Qiu Xiaolong - A Loyal Character Dancer

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 across 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.