The Mao Case (9 page)

“How can you skip school for a crab? Shame on you! And a stray crab from others’ offering to their ancestor too! That’s totally against the Confucian rites. What’s more, you put the crab in your hat. Not one of Confucius’s students had to straighten his hat before dying.” Aiguo softened as the kid sobbed in a heartbreaking way. “Study hard. When you get into college, I’ll buy crabs for you.”

“What’s the point?” Xiaoguo said, sobbing and smacking his lips, “Both you and Father studied at college, but what good was it?”

“Then what are you going to do?”

“I’ll be a Big Buck, so I’ll buy crabs for you then. Tons of crabs, I swear. That’s why I pledged on the crab shell.”

“Confucius says —”

“Crap!”

It was a realistic piece. Chen looked in the Analects for the many “do not eats” about crabs, and he found all of them in the chapter “Old Home,” though Confucius talked about meat and fish in general, not about crab. At least not about crab exclusively, despite what Aiguo told his grandson. Long had clearly read other books beside Mao. The committee at the Writers’ Association didn’t like the narrative because it “joined the complaining crowd without representing the immense progress the reform has achieved in China.” Nor did it read like a story with any plot or craftsmanship, to be strict about it. Still, Chen liked the mouth-watering anecdote, suspecting that those vivid details had come from Long’s own passion for crabs. Chen, too, liked crabs, and though he was not a successful entrepreneur like Gengbao, he was far luckier than Aiguo. As a chief inspector, he was acquainted with Big Bucks who would occasionally treat him to crabs and other delicacies.

As if through mysterious correspondence in the wireless space, his cell phone vibrated with a call from Gu. Gu was a prosperous entrepreneur who owned several companies, restaurants, and clubs. Chen couldn’t help mentioning the story of crabs during the course of the conversation, wondering whether people could still purchase crabs at the state price nowadays.

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.”

TEN

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.”

“That’s something, Long,” Chen said. “I’m learning a lot today — apart from Mao’s poetry.”

“Few publishing houses are interested in poetry today,” Long said, looking him in the eye. “Are you trying to write something about his poems?”

“No, I’m no scholar, not like you. I majored in English, so I’m interested in translation.”

“Translation?”

“Yes, there was an official translation of Mao poetry in the seventies — by celebrated scholars and translators. One of them was a professor at Beijing Foreign Language University, where I studied. But the ‘politically correct’ interpretation could have been taken too far during those years. For instance, some of his poems could be personal, not just about revolution, but translators at the time had to translate them into revolutionary poems.”

“That’s true. Everything could be political in those days.”

“Poetry translation doesn’t simply mean word-to-word rendition. They should read like poems in the target language.” Chen opened his briefcase and took out his translation of classical Chinese love poems. “That’s a collection translated by Professor Yang and me. An American edition of it has just come out. We didn’t make much money, but we got a lot of publicity.”

“In today’s market, perhaps you could have a poetry collection of your own published here, and abroad too. You went to a conference in the United States not long ago, I remember. You know a lot of people there.”

“Some,” Chen said, thinking Long must have heard stories about him as the head of the delegation attending the literature conference — if not about his police work there. “That is why I’m coming to you today. A publishing house is interested in a translation of Mao’s poetry.”

“I’m not surprised. People know what a poet-translator you are,” Long said, crushing a crab claw with a small hammer — not a special crab hammer, but more likely a fine carpentry hammer, which served the purpose just as well. “I appreciate your thinking of me for the project. My annotated edition was published years ago, but I’ve recently finished an index of the new publications on his poetry. You surely can have both of them.”

“I have a copy of your annotated edition at home, but your new index may be very important. Since most of the books on the subject were published during the Cultural Revolution, the sourcing of their information was limited. You alone have continued your research, so you would have a lot of the latest information.”

“I’ve been working on a manuscript about his work, but it is not finished yet. As for new information, there may not be such a lot, I’m afraid.”

“I can’t wait to read it,” Chen said. In a manuscript meant for publication in China, however, the “new” material would be understandably limited. Nor would it provide what he was looking for. “Now with translation, the first step is interpretation. The poem Mao wrote for Madam Mao’s picture, for instance, could be a personal one.”

“ ‘Inscription on a Picture of the Celestial Cave in the Lu Mountains Taken by Comrade Li Jin.’ ” Long began reciting the poem from memory, holding a crab claw like a stick of chalk.
“Against the gathering dusk stands a pine, sturdy, erect / in composure with riotous clouds sweeping past. / What a fairy cave it is, born out of the nature! / Ineffable beauty comes at the perilous peak.”

“In the sixties, the poem was read as a revolutionary stance against imperialism and revisionism — riotous clouds could be symbolic of the reactionary force, and also as an example of the closeness between Mao and Madam Mao,” Chen said, taking up a crab leg and, like Long, holding it like a piece of chalk. “After the downfall of the Gang of Four, Madam Mao became dog shit, and the poem was said to be simply the expression of Mao’s revolutionary spirit — nothing to do with Madam Mao. However, there’s a recent interpretation by Wang Guangmei.” Long would not need to be told who Wang Guangmei was — everyone was familiar with the wife of Liu Shaoqi, the late chairman of the People’s Republic of China. “According to Wang, Mao invited her to swim. Afterward they had lunch together without waiting for Madam Mao, who was pissed off. To appease her, Mao wrote a poem for her picture.”

“Yes, I heard about that,” Long said, nodding over the dazzling white meat and the shining scarlet ovary of a female crab he had just broken open, “but I doubt it’s reliable. Mao wouldn’t have told others about the occasion. Nor would Madam Mao. It is quite possibly merely a guess by Wang, who may still bear a grudge against Mao. And it’s understandable. After all, her husband was persecuted to death during the Cultural Revolution.”

“True. But even so, and even though Madam Mao was a shallow bitch, Mao could also have written it as man to woman, in a moment of passion. There is need to insist on a political interpretation, right?”

“That’s right, but what can I do for you, Chief Inspector Chen?”

“Help me understand the background of these poems, so we’ll have a reliable interpretation. I’ll acknowledge your help as a consultant for the project. And I’ll put it in my foreword that my translation is based on your studies.”

“You don’t have to do that —”

“Furthermore, I’ll pay you ten percent of the royalty, both here and abroad.”

“That’s way too much, Chief Inspector Chen. You have to tell me more specifically what you need.”

“Let’s continue on with that poem for Madam Mao. I’ve heard of another interpretation — an erotic one. In classical Chinese literature, a ‘fairy cave’ can be a metaphor for — well, what you know. The journey to the perilous peak is even more loaded with sexual suggestions. The fact that it was a poem between husband and wife lends itself to such an interpretation, though Madam Mao later used it for her own political gain.”

“No, that’s not the way to interpret a poem.”

“But you can’t miss some images. The sturdy and erect pine. And that against the dusk too. As if all those weren’t enough, there is the image of flying clouds. You know what cloud and rain mean in classical Chinese literature. Finally there is the perilous peak at the end of poem. Mao wasn’t young at the time. It might not have been so easy for him to reach the peak, you know what I mean.”

“But that’s almost absurd!”

“For a romantic poet, after a night of cloud and rain, in the fantastic view of the Lu Mountains — is it so hard to believe?”

“The poem was written in 1961. Mao and Madam Mao had separate room arrangements long before that. They didn’t live together in the Central South Sea. Why, all of a sudden, should Mao have written such a poem for her?”

“Well, after an unexpected reunion or reconciliation up in the mountains. Mao knew better than to write about such a night in an explicit way —”

“It’s in our poetic tradition to write about a painting or a picture — as a compliment or a comment. People shouldn’t read too much into it. That’s really all I can say, I think.”

“That’s fine, Long. Let’s set this poem aside for the moment and take a look at another one. ‘On the Photograph of a Militia Woman.’ Not a difficult poem. Also in the poetic tradition of writing about a picture. During my school years, the poem was even made into a song.”

“Yes, I can still sing it.” Long rose, eager for a change in their discussion.
“Valiant and handsome, she shoulders a five-foot rifle, / in the parade grounds first lit by the sunlight. / A Chinese girl with an extraordinary aspiration, / she loves her military attire, not the extravagant fashion.”