Qiu Xiaolong - A Case of Two Cities

“No, you know it’s not true,” he said, meeting her eyes, but she looked away. In the dusk, he was not so sure about the color of her eyes.

The bookstore in question proved to be nice, one of the few independent bookstores that survived in the city, she explained. The manager was young but knowledgeable. “Oh, it’s not too far away. Eliot’s old home is a brownstone,” he said amiably, accompanying them to the door. “Go straight from here. Westminster Place. You won’t miss it.”

Walking out of the store, Chen saw a café to its left, with white plastic tables and chairs set outside under colorful umbrellas. There were several people sitting there, talking at leisure, stirring memories or desires in their cups. It was like a scene he had read. Then it was juxtaposed with another he had seen. A picture she had given him at the end of their joint investigation in Shanghai. He turned to her.

“Oh, remember the picture you gave me? The one of you sitting at a sidewalk café.”

“That café is on Delmar,” she said. “My apartment is close.”

“I would love to go there,” he said sincerely.

The visit to Eliot’s home turned out to be a disappointment. It was one of the ordinary-looking old houses in a quiet, private neighborhood. The umber-colored front with the symmetrical black shutters gave the impression of an apartment building rather than a family house. Still, he climbed up the stone steps to the door, and she took a picture of him standing there, with a small historical-site sign behind him bearing the name of Henry Ware Eliot. He wondered whether it would be appropriate for him to knock at the door.

She solved the problem by taking his hand in hers and leading him into a lane to the back garden. There was an ancient board saying, “I’m in the garden” on the garden door. She stood on tiptoes on a ridge, peeking over the tall fence. He followed her example, looking over her bare shoulder. He saw nothing there except a tree draped with green vines.

A neighbor came out, saying the house was now owned by a well-to-do high-tech entrepreneur who was on vacation somewhere else.

“The swallows, visitors / to the mansions of those noble families / in the bygone days, are flying / into the houses of ordinary people.”

“You’re in a poetry-quoting mood again?” Catherine said.

“I wonder whether this is Eliot’s house.”

“I’m sure it is, but even if people welcomed you in, you wouldn’t see much inside after so many years.”

“You are right.”

They started heading back. They weren’t in a hurry to return to the hotel. The visit to Eliot’s home was an excuse, like all other excuses. They had things to discuss.

“Let’s go to a café. We can sit and talk,” he said.

So they walked to a café, which was larger than the one next to the bookstore. A performance might have been going on inside. The café window presented dancing music notes in neon lights. There were also chairs and tables outside, where an old man sat drowsing over an empty paper cup.

She said, “Let’s sit outside.”

He had an espresso, she had a glass of white wine.

He knew they had to talk about their work. This was an opportunity he couldn’t afford to miss. Still, he didn’t start immediately.

But she said, “Tell me more about your investigation in China.” It was a simple, direct question. She had been thinking along the same line.

She had to know what he’d been doing, he knew, and it was a risk he was going to take. After all, he had thrown in his lot with her-in another city, in another investigation. And here, she had already shown she trusted him by playing that trick with Bao’s cell phone. They had been collaborating as partners.

They were sitting close. Chief Inspector Chen was not going to be doing anything against the interest of the Chinese government, he thought, as long as he didn’t give out specific details about those high-ranking officials. A general picture of China ’s corruption was nothing new, particularly as Xing’s case was being widely reported here. So he told her about the Xing investigation under the committee and brought in his theory about An’s death. She was an attentive audience, responding with occasional questions and suggestions.

“She might have contacted her people after the talk with you,” she said.

“Yes, that’s possible.”

Nor did he try to conceal his own suspicion about the delegation appointment, though he gave her all the official reasons Chairman Wang had given him.

“They wanted to get you out of the way,” she added, thinking, “but only for a couple of weeks?”

It was a question she’d raised on the top of the Arch, where he didn’t have the time to discuss it. She had a point. If people had intended to put him out of the picture, they could have easily done so without bothering to arrange a trip like this.

“I’ve been thinking about that too,” he said. “It doesn’t make sense unless dramatic change was anticipated during this period, but I can’t think of any.”

“Let me ask you another question, Chen. Were you told to do anything about Xing here?”

“No, no one told me, trust me, Catherine,” he said, reaching to take her hand across the table on impulse. “There’s no point sending someone like me for the purpose.”

She nodded, her hand remaining in his.

“Nobody told me anything,” he repeated. “I’ve only groped in the dark.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not a cop here. What can I do?” He decided to be vaguely honest. “Groping for information about Xing is about all I can possibly do here.”

“What’s the point?”

“Difficult to say. Perhaps it’s like playing go chess. Occasionally you have to move anyway, though the move itself may seem pointless for the moment.”

So he summarized what he had tried to accomplish without giving specific details or revealing the names of the people involved. After Little Huang’s death, he couldn’t be too careful.

“It could be dangerous,” she said, tightening her grasp. “If your investigation became known-to Xing, and to people in Beijing.”

“I know. But I also remember what my father once told me, ‘A man has to do what he should do, even it is impossible for him to do.’”

The waiter came over to them with the menu. Neither was hungry. But he thought he should order something. He looked at the wine list, which presented all the unfamiliar names.

“You choose,” he said.

She did, pronouncing a wine name he hadn’t heard before, in French or in Italian. She then leaned back and crossed her legs in a leisurely manner. The wine came and she took a small sip, nodding her approval. He was becoming slightly uncomfortable. He wondered whether he would come to be like someone in that TV series, at home in an American bar.

The evening clouds started unfolding in sensual peace, as if being smoothed by long, slender fingers. Among the glasses, among the talk, among the indistinct shadows on the sprinkled street, he felt disoriented.

In a couple of hours, the delegation would be going back to the hotel, but it didn’t matter much if he returned late. Everybody was aware of his passion for Eliot. “Lost in the ‘ Waste Land.’” He could joke about his absence.

He didn’t want to spend the evening just talking about a corrupt Chinese official hiding away like a fattened rat. He was sitting with her, their fingers entwined, in a café in the Central West End. In an evening Eliot, or Prufrock, dared not to dream about, with the streets muttering into retreat, against a hundred visions and revisions.

“ China man, Chinglish!” Several kids appeared to come out of nowhere, shouting, scuttling along on their scooters, and pointing their fingers at him. The scooters resembled a miraculous vehicle in a children’s book of mythology he had read at their age.