by Qiu Xiaolong
“He has played Mao so much, he has become Mao incarnate. When Song’s investigation posed a potential threat to him, he simply had him killed. It was the same way that Mao got rid of his rivals using one ‘Party Line Struggle’ after another.”
“I am Mao!” Hua screamed. “Now do you finally understand?”
“You’re talking in your dreams,” Chen sneered. “How could you even come close to the shadow of Mao? For one thing, Mao had many women devoted to him, heart, body, and soul. ‘Chairman Mao is big – in everything!’ Think about it. Many years after his death, Madam Mao committed suicide for his ‘revolutionary cause.’ You may quote Mao, but do you have anyone loyal to you? Wang Anshi put it so well: ‘Lord of Xiang is a hero after all, / having a beauty die wholeheartedly for him.’ What about you? You couldn’t even win the heart of a little concubine.”
“You bastard,” Hua hissed through his clenched teeth, groaning savagely, his eyes darting back and forth like a trapped animal. “Don’t fart.”
“Don’t fart your Mao fart,” Old Hunter butted in.
“Don’t fart” was a notorious line in a poem published by Mao in his last days, by which time he believed he could put whatever he liked to say into poetry. People joked about it after his death.
“Jiao might have shared the bed with you, but nothing else,” Chen went on. “Like the old saying, she dreamed different dreams on the same bed with you. You didn’t know anything about her.”
“What the hell do you know?”
“A lot, and you’re completely in the dark. Like her passion, her dreams, her future plans, we talked about them for hours in the garden and over a candle light dinner at Madam Chiang’s house. Let me just give you a small example; her sketch of a broom-riding witch over the Forbidden City.” Chen paused in deliberate derision, attempting to drive Hua past mere fury. What was sustaining Hua was only the alter ego of Mao that he’d created and to which he had to cling at any cost. What Chen wanted to find out was if Jiao had given him any inkling of the real Mao material – hidden in the broom head or anywhere else. Pushed hard enough, he might be tempted to divulge that knowledge, like his adamission that he had Song murdered. “It’s so symbolic, surrealistic, with something hidden behind the surface -”
“Shut up, pig! You fell hard for her, really head over heels. You tried so hard to charm her with a candle light dinner, with all your literary mumble and jumble, symbolic or not, but you didn’t get her, not a hair of her. To show her loyalty, she swore to me she would stop seeing you altogether. Oh, to the song of ‘Internationale’ tragic and high, / a hurricane comes for me from the sky!”
His reaction was that of a wounded lover-emperor, proving that he knew nothing about the Mao material, about the broom head.
“If I couldn’t have her, neither could you or anybody else!” Hua went heatedly, spittle flying from his mouth. “You’re too late. She betrayed me and she had to die.”
With the pressure from the investigation and with his insane jealousy, fear that she might leave him for another man drove Hua over the edge. He strangled her not so much to stop her shouting as from a subconscious resolve to let no one else have her. Again, that was Mao’s logic, an emperor’s logic. As in ancient times, the palace ladies had to remain single, “untouched,” even after the emperor’s death.
“You bastard of Mao!” Old Hunter exclaimed.
“Now,” Hua said, raising himself up on one elbow, “let me tell you guys something.
“I succeed, and I’m the emperor,” he said, his face lit with enraged dignity as he suddenly jumped up to his feet, balancing himself and pivoting around, all in a lightning flash of movement, “you fail, and you’re the murderers.”
It was an unexpected move, fast, furious, catching them by surprise. He must have recovered during the phone call and the subsequent talk. Hair flying, he flung himself forward and swung out with his right arm. A tall, stout man, he bulled past them with a momentum that sent Old Hunter reeling backward against the wall. Sprinting to the living room, he swerved in the direction of the long scroll of Li Bai’s poem on the wall.
It was a turn Chen hadn’t anticipated. He thought he glimpsed something like a door behind the scroll, but in the semi-darkness he wasn’t sure. Cursing, he took after Hua, who was dashing like a dart. But then suddenly Hua stumbled and swayed with a blood-chilling yell, having stamped his foot down on the dustpan full of splintered glass Jiao had set down.
Chen took a stride over and clubbed him with the edge of one hand. The blow cracked on Hua’s head, reopening the wound inflicted by the portrait of Mao. Bleeding, Hua went down, banging his head against the corner of the dining table. He stared up, shook violently as if having a nightmare, and lost consciousness again, still making a blurred sound in his throat.
“Idiot!” Old Hunter hurried over and bent back Hua’s arms, hand-cuffing the unconscious man. “Now what, Chief Inspector Chen? Internal Security is coming any minute. What are we supposed to say to them?”
“We’ll play our roles – You’re retired, of course, and happened to be patrolling around the area tonight. When you heard the noise, you rushed up. Naturally, you know nothing about the Mao Case – about the case.”
Internal Security might not easily swallow that story, but it was basically true. There wasn’t much they could do about a retired cop.
Chen wasn’t that concerned about himself. He had been authorized by Beijing to act however he chose. With the tape recording he’d made, and with Old Hunter as a witness, he would be able to nail Hua for the murders of Jiao, Yang, and Song. That should be more than enough.
He didn’t have to do anything else, except turn the Mao scroll over to Beijing. Nor would it be difficult for him to tell his story. It might be necessary to omit some parts, of course. But it would be best for him, and for everybody else, to have the case conclude this way.
This way it wasn’t a Mao case.
Hua would be put away, conveniently, as a “nut.” With Mao in the background, no one would raise any questions, and all would be hushed up. A murder case, simple and pure, perhaps with details selectively revealed, such as Jiao being kept by Hua in secret, as a “little concubine.” It might prove a plausible interpretation to some: like grandmother, like daughter.
Such a conclusion would be acceptable to the Party authorities. There was no need for them to worry about any Mao material. If she had had any, she took its whereabouts to the grave with her. It was the end of the Shang saga.
And it would be acceptable to Internal Security too. It avenged Song, and brought closure to their nightmare, though they would still complain to Beijing about Chen.
Chief Inspector Chen had delivered what was expected of him – a satisfactory answer sheet to the Party authorities.
But what about the answer sheet he presented to himself?
Brooding, he cast another look to her body on the bed.
He had striven to do a good job, so that Jiao might avoid a tragedy like Shang’s. But was he really so anxious to help her? Being honest with himself, he admitted that his responsibility as a law enforcement officer came first. As a cop who worked within the system, and for the system, he went out to retrieve the Mao material despite all his misgivings. Consequently, he was preoccupied with the broom, not paying attention to what was happening in the room, resulting in two or three minutes of fatal negligence.
“You are really an exceptional cop,” Old Hunter murmured, trying to comfort the obviously distraught Chen.
“An exceptional cop,” Chen echoed, reminded of what Ling had said to him in that siheyuan room, against the memories of the orange pinwheel spinning out of the paper window, of their reading Spring Tide together on a green bench at North Sea, of the phone call fading in the glittering wing of white gulls over Bund Park, and the water still lapping against the bank…
For that – for the drive to be an exceptional cop – he had given up, or irrecoverably lost, so much. It was too agonizing for him to think a
bout. His head hung low, he stepped back into the bedroom.
He saw the broom lying on the floor, near the closet.
What was he going to do about it?
He would check it out before turning it over to the Beijing authorities. It was up to them to decide what course of action would best serve the Party’s interests. whatever their decision, it would mean more credit for him, and secure his promotion.
It would also be in line with the principle of not judging Mao on his personal life, though as far as Mao was concerned, the personal might not be that personal after all. With T. S. Eliot, the personal went into a poem, into the manuscript of The Waste Land, but with Mao, the personal became a disaster for the whole nation.
And what about Jiao’s wants?
He didn’t have to ask the question. The answer was loud and clear in that painting of the witch flying on a broom over the Forbidden City – To sweep away all the bugs! He felt as if he himself were turning into a bug, drowning in waves of guilt, unable to look her in her still-staring eyes.
His head hung even lower, he saw a fleck of chopped green onion on the elegantly arched sole of her foot, a tiny detail that made her feel intensely real, yet forever lost. She had walked barefoot in the kitchen just a short while ago. Admittedly he didn’t know her that well. She might have had her problems, possibly she was vain, coquettish, vulnerable, and materialistic, like other girls her age, but like them, she should have lived.
Instead, like her mother, and grandmother, she had perished in the shadow of Mao.
If the chief inspector hadn’t been able to save her, he should at least try to do something for her, after death.
He looked again at the broom lying outside the closet. As it was, it would be carefully examined as part of the crime scene. whatever was hidden inside could be discovered.
The sound of a siren pierced the night, when Chen was seized by the impulse to do something – something not expected of an exceptional cop.
“When I rushed out, I tripped over this broom and fell out of the closet,” he said, stooping to pick up the broom. “Let me put it back.”
“Well,” Old Hunter said reflectively, “you don’t have to explain anything to Internal Security. We came in together. I had the master key from neighborhood security. You know what I mean, Chief.”
Chen understood the subtle suggestion. It seemed to Old Hunter that it wouldn’t be easy for the chief inspector to explain his presence in the closet, and his subsequent failure to stop Hua from killing Jiao. So he might as well say that he had rushed in alongside the retired cop. Hua might contradict his story, but no one would pay much attention to a deranged man.
It was a fact, however, that Chen had been in the closet, and that, but for his zeal to retrieve the Mao material, he might have been able to save Jiao’s life.
But Chen was putting the broom back in the closet for a different reason. He shook his head. “No, the broom isn’t really part of the crime scene. It belongs in the closet.” Chen picked up the long scroll box. “I’ll have to turn it in to Beijing.”
whatever happened to the broom now, it would be beyond his control. And not his concern.
He wasn’t taking an action that would be against Jiao’s will, not with his own hands. At least, so he could tell himself.
Nor was he involved in any effort to cover up for Mao, regardless of other people’s judgments or interpretations.
The broom, like a lot of stuff in the room, would eventually be thrown away. Somebody might pick it up, use it as a broom and nothing but a broom, until dirty and worn-out, it would finally turn into dust…
There was a chance that the thing inside would come to light one day. By that time, no one would be able to tell that the Mao material – whatever it was – originally came from Jiao. When he was no longer in charge of the case, he would have no objection to seeing it. He, too, was curious.
But for now, as long as he didn’t see it with his own eyes, he wasn’t witholding information. That was something he had learned from Xie.
“Don’t worry about me, Old Hunter. I am authorized by Beijing to investigate in whatever way I choose. And I’m notorious for my eccentric approach.”
Outside the window, he heard police cars coming nearer with their sirens wailing and horns honking. Old Hunter walked over to the window and looked down into the street below, suddenly noisy like boiling water.
Looking up, Chen saw a crimson-colored moon riding high in the night sky, as if covered in blood, but being washed by pale clouds and chilled rain.
He began murmuring, almost to himself.
The horses galloping, the horn sobbing.
The mountain pass may be made of iron,
but we are crossing it all over again,
all over again,
the hills stretching in waves,
the sun sinking in blood.
“What’s that?” Old Hunter said, looking over his shoulder at Chen.
“ ‘The Lou Mountain Pass,’ a poem by Mao,” Chen said, “written during the first Civil War.”
“Leave Mao in peace,” the retired cop said shivering, as if having swallowed a fly, “in heaven or in hell.”
Qiu Xiaolong
***
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