Red Mandarin Dress

by Unknown

  There was a couplet on both sides of the eatery door, which read vertically, “Breakfast, lunch, dinner—the same. Last year, this year, next year—like that.” Above the couplet was a horizontal comment, “True in your mouth.”

  The taxi money left him by the nightclub manager would probably be enough, Chen calculated, for breakfast here. A waiter recommended the house special: Xi’an mo in mutton soup. Mo was a hard, baked cake, which people could break into small or large pieces as they preferred before having it boiled in the mutton soup. The waiter brought them a pot of hot tea for free.

  “Comrade Fan, let me toast you with tea, though tea is not enough to show my respect.”

  “People don’t burn incense to the Three Treasures Temple without a reason. You are a busy man, Chief Inspector Chen. I don’t think you came to an old retired man like me for nothing.”

  “Yes, I have some questions for you. According to the neighborhood committee here, you alone can help me.”

  “Really! Please tell me how.”

  “We’re engaged in a homicide investigation. I would like to ask you some questions about Mei, who used to live here. She was once the mistress of the Ming Mansion. At that time, you were the neighborhood cop.”

  “Mei—yes, but she died such a long time ago. How could she be involved in your investigation?”

  “At the moment, all I can say is that information about her may really help our work.”

  “Well, I came here as a neighborhood cop two or three years before the Cultural Revolution. How old were you then? Still in elementary school, weren’t you?”

  “Yes,” Chen nodded, raising his cup.

  “The job of a neighborhood cop may be nothing in the nineties,” Fan said, breaking the mo into smaller bits, as if they were parts of his memory, “but in the early sixties, with Chairman Mao’s call for class struggle resounding all over the country, the job carried a lot of responsibilities. Everyone could be a class enemy secretly bent on sabotaging our socialist society—especially so in this neighborhood. A considerable number of residents were black in their class status. After 1949, some of the families were driven out because of their connection to the Nationalists, and working-class families moved in. Still, there were families with ties both to the old and new regimes, so they kept their mansions here. Like the Mings.”

  “What about the Mings?”

  “They kept theirs because the old man, an influential investment banker, had denounced Chiang Kai-shek in the late forties. So the Communists declared him to be a ‘patriotic democratic personage,’ leaving his fortune untouched. His son was a teacher at the Shanghai Music Institute who married Mei, a violinist who also taught there. They had a son, Xiaozheng. Inside the mansion, they lived in affluence, for which their working-class neighbors grumbled a lot. As a neighborhood cop, I had to pay extra attention to them.

  “Things changed dramatically with the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution. The old man died of a heart attack, which actually spared him all the humiliations. But his family was not so fortunate. Mei’s husband was put into isolation interrogation as a British secret agent for the crime of having listened to the BBC. He hung himself.

  “Then their house fell too. People came and took over rooms as their own. The Mings—now only Mei and her son—were pushed out into an attic room above the garage, originally the servants’ quarters.”

  “No one did anything about it?” Chen said, but he immediately realized the ridiculousness of his question. His family, too, had been driven out of their three-bedroom apartment at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution.

  “Don’t you remember a popular quote from Chairman Mao? ‘There are thousands of arguments for revolution, but the principal one is: it is justified to rise in rebellion.’ It was considered a revolutionary activity to take away property from the rich.”

  “Yes, I remember. Red Guards came to my family too. Sorry for the interruption, Comrade Fan. Please go on.”

  “In the third year of the Cultural Revolution, there appeared on their garden wall a counterrevolutionary slogan—or something that resembled one, consisting of two short phrases. One was ‘Down With,’ and the other was ‘Chairman Mao.’ They were possibly put there by two kids, at different times. They just happened to appear close together on the wall. But something like that was enough to turn the people in the mansion into possible suspects. Because of the class struggle, focus naturally fell on the Ming family, the only one of black class status. And especially on the boy. No one could prove he did it, but no one could prove that he didn’t do it, either.

  “So a joint investigation group was formed, with members from the neighborhood committee and from the Mao Team at Mei’s institute. The boy was locked up in the back room of the neighborhood committee—alone, in so-called isolation interrogation, which was known to be effective in breaking the resistance of a class enemy. In fact, Mei’s husband had committed suicide after a week in isolation interrogation.

  “She was terrified that the son would follow in the footsteps of the father. For days she was begging around like a headless fly. She even came to me. I was helpless. In those years, the local district police station was practically taken over by those rebels. So what could a neighborhood cop do?

  “Then one early afternoon the boy was suddenly released. No real evidence or witness was found against him, it was said. Besides, he had caught a high fever in the back room, and the guard on duty there didn’t want to keep him. So he went straight home, but upon pushing open the door, it looked as if he had seen a ghost. He turned around, fleeing and screaming. His mother rushed out after him—stark naked. She stumbled on the stairs and fell all the way down.

  “He might or might not have heard her fall, but he didn’t go back. He kept running like mad. Out of the house, along the street, all the way back to that back-room office—”

  “That’s strange,” Chen said. “Did you talk to her neighbors about what happened that afternoon?”

  “I did, to several of them,” Fan said. “Particularly to Tofu Zhang, a neighbor in the building, who happened to be home that afternoon. He was still sleeping after working the night shift, when he heard the eerie sound. So he jumped out of bed and saw her running out naked, calling after her son. He didn’t see the boy and guessed that she must have had a nightmare. But then she fell, tumbling, hitting her head against the hard ground. He thought about going out to help, but he hesitated. He was just married, and his jealous wife could have reacted like a tigress to the sight of Zhang together with a naked woman. He thought better of it and closed the door.

  “No one came to her side until a couple of hours later. She died that day without regaining consciousness.

  “The boy was sick for a week, delirious with a high fever. Some sympathetic neighbors managed to put him in a hospital. When he recovered, he found himself back in the empty attic room, facing his mother’s picture in a black frame. It was hard for him to understand what had happened, but he understood it was useless for him to ask.”

  “Did the neighborhood or local police station try to look into the circumstances of her death?” Chen interrupted again.

  “No, it was nothing for a woman of her black family background to die those days. An accident, the neighborhood committee concluded. I tried to talk to the boy, but he wouldn’t say anything.”

  Comrade Fan sighed, breaking the last piece of mo, putting them all back into the bowl, and rubbing his hands.

  It was a more detailed account about the circumstances of her death, but it didn’t provide anything really new or substantial.

  Chen had a feeling that Fan had something left unsaid. An old, experienced cop like Fan, however, knew what he should and shouldn’t say, and there was little Chen could do about it.

  Was it possible that Fan, too, had been a secret admirer? Chen made no immediate comment, finishing his part of the mo-breaking. The waiter took their two bowls to the kitchen. An old woman passed by their table, waving a string of bead
s toward them.

  “I’ve heard that she was a stunner in her day,” Chen said. “Did she have some admirer or lover?”

  “It’s an interesting question,” Fan said. “But in those days, it was unimaginable for a woman of her black family background to have a secret lover. Even husbands and wives were divorced because of political considerations. ‘A couple are like two birds; when in a disaster, one flies to the east, one to the west.’ ”

  “It’s a quote from the Dream of the Red Chamber,” Chen said. “You have read a lot.”

  “Well, what can a retired old cop do? I read books while babysitting my grandson.”

  “Now can you tell me something about her son, Comrade Fan?”

  “He moved out of the neighborhood to stay with a relative. After the Cultural Revolution, he studied at a college and got a good job, I heard. That’s about all I know.”

  Chen hesitated to talk about the possibility he had been contemplating. He had nothing to support such a wild scenario. At least he should check some documents first.

  “What a tragic story,” he said. “Sometimes you can hardly believe that these things happened during the Cultural Revolution.”

  “How many things have happened, true or false, past or present, and you talk about them over a cup of wine,” Fan said. “The tea here is not too bad.”

  It was like an echo from another classic novel.

  Then Chen’s cell phone rang. It was Detective Yu.

  “Did you call me last night, Chief?”

  “Yes, but it was late. So I was going to give you a call this morning.”

  “What’s it all about, Chief? Where have you been? I looked everywhere for you. And where are you—”

  “I know, and I’ll explain later. Right now I’m in the company of Comrade Fan, a retired neighborhood cop of the Henshan Road Area. He is helping me.”

  “A neighborhood cop of Henshan Road?”

  “Yes. Whatever you are doing at this moment, drop it. Go to Tian’s steel mill and gather as much information as possible about him, particularly about his activity as a member of the Mao Zedong Thought Propaganda Team. Call me with anything you get—”

  “Hold on, Chief. Party Secretary Li is having another emergency meeting this morning. It’s Thursday morning.”

  “Forget about Party Secretary Li and his political meeting. If he says anything, tell him it’s my order.”

  “I’ll do that,” Yu said. “Anything else?”

  “Oh, ask Old Hunter to give me a call.” He added, “It’s important. As you have said, it’s Thursday.”

  The waiter brought them a small dish of peeled garlic, a sort of appetizer for the mo in the mutton soup.

  “Oh, do you know Old Hunter?” Fan asked as Chen turned off his phone.

  “Yes, his son Yu Guangming is my longtime partner. Old comrades like you, like Old Hunter, are so resourceful. He is doing a great job at the traffic control committee.”

  “Now I remember, Chief Inspector Chen. You were the acting head of the traffic office, and you recommended him for the position. Old Hunter mentioned it to me,” Fan said, putting down his chopsticks. “You also mentioned someone in a steel mill?”

  “Yes, Tian of Shanghai Number One Steel Mill,” Chen said. “About the investigation, let me put it this way. Mei passed away a long time ago, but the exact circumstances of her death may throw light on another case involving people still alive, including Tian.”

  “But what can you do about something that happened during the Cultural Revolution? It’s a can of worms the government doesn’t want to open up.”

  “Confucius says, ‘You know that it is impossible to do, but as long as it is something you should do, you have to do it.’ ”

  “It’s not common for a young chief inspector to quote Confucius like that,” Fan said. “Do you really mean—”

  The phone rang again. This time, it was Old Hunter.

  “What’s up, Chief Inspector Chen?”

  “I have to ask another favor of you, Uncle Yu,” Chen said. “We are going to play our old trick again—like in the national model case, remember? I hate to bother you like that, but I can’t rely on those people in the bureau.”

  “A new case?”

  “I’ll explain the case to you later, but any responsibility for it will be mine.”

  “Come on. You don’t have to explain anything, Chief Inspector Chen. Whatever you want me to do, it’s not something against the conscience of a retired cop, that much I know. So go ahead and tell me: when and where?”

  “At this moment, I want you to hold yourself ready with a traffic violation ticket and a tow truck. Also, you’d better stay in the office for the day, so I can reach you there at any time.” He changed the topic abruptly. “Oh, I am talking with someone you know: Comrade Fan. Do you want to say hi to him?”

  “Hi, Old Hunter,” Fan said, taking the phone. “Yes, I’m talking with Chief Inspector Chen. You have worked with him, haven’t you?”

  For the next two or three minutes, Fan listened carefully, barely interrupting except for saying “yes” and nodding. With the phone volume turned up to the maximum, some words in Old Hunter’s excited voice were indistinctly audible, possibly telling Fan his opinion of the chief inspector. Possibly positive. But Fan remained cautious, speaking only single words or fragmented phrases instead of sentences.

  Fan finally said, “I will, of course. I owe you a big one, Old Hunter.”

  The waiter came back to the table, carrying over two big bowls of mo in the steaming hot mutton soup, the mo golden against red soup with chopped green onion. The sight of it drove away the lingering chill of the night.

  “Old Hunter and I have been cops all our lives,” Fan said, raising his chopsticks. “After over thirty years on the force, we remain at the bottom. You know Old Hunter well. An able, conscientious cop. Just because he’s incapable of doing things against his conscience, he’s a failure professionally. I may not be as able, but I, too, have held to my principles.”

  “Confucius says,” Chen said, “‘There are things you do, and things you do not do.’ It’s not easy to be a cop.”

  “Your father was a Confucian scholar, Old Hunter just told me. No wonder,” Fan said, putting down his chopsticks. “Many years ago, I worked with Old Hunter on a homicide case. I got into big trouble, and he saved me. Suffice it to say that it was something I did on principle, which I never regretted. As a result, I was reassigned as a neighborhood cop. It was a huge setback for a young officer, but without his help, I could have ended up in one of those labor camps. Now that he’s told me what kind of a man you are, I don’t think I need to be concerned anymore.”

  “Thank you for telling me all this. But what are you concerned about, Comrade Fan?”

  “About some aspects of her death. I didn’t go into detail regarding them because—” Fan cleared his throat. “Because an old man’s memory may not be that reliable. After all, it happened so many years ago.”

  Memory could always serve as a face-saving excuse. The change came from his comradeship with Old Hunter, Chen guessed.

  “Also because I didn’t know what you are really looking for,” Fan went on. “I didn’t want her memories to be dragged again through the humiliation mire for nothing.”

  “I understand,” Chen said, recalling a similar statement by Professor Xiang.

  “I think I mentioned Tofu Zhang.”

  “Yes, you did. Zhang hesitated and closed the door without going out to help.”

  “Before closing the door, he saw someone sneaking out of her room. Zhang thought it was Tian, but he wasn’t absolutely sure.”

  “Tian—the Mao Team member from the steel mill.”

  “Yes, the very Tian you wanted your partner to check.”

  “Did anyone ask Tian about that afternoon?”

  “According to Tian, he had planned to have a talk with her, but she appeared too disturbed, so he left,” Fan said. “But that didn’t hold water. Zhang sa
w him leaving after Mei’s accident, not before. In those years, however, who wanted to question the word of a Mao Team member? She died in an accident anyway. It was nobody’s fault.”

  “The district police station didn’t do anything about it?”

  “I was then about your age,” Fan said, taking a spoon of soup instead of responding directly. “I still wanted to do something as a cop. When I heard about the tragedy, I hurried over to the scene. There I took pictures, and I talked to some of her neighbors, including Zhang. According to another neighbor, two or three nights before, he heard something weird in her room. As an old proverb goes, there are a lot of troubles before a widow’s door—let alone such a black widow. No one reported it. I believed that it was worth investigating. It was no coincidence that Tian went in and out of her room. What’s more, if she thought to ask me for help, she could well have turned to Tian too. The poor woman was desperate, ready to do anything for her son. And Tian, unlike me, had the power to help.”

  “Yes, it was unusual for Tian to join that particular Mao Team at Mei’s school in the first place,” Chen said, “not to mention his then joining the investigation group in the neighborhood here.”

  “The release of the boy was sudden and suspicious. Also, I talked to a member of the neighborhood committee about it. It was Tian that had made the decision, though he hadn’t specified the release time. The boy was sick with a high fever, so she thought she might as well let him out that afternoon.”

  “That explains the boy’s reaction upon his return—you can imagine the scene he stumbled upon.”

  “Exactly. It was too much for him, and that’s why she ran after him like that. She knew what a shock it must have been. She forgot her nakedness, she slipped, and she fell.”

  “And that also explains why the son, who loved his mother so much, ran away without even looking back,” Chen said. “Indeed, all those details make sense.”

  “But it was a time when the police bureaus themselves were seen as a bourgeois institution. Red Guards and Worker Rebels alone had the real power. When I talked to my boss about an investigation, he brushed aside the idea.”