Qiu Xiaolong - Shanghai Redemption

Shen wrote back: “I’ve talked to several of them. His lips seemed to be sealed about his business. He knew better.”

There were many Americans in Shanghai, but during the last few days, Chen had heard or read about the death of a mysterious American several times and from various sources.

He lit a cigarette, half closing his eyes, trying in vain for a short break.

There were still so many messages he hadn’t read. Many that he’d skimmed were too elusive to reveal their full meaning. Some seemed to be marginally related, but he didn’t want to jump to conclusions.

He felt he had reached a point of no return. He might not have been the sole cause of Qian’s death, but he was fairly sure she had been murdered because of her contact with him. Finding her killers wouldn’t necessarily redeem him, but he owed it to her.

The waitress came over again, carrying a thermos of hot water.

“You have been working nonstop for more than four hours,” she said with an enigmatic smile.

“The quiet garden helps me concentrate,” he said. But when he looked up, he realized that there were several tourists sitting outside, talking, drinking tea, or cracking watermelon seeds. It was a sunny, glorious day, but he’d been too absorbed in gloomy conspiracies to notice.

It was time for him to leave. He didn’t want to appear suspicious, working so long in a garden full of tourists.

He needed to go somewhere else, perhaps that bookstore near the hotel. He needed a quiet place where he could dive back into the depth of these e-mails, however fathomless they were.

CHEN CAME BACK TO Shanghai the next morning.

But this time, he wasn’t coming in quite so surreptitiously, Chen thought, as he walked out of the Shanghai Railway Station. It felt good to be back in the city so familiar to him.

He was exhausted after reading and rereading all those e-mails yesterday. Some of the clues in those messages needed to be investigated more thoroughly. What direction those clues would lead, he had no idea.

Unexpectedly, an empty taxi came to a stop right in front of him, before Chen got into the long taxi line. Chen liked that. It was a stroke of luck and not a bad beginning to the day. Also, for once, the driver turned out not to be very talkative. Chen liked that almost as much.

The traffic was terrible, as always, but he was in no hurry. The car stereo was playing some classical music, not too loudly, and Chen tried to sort out some of his tangled thoughts during the ride.

He had made the trip back to Shanghai today for a conference where he was going to be a keynote speaker. It had been scheduled months ago, and he’d practically forgotten about it. Party Secretary Li had called him last night and said, “The conference sent a notice to the bureau. The organizers must not have gotten your new office address. We know you’re busy in Suzhou, but your speech is important to the building of a harmonious society. There are newspaper and TV reporters who will come to cover it.”

The event would also function as proof that Chen retained a high-ranking position, thus heading off any speculation about disharmony in the “harmonious society.”

Chen, however, thought he’d better attend for his own reasons. The meeting was cosponsored by the Shanghai Writers’ Association and the Shanghai Entrepreneurs’ Association. He was supposed to deliver a speech about a writer’s responsibility to reflect the changes in today’s society, focusing on the contribution of entrepreneurs to the unprecedented economic reform. In Mao’s time, the proletariat had been portrayed as the sole masters of society, and entrepreneurs as capitalists of the most egregious sort. Now, the role of entrepreneurs was totally reversed. As far as the Writers’ Association was concerned, the conference was also arranged to push an undeclared agenda-to solicit financial support from the Entrepreneurs’ Association. As a member of the former, Chen considered it his duty to help this effort.

While in Shanghai, Chen also wanted to see his mother, who had returned home from the hospital but remained weak.

Time permitting, he wanted to have another bowl of noodles at Peiqin’s place as well.

He felt a net closing in on him, and he knew that any move he made-even a move he didn’t make-could pull him deeper into the mire. The consequences of his going to talk to Sima, for instance. He thought he’d had a plausible pretext for the conversation, but then what happened? Immediately, their conversation was reported to someone higher up as evidence that Chen was trying to make trouble. And the consequences of his contact with Qian…

It hurt for him even to think about it.

You left, like a cloud drifting away, / across the river. The memory / of our meeting is like a willow catkin / stuck to the wet ground, after the rain .

He’d decided the best thing to do was to attend the lecture as originally scheduled, while taking all possible precautions.

His cell phone buzzed. It was a text message, and it looked to be one of those chain messages that spammers occasionally sent around. Often the message was a joke at the expense of the government. The sender usually used a fake name, so it was difficult to trace. Chen didn’t receive too many, since not many people knew his number.

But today’s text was strange. It sounded more like a vicious, practical joke in the form of a bit of doggerel:

Prelude

You are sick, dangerously sick / too sick for the higher-up’s pick / like her cat tongue’s old trick / purring, trying to suck your dick .

Like most doggerel, it didn’t make much sense. But he couldn’t help reading it again. It wasn’t like the usual work composed by a youngster who spent all day and night on the Internet. Then he realized what struck him as strange. As a rule, run-ons don’t appear in the syntax of Chinese doggerel. This one was more like a piece written by someone familiar with Western poetry. And then there was the title, which seemed to echo an early poem by Eliot-full of ominous hints and suggestions. It was likely a coincidence-but Chen didn’t believe in coincidences.

Then his cell phone rang: another call was coming in. This time, it was his mother. The driver looked over his shoulder and turned the volume down on his radio.

“Where are you, son?”

“I’ve just gotten back to the city,” he said. “How are you, Mother? After I get out of a morning meeting, I’ll come to visit you this afternoon.”

“Don’t worry about me. I’m fine. I know you’re busy.”

“I have some new pictures of the renovation of father’s grave in Suzhou. I’ll bring them to show you.”

“Don’t go out of your way on this renovation project. Things in this world are fleeting. It’s a large sum of money on a policeman’s salary. Buddha watches. You act with a clean, clear conscience and you’ll be protected.”

It was a subtle warning from her. She’d long since given up pushing him to change his career, but she still insisted that he follow the right path. She had no idea that he wasn’t a cop any longer, and he doubted he would be protected by Buddha, either.

Ironically, that night at the Heavenly World, he’d been protected by the phone call from his mother, a call related to his filial duty. Karma.

He’d just gotten out the taxi when he received another phone call from Party Secretary Li.

“So you’re back in Shanghai. That’s great,” Li said cordially. “As you haven’t yet started work at your new office, I’m sending a bureau car to pick you up.”

“There’s no need. I can take a taxi.”

“It’s going to rain today. On a rainy day, it’s not easy to hail a taxi. Remember, you’re not speaking at the conference for yourself alone. Your speech there will be a credit to our bureau. So, don’t worry about it. People here miss their chief inspector. Skinny Wang will arrive before nine thirty.”