A Loyal Character Dancer

by Qiu Xiaolong

  “There is one thing you can do,” Chen said testily. “Go to the hospital. Ask the doctors to do their best for Qiao. If money is an issue, draw on our special budget.”

  “I’ll go there, Chief, but the special budget-”

  “Don’t give me any buts! That’s the least we can do,” Chen snapped, slamming down the receiver.

  He was perhaps too upset to be fair to the young cop. He felt enormously responsible for what had happened to Qiao, who had gone through all that for her baby, and still lost it in the end. What was worse, she could never become pregnant again. A devastating blow to the poor woman.

  Chen broke a pencil in two, like an ancient soldier breaking an arrow in a pledge. He must find Wen, and soon. That would be his way to retaliate against human smuggling. Against Jia Xinzhi. And against all the evil of the triads.

  He brooded over Qiao’s bad luck in finding the job in Qingpu. “Fortune begets misfortune, and misfortune begets fortune,“ as Lao-tse had said thousands of years earlier. So many provincial people had poured into Shanghai, they could not find jobs even with the help of a new institution in the market economy-the Shanghai Metropolitan Employment Agency. Qiao had succeeded, but that success had led to disaster for her.

  There was another office for him to call, he realized. Wen might have turned to the job agency for a temporary position, such as a live-in waitress or nanny.

  The answer he got was not encouraging. Their records did not show anyone matching Wen’s description, nor was a pregnant woman considered a likely candidate in the present day job market. The agency manager promised, however, to call if any relevant information turned up.

  Then Chen phoned the Peace Hotel. It was still his responsibility to keep Catherine Rohn company, whatever criticism this might lead to. She was not in. He left a message. This was not the moment for him to go to the hotel, holding a bouquet of flowers. Not after Internal Security had reported his putting a trinket around her neck, and Party Secretary Li had chosen to bring up the subject.

  He had worked with her for only a couple of days. A partner assigned to him temporarily. It could have been, however, one of the unstated reasons for Party Secretary Li’s proposing the vacation in Beijing. A timely reminder. Everything was politics, and everything would be grist for Li’s mill.

  He decided to go to his mother’s place during the lunch break.

  It was not far away, but he had Little Zhou drive him there in the Mercedes. On the way, he stopped by a food market, where he bargained with a fruit peddler for several minutes before he bought a small bamboo basket of dried Longyan pulp. He recalled Inspector Rohn’s gibe about his bargaining skills.

  The sight of the familiar old building in Jiujiang Road seemed to promise the brief respite he needed from politics. Some of his former neighbors greeted him as he stepped out of the Mercedes which he was using for his mother’s benefit. She had never approved of his career choice, but in an increasingly materialistic neighborhood, his cadre status, with a chauffeur holding the door for him, might help hers.

  The common cement sink by the front door was still damp. He spotted deep-green moss sprouting abundantly, like a large map, near the tap. The cracked walls needed extensive repairs. Several holes at the foot of the side wall, from which the crickets of his childhood had jumped out, were still there. The stairway was musty and dark, and the landings were piled with broken cardboard boxes and wicker baskets.

  He had not visited his mother since he had taken over the Wen case. There, in the same small plain attic room, he was amazed to see a colorful array of breads, sausages, and exotic-looking dishes in disposable plastic containers on the table.

  “All from Moscow Suburb,” his mother said.

  “That Overseas Chinese Lu! He can be overwhelming.”

  “He calls me ‘Mom,’ and refers to you as his real brother in need.”

  “He’s been harping on the same story all this time.”

  “ ‘A friend in need is a friend indeed.’ I’ve been reading Buddhist scripture. It’s not for nothing you do good deeds in this world. Whatever you do leads to something, either what you expect or what you don’t expect. Some people call it luck, but it’s really karma. Another friend of yours, Mr. Ma, has also visited me.”

  “When?”

  “This morning. A regular medical checkup, that’s what the old man calls it.”

  “It’s very thoughtful of him,” he said. “Any problems, Mother?”

  “My stomach has not been so comfortable of late. Mr. Ma insisted on coming over. It’s not easy for an old man to climb the stairs here.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Nothing serious. The imbalance of yin and yang, so on and so forth. He had the medicine delivered here,” she said. “Like Lu, Mr. Ma is anxious to pay you back, or he won’t be at ease. A man yiqi.”

  “The old man has suffered so much. Ten years for a copy of Dr. Zhivago. What I did was nothing.”

  “Wang Feng wrote the article about him, didn’t she?”

  “Yes, that was her idea.”

  “How is she doing in Japan?”

  “I haven’t heard from her for a long time.”

  “Any news from Beijing?”

  “Well, Party Secretary Li talks about arranging a Beijing vacation for me,” he said evasively.

  His mother did not really approve of his relationship with Ling, he knew. The old woman was concerned that High above, in the jade palace of the moon, / it could be too cold. What had worried Su Dongpo thousands of years earlier worried her, but what worried her more was the reality of his approaching thirty-five, still a bachelor. As the saying went, “Anything in a vegetable basket has to be counted as a vegetable now.”

  “That’s good,” she said with a smile.

  “I’m not sure if I can make it.”

  “So, you’re not sure-” His mother left the sentence unfinished, “Well, Mr. Ma told me you brought an American girl to his place.”

  “She is my partner temporarily.”

  “You seemed to think a lot of her, Mr. Ma said.”

  “Come on, Mother. I have to take good care of her. If anything happens to her, I will be held responsible.”

  “Whatever you say, Son. I’m old, and I hope you will settle down, just like everybody else.”

  “I’m too busy with my work, Mother.”

  “I do not know anything about your work. The world has changed too much. But I don’t think entanglement with an American will do you any good.”

  “Don’t worry, Mother. It’s totally out of the question.”

  He was disturbed, though. Normally, his mother refrained from interfering-except for quoting the same Confucian maxim, “There are three unfilial things in the world; to be without offspring is the worst.” Now she seemed to agree with what Party Secretary Li had tacitly suggested.

  People cannot see the mountains clearly when they are in the mountains, Su Dongpo had written on a Buddhist temple wall in the Lu Mountains. But Chief Inspector Chen was not in the mountains, he believed.

  He did not talk much as he helped his mother prepare lunch. Before he finished warming up the dishes from Moscow Suburb, however, his cell phone rang.

  “Chief Inspector Chen, this is Gu Haiguang speaking.”

  “General Manager Gu. What’s up?”

  “I’ve got something for you. There was someone from Fujian here a couple of days ago. I am not sure if he’s a Flying Ax. He got in touch with some organization people here and then disappeared. “

  “So he was not Diao, the Hong Kong visitor to the club you mentioned?”

  “No, definitely not.”

  “What was he doing in Shanghai?”

  “He was looking for someone.”

  “For the woman I described to you?”

  “I have not yet got any details, but I will try my best to find out, Chief Inspector Chen.”

  “When was that Fujianese last seen?”

  “On the afternoon of April seventh. Some
people saw him having dumplings in a snack bar on Fuzhou Road. There was a car waiting for him. A silver Acura.”

  The date matched. The development seemed to be encouraging. Possibly it related to the park case, or to Wen’s case. Or maybe both.

  “Great job, General Manager Gu. What’s the name of the restaurant?”

  “I don’t know. It sells a special kind of Fuzhou dumplings. Yanpi. It’s close to the Foreign Language Bookstore.” Gu added, “And please call me Gu, Chief Inspector Chen.”

  “Thank you, Gu. There’re not too many silver Acuras in the city. It will be easy to check through the Traffic Control Office. I really appreciate your tip.”

  “Don’t mention it. Meiling, your secretary, called me this morning. She may come over to take a look at the Dynasty. For a club like ours, she said a parking lot would be essential.”

  “I’m glad she thinks so.”

  “She also told me a lot about you, Chief Inspector Chen.”

  “Really!”

  “Everybody knows you will soon be the director of the Traffic Control Office. Indeed, with your connections at the highest level, that position means nothing to you.”

  Chen frowned though he understood why Meiling had said those things to Gu. It had worked. And Gu had made several calls to obtain information for him. Gu finished the conversation with a warm invitation.

  “You have to come again, Chief Inspector Chen. Your stay was too short yesterday. We have to drink to our friendship.”

  “I will,” he promised.

  His mother must have noticed something. “Is everything all right?”

  “Everything is fine, Mother. I just need to make another phone call.”

  He dialed Meiling, asking her to check into the registrations of silver Acuras. She promised to do so immediately. Then she discussed the parking lot issue with him. It happened to be a borderline case. If the land was not zoned as the parking lot for the club, the city might realize sizable extra income. She needed to do some additional research. Toward the end of their conversation, she heard his mother coughing in the background and insisted on saying a hello to “Aunt Chen.”

  When they finished speaking, a resigned smile appeared on his mother’s face. She began to rewarm the dishes. The small attic was filled with a strong gas smell from the coal briquette stove. It was a bit too heavy for her to carry in and out. In the days before he had gotten his own apartment, it had been his job to carry the stove onto the stair landing and bring it back in the evening. The staircase was so narrow that kids were always bumping into the stove in the dark. His mother did not want to move into his one-bedroom apartment, though he had asked her.

  His father, his broad forehead lined with worries, seemed to be looking at him with a melancholy expression from the black-framed picture on the wall.

  He dug into a small dish of tofu seasoned with sesame oil and green onions and finished a bowl of watery rice absentmindedly.

  To his dismay, his cell phone started ringing again as he was ready to leave. When he turned it on, he got a fax signal. The signal repeated. He turned the phone off in frustration.

  “I know you are doing well, Son, with your cellular phone, bureau car, secretary girl, and a general manager calling you during lunch,” his mother said, walking him downstairs to the door. “You are part of the system now, I understand that.”

  “No, I don’t think I’m part of it. But it is necessary for people to work within the system.”

  “Do something good then.” she said. “As Buddhist scripture says, ‘Something as small as a bird’s peck is preordained and has consequences’.”

  “I will keep it in mind, Mother,” he said.

  He thought he understood why his mother had kept talking about doing good things in. the Buddhist spirit. Worried about his prolonged bachelorhood, she had been burning incense to Guanyin every day, praying that retribution for any wrongdoing by the family would befall her instead.

  “Oh, Aunt Chen!” Little Zhou sprang out of the car with half of a steamed bun in his hand. “Whenever you need the use of a car, give me a call. I’m Chief Inspector Chen’s man.”

  His mother shook her head slightly as the car pulled away, noting her neighbors’ envious looks.

  Little Zhou started playing a CD of The Internationale in a rock version. Those heroic words failed to uplift his spirits. He told Little Zhou to pull up at the corner of Fuzhou and Shandong Roads. “I want to browse in a bookstore. Don’t wait for me. I’ll walk back.”

  Several bookstores were located there, both state-run and private. He felt tempted to go into the one where he had bought his father’s book on the contingency of history. He had forgotten the arguments in the book, except for the fable about how a pampered palace goat contributed to the overthrow of the Jing dynasty. He also remembered the colorful poster of the bikini-clad girl that had been offered to him, which he had not accepted. Indeed, he was an unfilial son; he had strayed so far from his father’s expectations.

  Instead, he walked over to a dumplings bar across the street. Like that private bookstore, the small bar had been converted from a residence. A simple sign declared in bold characters: YANPI DUMPLING SOUP. In the front, a middle-aged man was dropping the dumplings into a large wok. There were only three tables in the bar. Before a cloth curtain at the back, a young girl stood kneading the cream-colored dough, mixing the rice wine and minced eel meat into it.

  On the wall was a red poster explaining the origin of Yanpi, the dumpling skin made of wheat flour, egg, and fish meal. Chen ordered a bowl, which tasted delicious, though it had a singular fishy smell. It became acceptable after he added vinegar and chopped green onion to the soup. He wondered what other non-Fujian customers would think of it. As he finished, he suddenly realized something else.

  The restaurant was close to Wen Lihua’s residence, the home in which the missing woman, Wen, had grown up. It was no more than a five-minute walk.

  He approached the owner, who was busy ladling dumplings out of the wok. “Do you remember someone who came to your place in a luxurious car a few days ago?”

  “This is the only place selling genuine Yanpi in the whole city. It’s not uncommon for people to drive halfway across Shanghai for a bowl of Yanpi. Sorry, but I cannot remember a particular customer because of his car.”

  Chen then handed him a card together with a picture of the victim found in the park. “Do you remember this man?”

  The owner shook his head in bewilderment. The young girl walked over, took a look at the picture, and said she remembered seeing a customer with a long scar on his face, but she was not sure if this was the same man.

  Chen thanked her. He decided to walk back to the bureau. Sometimes he thought more clearly while walking, but not this afternoon. On the contrary, he felt more confused than ever by the time he reached the bureau.

  There was only one message in his office from the state job agency, providing him with the names and numbers of several private employment agencies. After spending an hour making one phone call after another, he concluded that the information from the private sector was practically the same. It was out of the question for a middle-aged, pregnant woman like Wen to find a job in Shanghai.

  Gu’s metaphor came buzzing back to him, as the stack of papers piled up on his desk, the phone rang incessantly and the pressure on him increased. He stood up to practice tai chi in his cubicle. The effort did not relieve his tension. It actually served as another subconscious reminder of the unsolved case in the park. Perhaps he should have practiced tai chi all these years, like the elderly former accountant, who at least enjoyed inner peace, moving in harmony with the qi of the world.

  What might have been was like the flower in the mirror, or the moon in the water. So vividly alive, he could almost touch it, but it was not real.

  And what was he going to do about the proposed “vacation” in Beijing? It was not a matter of making or not making a decision in his personal life, not as Party Secretary Li had su
pposed. In China, the personal could hardly be separated from the political. He could have tried harder to court Ling, but his awareness of her HCC status prevented him from making any further effort.

  Was it really so hard for him to be a bit more courageous, to disregard others criticizing him as a political climber?

  On a moment’s impulse, Chen picked up the phone, thinking of the number in Beijing, but he ended up calling Inspector Rohn instead.

  “I’ve been trying to reach you all afternoon, Chief Inspector Chen!”

  “Really, Inspector Rohn!”

  “You must have turned off your cell phone.”

  “Oh yes, it rang several times with a fax signal. I turned it off, and forgot about it.”

  “Because I could not reach you, I called Detective Yu.”

  “What is his news?”

  “Wen was actually seen leaving the village the night of April fifth! Instead of taking a bus, she hitchhiked and got a ride on a truck heading to the Fujian railway station. The truck turned off a few miles before it reached the station and Wen got out. The truck driver contacted the local police bureau this morning. The description matched, except that he was not sure if the woman was pregnant.”

  “That’s possible. Wen’s only in her fourth month. Did she mention to him where she was going?”

  “No. She may still be in Fujian Province, but it is more likely that she has left.”

  He seemed to hear a train whistle in her background. “Where are you, Inspector Rohn?”

  “The Shanghai Railway Station. Can you meet me here? According to Detective Yu, a train left Fujian for Shanghai at 2 a.m. on April sixth. Tickets were sold out long before that date. The ticket seller remembered one of the people approaching him for an emergency ticket was a woman. Yu suggested we make inquiry at the Shanghai Railway Bureau. That’s why I am here, but I don’t have authority to ask questions.”

  “I’m on my way,” Chen said.

  The visit turned out to be a prolonged one. The Fujian train did not arrive at the station until after late afternoon. They had to wait for hours before they could obtain the conductor’s records. Three ticketless passengers had boarded the train at the Fujian station in the early hours of April sixth. Judging by the amount they paid, Shanghai was the destination of two of them. The third got off before Shanghai. The attendant remembered one was a woman because the other two were businessmen who chatted all the way. The woman had squatted silently near the door. The attendant had not noticed where she left the train.