Qiu Xiaolong - The Mao Case

It was a man’s voice, with a strong provincial accent, though which province Chen couldn’t immediately tell. He was confounded, not having heard someone come in with Jiao, nor hearing the door reopen later. What’s more, the voice seemed to come from the other end of the living room, not close to the door -

Could there be another door – a secret one in the living room? Though it was hard to imagine, it would explain Internal Security’s failure to detect a man coming in and out of her apartment.

If so, the mysterious man behind Jiao must be rich and resourceful, having bought this apartment along with the one adjacent, and having a secret door installed between the two. But why all the elaborate secrecy?

He could hear Jiao hurrying out, saying, “Why did you want me to hurry back?”

“What a nice meal,” the man said with a chuckle. “Fatty pork is good for the brain. I’ve been fighting so many battles. An emperor, too, has to eat.”

The two met up in the kitchen area. Chen hadn’t paid much attention to the dishes on the table there. The fatty pork, which Peiqin had mentioned as one of Jiao’s favorites, turned out to be one of the mystery man’s favorites, for an uncommon reason.

“It’s hot, it’s revolutionary,” the man said, clanking his chopsticks on a bowl. “You should learn to eat pepper.”

Jiao murmured something in response. “Having just enjoyed the Yangtze River water,” the man went on in high spirits, “I am relishing the Wuchang fish.”

Chen finally recognized the man’s accent as Hunan, possibly affected, as he spoke slowly, almost deliberately. But there was something else mystifying about his comment. It sounded like a paraphrase of the two lines Mao wrote after swimming in the Yangtze River. “I’ve just tasted the Yangtze River water, / and I’m now enjoying the Wuchang fish.” The original carried an allusion to the ambitious King of Wu during the Three Kingdom period. The king had wanted to move the capital from Nanjing to Wuchang, but the people were unwilling, saying that they would rather drink the Yangtze River water than eat the Wuchang fish. Mao dashed off the poem, comparing himself favorably to the Wu emperor, having both the water and the fish to his heart’s content.

There might be a fish on the table, presumably a real Wuchang fish too.

“No, the Huangpu River water,” Jiao responded debunkingly.

Chen slid the closet door open an inch, trying to peep out. From where he stood, however, he couldn’t see into the kitchen area. He fought down the temptation venture out farther.

Jiao and her company continued eating in silence.

But Chen saw a mini recorder on the corner table, which reminded him of the one in his briefcase. He took it out and rewound the tape to the beginning.

“Leave the dishes alone,” the man said to Jiao. “Let’s go to bed.”

The two of them were already moving into the bedroom, his footsteps heavier than hers.

“Haven’t you put up the scroll I bought you?” he asked.

“No, not yet.”

“I wrote the poem for you years ago. Now I finally got it back. I paid a high price for it.”

Chen was totally lost. The man was presumably talking about the scroll in the closet, which had a huge price tag. But Mao had composed the poem for Shang, so how could the man outside claim it as his for Jiao?

And what was the relationship between the two? Obviously, he was the “keeper.” Judging from her response, Jiao didn’t feel strongly about the scroll. At least, she didn’t put it up quickly. Having rewound the tape, Chen pressed the button to start recording. It had become hot, almost suffocating, in the closet. He remained still, worried that the man might insist she hang the scroll up right now.

Instead of pushing her, the man started yawning and slumped across the bed, which then creaked under his weight. Jiao kicked off her shoes, her heels falling on the floor, one after another.

It was still early, but the two on the bed sounded tired. Before too long, hopefully, they would stop talking and fall asleep. Then Chen would be able to get out.

“You’ve got something on your mind,” Jiao said. “Talk to me.”

“Well, I have overcome so much, sweeping away all my enemies like rolling up a mat. How can I have anything on my mind? Let’s forget our worries in the cloud and rain.”

“No, it’s useless. And it’s too early.”

“A plum blossom can always come out a second time.”

The conversation in the bedroom struck Chen as inexplicably stilted. The metaphor of “rolling up a mat” sounded like another line by Mao, though Chen wasn’t sure. But he was certain that in erotic literature, a plum flower blossoming a second time could refer to a second climax during sexual intercourse.

Their talk was becoming quiet, indistinct, intelligible only to themselves. Chen had a hard time hearing their murmuring to each other, except for occasional exclamations interspersed with moaning and groaning.

“You are really big, Chairman, big in everything,” she said breathlessly.

Chen was thunderstruck. She called her bed partner “Chairman.” Nowadays, “Chairman” wasn’t exclusively reserved for Mao, but “CEO” or “President” would be far more common for Big Bucks in contemporary China. Chen was able to puzzle out the sentence because it was something he had read in the file about Shang – what she had said about Mao after their first night together: “Chairman Mao is big – in everything.” It could mean a lot of things. But in the present context, it meant only one thing.

Was Jiao imitating Shang?

The groaning and moaning intensified, rising to a crescendo. Chen had never imagined he would ever investigate a case like a peeping Tom in a closet, or to be exact, an eavesdropping Tom. The sound kept breaking in, wave upon wave, whether he liked it or not.

If he tried to slip out now, he might succeed in getting away unnoticed. Lost in sexual rapture, the lovers might hardly pay attention to anything else, and there was only a faint night light flickering in the bedroom.

But he decided to stay. The two might soon fall asleep, and it would be less risky to sneak out then. Besides, he was intrigued by their talk in the midst of the grunting and grinding on the wooden-board mattress.

“Oh, oh, against the gathering dusk stands a pine,” the man burst out in a loud falsetto, “sturdy, erect -”

It befuddled Chen. At the dinner table, the man’s comment about the fish might have been a witty joke. In the midst of sexual passion, however, he was quoting Mao again, and that was bizarre -

Chen finally recognized the Hunan-accented voice as an imitation of Mao.

Could he be playing a role – that of “Mao?”

From the moment of his entry into the apartment, the man had been talking and acting like Mao, including his remarks at the dinner table about fatty pork being beneficial for the brain, about hot pepper being revolutionary. Those were details from the memoirs about Mao. Not to mention all the quotes from Mao, and now the very poem he wrote to Madam Mao, “On the Picture of the Fairy Cave in Lu Mountains.” “Mao” must have heard the erotic interpretation and was applying it to that very context.

The chief inspector had read about sexual fantasies, but what was being staged in the bedroom was far more than that – it was elaborate, perverted, absurd.

Abruptly, something seemed to be going wrong on the bed in the dark.

“What a fairy cave it is, born out of the nature! / Ineffable – ineffable -”

“Mao” failed to complete the last line. Could he have forgotten the remaining words in his climb up to the height of sexual ecstasy?

In the ensuing silence, Chen heard Jiao making a muffled sound which went on for two or three minutes before she burst out in frustration.