Qiu Xiaolong - A Loyal Character Dancer

“What did he say?”

“Nothing serious. The imbalance of yin and yang, so on and so forth. He had the medicine delivered here,” she said. “Like Lu, Mr. Ma is anxious to pay you back, or he won’t be at ease. A man yiqi.”

“The old man has suffered so much. Ten years for a copy of Dr. Zhivago. What I did was nothing.”

“Wang Feng wrote the article about him, didn’t she?”

“Yes, that was her idea.”

“How is she doing in Japan?”

“I haven’t heard from her for a long time.”

“Any news from Beijing?”

“Well, Party Secretary Li talks about arranging a Beijing vacation for me,” he said evasively.

His mother did not really approve of his relationship with Ling, he knew. The old woman was concerned that High above, in the jade palace of the moon, / it could be too cold. What had worried Su Dongpo thousands of years earlier worried her, but what worried her more was the reality of his approaching thirty-five, still a bachelor. As the saying went, “Anything in a vegetable basket has to be counted as a vegetable now.”

“That’s good,” she said with a smile.

“I’m not sure if I can make it.”

“So, you’re not sure-” His mother left the sentence unfinished, “Well, Mr. Ma told me you brought an American girl to his place.”

“She is my partner temporarily.”

“You seemed to think a lot of her, Mr. Ma said.”

“Come on, Mother. I have to take good care of her. If anything happens to her, I will be held responsible.”

“Whatever you say, Son. I’m old, and I hope you will settle down, just like everybody else.”

“I’m too busy with my work, Mother.”

“I do not know anything about your work. The world has changed too much. But I don’t think entanglement with an American will do you any good.”

“Don’t worry, Mother. It’s totally out of the question.”

He was disturbed, though. Normally, his mother refrained from interfering-except for quoting the same Confucian maxim, “There are three unfilial things in the world; to be without offspring is the worst.” Now she seemed to agree with what Party Secretary Li had tacitly suggested.

People cannot see the mountains clearly when they are in the mountains, Su Dongpo had written on a Buddhist temple wall in the Lu Mountains. But Chief Inspector Chen was not in the mountains, he believed.

He did not talk much as he helped his mother prepare lunch. Before he finished warming up the dishes from Moscow Suburb, however, his cell phone rang.

“Chief Inspector Chen, this is Gu Haiguang speaking.”

“General Manager Gu. What’s up?”

“I’ve got something for you. There was someone from Fujian here a couple of days ago. I am not sure if he’s a Flying Ax. He got in touch with some organization people here and then disappeared. “

“So he was not Diao, the Hong Kong visitor to the club you mentioned?”

“No, definitely not.”

“What was he doing in Shanghai?”

“He was looking for someone.”

“For the woman I described to you?”

“I have not yet got any details, but I will try my best to find out, Chief Inspector Chen.”

“When was that Fujianese last seen?”

“On the afternoon of April seventh. Some people saw him having dumplings in a snack bar on Fuzhou Road. There was a car waiting for him. A silver Acura.”

The date matched. The development seemed to be encouraging. Possibly it related to the park case, or to Wen’s case. Or maybe both.

“Great job, General Manager Gu. What’s the name of the restaurant?”

“I don’t know. It sells a special kind of Fuzhou dumplings. Yanpi. It’s close to the Foreign Language Bookstore.” Gu added, “And please call me Gu, Chief Inspector Chen.”

“Thank you, Gu. There’re not too many silver Acuras in the city. It will be easy to check through the Traffic Control Office. I really appreciate your tip.”

“Don’t mention it. Meiling, your secretary, called me this morning. She may come over to take a look at the Dynasty. For a club like ours, she said a parking lot would be essential.”

“I’m glad she thinks so.”

“She also told me a lot about you, Chief Inspector Chen.”

“Really!”

“Everybody knows you will soon be the director of the Traffic Control Office. Indeed, with your connections at the highest level, that position means nothing to you.”

Chen frowned though he understood why Meiling had said those things to Gu. It had worked. And Gu had made several calls to obtain information for him. Gu finished the conversation with a warm invitation.

“You have to come again, Chief Inspector Chen. Your stay was too short yesterday. We have to drink to our friendship.”

“I will,” he promised.

His mother must have noticed something. “Is everything all right?”

“Everything is fine, Mother. I just need to make another phone call.”

He dialed Meiling, asking her to check into the registrations of silver Acuras. She promised to do so immediately. Then she discussed the parking lot issue with him. It happened to be a borderline case. If the land was not zoned as the parking lot for the club, the city might realize sizable extra income. She needed to do some additional research. Toward the end of their conversation, she heard his mother coughing in the background and insisted on saying a hello to “Aunt Chen.”

When they finished speaking, a resigned smile appeared on his mother’s face. She began to rewarm the dishes. The small attic was filled with a strong gas smell from the coal briquette stove. It was a bit too heavy for her to carry in and out. In the days before he had gotten his own apartment, it had been his job to carry the stove onto the stair landing and bring it back in the evening. The staircase was so narrow that kids were always bumping into the stove in the dark. His mother did not want to move into his one-bedroom apartment, though he had asked her.

His father, his broad forehead lined with worries, seemed to be looking at him with a melancholy expression from the black-framed picture on the wall.

He dug into a small dish of tofu seasoned with sesame oil and green onions and finished a bowl of watery rice absentmindedly.

To his dismay, his cell phone started ringing again as he was ready to leave. When he turned it on, he got a fax signal. The signal repeated. He turned the phone off in frustration.

“I know you are doing well, Son, with your cellular phone, bureau car, secretary girl, and a general manager calling you during lunch,” his mother said, walking him downstairs to the door. “You are part of the system now, I understand that.”

“No, I don’t think I’m part of it. But it is necessary for people to work within the system.”

“Do something good then.” she said. “As Buddhist scripture says, ‘Something as small as a bird’s peck is preordained and has consequences’.”

“I will keep it in mind, Mother,” he said.

He thought he understood why his mother had kept talking about doing good things in. the Buddhist spirit. Worried about his prolonged bachelorhood, she had been burning incense to Guanyin every day, praying that retribution for any wrongdoing by the family would befall her instead.

“Oh, Aunt Chen!” Little Zhou sprang out of the car with half of a steamed bun in his hand. “Whenever you need the use of a car, give me a call. I’m Chief Inspector Chen’s man.”

His mother shook her head slightly as the car pulled away, noting her neighbors’ envious looks.

Little Zhou started playing a CD of The Internationale in a rock version. Those heroic words failed to uplift his spirits. He told Little Zhou to pull up at the corner of Fuzhou and Shandong Roads. “I want to browse in a bookstore. Don’t wait for me. I’ll walk back.”