Don't Cry Tai Lake (13 page)

“The breakfast wasn't good?”

“It's very good. I'll eat it a bit later.”

“It's better to take the medicine after you eat.”

“Yes, I know that,” he said and motioned her to leave the medicine on the table.

He pulled out another cigarette, but changed his mind and put it back into the box before absentmindedly moving over to the French window in the back.

Out the window, on the cedar deck, he saw a tung-oiled paper umbrella unfolded against the railings, red-pointed like a gigantic breast, trembling slightly in the wind.
Everything is imaginable, but not necessarily innocent
. The night before, he had gone for his customary walk in a light drizzle, and left the umbrella out on the deck after he returned.

He sat down in the antique dark wood chair by the window and stretched his feet onto the windowsill. In postmodern theory, it could be said that the sight of the shapely chair arms took him, he thought with a touch of amusement. Indeed, many would be contented to just sit here—

But the morning wasn't going to be a quiet, contemplative one for him. His cell phone rang, sounding like the alarm clock in the dream. He glanced at the number on the screen. It was Sergeant Huang.

“Liu's rival had a solid alibi too.”

“Who?”

“Zhang Tonghua, the head of another chemical company in Wuxi, who was Liu's main rival in that line of the business.”

“Oh, the man you targeted,” Chen said. “Of course, Zhang could have hired a killer to do the job, but then it would have become too much of a wild goose chase.”

Chen thought about the puzzling details of the crime scene, details which couldn't be accounted for in a scenario involving a professional killer, either.

“But the timing of it,” Huang said, not giving up. “We can't miss the connection between his murder and the IPO plan. Surely it's not a coincidence.”

This point had been first made by Chen. Huang had obviously embraced and elaborated upon it and probably saw it as his own by now. Still, it made some sense while nothing else did.

“Oh, about Shanshan's phone record,” Huang went on, “I've found something for you.”

“Yes?”

“The threatening calls were made from public pay phones. They were by no means a kid's prank calls.”

“That's what I suspected.”

“What's more,” Huang said after a pause, “somebody else is interested in her phone calls. Her calls are being tapped in connection with the investigation into Jiang.”

“Oh, that's interesting. Who's bugging her?”

“Internal Security. According to them, she and Jiang know each other well. She could have been involved.”

“Have they found anything?”

“Not yet. At least, they haven't said anything to me. But I'll follow up, Chief.”

“Thanks for telling me this, Huang,” Chen said. “Call me immediately if there's anything new.”

After he hung up with Huang, Chen tried to fit the new information into the puzzle. As before, his efforts failed to lead anywhere. So, for the sake of change, he decided to write a report about the environmental issue to Comrade Secretary Zhao. Chief Inspector Chen was a cop, and a busy one, but nonetheless a responsible citizen like Shanshan. It was up to him to write this report, whether it would appeal to the top leaders or not.

He had hardly completed the first paragraph when he found himself slowing down. It was turning out to be much harder than he had anticipated. So far, all he had was a hodgepodge of high-sounding yet empty sentences that didn't prove anything. It wasn't his territory, and he didn't have anything concrete or solid to support his argument. He was quickly losing confidence in his ability to write such a report.

He lit another cigarette and his mind began wandering back to the case. He realized, much to his dismay, that it was only when he was thinking like a cop that he was able to proceed with confidence.

Since when had he become a cop who looked only at his own feet? True, in case after case, Chief Inspector Chen had been too busy with his job to do anything else, but there's no denying that there were privileges for an emerging Party cadre. He wasn't exactly a high-ranking cadre yet, but he felt a sense of obligation to the system that had treated him well.

Thinking of Shanshan and her arduous uphill battle for the lake, he turned back to the table, opened the laptop and started to type.

In a trance of blazing poppies

or in the cooling shade, deeply covered

with moss, you have forgotten

the night we spent on the bridge,

the light in the distance, and the lights

beyond them converging

into music on your retina, while

you conducted with your cigarette

a tone poem of the sleepless lake,

when you no longer belonged

to a place, nor a time, nor yourself.

When another white water bird flies

from the calendar, may you dream

no longer of a pale oyster

clinging to the grim limestone.

 

(Where are you now, as dawn taps

at my window with her rosy fingers,

as the fragrance of coffee and bread

penetrates the wakening mind,

and as the door, like a smile,

welcomes flowers and newspapers?)

The lines came almost effortlessly, more or less to his own bewilderment. Was he the persona “you” in the first stanza? That's not possible. He had been staying by the lake for only a few days. But a sense of guilt in it was unmistakable. In a symbolist way, perhaps. The second stanza in parentheses probably was the result of his recent experience at the center, but what did it really mean?

Nevertheless, these lines could develop into a long poem and not one about himself, but more about her and the lake, about what's happening in China, and about an unyielding spirit …

Then he paused and compelled his thoughts back to the case again, thinking with confidence. There was something else at the crime scene; what, exactly, he couldn't yet tell. So he picked up the list of things in Liu's apartment, a list he had already gone over several times.

This time he came to a stop at one particular item—a lacquer jewelry box with a black pearl necklace, gold earrings, and a green jade bracelet. None of it was of extraordinary value. But it was at his office, not his home. According to Mrs. Liu, she didn't stay there. So why was a jewelry box there? If anything, it only served to confirm Shanshan's account about Mi, the little secretary. But that didn't prove helpful, however, in his effort to connect the dots of possible clues.

Then he pulled out the pictures of the crime scene. He placed them on the floor of the living room, then seated himself in the midst of them. He looked over them one by one. Still, he failed to see anything; all he had was a vague feeling that there was something missing. Perhaps something common in everyday life, but it eluded him for the moment.

He could no longer hide in the background, he concluded. At the very least, he should personally examine the crime scene and talk to some of the people involved. It wouldn't be a big risk. Chief Inspector Chen couldn't help being curious, one could argue, about a murder investigation in Wuxi, the town where he happened to be on vacation.

And he might still keep his movements secret as long as he and Huang proceeded cautiously.

After he took the herbal medicine, fielded a mysterious wrong number phone call, and drank a third cup of lukewarm coffee, he realized that he had spent practically half a day doing nothing in the villa. He was like one of those high-ranking cadres supposedly recuperating there in lassitude, still wearing pajamas around eleven o'clock.

He felt stupidly useless sitting there.

So he got up to get ready for the rescheduled lunch with Qiao, which he could no longer put off.

The restaurant was in the main building of the center, where the waitresses all wore colorful silk mandarin dresses with high slits, like Qing palace ladies. In the midst of their bowing and greeting, he walked up a flight of steps covered by a red carpet held in place by shining brass clips.

It turned out to be an expensive banquet of “all lake delicacies,” just as Qiao had promised, in an elegant private room. Several high-level executives of the center joined in, greeting and toasting the distinguished guest.

“All the lake delicacies are carefully selected. They are not the so-called ‘lake special' that you might find in the market,” Qiao said reassuringly.

It was quite possible that the meals here were specially prepared for Party officials. Chen had heard about the unique treatment reserved for high cadres—not just for those staying by the lake here.

But what about the ordinary people who lived by the lake?

A huge platter of hilsa herring covered in sliced ginger and scallion was served. The fish was steamed with Jinhua ham and chicken broth, along with some white herb Chen didn't recognize.

“It's not from the lake here,” an executive named Ouyang said, the oldest of the group, who was probably going to retire soon. “We simply call it
shi
fish. The chef has to clean and peel off its scales first, but after putting the fish in the bamboo steamer, he will gingerly place the large scales back on the body to prevent the loss of juice and to keep the texture tender.”

Shi
fish was extremely expensive, costing at least five or six hundred yuan a pound at the market. The way it was prepared was also exceedingly time-consuming.

“Yesterday I walked out along a small road in the opposite direction of the park,” Chen said, for once not talking like a gourmand at a banquet. “I happened to pass by a chemical company. People were saying that somebody was murdered there. Have you heard anything, Director Qiao?”

“Yes, I heard about it too. Liu Deming, the general manager of the chemical company, was murdered in his home office,” Qiao said. “It is a very successful company, and he was killed right on the eve of a huge IPO too. What a pity! He could have become a billionaire.”

“A billionaire, but so what?” Ouyang cut in, shaking his silver-haired head like a dream lost in the light streaming through the windows. “As in the old proverb, rich or poor, people inevitably end up alike in a mound of yellow earth. There's no escaping
kalpa
.”

“Or you may say karma, Ouyang,” Chen said. “I've heard people are talking about the ecological pollution caused by those lakeside factories.”

“No, not karma. I'm not a man of letters, Mr. Chen. I'm too dumb to understand those high-sounding theories about environment. Before the economic reform, however, people here had hardly enough to feed themselves. Many died of starvation during the so-called three years of natural disasters. As Comrade Deng Xiaoping put it well, development comes before everything else. Can you imagine the present-day prosperity of Wuxi without these factories?”

But at what a cost?
Chen thought, but didn't say out loud.

“The company donates a large annual sum to our center,” Qiao said pensively. “I don't know if the new boss will continue to do that.”

Indeed, perspective determined everything, Chen thought. It was little wonder that local officials defended the pattern of the economic development.

Chen had lost his appetite, but he managed to get through the meal, absentmindedly eating, drinking, and saying things as if playing and replaying a CD from a hidden groove of his mind. Afterward, he took leave of his host with some sort of excuse and walked out.

The center was like a miniature park. The pavilions built in the traditional architectural style, alongside Western-style buildings, made for a pleasant mixture of Oriental and Occidental landscape. He followed a cobble-covered path without purpose or direction, walking past a man-made waterfall against grottos of exquisite rocks before he reached the foot of the verdant hill. He ended up near the fence door at the back, though he had come here by a different route last time. As before, no one was there. He sat on a slab of rock, looking out over the shimmering expanse of water.

It's not the lake, but the moment / the lake comes flowing into your eyes
 …

He was thinking of her again, but that afternoon, he started to realize what a battle she had been fighting in her efforts to protect the environment.

Just like those people at the banquet, Liu and the others must have been putting a lot pressure on her.

From the overpass full of sound and fury,

you may see time is like water

covered with all the dirty algae,

empty cans, plastic bottles.

Water has so many delusions,

cunning currents that deceive

with whispering ambitions and vanities.

If you are lost in the revelries

of a solitary green reed in the wind,

the water flows away, leaving you behind.

The lake has so many exits,

once lost, you can never find your way back.

After so many years, you still don't know

how the water flows?

 

Don't forget what's really important

in a tiny blue test tube.

Virtues are forced upon you

by the tears shaken from the forbidden tree.

 

The siren, coming from afar,

shouted in terror through the murky mist …

He was again surprised by the voice in the lines, apparently one of mighty authority, like Liu and his people, speaking out to Shanshan, though the persona here was also more of a collective one—not necessarily in Wuxi, nor just by Tai Lake. But that voice might work for an ambitious multivoice, multiperspective poem—along with the lines he had dashed off earlier that morning.