Red Mandarin Dress

by Unknown

  This further confirmed the scenario that somebody had been after Tian. But that wasn’t necessarily a lead in the red mandarin dress case.

  In the meantime, he read through the material prepared by Yu and Hong. Hong had not called in during the weekend, though. She must have been busy with her decoy assignment.

  He also experimented further with focusing on the contradictions in the case, which seemed only to lead to more contradictions.

  By Tuesday, however, he had again arrived at the conclusion that he could hardly do any better than his colleagues, in spite of the fact that he had been going all out, concentrating on the serial murder case.

  Just as he was about to brew a second pot of coffee in frustration, Professor Bian called and asked about his progress with the paper.

  “I’ve been working on it,” Chen said.

  “Do you think you can turn it in with others?” Bian asked. “It’s a promising paper.”

  “Yes, I’ll turn the paper in on time.”

  After he hung up, he became worried. He had a longstanding habit of setting deadlines for himself, as he needed the extra pressure to complete a project, such as a poem or a mystery translation. This time was different. He was already under too much pressure. Since all of his efforts in the investigation seemed to be going nowhere, with not even the suggestion of a possible breakthrough anytime soon, he decided he might as well try to finish his paper first. In the past, he’d found himself coming up with new ideas about a project after temporarily putting it on the shelf. The working of the subconscious, perhaps.

  It was no longer possible for him to focus while at home, however. Phone calls kept coming in, and unplugging the phone line didn’t help. Now that there were three victims in the case, his cell phone number had become suddenly known to many, including the media. Even at the library, he was recognized by a couple of people who then peppered him with questions about the murder case. Last night, a Wenhui journalist had come knocking at his door, carrying a package of barbecued pork and a bottle of Shaoxin wine, eager to discuss her theories with him over the feast—almost like a passionate female character stepping out of one of those romantic stories.

  He decided to go to the Starbucks Café on Sichuan Road.

  Starbucks, along with McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken, had mushroomed in the city. The café was regarded as a cultivated resort for the elite, and the atmosphere there was supposedly quiet and peaceful. At the café, where he was nobody, he could have an undisturbed morning and concentrate on the paper.

  Choosing a corner table, he took out his books. He had gathered five or six stories, but three might be enough for the paper. The third one, “Artisan Cui and His Ghost Wife,” was originally narrated by Song dynasty professional storytellers in marketplaces or tea houses where old people sat talking loudly, cracking watermelon seeds, playing mahjong, and spitting to their hearts’ content.

  Sipping at his coffee, he started reading. In the tale, Xiuxiu, a pretty girl in Lin’an, was purchased as an embroidery maid by Prince Xian’an, the military leader of three commanderies. In his household worked a young jade carver named Cui, who gained the prince’s favor for having carved a marvelous jade Avalokitesvara for the emperor. So the prince promised to marry Xiuxiu to Cui in the future. One night, fleeing from a fire at the prince’s mansion, Xiuxiu suggested to Cui that, instead of waiting, they become husband and wife there and then. So that night, the two left for Tanzhou as a couple. After a year, they ran into Guo, a guard for the prince. Guo reported the whereabouts of the fugitives to the prince, who had them brought back. At the local court, Cui was punished and banished to Jiankang. Xiuxiu overtook him on the way there, telling him that after getting her punishment in the back garden, she was set free. As it happened, the imperial jade Avalokitesvara needed repairing, so the Cuis moved back to the capital, where they again ran across Guo. Once more the prince sent for Xiuxiu, but when the sedan chair supposedly carrying her arrived, there was no one inside. Guo then got a severe beating for his false information. Next, Cui, too, was brought to the prince, at which point Cui learned that Xiuxiu had been beaten to death in the back garden. So it was Xiuxiu’s ghost who had been with him all this time. When Cui returned home, he begged her to spare him, but she took away his life so he could keep her company in the next world.

  As with earlier stories, Chen soon detected suspicious ambiguities in the text. An implied critique was discernable even in an alternative title of the story: “A Curse in Life and Death for Attendant Cui.” There was no mistaking the message about Xiuxiu being a curse. Cui was doomed because she, in the name of love, never let him get away—doomed to the loss of his position, the punishment at court, and eventually the loss of his life. Xiuxiu embodied the contradiction: a pretty girl who loves Cui with a courageous passion rarely seen in classical Chinese literature also deliberately destroys Cui with her own hands. Attraction and repulsion were like two sides of a coin.

  For the merging of the two sides, Chen found an explanation in the contemporary generic classification. The story belonged to the category of yanfen/linggaui. Yanfen referred to tales of beautiful women in amorous affairs and linggui, to tales of women identified as demons and ghosts.

  There was a similar term in western literature—femme fatale.

  In “Artisan Cui and His Ghost Wife,” Xiuxiu was exactly such a curse. Chen took out a pen to underline the paragraphs at the end of the story.

  Cui returned home in a depression. He stepped into his room only to see his wife sitting on the bed. Cui Ning said, “Please spare me, my wife.”

  “I was beaten to death by the prince because of you and was buried in the back garden,” Xiuxiu said. “How I hate that Private Guo for talking so much! I have finally avenged myself—the prince has beaten him fifty times on the back with a stick. Now that everybody knows me as a ghost, I cannot stay here anymore.”

  With that, she sprang up and grabbed Cui Ning with both hands. He screamed and fell to the ground.

  At that moment, there happened to be something falling to the floor in the café. Chen turned to see a girl slipping from a bar stool. She had overreached to kiss a young man across the bar, her foot stretching to the floor for balance, and her high-heeled sandal flew off into a corner.

  The café was not as quiet as expected. Customers came pouring in, most of them young, fashionable, and spirited. One brought in a laptop and started playing a game, her fingers pecking and chirping like noisy sparrows on a spring morning. Several had cell phones in their hands, talking as if there were no one else in the world.

  Chen ordered another cup of coffee.

  How could Xiuxiu bear to take away Cui’s life? Chen turned back a few pages, to the part about Cui and Xiuxiu running into each other on the night of the fire.

  “Do you remember the night when we were enjoying the moon on the terrace?” Xiuxiu said to Cui Ning. “I was betrothed to you and you just kept on thanking the prince. Do you remember or not?”

  Cui Ning clasped his hands and could only respond with “Yah.”

  “That night, all the people were congratulating you, saying ‘What a wonderful couple!’ How come you’ve forgotten all about it?”

  Cui Ning again could only respond with “Yah.”

  Rather than continuing to wait, why don’t we become husband and wife tonight? What do you think?”

  “How would I dare?”

  “You dare not? What if I shout and ruin your reputation? You can never explain why you brought me home. I shall report you to the prince tomorrow.”

  Chen was now beginning to see Xiuxiu “seducing” Cui. Cunning and calculating, she actually dragged Cui into it.

  There were still questions left unanswered in the story, but Chen believed he had found something in common with the other stories. He would be able to wrap up the paper, even though it was not as ambitious a project as he had hoped.

  Draining the coffee, he flipped open his phone. There were quite a few messages, incl
uding one from White Cloud. He called her back first. She reported to him like a cop, about the lack of progress in her computer research, but toward the end, she made a suggestion like a “little secretary.”

  “Give yourself a break, Chief. Go to a nightclub. There you can experience the environment of the victims firsthand, and get to relax a little too. And you can always have my company, you know. You have too much on your mind and I’m worried. Your nerves won’t stand the strain.”

  Whether that was intended as a hint, he didn’t know. As an ex–singing girl herself, though, she knew about the business, and it might be helpful to the investigation.

  “Thank you, White Cloud. That might be a good idea, after I finish my paper in a couple of days.”

  He then made a phone call to Professor Bian, who was at home, picking up on the first ring.

  “How is your paper coming, Chief Inspector Chen?”

  “I’ve been working on another story,” Chen said. “Do you think an analysis of three stories will be enough for the paper?”

  “Yes, three should be enough.”

  “They share a common movement: each of them contains something that contradicts the love theme generally taken for granted, with the heroine unexpectedly turning into a demon or a disaster. The turns come through a tiny detail: a medical term, an ambiguous poem, or a phrase thrown in at random. Once those are examined closely, the romantic motif undergoes a dramatic reversal.”

  “You have an original point. But you have to prove what’s behind it, I think.”

  “What’s behind it?” Chen said, echoing Bian’s comment. No coincidences, just as in police work. Or as in psychoanalysis. There had to be an explanation for it. “You’re right, Professor Bian.”

  “The stories were written during different dynasties, and the writers came from different social backgrounds—”

  “So you mean something that is always there behind the scenes, going on through the different dynasties, whether those writers were aware of it or not.”

  “If you want to see it that way. Something deep within the Chinese culture. So your project may not be an easy one.”

  “I’ll think about it. Thank you so much, Professor Bian.”

  Indeed, that was thought-provoking. As Chen put down the phone, the first thought that came to him was about Confucianism, the ruling ideology for two thousand years in China, something hardly ever challenged until the beginning of the twentieth century.

  However, Confucius said nothing about romantic love, as far as Chen could recall.

  But he still felt excited, as if standing on the threshold of a breakthrough. He had borrowed several Confucian canons, which he hadn’t had the time to read. Now he should be able to work out a conclusion for the paper. Ideas came crowding into his mind when the phone rang again. It was Director Zhong.

  “I’ve been looking for you all morning, Chief Inspector Chen.”

  “Sorry, I’d forgotten to turn my phone on,” Chen said. “Anything new in the housing development case?”

  “The trial date has been moved up to about two weeks from now. It was a decision made in Beijing.”

  “Why such a hurry?”

  “A longer night has more nightmares. No one wants the case to drag on. Peng is to be punished anyway, so why delay? People will see that the Party authorities are on their side.”

  “That’s good,” Chen said. But it was just another case in which politics dictated the outcome of a trial. “So we don’t have to worry anymore.”

  “Well, Jia has been pushing hard. He declares that Peng is not alone in the scandal. What is wrong with this attorney? Peng may be acquainted with some people in the city government, but being acquainted doesn’t necessarily lead to corruption. Have you found anything out about him?”

  “Not anything special,” Chen said. True, he had been too busy with his own things to delve deeply, but it was also true that no one had said anything special to him about Jia. “But I’ll keep checking.”

  When he closed the phone, Chen had already lost his earlier train of thought about the paper. Another cup of coffee failed to help.

  He looked up at the clock on the wall, feeling sick.

  SIXTEEN

  EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, Chen woke up with a terrible headache.

  He made a pot of strong coffee and gulped down two cups for breakfast—nothing else. His headache did not improve.

  No ideas came to him for the paper or for the case.

  But another special delivery came from the police bureau, including a report from Hong about her decoy activities as a dancing girl.

  So he brewed a second pot. He also devoured a handful of Korean ginseng pills with the coffee and smoked a cigarette.

  Shortly afterward, he felt sick and shaky and broke into a cold sweat.

  He was seized by an overwhelming impulse to do irrational things—to kick the wall, to howl like an owl, to smash, to shout the politically blasphemous.

  Sweating, stuffing a fist into his mouth like battling a toothache, he hurried to lock the door before swallowing a couple of sleeping pills and slumping across the bed.

  He awoke later to find himself a scared scarecrow. A nervous breakdown, he thought, recalling T. S. Eliot’s collapse in Switzerland. He was shaken by the realization.

  What if an irrational compulsion gripped him again? Fortunately he was at home now, but there was no telling where he’d be the next time. It would be a disaster if he were caught going crazy like that in public.

  He searched through the medicine cabinet without finding anything else, imagining himself the hollow man in Eliot’s poem.

  Around nine, when White Cloud called, making a routine report about her computer search, he had hardly the strength to talk.

  “Don’t move,” she said with genuine worry in her voice. “I’m on my way.”

  Half an hour later, she arrived and, to his surprise, she came with Gu, her former employer, the chairman of the New World Corporation. Gu carried a large plastic bag of Chinese herbal supplements.

  Ever since they had met in another homicide case, the resourceful entrepreneur had proclaimed himself a friend of the chief inspector. A connection like Chen could be valuable to his business, but Gu had also helped Chen in his way.

  “You need a vacation, Chief Inspector Chen,” Gu declared. “A vacation at the Ting Mount and Lake Vacation Village. You are going there today. I’ll make the arrangements.”

  Gu had invested in a number of properties, including the well-known vacation village along the border between Shanghai and Zhejiang Province.

  It was a tempting suggestion. For the last few days, Chen had been worn out by the pressure from the housing development case, from the mandarin dress case, from the politics inside and outside the bureau, and in addition to all that, from the paper deconstructing classical love stories. A short vacation might help.

  “Thank you, Mr. Gu,” he said. “I owe you one.”

  “What is a friend for, Chief?” Gu said, “I’ll send a car for you.”

  “I could also serve as your health secretary there,” White Cloud said with a knowing smile. “You definitely need a break.”

  “Thank you for everything, White Cloud. I think I just need a couple of days for myself. But if there is anything you can do for me, I’ll contact you.”

  “Make yourself available for him whenever he needs, White Cloud,” Gu said. “Let me know.”

  White Cloud had previously worked as a singing girl for Gu, and then later for Chen as a “little secretary” paid by Gu. That was probably all there was to it—Gu wasn’t suggesting anything improper.

  After the arrangements were made, Gu and White Cloud left. Chen started packing. For a quick recovery, he knew he’d better forget about all his worries and responsibilities while on vacation. Still, if he felt better there, he might try to finish his paper. So he decided to carry with him a couple of Confucian classics for the conclusion of the paper. This was probably his last chance, he tho
ught, to strive for a different “self-realization.” It would be too easy for him to turn back into Chief Inspector Chen.

  He put a packet of sleeping pills in his wallet, hiding them beneath the picture of White Cloud wearing that mandarin dress in the Old City God’s Temple Market. It would look natural for him to check a girl’s picture occasionally. But he needed to reassure himself that the tranquilizers were there, available through her smile.

  He was not going to carry the cell phone with him, or his vacation would come to nothing. He should be able not to be a chief inspector for a couple of days. Besides, he couldn’t do anything as a cop right now. His psychological approach was going nowhere.

  When the car Gu had sent for him honked its horn under his window, however, he stuffed in his bags the folders containing the case files, almost mechanically.

  In the Mercedes, Chen borrowed a phone from the driver to call his mother, saying that he would be out of the city for a few days. She must have taken it for one of those mysterious assignments, and she did not even ask him where he was going.

  Afterward, he contacted White Cloud, asking her to call his mother from time to time, insisting that she reveal his whereabouts to no one.