the legend of the celestial weaving-girl and the earthly cowherd.”
“I’ve heard of the legend, but that was such a long time ago.”
“The weaving girl and the cowherd fell in love. It was against the heavenly rule—a match between the celestial and the mundane. For their punishment, they’re allowed to meet only once a year, on the seventh day of the seventh month, walking over the bridge made of sympathetic magpies lining up across the River of the Milky Way. The poem is about their meeting on that night.”
“Recite it for me, please.”
And he did, seeing himself in her eyes: “The varying shapes of the clouds, / The missing message of the stars, / The silent journey across the Milky Way, / In the golden autumn wind and the fade-like dew, their meeting eclipses / The countless meetings in the mundane world. / The feeling soft as water, / The time insubstantial as a dream, / how can one have the heart to go back on the bridge of magpies? / If two hearts are united forever, / What matters the separation—day after day, night after night?”
“Fantastic. Thank you for reciting the poem to me,” she said.
They did not have to say more. There was a tacit understanding between them. The reflection of the White Pagoda shimmered in the water.
“There’s something else I have to tell you,” she said, hesitantly.
“What’s that?”
“It’s about my family—”
It turned out that her father was a politburo member of the Party Central Committee, who was rising fast to the top.
For a moment, he was at a loss for words. That was not at all what he had expected.
Upon graduation, T.S. Eliot could have led an easy life by obtaining a job through the connections of his family, or those of his wife Vivien’s family, but he chose not to. He took a different road. Through “The Waste Land,” through his own efforts, Eliot came to be recognized as an innovative modernist poet.
Looking over her shoulder, he gazed at the red walls of the Forbidden City resplendent in the late afternoon light. Across the White Stone Bridge loomed the huge Central South Sea complex, where a group of the Party politburo members lived. Her father was going to move there soon, she had just told him.
Her family was much more powerful than Vivien’s.
Such a family background could make a world of difference in China.
What could he possibly offer her? A couple of poems. Romantic enough for a Saturday afternoon. But not enough for the life of a politburo member’s daughter.
Whatever she might see in him at the moment, on the North Sea Lake, he was not going to be the man for her, he concluded.
“Before I leave,” she said, “shall we talk about our future plans?”
“I don’t know,-’ he said. “Maybe—since you will be back in half a year, maybe we’ll see each other then—if I’m still in Beijing.”
She did not say anything in response.
“I’m sorry,” he added, “I did not know anything about your family background.”
No future plans. He did not say it in so many words, but she understood. He promised he would keep in touch, but that, too, was no more than a varnish over their breakup. She accepted his decision without protest, as if she had anticipated it. The White Pagoda shimmered in the afternoon sunlight, in her eyes.
She, too, was proud.
Afterward, he had had his moments of doubt, but he was quick to dispel them. It was not anybody’s fault. Politics in China. A decision he had to make.
After he had gotten his job in Shanghai, he became once more convinced that he had made the right decision. Her stay in Australia was extended to one year. One afternoon, on the lowest level of the bureau mail shelf, he found a letter containing a clipping from an Australian newspaper that carried a picture of her, along with a rejection of his poetry by a local magazine. He was just one of the nameless, an entry-level cop. Nor had he much hope of success with his so-called modernist writing in China.
Then, the second year, a New Year’s card from Beijing told him that she had come back from Australia. They had not seen
each other since that afternoon at North Sea Park.
But had they really parted? Was that why they had not said anything? She had never left him. Nor had he gotten over her. Could that be the cause of his writing to her on the night when he felt he was totally crushed?
It was the last thing he had wanted to do—to beg for her help. In the post office, he had kept telling himself that he was writing the letter in the name of justice.
She must have realized how desperate the situation was. She had gone out of her way, had thrown the weight of her family behind him. She had introduced herself to Minister Wen as his girlfriend, and now her family’s influence had been put into the balance of power.
One HC’s son vs. one HC’s daughter.
So it would have appeared to the minister. And to the world. But what would this mean for her? A commitment. The news that she had a cop as her lover would spread fast in her circle.