by Qiu Xiaolong
“MacNeice’s poem is about how helpless people are.”
“Yes, MacNeice is another of your favorite modernist poets.”
“How do you know?”
“I have done some research on you, Chief Inspector Chen. In a recent interview, you talked about his melancholy because his job did not allow him to write as much as he wanted, but you felt sorry for yourself, for missing your chance as a poet. People say in poetry what is impossible for them to say in life.”
“I don’t know what to say—”
“You don’t have to say anything, Chief Inspector Chen. I’m going back in a couple of days. Our mission is finished.”
A mist enveloped the garden.
“Let me recite the last stanza for you,” he said. “Sad it’s no longer sad, / the heart hardened anew, / not expecting pardon / but grateful and glad / to have been with you, / the sunlight lost on the garden.”
She thought she knew why he had chosen to recite the poem.
Not just for Wen and Liu.
They sat there, quietly, the last rays of the sunlight silhouetting them against the garden, but she experienced, indelibly, a moment of gratitude.
The evening spread out like the scroll of a traditional Chinese landscape painting: A changing yet unchanging panorama against the horizon, cool and fresh, a light haze softening hills in the distance.
The same poetic garden, the same creaking Ming dynasty bridge, the same dying Qing dynasty sun.
Hundreds of years earlier.
Hundreds of years later.
It was so tranquil that they were able to hear the bursting bubbles of wrigglers in the green water.
* * * *
Chapter 33
T
he train arrived at the Fuzhou Station at 11:32 a.m., on time.
The station was alive with waiting people, some waving their hands, some running alongside the train, and some holding up cardboard placards bearing the passengers’ names. However, there was no one from the Fujian Police Bureau waiting for them on the crowded platform.
Chen did not say a single word about this. Some acts of negligence on the part of the local police might be understandable, but not in this case. It did not make sense. A premonition gripped him.
“Let’s wait here,” Catherine suggested. “They may have been delayed.”
Wen looked on in silence, her expression unchanged, as if their arrival meant nothing to her. Throughout the train ride, she had said little.
“No, we are too pressed for time,” he said, unwilling to voice his fears. “I’ll rent a car.”
“Do you have the directions?”
“Detective Yu made a map for me. The directions are marked on it. Wait here with Wen.”
When he drove back in a Dazhong van, only the two women were still standing there.
Opening the door for Wen, he said, “Sit in the front with me, Wen. You may be able to help with the directions.”
“I’ll try.” Wen spoke to him for the first time. “Sorry for this trouble.”
Catherine tried to comfort her from the backseat. “This is not your fault.”
Consulting Wen and the map, Chen was able to find the right road. “Now the map is serving a purpose Detective Yu did not expect.”
“I’ve only spoken to Detective Yu on the phone.” Catherine said. “I’m looking forward to meeting him.”
“He must be on his way back to Shanghai already. You will meet him there. Both Yu and his wife Peiqin are wonderful people. She is also a marvelous cook.”
“She must be some cook to earn a compliment from a gourmet like you.”
“We may go to his home for a genuine Chinese meal,” he said. “My place is too messy.”
“I will look forward to it.”
They chose not to talk about work with Wen sitting in the car, clasping her hands over her belly.
It was a long drive. He stopped only once at a village market, where he bought a bag of lichee.
“Good nutrition. Now you have this fruit in big cities, too. It’s shipped by air,” he said, “but still it’s not as good as in the countryside.”
“It tastes wonderful,” Catherine said, nibbling at a transparent white lichee.
“Freshness makes all the difference,” he said, peeling one for himself.
Before they finished half of the lichee in the paper bag, Changle Village came into view. For the first time he noticed a change in Wen. She rubbed her eyes, as if dust had blown into them.
Inside the village, the road became a lane, wide enough only for a light tractor. “Do you have a lot to pack, Wen?”
“No, not a lot.”
“Then let’s park here.”
So they got out of the car. Wen led the way.
It was nearly one o’clock. Most of the villagers were at home having lunch. Several white geese sauntered about near a rain water puddle, stretching out their necks at the strangers. A woman carrying a basket of deep green shepherd’s purse recognized Wen, but she scurried away at the sight of the strangers walking behind her.
Wen’s house was located in a cul de sac, next to a dilapidated, abandoned barn. Chen’s first impression was that the house was a good size. There was a front yard as well as a back one on a steep slope over a creek overgrown with nameless bushes. But its cracked walls, unpainted door, and boarded-up windows made it an eyesore.
They entered the front room. What impressed Chen there was a large, discolored portrait of Chairman Mao hung on the wall above a decrepit wooden table. Flanking the portrait were two strips of dog-eared red paper slogans declaring, despite the change of times: “Listen to Chairman Mao!” “Follow the Communist Party.”
There was a spider resting contentedly, like another mole, on Mao’s chin.
The expression flashing across Wen’s face was unreadable. Instead of beginning to pack, she stood staring at the portrait of Mao, her lips trembling, as if murmuring a pledge to him— like a loyal Red Guard.
Several packages with Chinese or English labels were stored in a bucket under the table. Wen picked up a tiny package and put it in her purse.
“Are those for the precision parts, Wen?” he asked.
“It’s the abrasive. I want to take one with me as a reminder of my life here. As a souvenir.”
“A souvenir,” Chen echoed. The emerald snail climbing up the wall in Liu’s poem. He, too, picked up a package whose label bore a heavy cross over a schematic drawing of fire. There was something odd in the way Wen offered her explanation. What was there here she would like to be reminded of? But he decided not to touch on the topic of her life in the village. He did not want to reopen her wounds.
The living room led into a dining room, from which Wen headed into another through a bamboo-bead curtain hung in the doorway. Catherine followed her. Chen saw Wen taking out some child’s clothes. There was nothing he could do to help there. So he crossed to a walled back courtyard. Originally, the back door must have opened out onto the slope, but it had been boarded up.
He walked around to the front courtyard. The rattan chair by the door was broken, dust-covered. It seemed to be telling a tale of its owner’s indifference. He also saw empty bottles in bamboo baskets, mostly beer bottles, providing a footnote to the general desolation.
Outside, an old dog jumped up from a patch of shade in the village lane and shambled away silently. A puff of wind blew the weeping willow tree into a question mark. Lighting a cigarette, he leaned against the door frame, waiting.
There was a train leaving for Shanghai late in the evening. He decided not to contact the local police, not just because of their failure to appear at the railway station. He could not shake off the ominous feeling he’d had since Wen had demanded they undertake this trip.
He felt worn out. He had hardly slept in the train. The hard sleeper had presented an unforeseen problem during the night. Of the three bunks, the bottom one went to Wen. It was out of the question for a pregnant woman to climb the ladder. The upper bunks ac
ross the aisle were left for Catherine and him. It was important to keep a watch on Wen. “Sometimes a cooked duck can fly away.” So he lay on his side most of the night, watching. Every time Wen stepped away from her berth, he had to climb down, following her as inconspicuously as possible. He had to resist the temptation to glance at Catherine across the aisle. She, too, lay on her side most of the time, wearing only the black slip they had bought at the Huating Market. The soft light played across the sensuous curves of her body, the skimpy blanket hardly covering her shoulders and legs. She was in no position to look at the bunk directly beneath her. So more often than not, she faced in his direction. It did not help when the lights were turned out at midnight. He felt her nearness in the darkness, turning and tossing, amid the train’s irregular whistles in the night. . .
As a result, standing in the doorway now, he had a stiff neck, and had to roll his head like a circus clown.
It was then he heard heavy, hurried footsteps drawing close from the village entrance. Not one or two men. A large group of them.
Startled, he looked out. There were a dozen men coming in his direction, each of them masked with black cloth, carrying something that shone in the sunlight—axes. At the sight of him, they broke into a charge, swinging their axes, yelling over the sound of the chickens screeching and dogs barking.
“The Flying Axes!” he shouted to the two women who were just emerging from the house. “Get back inside. Quick!”
He whipped out his revolver, aimed in haste, and pulled the trigger. One of the masked men spun like a broken robot, tried in vain to raise his ax, and crumpled to his knees. The others seemed to be stunned.
“He has a gun!”
“He’s killed the Old Third.”
The gangsters did not run away. Instead, they broke into two groups, several taking cover behind the house across the lane, and the others dashing into the barn. As he took a step toward them, a small ax was hurled at him. It missed, but he had to retreat.
Each of them had several axes, large and small, tucked into the front and backs of their belts in addition to those they held in their hands. They threw the small ones like darts.
To his surprise, none of the gangsters seemed to have a gun, even though weapon smuggling was not unheard of in a coastal province like Fujian. This was not the moment for him to find fault with his luck.
What did he have? A revolver with five bullets left. If he did not miss a single shot, he might be able to cut down five of them. Once he fired his last shot, there was nothing else he could do.
The Flying Axes would have surrounded the house. Once they began to attack from all directions, they would overwhelm it. Nor could he hope for timely rescue by the local police. Only the local police had known of their arrival in Fujian.
“Fujian Police, Fujian Police ...”
He heard Inspector Rohn shouting into her cellular phone.
Another ax came flying through the air. Before he could react, it stuck trembling in the door frame, missing Catherine by only two or three inches.
If anything happened to her—
He felt the blood rushing to his face. He had made a huge mistake in coming here with the two women. There was no professional justification for it—he had followed a hunch, but he had been wrong to take such a risk.
Cringing besides Catherine, Wen clutched the poetry anthology like a shield.
Poetry makes nothing happen.
It was a line he had read years ago. However, he had hoped that poetry could make some things happen. Here he was, ironically, because of that poetry anthology. It was absurd that he should be thinking of such things in the midst of a desperate fight.
“Do you have any gasoline here, Wen?” Catherine said.
“No.”
“Why do you ask, Inspector Rohn?” he said.
“The bottles—Molotov cocktails.”
“The abrasive! The chemicals are flammable, aren’t they?”
“Yes. They must be as good as gasoline!”
“You know how to make them—Molotov cocktails?”
“Oh yes.” She was already running to the bucket of chemicals in the house.
Several gangsters were moving out of hiding. He raised his revolver as one of them charged, chanting loudly as if under a spell, “Flying Axes kill all the evil,” like someone out of the Boxer Uprising. Chen fired twice. One bullet slammed into the man’s chest, but the momentum carried him sprawling across a few more yards, to fall, still clutching his ax. Sheer luck. Chen remembered how poorly he had scored at the firing range. He had only three bullets left.
Four or five axes came whirring through the air. Aware of Catherine returning with the bottles, Chen instinctively flung up the rattan chair in front of him. The axes crashed into it so heavily he took a step back, involuntarily.
Behind him, Catherine squatted, filling bottles with chemicals, Wen stuffing the bottle tops with rags.
“Have you a light, Catherine?” he asked.
She searched her pockets. “The hotel matchbook—a souvenir of Suzhou.” She struck a match.
Grabbing the bottle from her, he hurled it toward the house where the gangsters had taken shelter. There was a blast. Flames shot up with dazzling colors. She lit the second bottle for him. He tossed it toward the barn. It exploded more loudly, and the acrid smell of the burning chemicals filled his nostrils.
It was a moment Chen could not afford to waste. In the confusion brought on by the explosions, they might stand a chance.
He turned to Wen, “Is there a shortcut out of the village across the creek?”
“Yes, there’s hardly any water in the creek now.”
“There’s a door to the backyard, Catherine. Break it down, run out with Wen, and cut across the creek to the car.” He handed the gun to her. “Take the gun. There are only three bullets left. I’ll cover you.”
“How are you going to do that?”
“With Molotov cocktails. I’ll throw out several bottles.” He plucked the ax out of the door frame. Soon, perhaps, he would have to use it. A kung fu miracle was possible only on the screen. “I will catch up with you.”
“No. I can’t leave you here like this. The local police must have heard about the fighting. They should arrive any minute.”
“Listen, Catherine,” Chen said, his throat dry. “We cannot hold out for long. If they start attacking us from both front and back, it will be too late. You have to go now.”
So saying, he started to throw the bottles, one after another, in quick succession. The path was engulfed in smoke and flames. Amidst the explosions, he heard Catherine and Wen pounding at the back door. He had no time to look over his shoulder. A gangster was rushing at him, axes flashing through the smoke. Chen hurled a bottle at him, and then the ax.
Nobody came through the fading smoke.
Great, he thought, clutching one of the remaining bottles, when he heard a loud gun shot at the back of the house. There was a thud.
Spinning around, he saw Catherine pulling Wen back into the house. A masked face was rising over the backyard wall, then two hands, and then shoulders. She shot again. The Flying Ax toppled backward.
“The bitch has a gun!” someone shouted outside.
With Chen in front, and Catherine in back, the gangsters were temporarily stopped, but it would only be a few minutes before they resumed their attack.
There was only one bullet left in the gun.
That couple of minutes proved, however, to be more crucial than he had imagined.
He heard a siren coming from a distance, then a car screeching into the village. Hurried footsteps. Blurred shouting. Frantic barking.
He charged out, clutching the last two Molotov cocktails amidst an outburst of gunfire. A volley of bullets was directed at the gangsters sheltered by the house across the lane. Another fusillade of bullets rained onto the barn, which at once burst into new flames. The triad men scrambled out and fled.
“Cops!”
In a matter of a fe
w seconds, only bodies scattered on the ground remained. Armed policemen were chasing the running men, guns held high.
To his amazement, Chen saw Yu coming toward them, waving a pistol.
The battle was over.
* * * *
Chapter 34
D
etective Yu!” Chen grasped Yu’s hand.
“It’s good to see you, Chief.” Yu was too excited to say more.