by Qiu Xiaolong
“Let me take a look.”
Catherine slipped off her shoes and had her ankle examined. It ached under his touch. She doubted whether the old man could tell anything without an x-ray.
“Nothing on the surface, but you never know. Let me apply a paste to your foot. Better remove it after two or three hours. If the inner injury comes to the surface, you don’t have to worry.”
It was a sticky yellow paste. Mr. Ma spread it around the injured part. It felt cool on her skin. Mrs. Ma helped to wrap her ankle in a roll of white gauze.
“She also feels a little giddy,” Chen said. “She has had a long trip. And she’s been busy since her arrival. An herbal drink may boost her energy level.”
“Let me take a look at your tongue.” Mr. Ma examined her tongue and felt her pulse for a couple of minutes with his eyes closed, as if lost in meditation. “Nothing seriously wrong. The yang is slightly high. Maybe you have too much on your mind. I’m writing you a prescription. Some herbs for balance, and some for blood circulation.”
“That’ll be great,” Chen said.
Mr. Ma flourished a skunk-tail-brush pen over a piece of bamboo paper and handed the prescription to Mrs. Ma. “Choose the freshest herbs for her.”
“You don’t have to tell me that, old man. Chief Inspector Chen’s friend is our friend.” Mrs. Ma started measuring out a variety of herbs from the small drawers—one pinch of white stuff like frost, another of a different color, almost like dried petals, and also a pinch of purple grains like raisins. “Where are you staying, Catherine?”
“The Peace Hotel.”
“It’s not easy to prepare traditional Chinese medicine in a hotel. You need to have a special earthen pot and to watch over the process. Let us prepare the medicine and send it to you by messenger.”
“Yes, that’s better, old woman.” Mr. Ma stroked his beard approvingly.
“Thank you,” Catherine said. “It is so thoughtful of you.”
“Thank you so much, Mr. Ma,” Chen said. “By the way, do you have any books about triads or secret societies in China?”
“Let me check.” Mr. Ma stood up, went into a back room, and came out presently with a thick volume. “I happen to have one. You can keep it. I no longer run a bookstore here.”
“No, I’ll return it. You have saved me a trip to the Shanghai Library.”
“I’m glad my dust-covered books can still be of some use, Chief Inspector Chen. Anything we can do for you, you know, after—”
“Don’t say that, Mr. Ma,” Chen cut the old man short. “Or I dare not come here again.”
“You have so many books—not just medical books, Mr. Ma.” Catherine was interested in the curtailed conversation between the two men.
“Well, we used to run a used bookstore. Thanks to the Shanghai Police Bureau,” Mr. Ma said with undisguised sarcasm, twisting his beard between his fingers, “we’re running this herbal drugstore instead.”
“Oh, our business is pretty good,” Mrs. Ma intervened in a hurry. “Sometimes more than fifty patients a day. From all walks of life. We have nothing to complain about.”
“Fifty patients a day? That’s a lot for a herbal drugstore that does not accept state-issued medical insurance.” Chen turned to Mr. Ma with a renewed interest. “What kind of patients are they?”
“People come here for various reasons. For some, because the state-run hospital cannot do anything about their problems, for some, because they cannot go there for their problems. For instance, injuries in a gang fight. The state-run hospital will immediately report it to the police. So I’ve helped a few of them.” Mr. Ma looked up at Chen before going on with a hint of defiance. “It’s your job to catch them, Chief Inspector Chen, if they are criminals. They come to me as patients, so I treat them as a doctor.”
“I see, Doctor Zhivago.”
“Don’t call me that.” Mr. Ma waved his hands hurriedly, as if trying to chase away an invisible fly. ‘Once bitten by a snake, forever nervous at the sight of a coiled cord.’”
“Some of these people must be grateful to you,” Chen said.
“You can never tell with them, but like in kung fu novels, they always talk about paying their debts of gratitude.” Mr. Ma added after touching the beads for a few seconds, “Nowadays, they are capable of anything. Their long arms reach to the skies. I have to do something for them, or my practice will be in big trouble.”
“I understand, Mr. Ma. You don’t have to explain it to me, but I have to ask you another favor.”
“Anything.”
“We’re looking for a woman, a pregnant woman from Fujian. A Fujian triad called the Flying Axes may be looking for her, too—she was an educated youth from Shanghai years ago. If you happen to hear anything about her, please let me know.”
“The Flying Axes—I don’t think I have met any of its members. This is Blue territory, you know. But I can ask around.”
“Your help will be invaluable to us, Mr. Ma, or shall I say, Doctor Zhivago?” Chen stood up to leave.
“Then you’ll have to be the general.” Mr. Ma smiled.
Catherine was intrigued with their talk, particularly the part about Doctor Zhivago. Years earlier, her mother had bought her a music box that, played “Lara’s Song.” The novel had since become one of her favorites. The tragedy of an honest intellectual’s life in an authoritarian society. Now the Soviet Union was practically finished, but not China. There was something fascinating about the background of the conversation, almost like a scroll of a traditional Chinese painting, in which the blank space suggested more than what was presented on the paper.
When they got back to the hotel, it was near six. She heard him telling Little Zhou to leave. “Don’t wait for me. I’ll take a taxi home.”
In her room, the chambermaid had prepared everything for the night. The bed was turned down, the window closed, and the curtain drawn. There was a pack of Virginia Slims by a crystal ashtray on the nightstand, an imported luxury that suited her status here. Everything had been prepared for a distinguished guest. As he helped her seat herself on the couch, she said, “Thank you, Chief Inspector Chen, for all you have done for me.”
“Don’t mention it. How do you feel now?”
“I feel much better now. Mr. Ma is a good doctor.” She motioned him to sit in the sofa. “Why did you call him Dr. Zhivago?”
“It’s a long story.”
“We are finished for the day, aren’t we? So please tell me the story.”
“You will probably not be interested in it.”
“I majored in Chinese studies. There’s nothing more interesting to me than a story about Doctor Zhivago in China.”
“You should have a good rest, Inspector Rohn.”
“According to your Party Secretary Li, you are supposed to make my stay a satisfactory one, Chief Inspector Chen.”
“But if you call in sick tomorrow, Party Secretary Li will hold me responsible.”
“I cannot take my evening walk along the Bund,” she pleaded in mock seriousness, but she felt a bit vulnerable, too, as she spoke. “I am alone, in this hotel room. Surely you could humor me.”
Perhaps he realized how she felt, her ankle sprained, her yin-yang system out of balance, in a solitary hotel room, in a strange city, where she had no one to talk to—except him. He said, “Fine, but you have to lie down, and make yourself comfortable.”
So she slipped off her shoes, reclined on the couch, and laid her feet on a cushion he placed for her. Her posture was modest enough, she thought, her dress pulled down over her knees.
“Oh, I’ve forgotten all about Mr. Ma’s instructions,” he said. “Let me take a look at your ankle.”
“It’s better now.”
“You have to take off the paste.”
When the gauze was removed, she was astonished to see her ankle had turned black and blue. “The bruise did not show in Mr. Ma’s office.”
“This yellowish paste is called Huangzhizhi. It is capable of bring
ing the inner injury to the surface, so you can heal more quickly.”
He went into the bathroom and came back with a couple of wet towels.
“The paste is no longer useful now.” He knelt down by the couch to wipe off the remainder and to rub her ankle. “Does it still hurt?”
“No.” She shook her head, watching Chen examine the bruise, making sure there was no paste left.
“Tomorrow you will be able to run like an antelope again.”
“Thank you,” she said. “So, it’s time for the story.”
“Would you like a drink first?”
“A glass of white wine would be perfect. What about you?”
“The same.”
She watched him open the refrigerator, take out a bottle, and come back with the glasses.
“You are making it a special evening.” She raised herself slightly on one elbow, sipping the wine.
“The story goes back to the early sixties,” Chen started, sitting in the chair drawn close to the couch, gazing down at the wine, “when I was still an elementary-school student...”
In the early sixties, the Mas had owned a used-book store, a husband-and-wife business. As a kid, Chen had bought comic books there. Out of the blue, the local government declared the bookstore “a black center of antisocialist activity.” The charge was made on the evidence of an English copy of Doctor Zhivago on its shelves. Mr. Ma was put in jail, where he was allowed to take with him, out of all his books, only a medical dictionary. Toward the end of the eighties, he was released and rehabilitated. The old couple did not want to reopen the bookstore. Mr. Ma thought of running a herbal drugstore with the knowledge he had acquired in prison. His business license application traveled from one bureaucratic desk to another, however, without making any progress.
Chen had been an entry level cop then, not the one in charge of “rectification of wrong cases.” When he heard about Mr. Ma’s situation, however, he managed to put in a word through Party Secretary Li and obtained the license for the old man.
Afterwards, Chen happened to talk to a Wenhui reporter, dwelling on the irony of Mr. Ma becoming a doctor because of Dr. Zhivago. To his surprise, she wrote for the newspaper an essay entitled “Because of Dr. Zhivago.” The publication added to the popularity of Mr. Ma’s practice.
“That’s why the old couple are grateful to you,” she said.
“I did little, considering what they went through in those years.”
“Do you feel more responsible now that you are a chief inspector?”
“Well, people complain about the problems with our system, but it is important to do something—for people like the Mas.”
“With your connections—” she paused to take a sip of her wine, “which include a woman reporter writing for the Wenhui Daily.”
“Included,” he said, draining his glass in one gulp. “She is in Japan now.”
“Oh.”
His cell phone rang.
“Oh, Old Hunter! What’s up?” He listened for several minutes without speaking and then said, “So it must be someone important, I see. I’ll call you later, Uncle Yu.”
Turning off the phone, he said, “It’s Old Hunter, Detective Yu’s father.”
“Does his father work for you too?”
“No, he’s retired. He’s helping me with another case,” he said, standing. “Well, it’s time for me to leave.”
He could not stay longer. She did not know about his other case. And he would not tell her about it. It was not her business.
As she tried to rise, he put a hand lightly on her shoulders. “Relax, Inspector Rohn. We have a lot of work to do tomorrow. Good night.”
He closed the door after him.
The echo of his footsteps faded along the corridor.
There was a sound of the elevator bobbing to a stop and then starting to descend slowly.
Whatever reservations Inspector Rohn might have about her Chinese partner, and his possible involvement in a cover-up, she was grateful for this evening.
* * * *
Chapter 11
C
hen failed to reach Old Hunter. He had forgotten to ask where the old man had called from. He had been too preoccupied with telling the story of Dr. Zhivago in China to an attentive American audience of one. So he decided to walk home. Perhaps before he got there, his phone would start ringing again.
It rang at the corner of Sichuan Road, but it was Detective Yu.
“We’re in for it, Chief.”
“What?”
Yu told him about the food poisoning incident at the hotel and concluded, “The gang is connected to the Fujian police.”
“You may be right,” Chen said, not adding his own comment: not only with the Fujian police. “This investigation is a joint operation, but we don’t have to report to the local cops all the time. Whatever action you’re going to take, go ahead on your own. Don’t worry about their reaction. I will be responsible.”
“I see, Chief Inspector Chen.”
“From now on, call me at my home or on my cell phone. Send faxes to my home. In an emergency, contact Little Zhou. You cannot be too careful.”
“Take care of yourself, too.”
The food poisoning incident made him think of Inspector Rohn. First the motorcycle, and then the accident on the staircase.
They might have been followed. While they were talking with Zhu upstairs, something could have been done to the steps. Under normal circumstances, Chief Inspector Chen would have treated such an idea like a tall tale from Liaozhai, but they were dealing with a triad.
Anything was possible.
The triad might be proceeding on two fronts, in Shanghai and in Fujian. They were more resourceful than he had anticipated. And more calculating, too. The attempts, if that is what they were, had been made to seem like accidents, orchestrated so that there was no way to trace them to the perpetrators.
He thought about warning Inspector Rohn, but refrained. What would he tell her? The omnipresence of gangsters would not contribute to a positive image of contemporary China. Whatever the circumstances, he had to keep it in mind that he was working in the national interest. It was not desirable for her to think of the Chinese police or China in a negative way.
Looking at his watch, he decided to phone Party Secretary Li at home. Li invited him to come over to talk.
Li’s residence was located on Wuxing Road, in a high cadre residential complex behind walls. There was an armed soldier standing at the entrance gate and he made a stiff salute to Chen.
Party Secretary Li waited in the spacious living room of a three-bedroom apartment. The room was modestly furnished, but larger than Lihua’s entire home. Chen seated himself on a chair beside a pot of exquisite orchids swaying lightly in the breeze that came through the window, breathing elegance into the room.
There was a long silk scroll on the wall, bearing two lines in kai calligraphy: An old horse resting in the stable still aspires / to gallop thousands and thousands of miles. It was a couplet from Chao Cao’s “Looking out to the Sea,” a subtle reference to Li’s own situation. Prior to the mid-eighties, Chinese high-ranking cadres never retired, hanging on to their positions to the end, but with the changes Deng Xiaoping had introduced into the system, they, too, had to step down at retirement age. In a couple of years, Li would have to leave his office. Chen recognized the red seal of a well-known calligraphist imprinted under the lines. A scroll of his was worth a fortune at an international auction.
“Sorry to come to your home so late, Party Secretary Li,” Chen said.
“That’s okay. I’m alone this evening. My wife is at our son’s place.”
“Your son has moved out?”
Li had a daughter and a son, both in their mid-twenties. Early last year, the daughter got an apartment from the bureau by virtue of Li’s cadre rank. A high-ranking cadre was entitled to additional housing because he needed more space in which to work in the interests of the socialist country. People grumbled beh
ind his back, but no one dared to raise it as an issue in the housing committee meeting. It was surprising that Li’s son, a recent college graduate, had also received his own apartment.
“He moved last month. She is with him tonight, decorating his new home.”
“Congratulations, Party Secretary Li! That’s something worth celebrating.”
“Well, his uncle made a down payment on a small apartment and let him move in,” Li said. “Economic reform has brought about a lot of change in our city.”
“I see,” Chen said. So this was the result of housing reform. The government had started to encourage people to buy their own housing to supplement their work units’ assignments, but few could afford the price—except the newly rich. “His uncle must have done well in his business.”