Qiu Xiaolong - The Mao Case

Afterward, he dialed the Shanghai Writers’ Association. He had a long talk with the executive secretary, and got the information he needed about Long.

Chen started preparing a list of questions for his visit. Halfway through it, he heard a knock on the door. To his surprise, a bamboo basket of live river crabs was waiting there – at least ten pounds of live crabs. Attached was a short note from Gu.

You’re too busy to come to my restaurant, I know. Another basket was sent to your mother’s place.

Chen regretted mentioning the crab story to Gu. The cost of such a basket could be exceedingly high, though it came without a price tag – at least not yet. But for now Chen chose to tell himself a cliché: the end justifies the means. After all, it was a Mao case, and the basket might come in handy for the important visit to Long.

Chen dialed Long’s number and proposed coming over for a visit. The two had met at the association before, but his call must have come as a surprise to Long, especially when Chen added at the end, “I’ll bring along something to eat, so we’ll talk over a cup.”

ABOUT AN HOUR LATER, Chen arrived at a small street in the Old City area and saw Long waiting in front of his apartment building. In spite of Chen’s tip on the phone, Long was flabbergasted at the sight of the basket of river crabs.

“My humble abode is brightened by your visit,” Long said. “Now you are overwhelming me with all the crabs.”

“I was impressed by your crab story, Long. And I happen to know someone at a restaurant. After I was able to get some at the state price, I decided to come over.”

“I’m not surprised by your connections, Comrade Chief Inspector Chen, but the ‘state price’ more than surprises me.”

Chen smiled without giving any explanation, but Long was right about the nonexistence of “state price.”

Long welcomed Chen into his efficiency apartment – the bedroom, the living room, the dining room, and the kitchen were all in one room. A red-painted table was already set out in the middle of the room. On the side closest to the door, there was a sink and a coal briquette stove. On one of the white walls, Chen saw a couple of scarlet crab claws as decoration.

“My wife has to babysit at her sister’s place today,” Long said. “We’ll talk to our hearts’ content over a crab feast. Let me prepare them first. It’ll take just a few minutes.”

Long put the crabs in the sink underneath the window and started washing them with a short bamboo broom. With the water still running and the crabs crawling, he took out a large pot, filled it half full with water, and put it on the propane gas tank.

“Steaming is the simplest and best way.”

“Can I help, Long?”

“Slice the ginger,” Long said, taking out a piece of the root, “for the sauce.”

Long bent down over the sink to clean the crabs with an old toothbrush. As Chen finished slicing the ginger, Long started binding the crabs, one by one, with white cloth strings.

“This way, the crabs won’t lose their legs in the steamers,” Long commented, putting them into the pot.

By now Chen was convinced that Aiguo in the story was none other than Long himself. The way he prepared the crabs was impressive.

“I’ll tell you what, Chief Inspector Chen. I, too, used to have crabs every month back in the early seventies.”

That was during the Cultural Revolution, Chen thought, when Long was a “revolutionary worker scholar,” capable of enjoying privileges not easily available to others.

“That’s what I guessed. Your story must have been more or less drawn from your own experience.”

The special sauce of vinegar and sugar and ginger was prepared. Long dipped his chopsticks into the sauce, tasted it, and smacked his lips. He opened a bottle of Shaoxing yellow rice wine, poured out a cup for Chen, and poured a cup for himself.

“Let’s have a cup first.”

“To a crab evening!”

“Now let’s wash our hands,” Long said. “The crabs will soon be ready.”

As Chen seated himself at the table, Long took off the cover of the steamer, picked up the contents, and placed on the table a large platter of steamed crabs, dazzlingly red and white under the light. “Crabs have to be served hot. I will leave some of them unsteamed for the moment.”

So saying, Long fell to eating a fat crab without further ado, and Chen followed suit. Spooning the sauce into the crab shell, Chen dipped a piece of crab into the amber-colored liquid. It was delicious.

Only after having finished the digestive glands of the second crab did Long look up with a satisfied sigh and nod. Turning the crab’s entrails inside out, he had something that looked like a tiny monk sitting in meditation on his palm.

“In the story of the White Snake, a meddlesome monk has to hide somewhere after he has ruined the happiness of a young couple. Finally he pulls himself into a crab shell. It’s useless. Look, there’s no escape.”

“A marvelous story. You are truly a crab expert, Long.”

“Don’t laugh at my exuberance. It is the first crab-treat for me this year. I can’t help it,” Long mumbled with an embarrassed grin, a crab leg still between his teeth. “You’re an important man. You may want to talk to me about something, but you don’t have to bring all those crabs.”

“Well, you are an authority on Mao’s poetry. In ancient times, a student came to his teacher with a ham, so it’s proper and right for me to come here with crabs. They are far from enough to show my respect for you.”

Poking the meat out of the crab leg with a chopstick, Long said, “I really appreciate it.”

“I’ve been reading his poems. Whatever people may say about Mao nowadays, his poems are not bad at all.”

“The most magnificent poems,” Long said, raising his cup. “It’s not easy for a young intellectual like you to say so. You, too, are a poet.”

“But I write free verse. I don’t know much about regular verse. So you have to enlighten me on that.”

“In terms of poetic tradition, Mao wrote ci poems, which have elaborate requirements for the number of characters in a line, and for the tone and rhyme patterns too. But you don’t have to worry about the versification to appreciate his poems. Like ‘Snow,’ which is full of original and bold images. What a sublime vision!”

“A sublime vision indeed,” Chen echoed. It might be well to start with a poem not directly related to the investigation. “What an infinite expanse of imagination!”

“That’s true,” Long agreed. His tongue loosened with the wine, he quoted the last line with a flourish. “To look for the really heroic, you have to count on today!”

“But the poem was also controversial, I have read. Mao made that particular statement after listing well-known emperors in history and pronouncing himself a greater one.”

“You cannot take a poem too literally. ‘The really heroic’ here can be singular or plural. It doesn’t have to refer to Mao alone. Also, we have to take into consideration that Mao and the Communist Party were then regarded as ‘uneducated bandits.’ So the poem showed Mao’s learning and won applause from the intellectuals.”

“Yes, your interpretation throws much light on it,” Chen said, though not at all convinced. “That’s why I am coming to an expert like you.”

“There are interpretations and interpretations. Some people may have a personal grudge against Mao – quite possibly because of their suffering during the Cultural Revolution, but we have to see Mao from a historical perspective.”

“Exactly, but people cannot help seeing him from their own perspective.”

“Now, from my perspective, the sauce is a must. Simple yet essential, it brings out the best of the crabs,” Long said, changing the topic as he poured the sauce into another crab shell. “Once I even dipped pebbles into the sauce, and with my eyes closed, I still enjoyed all the memories of the crabs.”