Qiu Xiaolong - The Mao Case

“Here it is,” she said, beginning to read aloud from the LCD screen.

It was on a hillside, Jingshan Park, Forbidden City / where the Qing Emperor had succeeded / the Ming Emperor, we sat / on a slab of rock there, watching / the evening spreading out against the tilted eaves / of the ancient, splendid palace. / Below us, waves of buses flowed / along Huangchen Road – a moat, hundreds of years ago. We murmured / words in Chinese, then in English / we were learning. The bronze stork / which had once escorted the Qing Dowager / stared at us. You dream of us becoming / two gargoyles, you told me / at Yangxing imperial hall, gurgling/ all night long, in a language comprehensible / only to ourselves. A mist / enveloped the hill. We saw a tree / hung with a white board saying / “It’s on this tree that Emperor Chongzhen / committed suicide.” The board reminded me / of the blackboard hung my father’s neck / during the Cultural Revolution. The evening / struck me as suddenly cold. / We left the park.

“Yes, the poem. I really appreciate it that you kept it for me -”

“I did it on the airplane. Nothing to do during those business flights.”

But he was vexed, almost irrationally, imagining her traveling with her businessman husband, sitting side by side, and reading his poems to him. Chen had given her a number of his poems. He started wondering whether she had kept them, and where.

“Oh, about the poems I wrote – I meant the poems for you, Ling. I haven’t kept the manuscripts properly, only some pieces here, some pieces there. If you still have them, can you give them back to me?”

“You want them back?”

He regretted the way he had made the request. So impulsive and abrupt. How was she going to interpret it?

But she changed the subject. “I have a friend working in the Central South Sea. A visit to his old home can be arranged, I guess.”

Since they were back to talking about Mao, he decided to push his luck further. “Oh, there’s a book written by Mao’s personal doctor, do you know anything about it?”

“This is about an investigation concerning Mao, isn’t it?” she said, looking him in the eye. “You have to tell me more about your work.”

So he told her what information he was looking for, though without going into detail. He knew that honesty would be the best way to enlist her help.

“You’re somebody in your field, Chief Inspector Chen -”

But her cell phone rang. She snatched it up in frustration. In spite of her initial reluctance, she began speaking in earnest. Possibly an important business call.

“Quota is no problem…”

He stood up, pulled out a packet of cigarettes, and made a gesture with it. Pushing open the door, he headed into the courtyard.

The courtyard was even more deserted than he had first thought. The quadrangle house was holding out in desperation against the development. He watched her profile silhouetted against the window paper, the phone pressed to her cheek. Almost like an ancient shadow play. At that instant, she seemed to have moved far away.

She was capable. No question about it. There was no forgetting, however, that she had succeeded in the business world not because of her capability, but because of her family connections. It was part of the system – the way of the system. The quota she was talking about, presumably for export business, was an example: she could get the quota easily with a phone call to her “uncle” or “aunt,” yet it was way beyond ordinary people.

He wasn’t able to identify with the system, not yet, not totally, in spite of his “success” in the system. In his heart of hearts, he still yearned for something different, something with a sort of independence, albeit a limited one, from the system.

He saw she was finishing the call, putting the phone down on the table. Grinding out the cigarette, he hastened back into the room.

“You’re a busy CEO,” he said in spite of himself.

“You don’t have to say that. As a chief inspector, you’re busier.”

“It’s a job you have to put more and more of yourself into. Then it becomes part of you, whether you like it or not,” he said wistfully. “I’m talking about myself, of course. So I may redeem myself, ironically, only by being a conscientious cop.”

“Will the visit to Mao’s residence make such a difference to your police work?”

She was right to ask the question. The visit alone would make no difference. In fact, the very trip to Beijing could be a pathetic attempt to treat a dead horse as if it were still alive. “A special team was sent to Shang’s home,” he said, taking her question as a subtle hint. “After so many years, no one could know anything about what they did. The archive may still be listed as confidential -”

But her phone rang again. She took a look at the number and turned it off. “Those businesspeople will never let you alone,” she said, her fingers brushing against the paper window, like against the long-ago memories. “That night, I remember, there was an orange pinwheel spinning in the window. You were drunk, saying it was like an image in your poem. Have you totally given up your poetry?”

“Can I support myself as a poet?” He had a hard time following her as she jumped to the topic of poetry. She might be as self-conscious as he was at the unexpected reunion. “I published a collection of poems, but I found out that it was actually funded by a business associate of mine without my knowledge.”

“When I first started my business, I, too, had the naïve idea, that among other things, you might be able to write your poems without worrying about anything else.”

He was touched by a faraway look in her eyes, but she was intensely present too. She had never given up on the poet in him. Was it possible, however, for him to let her support him like that?

“When I first met you, I never imagined I would be a cop.” And I never thought you would be a businesswoman – “In those days, we still had dreams, but we have to live in the present moment.”

“I don’t know when Yong will come back,” she said, glancing up at the clock on the wall.

“It’s late,” he responded, almost mechanically. “It may be difficult for you to find a taxi.”

“I’ll leave a note for her. She will understand.”

So it ended in a whimper, this evening of theirs, but whether Yong would understand it, he didn’t know.

As they walked out of the courtyard, he was surprised to see the limousine still waiting there, like a modern monster crouching against the ruins of the old Beijing lane. A wooden pillar still stood out, like an angry finger pointing to the summer night sky.

“Is it your father’s car?”

“No, it’s mine.” She added, “For business.”

HCC were no longer something simply because of their parents. With their family connections, they themselves had turned into high cadres, or into successful entrepreneurs like her, or into both, like her husband.

He followed her over to the limousine, her high heels clicking on the stone-covered lane, a sliver of the moonlight illuminating her fine profile.

Holding the door for her, the chauffeur bowed obsequiously, white-haired like an owl in the night.

“Let me take you to your hotel,” she said.

“No, thanks. It’s just across the lane. I’ll walk there.”

“Then good night.”

Watching the car roll out of sight, he recalled that her earlier reference to the “tide” could have come out of a Tang-dynasty poem. The tide always keeps its word / to come. Had I known that, / I would have married a young tide-rider.

He was no longer a young tide-rider on the materialistic waves today.

CHIEF INSPECTOR CHEN STARTED his second day in Beijing by making a phone call to Diao. It was quite early in the morning.