A Case of Two Cities

by Qiu Xiaolong

  Chen smiled by way of response. In Chinese, guiren meant an unexpected helper, as if preordained. It was true that a large number of readers came to know Chen through Eliot.

  “Really!” Catherine feigned surprise.

  “Well, the success of the translation came more from Eliot’s status as a modernist. Some critics claimed-tongue-in-cheek-that it was necessary to understand modernism for the realization of ‘four modernizations’ for China.”

  “Yes,” Shasha cut in with a giggle, “a young girl put a Chinese copy of ‘The Waste Land’ as something symbolic of her modernist knowledge on top of her dowager in a tricycle, parading the book all the way through Nanjing Road.”

  “No wonder,” Catherine said. “Mr. Chen wouldn’t miss this opportunity for the world.”

  So they reached a compromise. As Peng wanted to take a nap after lunch, the delegation was going to the groceries in the late afternoon, and then to the theater as suggested by Catherine. Chen was going to the Central West End, alone, “like a pilgrim,” as Shasha commented.

  Not exactly alone, though.

  “I don’t think there’s a need for me to interpret at the Chinese groceries. Nor at the theater, people are not allowed to speak there. The minivan driver will take you there, and then bring you back after the opera. There are several Asian restaurants in the Grand area. Choose one you like.” Catherine went on, turning to Chen, “Let me drive you to the Central West End, Mr. Chen. We’ll discuss more about the schedule changes on the way.”

  “Yes, that’s so considerate of you, Catherine,” Shasha commented. “Our poet has been working hard. He deserves a break in his favorite area.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Chen said. “Comrade Bao, you’ll take care of the group.”

  It was a practical arrangement. No one raised any objections, except Bao, who declared in a miserable tone, “It’s really yangzhui to watch opera. I would rather stay in the hotel.”

  “Yangzhui?” Catherine repeated it in puzzlement. She hadn’t heard the Chinese expression before.

  Literally, yangzhui meant “foreign or exotic punishment or torture.” In its extended usage, it could refer to any unpleasant experience. For Bao, an opera in a foreign language for three hours would be indeed long and boring. Chen chose not to explain. He simply said, “Comrade Bao may be a bit tired.”

  But Bao changed his mind. In spite of his disinclination, he agreed to take the delegation to the theater. “One of us has to be responsible for the delegation, Chen. So you can go to the Central West End.”

  ***

  Outside the hotel, Catherine had a greenish car of German make. Not Volkswagen, but a brand not available in Shanghai. Chen took his seat beside her. A seat belt slid across his shoulder automatically. The moment she put the key into the ignition, however, her cell phone rang. She started the car and began to drive with the phone in her hand. It didn’t sound like a business call, he thought. He leaned back and looked out of the window. In spite of the time he spent studying the St. Louis guidebook, he couldn’t make out the direction. Fumbling in his pocket for the city map, he noticed the car already slowing down.

  “ Euclid,” she said, flipping closed the phone. “ Central West End is over there.”

  Central West End was an area with a marked difference. Small streets, quaint buildings, sidewalk cafés, colorful boutiques. The streets also boasted the city’s oldest and most impressive private homes. To Chen, all this seemed to have changed little from Eliot’s day.

  It took her quite a while, however, to find a parking place. As they walked out, turning into a side street, the evening breeze came like a greeting from a half-forgotten poem. They were in no hurry to talk about the delegation schedule. It was an excuse, they both knew.

  For this evening, for the moment at least, at Central West End, he wanted to feel like a Chinese poet, walking along the streets an English poet had walked.

  And to feel like a man walking in the company of a woman he cared for. It was the first time that they were really alone.

  Whatever might come next, he didn’t want to think about it. She didn’t seem to be in a hurry to talk about their work, either.

  “It’s pleasant to walk here on a summer evening,” she said.

  “Yes, it’s so different here.”

  Fragmented lines came with the evening spreading out against the sky, he contemplated, against all the possibilities…

  Do I dare, do I dare?

  Perhaps it was here a poet had once had the impulse to say the words, but failed to bring himself to the task. Perhaps too meticulous to roll the moment into a decisive ball…

  He checked himself. It was absurd of him to think of Eliot. A cop, at this moment more than ever, he should be aware of his responsibility, with a homicide case on his hands, another related murder case in China, and in the company of another cop.

  “What are you thinking, Chen?”

  “I’m glad to be here with you.”

  “Did you ever think about an evening like this?”

  “Yes, a couple of times.”

  She walked by his side, their shoulders occasionally touching. She wore a black dress with thin straps. Possibly the same dress she had had on the night of the Beijing opera at the Shanghai City Government Auditorium.

  A squirrel jumped over a tiny rainwater pool. He saw a gray-haired woman walking toward them, and he approached her. “Excuse me, do you know where Eliot used to live?”

  “Eliot? Who is he?” the woman said in surprise, pushing the gold-rimmed spectacles up her nose ridge. She looked like a schoolteacher, carrying a plastic grocery bag in her hand.

  “T. S. Eliot, you know, the poet who wrote ‘The Waste Land.’ “

  “Never heard of him. Eliot. I’ve lived here for twenty years. What is the waste land?”

  “Thank you,” Catherine cut in. “ Central West End is quite a large area, Chen. We can ask at the bookstore.”

  “Yes, the people there are nice,” the woman said, eyeing them for the first time with interest. “Sorry, I can’t help you.”

  “Don’t expect everybody to be so knowledgeable about Eliot,” Catherine said. “Let me tell you something, Chen. Last year, I saw a movie called Tom and Viv. A choice made under your influence. As it turned out, I was the only one in the audience.”

  “Really! I’ve read about the movie. Too much of a feminist emphasis. Vivian might have been a poet in her own right, but praise of her shouldn’t come at his expense.”

  “I’m not going to argue with you about feminism this evening,” she said with a wistful smile. “That evening, I wished that you were sitting there with me. I didn’t understand some references in the movie, but I could figure out Vivian’s crush on him. So let us go-to the bookstore. Eliot always comes first for you.”

  “No, you know it’s not true,” he said, meeting her eyes, but she looked away. In the dusk, he was not so sure about the color of her eyes.

  The bookstore in question proved to be nice, one of the few independent bookstores that survived in the city, she explained. The manager was young but knowledgeable. “Oh, it’s not too far away. Eliot’s old home is a brownstone,” he said amiably, accompanying them to the door. “Go straight from here. Westminster Place. You won’t miss it.”

  Walking out of the store, Chen saw a café to its left, with white plastic tables and chairs set outside under colorful umbrellas. There were several people sitting there, talking at leisure, stirring memories or desires in their cups. It was like a scene he had read. Then it was juxtaposed with another he had seen. A picture she had given him at the end of their joint investigation in Shanghai. He turned to her.

  “Oh, remember the picture you gave me? The one of you sitting at a sidewalk café.”

  “That café is on Delmar,” she said. “My apartment is close.”

  “I would love to go there,” he said sincerely.

  The visit to Eliot’s home turned out to be a disappointment. It was one of the ordinary-loo
king old houses in a quiet, private neighborhood. The umber-colored front with the symmetrical black shutters gave the impression of an apartment building rather than a family house. Still, he climbed up the stone steps to the door, and she took a picture of him standing there, with a small historical-site sign behind him bearing the name of Henry Ware Eliot. He wondered whether it would be appropriate for him to knock at the door.

  She solved the problem by taking his hand in hers and leading him into a lane to the back garden. There was an ancient board saying, “I’m in the garden” on the garden door. She stood on tiptoes on a ridge, peeking over the tall fence. He followed her example, looking over her bare shoulder. He saw nothing there except a tree draped with green vines.

  A neighbor came out, saying the house was now owned by a well-to-do high-tech entrepreneur who was on vacation somewhere else.

  “The swallows, visitors / to the mansions of those noble families / in the bygone days, are flying / into the houses of ordinary people.”

  “You’re in a poetry-quoting mood again?” Catherine said.

  “I wonder whether this is Eliot’s house.”

  “I’m sure it is, but even if people welcomed you in, you wouldn’t see much inside after so many years.”

  “You are right.”

  They started heading back. They weren’t in a hurry to return to the hotel. The visit to Eliot’s home was an excuse, like all other excuses. They had things to discuss.

  “Let’s go to a café. We can sit and talk,” he said.

  So they walked to a café, which was larger than the one next to the bookstore. A performance might have been going on inside. The café window presented dancing music notes in neon lights. There were also chairs and tables outside, where an old man sat drowsing over an empty paper cup.

  She said, “Let’s sit outside.”

  He had an espresso, she had a glass of white wine.

  He knew they had to talk about their work. This was an opportunity he couldn’t afford to miss. Still, he didn’t start immediately.

  But she said, “Tell me more about your investigation in China.” It was a simple, direct question. She had been thinking along the same line.

  She had to know what he’d been doing, he knew, and it was a risk he was going to take. After all, he had thrown in his lot with her-in another city, in another investigation. And here, she had already shown she trusted him by playing that trick with Bao’s cell phone. They had been collaborating as partners.

  They were sitting close. Chief Inspector Chen was not going to be doing anything against the interest of the Chinese government, he thought, as long as he didn’t give out specific details about those high-ranking officials. A general picture of China ’s corruption was nothing new, particularly as Xing’s case was being widely reported here. So he told her about the Xing investigation under the committee and brought in his theory about An’s death. She was an attentive audience, responding with occasional questions and suggestions.

  “She might have contacted her people after the talk with you,” she said.

  “Yes, that’s possible.”

  Nor did he try to conceal his own suspicion about the delegation appointment, though he gave her all the official reasons Chairman Wang had given him.

  “They wanted to get you out of the way,” she added, thinking, “but only for a couple of weeks?”

  It was a question she’d raised on the top of the Arch, where he didn’t have the time to discuss it. She had a point. If people had intended to put him out of the picture, they could have easily done so without bothering to arrange a trip like this.

  “I’ve been thinking about that too,” he said. “It doesn’t make sense unless dramatic change was anticipated during this period, but I can’t think of any.”

  “Let me ask you another question, Chen. Were you told to do anything about Xing here?”

  “No, no one told me, trust me, Catherine,” he said, reaching to take her hand across the table on impulse. “There’s no point sending someone like me for the purpose.”

  She nodded, her hand remaining in his.

  “Nobody told me anything,” he repeated. “I’ve only groped in the dark.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not a cop here. What can I do?” He decided to be vaguely honest. “Groping for information about Xing is about all I can possibly do here.”

  “What’s the point?”

  “Difficult to say. Perhaps it’s like playing go chess. Occasionally you have to move anyway, though the move itself may seem pointless for the moment.”

  So he summarized what he had tried to accomplish without giving specific details or revealing the names of the people involved. After Little Huang’s death, he couldn’t be too careful.

  “It could be dangerous,” she said, tightening her grasp. “If your investigation became known-to Xing, and to people in Beijing.”

  “I know. But I also remember what my father once told me, ‘A man has to do what he should do, even it is impossible for him to do.’”

  The waiter came over to them with the menu. Neither was hungry. But he thought he should order something. He looked at the wine list, which presented all the unfamiliar names.

  “You choose,” he said.

  She did, pronouncing a wine name he hadn’t heard before, in French or in Italian. She then leaned back and crossed her legs in a leisurely manner. The wine came and she took a small sip, nodding her approval. He was becoming slightly uncomfortable. He wondered whether he would come to be like someone in that TV series, at home in an American bar.

  The evening clouds started unfolding in sensual peace, as if being smoothed by long, slender fingers. Among the glasses, among the talk, among the indistinct shadows on the sprinkled street, he felt disoriented.

  In a couple of hours, the delegation would be going back to the hotel, but it didn’t matter much if he returned late. Everybody was aware of his passion for Eliot. “Lost in the ‘ Waste Land.’” He could joke about his absence.

  He didn’t want to spend the evening just talking about a corrupt Chinese official hiding away like a fattened rat. He was sitting with her, their fingers entwined, in a café in the Central West End. In an evening Eliot, or Prufrock, dared not to dream about, with the streets muttering into retreat, against a hundred visions and revisions.

  “ China man, Chinglish!” Several kids appeared to come out of nowhere, shouting, scuttling along on their scooters, and pointing their fingers at him. The scooters resembled a miraculous vehicle in a children’s book of mythology he had read at their age.

  What they had discussed here had already started him thinking in a new direction. Discussion helped, he knew. There could be something terribly wrong in his work, he suspected.

  “I have something for you,” she said, producing a folder. “A transcript of Bao’s cell phone calls. Perhaps you may make something out of it.”

  “Oh, you are so effective.”

  “Our people in L.A. have been following Xing and his associates closely. Especially his mysterious next-door neighbor. The man who called Bao had been seen in their company, so they tapped his line as well.”

  The first page was from a phone call to Bao on the day of their arrival in St. Louis. From L.A. The caller must have known Bao well.

  “I have phoned your hotel several times, Master Bao, and they told me you have not arrived yet. I was worried. So I’m making this call on your cell phone.”

  “Don’t worry. The highway traffic was terrible. We have just checked in.”

  “Is that the hotel you have shown me in the list?”

  “Yes, it’s a good hotel. A five-star one, close to the Arch. I don’t know how to pronounce its name in English.”

  “That cop still has the best room?”

  “Don’t mention him again. He alone has a massage bath in his room. And he simply takes it for granted. He must be luxuriating in the American bubbles right now, I bet.”

  “A typical bo
urgeoisie-you are absolutely right, Master Bao. It’s depressing even to talk about him. I’m calling you because I know someone in the shopping mall under your hotel. Old Fan, the owner of a Chinese buffet. Mention my name, and he will probably give you a treat. He may not have read your poetry, though.”

  “Yes, I’ll go there.”

  “Well, I’ll call you again if I have some other information.”

  ***

  There were several earlier phone records. Chen knew he did not have the time to peruse all of them. That call alone was enough to arouse serious suspicion. The mysterious caller might have been a fan of Bao’s poetry, but a fan, however passionate or devoted, would not have made a long-distance call, from a public phone, to his “master,” talking about the luxurious room of another writer, or about another restaurant owner he knew slightly. Furthermore, they must have had earlier discussions about Chen. At the least Bao had shown him the itinerary of their visit-including the name of the hotel in St. Louis.

  “According to Detective Lenich,” she said, “a Chinese man asked about your room number at the front desk, and then made a call in the lobby.”

  Chen recalled now. The afternoon, upon his arrival, a call came into his room. When he picked it up, the caller hung up.

  He didn’t give it a thought at the time.

  He knew he was in more serious trouble than he cared to admit. A possibility he had so far refused to acknowledge scuttled across the floors of his subconscious. He took a drink, trying not to show any change in his expression.

  “There’s one thing about being a poet,” he said. “Occasionally, you may be followed by your fans all the way.”

  “Here is the tape. The transcript was done in a hurry. So you can listen more carefully.”

  “I don’t know how I can thank you enough, Catherine.”

  “I’m concerned about you. It’s also in the common interest of our two countries that nothing else happens to your delegation,” she said, glancing at her watch. “It’s time for us to go back, I think.”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so.”

  It was a fact, he knew, but it disappointed him. He didn’t want to talk about it. The music from the café seemed to be slowing down with a dying fall.