A Loyal Character Dancer - [Chief Inspector Chen Cao 02]

by Qiu Xiaolong

  In a way, the incident was like a grinder rasping at his illusions about a career in journalism and contributed to his decision to quit. His timing could not have been better. In the early eighties, few made up their minds to let go of an iron rice bowl—a job in a state-run company. That gave him a good start, and the guanxi he had accumulated as the Wenhui reporter helped a lot, too. He made tons of money. Then he met Zhenzhen, a college student. She fell in love with him. They got married, had a daughter the following year, and his business further expanded. He had no time for poetry by the time the anthology came out. On impulse, he sent Wen a copy with his business card enclosed. There was no response. He was not surprised.

  On one occasion, he asked a Fujian businessman to take to her three thousand Yuan anonymously. She would not accept the money. Engaged in one business battle after another, he had no time for sentiment. He thought he had forgotten about her.

  He was astonished when, several days earlier, she suddenly walked into his office. She had changed a lot; she was hardly different from an ordinary peasant now. In his mind’s eyes, however, she remained what she had been at sixteen, the same oval face, the same infinite tenderness in her eyes, and the same slender fingers that had held up the red paper heart. It did not take him a minute to make up his mind. She had helped him at the darkest moment of his life. Now it was his turn to help her.

  Liu paused to take a drink of his tea.

  “So to you,” Chen said, “she has become an idea—a symbol of your lost youth. It does not matter that she is no longer young or beautiful.”

  “The difference in her appearance makes it all the more touching.”

  “All the more romantic, too.” Chen nodded. “What did she tell you about herself?”

  “That she had to stay away from the village for a few days.”

  “Did you ask her why?”

  “She said that she did not want to join Feng in the United States, but she was afraid she had no choice.”

  “What did that mean?” Chen inquired. “If she had no choice, why should she have come all the way to you?”

  “I did not press her. She broke down a couple of times during our talk. I think it’s about her pregnancy.”

  “So she never really explained.”

  “She must have her reasons. Perhaps she had to think about her future, and she could not do so in the village.”

  “Has she spoken to you about her plans?”

  “No, she hasn’t. She does not seem in a hurry to leave.” Liu added reflectively, “Married to such a bastard as Feng, her change of mind would not be surprising to me.”

  “Well—” Chen guessed that it would be probably useless to push Liu any more in that direction. She could have stayed here without having to make any explanation. “Let me tell you something she has not told you. She fled from the village because she got a phone call from Feng, saying her life was in danger from gangsters.”

  “She did not tell me that. I did not ask her, and she did not have to.”

  “It’s understandable that she did not tell you everything, but we know she came to you with the intention of staying for a few days—not to think, but to hide from the local triad.”

  “I’m glad she thought of me in her need.” Liu lit a cigarette.

  “According to our information, she was supposed to call Feng, her husband, as soon as she found a safe place. So far she has not done so. Now she won’t join him even if we guarantee her safety. So she must have made her decision.”

  “She can stay as long as she likes,” Liu said. “Do you suppose she will have a good life there?”

  “A lot of people think so. Look at the long line waiting for visas at the American Consulate in Shanghai. Not to mention those people like her husband who sneak out.”

  “A good life with that bastard?”

  “But he is still her husband, isn’t he? And if she remains here—with you, what will others think?”

  “What matters is what she thinks,” Liu said. “When she came to me in need, the least I could do was to shelter her.”

  “You have done a lot for her. I’ve seen her passport picture. She looks so different today. Almost like another woman.”

  “Yes, she’s been resurrected. Too romantic a word, you will say.”

  “No. It is the very word, except that we are not living in a romantic age.”

  “Romance is not something out there, Chief Inspector Chen. It is in your mind,” Liu said, shaking his head. “I’ve told you what I know, as you have requested. What do you want to tell me?”

  “Let me level with you, Liu,” Chen said, despite the knowledge that he could not. “I admire your intention to help her, so I would like to say something personal.”

  “Please, go ahead.”

  “You’re playing with fire.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She is aware of your feelings for her, isn’t she?”

  “I liked her—as early as in high school. It was such a long time ago. I do not have to erase the past.”

  “But your feelings are the same, whether for the queen in high school, or a middle-aged woman pregnant with another man’s child,” Chen said. “You are Mr. Big Bucks and a lot of women would fall for you head over heels. Let alone after what you have done for her. She cannot help returning your affection.”

  “I’m afraid I do not see your point, Chief Inspector Chen.”

  “No, you do not see it. As long as you can indulge yourself in reliving your high-school dream, treating her as part of your memory, and as long as she is content with being your insubstantial dream stuff, existing only in your remembrance of the past, things may work out between you two. But in time, she will have recovered enough to be a real woman. Flesh and blood. So on a romantic evening, she may throw herself into your arms. What shall you do?” Chen grew sarcastic in spite of himself. “Will you say no? That will be most cruel. If you say yes, what about your family?”

  “Wen knows I’m married. I don’t think she will do that.”

  “You don’t think so? So you’ll let her stay as an ex-schoolmate for months, for years. Yes, you are happy to help. But will she be happy when she has to suppress her feelings all the time?”

  “Then what the hell am I supposed to do? Turn her away? Send her to the husband who abused her?” Liu retorted angrily. “Or let some gang chase her around like a rabbit?”

  “That is what I want to discuss with you.”

  “What?”

  “The threat from the gangsters. They are frantically searching for her at this very moment. Whatever the police bureau’s reaction to my report, and I have to make a report, you know that, I’m sure the gang will soon learn that she’s staying here with you.”

  “How?” Liu demanded “Will the police pass the information to the gangsters?”

  “No. But the triads have inside connections. Just as they have learned about Feng’s deal, they will get wind of Wen’s whereabouts. During the last few days, Inspector Rohn and I have been followed everywhere”

  “Really, Chief Inspector Chen!”

  “On the first day, Inspector Rohn was nearly run down by a motorcycle. On the second, a staircase broke down as we were leaving. On the third, a few hours after our visit to a pregnant Guangxi woman, a gang abducted her, mistaking her for Wen. Detective Yu was almost poisoned in a Fujian hotel. Finally, the day before we came to Suzhou, we were almost caught in a police raid set up to entrap us at the Huating Market.”

  “Are you sure these incidents were all attributable to gangsters?”

  “These were no coincidences. They have ears inside the police both in Shanghai and Fujian. The situation is serious.”

  Liu nodded. “They are infiltrating the business world, too. Several companies here have hired gangsters to collect their debts.”

  “You see the point, Liu. According to the latest information I’ve got, the gangsters will not let her alone even after the trial, whether Feng cooperates or not.”

>   “Why? I’m confused.”

  “Don’t ask me why. All I know is that they will do whatever it takes to ferret her out. To make an example of her. And they’ll succeed. It’s a matter of time. She simply deludes herself thinking things will work out if she stays with you here.”

  “As a chief inspector, can’t you try to do anything for her, a pregnant woman?”

  “I wish I could, Liu. Do you think it’s easy for me to admit how helpless I am—a pathetic example of a policeman? Nothing would make me happier than if I could do something for her.”

  All his frustration came out in his voice. For a cop, it was more than a simple matter of loss of face to concede his helplessness, but he could see the response in Liu’s eyes.

  “So if you are going to take this into consideration,” Chen continued earnestly, “you can see that it is really in her interest for her to leave. There is no way you can protect her here for much longer.”

  “But how I can let her go to him, only to be abused for the rest of her life.”

  “No, I don’t think that she will let Feng go on abusing her. The last few days have made a difference. Resurrected—that’s your word. She has gotten on a new footing, I believe.” Chen added, “Besides, Inspector Rohn will be in charge there. She is going to act in Wen’s interests. I will make sure of it.”

  “So we are coming back to where we started. Wen has to leave.”

  “No. We have a better understanding of the situation. So I’ll try to explain to Wen, and she can decide for herself.”

  “All right, Chief Inspector Chen,” Liu said. “You talk to her.”

  * * * *

  Chapter 30

  C

  hief Inspector Chen and Liu Qing emerged from the study and entered the living room, where Inspector Rohn and Wen were sitting, waiting in silence.

  On the dining room table, however, Chen noticed a difference. There was an impressive array of dishes, among which a gigantic soy-sauce-braised carp lay with its head and tail sticking out of a willow-patterned platter. Possibly it was the very one dangling from Liu’s hand not too long ago. It could not have been easy to prepare a live carp of this size. The other dishes looked tantalizing too. One of them, the pinkish river shrimp stir-fried with green tea leaves, seemed to be still steaming.

  There was a plastic apron on the chair by Inspector Rohn. She had probably helped in the kitchen.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting so long,” Liu said to Wen. “Chief Inspector Chen wants to have a talk with you.”

  “Haven’t you spoken to him?”

  “Yes, but it’s up to you to decide. He says you should have a full picture of the situation. It may be very important,” Liu said. “He also has to hear the decision in your own words.”

  That was not what Wen had expected to hear. Her shoulders shook uncontrollably, then she said without raising her head. “If you think that it is important.”

  “Then I’ll be waiting for you in the study upstairs.”

  “What about your carp? The fish will get cold. It’s your favorite.”

  It was something small, yet enormous, Chen observed. Wen actually thought about Liu’s favorite dish at such a moment. Did she realize that this could be the last meal she was going to cook for him?

  “Don’t worry, Wen. We will warm it up afterward,” Liu said. “Chief Inspector Chen has promised that he will not force you to make any decision. If you decide to stay, you will always be welcome here.”

  “So let’s have a talk, Wen,” Chen said.

  As soon as Liu left them, Wen broke down. “What has he said to you?” Her voice was barely above a whisper as she took in deep breaths.

  “The same as he has said to you.”

  “I’ve nothing to add,” Wen said stubbornly, her face covered in her hands. “You can say whatever you want.”

  “As a cop, I cannot say whatever I want to the police bureau. I have to explain why you refuse to leave, or people will not let the matter drop.”

  “That’s right, Wen. We need to know your reason.” Catherine joined in, handing Wen a paper napkin for her tears.

  “The fact of your staying with Liu here also calls for some explanation,” Chen continued. “If people don’t understand, they will come down hard on Liu. You do not want anything to happen to him, do you?”

  “How can they blame him? It’s my own decision.” Wen choked, burying her tear-streaked face in her hands again.

  “They can. As a chief inspector, I know how unpleasant things can get for him. This is a joint investigation by China and America. It is not just in your interest, but also in Liu’s, for you to talk to us.”

  “What should I say?”

  “Well, start from the time when you graduated from high school,” he said, “so that I’ll have a comprehensive picture.”

  “Do you really want to know what I have suffered all these years—” Wen could hardly go on with tears trembling in her eyes, “with that monster?”

  “It may be painful for you to talk about it, we understand, but it is important.” Catherine poured a cup of water for Wen, who nodded her thanks.

  The two of them seemed to be on better terms, Chen observed. He did not know what they had talked about. Wen’s earlier hostility toward Catherine was largely gone. There was a fresh Band-Aid on Catherine’s finger. She had certainly been helping in the kitchen.

  So Wen started to narrate in a mechanical voice, as if she were telling a story about somebody else, her face expressionless, her eye vacant, her body occasionally racked with silent sobs.

  In 1970, when the educated youth movement swept all over the country, Wen was only fifteen. Upon her arrival at Changle Village in Fujian, however, she found it impossible to squeeze into the small hut with her relative’s three-generation family. As she was the only educated youth in the village, the Revolutionary Committee of the Changle People’s Commune, headed by Feng, assigned to her an unused tool room adjacent to the village barn. There was no electricity or water, nor any furniture except a bed in the room, but she believed in Mao’s call to young people to reform themselves through hardship. Feng turned out not to be, however, the poor-and-lower-middle-class-peasant of Mao’s theory.

  Feng started by asking her to talk in his office. As the number-one Party cadre, he was in the position to give political talks, supposedly in an effort to reeducate young people. She had to meet him three or four times a week, with the door locked, Feng sitting like a monkey in human clothes, his hands pawing at her over the red-covered copy of Quotations from Chairman Mao. And what she had dreaded happened one night. Feng broke into her room from the barn. She struggled, but he overpowered her. Afterward, he came almost every night. No one dared to say anything about it in the village. He had not thought about marrying her, but upon learning that she was pregnant, he changed his mind. He had no child from his first wife. Wen was desperate. She thought about abortion. The commune clinic was under his control. She thought about running away. There was no bus transportation at the time. Villagers had to ride a commune tractor for miles to the nearest bus stop. She thought about committing suicide, but she could not bring herself to do so when she felt the baby kicking inside her.

  So they got married under a portrait of Chairman Mao. “A revolutionary marriage,” as reported by a local radio station. Feng did not bother to have a marriage certificate. For the first few months, she was tempting, young, educated, from the big city—something for his sexual satisfaction. Soon he lost interest. After the baby was born, he became abusive toward her.

  She realized there was no use struggling. Feng was so powerful in those years. At first, occasionally, she still dreamed of somebody coming to her rescue. Soon she gave up. In the cracked mirror she saw she was no longer what she had been. Who would take pity on peasant woman with a sallow, wrinkled face, and a baby bundled on her back as she plowed with an ox in the rice paddy. She came to terms with her fate by cutting herself off from the people in Shanghai.

  In 1977,
after the end of the Cultural Revolution, Feng was removed from his position. Spoiled by the power he had enjoyed, he would not work like a peasant. She had to support the family. What’s worse, the perverted monster now had all his time and energy free for abusing her. And a reason, too. Among other things, he had been accused of dumping his first wife and seducing an educated youth. He attributed his downfall to that and wreaked his fury on her. When he became aware of her intention to divorce him, he threatened to kill her and her son. He was capable of anything, she knew. So things went on as before. In the early eighties, he started to stay away from home frequently—on “business,” though she never knew what he was really up to. He earned little. The only things he brought home were toys for his son. After the death of their child, things went from bad to worse. He had other women and came home only when he was broke.