The Mao Case (17 page)

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.

EIGHTEEN

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

“My name is Chen,” he introduced himself. “I used to be a businessman, but I’m trying my hand at writing. I talked with Chairman Wang of the Chinese Writers’ Association. He recommended you to me. So I would like very much to invite you to lunch today.”

“What a surprise, Mr. Chen! Thank you so much for your kind invitation, I have to say that first. But we’ve never met before, have we? Nor have I met Wang before. How can I let you buy lunch for me?”

“I haven’t read much, Mr. Diao, but I know the story of Cao Xueqin’s friends treating him to Beijing roast duck in exchange for a chapter of the
Dream of the Red Chamber
. That’s how I got the idea.”

“I don’t have any exciting stories for you, I’m afraid, but if you really insist, we may meet for a late lunch today.”

“Great. One o’clock then. See you at Fangshan Restaurant.”

Putting down the phone, Chen realized that he had the morning to himself. So he started making plans.

As he walked out of the hotel, he hailed a taxi, telling the driver to go to the Memorial Hall of Chairman Mao in Tiananmen Square. Afterward, he thought, he could take a short cut through the Forbidden City Museum, to the Fangshan Restaurant in North Sea Park.

“You’re lucky. The memorial hall is open this week,” the taxi driver said without looking back. “I took someone there just yesterday.”

“Thanks.”

“It’s at the center of the Tiananmen Square,” the driver said, taking him for a first-time visitor to Beijing. “The feng shui of the memorial hall is absolutely rotten.”

“What do you mean?”

“Rotten for the dead, wasn’t it? Hardly a month after Mao’s death, his body not even properly placed in the crystal coffin yet, Madam Mao was thrown into jail as the head of the Gang of Four. And inauspicious for the square too. You know what happened in the square in 1989. There was bloodshed all over it. Sooner or later his body will have to be removed, or it will cause trouble again.”

“You really believe that?”

“Believe it or not, there’s no escaping retribution! Not even for Mao. He died sonless. One of his sons was killed in the Korean War, another suffers from schizophrenia, and still another went missing during the Civil War. It was Mao himself who said that, while he was in the Lu Mountains.” The driver added with a sardonic chuckle, “But you never know how many bastards he might have left behind.”

Chen made no comment, trying to look out at the much-changed Chang’an Avenue. They had already passed the Beijing Hotel near Dongdan.

When the taxi came to a stop close to the memorial hall, Chen handed some bills to the driver and said, “Keep the change. But tell your feng shui theory to every customer. One of them may turn out to be a cop.”

“Oh, if that happens, I’ll have a question for that cop. My father — labeled a Rightist simply so his school could meet the quota demand — died during the Cultural Revolution, leaving me an orphan without an education or skills. That’s why I am a taxi driver. So what compensation does the government owe me?”

In the anti-Rightist movement launched by Mao in mid-fifties, there was a sort of quota — each work unit had to report a given number of rightists to the authorities. The driver’s father must have been labeled a Rightist because of that. Whatever the personal grudge against Mao, however, people shouldn’t talk that way about the dead.

“The times have changed,” the taxi driver said, poking his head out of the window, as he drove off. “A cop can’t lock me up for talking about a feng shui theory.”

And whatever its feng shui, the front of the splendid mausoleum, surrounded by tall green trees, had drawn a large group of visitors, standing in a line longer than he had expected. People seemed to be quite patient, some taking pictures, some reading guidebooks, some cracking watermelon seeds.

He joined the end of the line, moving up with others. Looking at a body sometimes helps, if only psychologically, he told himself again. He had to zero in, so to speak, to get a better understanding of someone who was possibly involved.

Peddlers swarmed, hawking watches, lighters, and all sorts of small decorations and gadgets bearing the name of Mao. Chen picked up a watch with an ingeniously designed dial — it showed Mao in a green army uniform with the armband of the Red Guard. The pendulum consisted of Mao’s hand waving majestically on top of Tiananmen Gate, endless like time itself.

A security guard hurried over, shooing away the peddlers like insistent flies. Raising a green-painted loudspeaker, he urged the visitors to purchase flowers in homage to the great leader. Several people paid for the yellow chrysanthemums wrapped in plastic as the line swerved into the large courtyard. Chen did as well. There was also a mandatory booklet on all the great contributions Mao made to China, and he bought a copy, but didn’t open it.

Scarcely had the line of people turned into the north hall, however, when they were ordered to lay the flowers beneath a white marble statue of Mao standing in relief against an immense tapestry of China’s mountains and rivers in the brilliantly lit background.

“Shameless,” a square-faced man in the line cursed. “Only a minute after you’ve paid for the chrysanthemums. They cash in on the dead by reselling the flowers.”

“But at least they are not charging an entrance fee,” a long-faced man said. “At all the other parks in Beijing, you now have to buy tickets.”

“Do you think I would come here if I had to buy a ticket?” the square-faced man retorted. “They just want to keep up the long lines by promising no charge.”

Chen wasn’t so sure about that, but it took no less than half an hour for the line to edge into the Hall of Last Respects, and then to move up, finally, to the crystal coffin, in which Mao lay in a gray Mao suit, draped with a large red flag of the Chinese Communist Party, with honor gaurds solemnly standing around, motionless like toy soldiers.

In spite of his anticipation, Chen was stunned at the sight of Mao. So majestic on the screen of Chen’s memory, Mao now appeared shrunken, shriveled out of proportion, his cheeks hollow like dried oranges, his lips waxy, heavily painted. The little hair he had left looked somehow pasted or painted.

Chen had stood close to Mao in the crystal coffin for less than a minute before he was compelled to move on. Visitors behind him were edging up and pushing.

Instead of turning into the Memorial Chamber with pictures and documents about Mao on display, Chen headed straight to the exit.

Once out of the Memorial Hall, he inhaled a deep breath of fresh air. Peddlers again came rushing over. It was close to twelve, so he decided to start moving in the direction of his appointment.

Passing under the arch of the towering Tiananmen Gate, he purchased a ticket to the Forbidden City Museum, mainly for the short cut. With the traffic snarl along Chang’an Avenue, it could take much longer for him to get to the park by taxi.

The Forbidden City, strictly speaking, referred to the palace compound, including the court, various imperial halls, offices, and living quarters, but just beyond the palace, there were royal gardens and other imperial complexes no less forbidden to the ordinary people. After the overthrow of the Qing dynasty, the palace proper was turned into a museum, with various exhibition halls displaying the splendors of the imperial dynasties.

The palace was apparently too huge for a museum. So booths appeared in the courtyards, along the trails, and at the corners. Absent-mindedly, he bought a stick of sugar-glazed hawthorn, a Beijing street food speciality. It tasted surprisingly sour.

He began to be aware of a subtle effect the imperial surroundings were having on him. A self-contained world of divine sublimity, where an emperor couldn’t have helped seeing himself as the son of the heaven, high above the people, a godly ruler endowed with the sacred mandate and mission for him alone. Consequently, no ethics or rules whatsoever could possibly apply to him.

So for Mao, the anti-Rightist movement, the Three Red Banners, and the Cultural Revolution — all those political movements that had cost millions and millions of Chinese people’s lives — might have been nothing more than what was necessary for an emperor to consolidate his power, at least in his imagination within the high walls of the Forbidden City…

Instead of stepping into any of the imperial exhibition rooms, Chen kept walking straight ahead. That morning, he was the only such determined passerby there.

Soon, he walked through the museum’s back gate, from which he then glimpsed the tip of the White Pagoda in the North Sea Park.

NINETEEN

FANGSHAN RESTAURANT, WHICH CHEN
had chosen for the lunch meeting with Diao, was in the North Sea Park, originally an outside imperial garden attached to the Forbidden City, celebrated for its imperial history.

The restaurant choice was also made for a personal reason. During his college years, Chen had talked to Ling about having lunch there. They had never done so, as it had been far beyond his means.

There was still about half an hour before the appointment time. So he took a leisurely walk along the lake. In spite of the park’s name, there was no sea, only a man-made lake, which was exaggerated for the sake of the emperor. Still, it was a fantastic park in the center of the city, adjacent to the Beijing Library, where Ling had once worked, and with the silhouette of the White Pagoda shimmering behind.

He made his way toward a small bridge that he remembered from years before. Cutting across a corner, he saw an arts-and-crafts boutique store embosomed in the summer foliage. He stepped in, but things were too expensive inside. In the evening, he might have some time for a visit to Xidan Department Store to choose a present.

Then the bridge came into view. There, a young girl stood leaning against the railing, gazing out to the verdant mountains in the distance, a pigeon whistle buzzing in the air. He was overwhelmed with a sense of déjà vu.
The heart-breaking spring ripple / still so green under the bridge, / the ripples that reflected her arrival / light-footed, in such beauty / as would shame a wild goose into fleeing.

One afternoon, in his last years of college, Ling had arranged to meet him here with some books he had requested. He was delayed at school, and she must have been waiting for a long time. Hurrying over, he saw her standing on the muddy planks of a little bridge, resting one foot lightly on the railing, scratching her ankle, her face framed by wind-tangled hair. The scene was inexplicably touching: it was as if she was merging into a backdrop of willow catkins, which symbolized ill-fated beauty in Tang-dynasty poetry.

Whether the scene of the willow catkins had foreshadowed their relationship, no one could tell. But it wasn’t time for nostalgia, he told himself, heading back in the direction of the restaurant.

Fangshan presented an ancient-looking front. In a quiet flagstone courtyard, a waitress dressed like a Qing palace lady came up and led him to a private room. What struck him first was the ubiquitous yellow color — the color exclusively for the royal family. Against the yellow-painted walls, the table was set up with an apricot-colored tablecloth and gilt chopsticks, and behind him, an old cabinet elaborately embossed with golden dragons. Sitting by the window, he opened the briefcase and took out the information he had about Diao.

Diao was a newcomer on the literary scene — a middle school teacher up until his retirement, with no publications whatsoever to his credit until he suddenly produced his bestseller,
Cloud and Rain in Shanghai
. That practically ruled out the possibility that Diao would recognize Chen. The former wasn’t a member of the Writers’ Association, and they couldn’t have met before. The chief inspector should be able to play a role similar to the one he had at Xie Mansion.

People attributed the success of
Cloud and Rain in Shanghai
to its subject matter, but nonetheless it bespoke of the author’s ingenuity. Chen had read the book, impressed by the subtle balance between the stated and the unstated in the text.

At two or three minutes before one, the waitress led in a gray-haired man of medium build, with a deeply furrowed forehead and beady eyes, wearing a black T-shirt, white pants, and shiny dress shoes.

“You must be Mr. Diao,” Chen said, rising from the table. “Yes, I’m Diao.”

“Oh, it’s a great honor to meet you. I’m Chen. Your book,
Cloud and Rain in Shanghai
, is such a big bestseller.”

“Thank you for your invitation to lunch. This is an imperial restaurant, really expensive, and I’ve only heard about it before.”

“I was a student in Beijing years ago, and I would dream of coming here. So it’s for the sake of nostalgia as well.”

“That’s not a bad reason,” Diao said with a grin, showing cigarette-stained teeth. “Don’t you remember a line by our great leader Chairman Mao? ‘Six hundred million people are all Sun and Yao, great emperors.’ Poetic hyperbole, to be sure, but Mao’s right about one thing. People are interested in being emperors, or being like emperors.”

“You are absolutely right.”

“It explains the popularity of the restaurant. People come not only for the food, but for the imperial association too. For a short moment, they can imagine themselves being an emperor.”

That might have also been true for Shang — she might have enjoyed imagining herself as an emperor’s woman. Chen raised his cup, making no comment.

The waitress approached and offered them a small platter of dainty, golden
ououtou
, steamed buns usually made of maize. The ones Chen remembered from his college years had been somber in color, hard to swallow. These looked very different.

“It’s made from a special green bean,” the waitress said, reading his surprise. “Super delicious. The Empress Dowager’s favorite.”

“Great, we’ll try that,” Chen said. “Recommend some other specials to us.”

“For the private room, there is a minimum charge of one thousand yuan. You have to spend at least that amount anyway. So let me recommend an exquisite meal of light delicacies. All small dishes, about twenty of them — the Empress Dowager’s way. That was the minimum for one meal for her too. To begin with, the live fish from the Central South Sea steamed with tender ginger and green onion.”

“That’s good,” Chen said. No one would miss the association between the Forbidden City and Central South Sea.

“What else?” Diao asked for the first time.

“The roast Beijing duck, of course.”

“Duck from the palace?”

“Genuine Beijing ducks. Specially fed, six to eight months old. Most restaurants now cook with an electric oven. We stick to the traditional wood-burning oven, and we use not just any firewood, but a special pine wood so the flavor penetrates deep into the texture of the meat. It was unique practice used only for the emperors,” she said with pride in her voice. “Oh, our chefs follow the tradition of blowing up the duck with their mouths and sewing up its ass before placing it into the oven.”

“Wow, so much to learn about a duck,” Diao exclaimed.

“We offer the celebrated five ways of eating a duck: crisp duck skin slices wrapped in pancake, duck meat slices fried with green garlic, duck feet immersed in wine, duck gizzard stir-fried with green vegetables, and duck soup, but the soup takes about two hours before it turns creamy white.”

“That’s fine. I mean the soup,” Chen said. “Take your time with the soup. Bring up whatever specials you think are the restaurant’s best. Today, it is for a great writer.”

“You overwhelm me with your generosity,” Diao said.

“As a businessman, I’ve made a bunch of money, but so what? In a hundred years, will the money still be mine? Indeed, as our grand master Old Du said, literature alone lasts for thousands of autumns. It’s proper and right for a novice like me to buy a meal for a master like you.”

Chen’s speech echoed one by Ouyang, a friend Chen had met in Guangzhou. An amateur poet yet a successful businessman, Ouyang had made a similar statement over a dim sum meal.

As far as nonfiction was concerned, however, Chen was legitimately a novice, so he could in fact learn something from Diao.

“Your book was a huge success,” Chen went on. “Please tell me how you came to write it?”

“I was a middle school teacher all my life. As a rule, I would start my class by quoting proverbs. Now, for a proverb to be passed on from generation to generation, there must be something in it — something in our culture. One day, I quoted a proverb —
hongyan baoming
— a beauty’s fate is so thin. When my students pressed me for an example, I thought about the tragic fate of Shang. Eventually, I started contemplating a book project, but I hesitated to focus on Shang, for the reasons you might guess. In the process of researching it, I learned about the equally tragic fate of her daughter, Qian. Something clicked in my mind. That’s how I came to write it.”

“That’s fantastic,” Chen said. “You must have done a lot of research on Shang.”

“Some, but not a lot.”

“It’s like a book behind a book. In the lines about the daughter, people may read the story of the mother.”

“Readers read from their own perspectives, but it’s a book about Qian.”

“So tell me more about the story behind the story. I’m fascinated by the real details.”

“What cannot be said must pass over in silence,” Diao responded guardedly. “What’s true and what’s not? You like the
Dream of the Red Chamber
, so you must remember the famous couplet on the arch gate of the Grand Illusion — ‘When the true is false, the false is true. / Where there is nothing, there is everything.’ ”

As Chen anticipated, Diao wasn’t willing to speak freely to a stranger, not even to just admit that it was a true story, despite the lunch at Fangshan.

“People of my generation have heard all sorts of stories from those years,” Diao went on, taking a sip at the tea. “As long as the official archive remains sealed to the public, we may never be able to tell whether a story is true or not.”

“But you must have gathered more information than you used in the book.”

“I put in only what I considered reliable.”

“Still, you must have interviewed a lot of people.”

Diao didn’t respond. A speaker outside started playing a song from the popular TV series
Romance of Three Kingdoms. “How many times, the sinking sun red, / a white-haired man angles, alone, in the river / rippling with stories from time immemorial …
” The TV series was based on the historic novel about the vicissitudes of the emperors and would-be-emperors in the third century, and the author ended the novel with a poem from the perspective of an old fisherman.

“Remember the poem titled ‘Snow’ by Mao?” Diao asked instead.

“Yes, particularly the second stanza.
‘The rivers and mountains so enchanting / made countless heroes bow in homage. / Alas, the First Emperor of the Qin and the Emperor Wu of the Han / were lacking in literary grace; / Emperor Tai of the Tang, and the Emperor Tai of the Song / had not enough poetry at heart; / Genghis Khan, / the proud son of Heaven for his generation, / knew only shooting eagle, bow outstretched. / All are past and gone! / To look for the really heroic, / you have to count on today.’
”

The return of the waitress interrupted their talk. She placed a large platter on the table. “The live fish from the Central South Sea.”

“I had to distinguish between what would be publishable, and what wouldn’t,” Diao resumed after helping himself to a large fish filet.

“Tell me about your background research then.”

“What’s the point? It’s nothing but knocking upon one door after another. Let’s enjoy our meal. To be honest with you, I’m a budget gourmet.”

“Come on. The meal is nothing for a bestselling author like you. That’s why I decided to quit my business.”

“You keep talking about my book as a bestseller. A lot were sold, that’s true, but I got very little for myself.”

“That’s unbelievable, Mr. Diao.”

“Don’t dream of making money by writing books. For that, you’d better stick to your business. If it would help, I might as well tell you how much I’ve made. Less than five thousand yuan. According to the editor, he took a great risk with an initial printing of five thousand copies.”

“But what about the second and third printing? There must have been more than ten printings for your book.”

“There is never even a second printing. As soon as there is buzz on a book, pirated copies come into the market, and you don’t get a single penny.”

“What a shame! Only five thousand yuan,” Chen said. Some of his more lucrative translation projects had paid him as much, for only ten pages or so, though he knew he had gotten the project because he was chief inspector. He glanced at his leather briefcase. It contained a sum of at least five thousand yuan — which he brought to buy a wedding present for Ling. But he had been having second thoughts about it after watching her leave in that luxurious limousine last night. It might be a large sum for him, but it was nothing to her.

He picked up the briefcase, snapped it open, and took out an envelope. “A small ‘red envelope’ of about five thousand yuan, Mr. Diao. Far from enough to show my respect, it is only a token of my admiration.”

It was a bulging envelope, unsealed, with a hundred-yuan bill peeping, which bore a portrait of Mao, declaring as the supreme Party leader to China, “The poorer, the more revolutionary.”

“What do you mean, Mr. Chen?”

“To tell the truth, I’m interested in writing something about Shang, publishable or not. So the envelope is in compensation for your invaluable information. For a businessman like me, it’s an investment, but it also shows my respect for you.”

“An old man like me, Mr. Chen, doesn’t have anything to brag about, but I think I can size up a man well. whatever you are up to, you aren’t after money.”

“whatever you tell me is not black or white. Nor will anyone be able to prove it’s from you, Mr. Diao. Outside of this room, you may say you have never met me.”

“Not that I was so unwilling to tell you the story about Shang, Mr. Chen,” Diao said, draining the cup, “but what I gathered could be just hearsay. You can’t take it literally.”

“I understand. I’m not a cop, so I don’t have to base every sentence on hard facts.”

“I didn’t write the book about Shang, but that doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be written. In ten or fifteen years, aspects of the Cultural Revolution may be totally forgotten. Oh, you’re not recording our talk, are you?”

“No, I’m not.” Chen opened the briefcase again, showing the contents.

“I trust you. So where shall I begin?” Diao went on, barely waiting for an answer. “Well, I won’t beat about the bush. About Shang: believe it or not, I happened to know a peddler, whose fish booth was crushed by her body falling out of a fifth-story window —”