by Qiu Xiaolong
‘Give this to Mayor Pei, Huang. Send for a doctor to check on her. And a tailor, too. Here is a small piece of silver. All the expense on me.’
‘Whatever you order, Your Excellency,’ the prison guard responded with another bow.
‘And send in the tray of snacks to her first.’
The air outside was unexpectedly refreshing, but Judge Dee found himself submerged in depression, devoid of any excitement at the likely conclusion of the case.
‘Any breakthrough?’ Yang raised the question to his master the moment Huang hurried out of sight, heading back to the cell.
‘I don’t know, but I think she may start talking. By the way, your discovery of the black fox spirit costume helped tremendously. Wei wore that for his nocturnal visits to her in the nunnery.’
‘That’s unbelievable, but finally we may be able to put the story of the black fox spirit to rest.’
‘Well, I don’t know about that, either.’
What she had said about Wei inside the prison cell was only partially true. As an accomplice in the murder, there would be no end of speculation about the reason for his wearing the black fox costume to scare away the neighbors in the depth of the dark night.
All in all, Judge Dee was not too sure whether Xuanji’s revised statement would prove to be that acceptable to Mayor Pei, Minister Wu, and the ‘people above,’ but a ‘speedy conclusion’ would appear to be in the interests of the Great Tang Empire. They all knew that.
It started to drizzle again in an enveloping mist.
That night, back in his room at the temple, Judge Dee began writing a letter to Minister Wu.
He began by highlighting his investigation-through-poetry approach, mentioning his plan for a possible collection of Xuanji’s poetry, and his visit to the prison as an integrated part of it, though he refrained from saying anything about the yellow silk underrobe and the peony poem. The visit to the prison confirmed, among other things, Wei being the ‘true-hearted lover’ in the poem ‘To a Girl in the Neighborhood.’ From that, he came up with the hypothesis that Xuanji’s motive in the murder case was insane jealousy, as was understandable for a woman devastated by too many betrayals in her life. Wei’s amorous tryst with Ning became the last straw for Xuanji, and in a murderous breakdown, she savagely beat the maid to death. And because of it, Wei later turned into an accomplice in the backyard burial. Judge Dee did not go into detail about the scenario, leaving it largely blank as in a traditional Chinese landscape painting for the viewer’s imagination. Minister Wu should be able to get most of it. Judge Dee merely added that after his talk with her in the prison, Xuanji seemed to have acquiesced with his analysis.
As for Wei’s death, Judge Dee did not think it was very important to Minister Wu or Mayor Pei. So he touched on a couple of related hypothetical points in passing: Wei’s wearing the black fox spirit costume struck terror into the neighborhood, so he was able to visit Xuanji at night without worrying about being seen by the neighbors, and Xuanji’s mentioning him as an impossible womanizer who paid the price in the end. Judge Dee did not even mention the death of the flower girl, Zhang. It could have been unrelated to the Xuanji case. Nothing but a coincidence. And he did not think Mayor Pei would have mentioned the killing near the temple in connection, which would not be a credit to the mayor.
‘Of course, there may be some other details not yet covered in the scenario about the Xuanji case. It is such a complicated, sensational case, and it’s definitely in the interests of the Great Tang Empire for us to have a speedy and acceptable conclusion, as you have said to me. Being so pressed for time, however, I can give you only a case report based on my investigation done during the last three days. Tomorrow morning, I have to leave for the new post entrusted to me by Her Majesty, as you know.’
Putting down the brush pen, he thought he’d better say something more, but he found himself dried up like the dried ink stone staring up at him, black, cold, hard.
The black tea leaves rising and sinking suspiciously in the cup, he took another sip of the lukewarm tea. And he noted a thin cracked line cutting across the surface of the ink stone, which could soon become too damaged for use.
It was a quiet, peaceful night in the temple. In the distance, however, someone was heard playing a pensive melody on a bamboo flute.
A stanza of a ci poem floated across his mind, as if flowing out of the flute melody under the dark night.
The flute sobbing,
waking from her dream,
she sees the moon shining,
above the high tower. The moon
shining above the high tower,
the willows turn green again, year
after year, along Baling Bridge,
where lovers sadly part.
The authorship of the ci poem remained unknown, but it had recently been circulated a lot in connection to the Xuanji case. Some scholars claimed that it was her poem. Judge Dee also felt rather inclined to include it in the collection of Xuanji’s poems, if he ever managed to compile it one of these days.
Without worrying too much about the authorship, the sensibility of the poem could have truly applied to Xuanji. She was waiting for her man, year after year, but to no avail. ‘Baling Bridge’ in the first stanza referred to a scenic location in the capital where lovers would choose to part, with the verdant willows weeping in the background. She, too, could have been standing there, holding on to the willow shoot, as if gazing out of the willow poem she had once written in the company of Wen, which had made her name widely known in the circle of poets.
Judge Dee could not exactly recall the second stanza of the poem, which seemed to be shifting to a more impersonal tone, with the introduction of the image of a ‘royal mausoleum’ lifting the poem to an everlasting sadness at a universal level, yet also carrying an ominous note about her tragic life, waiting for Wen, for Zi’an, without seeing a messenger bringing the message so crucial to her, and then toward the end of her life, waiting, waiting for the man in the yellow silk dragon-embroidered underrobe, with the moon shining on the high tower – no, into the dark prison cell, still no message coming along the ancient path.
Once again, Judge Dee wished he too could write a poem like hers, but he had reached an age, he told himself, when he could admit what was beyond him. So many years he had wasted playing politics, which, unlike poetry, would not survive him.
FIVE
After a short, broken sleep, Judge Dee rose in the early morning with the rain pattering against the lattice window, as if pattering in a half-forgotten dream.
In the temple courtyard, a sleepy-eyed, palm-leaf-capped-and-clad monk was yawning, stretching himself, and then beginning to strike the large bronze bell for the morning service, blow after blow, the sound reverberating into the impenetrable mist and rain.
It was time for Judge Dee to check out, he knew. Yang was waiting outside his room, ready to resume the journey with his master.
The white-browed abbot Stainless, Nameless, and a bevy of other senior monks immediately came out of the black-painted gate to see them off.
It was perhaps too early for Han Shan, who was also a guest in the temple, but then Judge Dee saw the poet monk hurrying over with a silk scroll in his hand.
‘The temple actually has a batch of ready-made blank scrolls for visitors like us. So I’ve just copied out a new poem of mine for you. After our talk about Xuanji’s poetry the day before yesterday, I had a sudden impulse for these lines.’
So Han Shan and Judge Dee unfurled the scroll between themselves, with each holding on to one end of it. On the rice-white paper was a poem written in vigorous brush pen calligraphy. Dee started reading it aloud with those monks standing around, nodding and murmuring in approval.
‘The stars spreading out, far and wide,
present a deeper, sincerer night sky.
Refusing to sink, the moon
hangs on like a solitary light burning
against the steep mountain cliff.
&nb
sp; No need for any polishing,
the moon appears so round, bright:
suspending still in the night sky
is my very heart.’
Judge Dee then noticed a line in small characters to the left bottom of the scroll: After talking with Judge Dee about Xuanji’s poems in the temple.
‘Thank you so much, Han Shan. I really appreciate it. What a marvelous Zen poem! The bright moon is your heart, and your heart is the bright moon. No difference between the subject and the object. The last couple of lines that “suspending still in the night sky / is my very heart” speaks volumes about your unwavering spirit.’
‘Well, you’re an unwavering judge, Dee, a man for doing things in the world of red dust,’ Han Shan said, smiling, producing a copy of a time-yellowed booklet out of his ample sleeve. ‘Still, a Buddhist classic like Diamond Sutra may turn out to be helpful to you when you find yourself lost in the confusion between appearance and reality. So here is an old copy handwritten by Xuanzang for you.’
‘Xuanzang, the master who has come back from pilgrimage to the west with all these scriptures! It’s extremely valuable! I cannot thank you enough, Han Shan.’
Judge Dee bid his farewell to Han Shan, the abbot, Nameless, and the other monks standing and waving their hands on the stone steps.
Outside, the new willow shoots appeared green, glistening with the morning rain. The scene reminded Judge Dee again of the melancholy willow poem composed by Xuanji when she first met Wen. In spite of the success of the poem at the time, a critic commented that the sentiment of the poem did not bode well for the future of the young girl. Dee was depressed at the thought of it. Poetry could foretell.
Yang followed his master in dogged silence, as if Judge Dee’s mood had somehow proved to be contagious. It was not too surprising a decision for them to leave the temple that morning, but it took Yang quite a while to have the carriage set up for the long trip.
Before getting into the carriage, Judge Dee looked over his shoulder again. A solitary old dog loitered out into a patch of the shade near the temple gate, staring up as if in wonder at the hustle and bustle of the travelers in the mundane world. A curl of smoke rose in leisure from the red and gray roofs scattered at the foot of the hills. The morning seemed to present a peaceful panorama that the morning itself did not understand.
‘You may take a short nap in the carriage, Master. The candlelight in your room kept on flickering long after midnight, I noticed. You have to take good care of yourself. After all, Xuanji’s is not our case. You have done everything possible about it, but there’s only so much you can do. In the meantime, there’s such a lot of work waiting for you at the new post.’
Judge Dee, too, tried to tell himself that he had done all he possibly could have for the Xuanji case, but he decided not to say anything to Yang about his talk with Xuanji in the prison cell the day before.
Nor about the possible result of it, which Judge Dee himself did not yet know.
But it was time to get ready for the new job as an imperial circuit supervisor, even though he found himself not in any mood for it. He had had a bad taste in his mouth when he woke up, and he still failed to get rid of the lingering tang.
Hardly had Judge Dee squeezed himself inside the carriage, pulling down the curtain and half-closing his eyes, when he heard a horse galloping over from the ancient path in front of the temple and to a sudden stop by the carriage.
He lifted up the curtain in a hurry.
It was a messenger from Mayor Pei, a black-attired man dismounting from the horse, still panting breathlessly from the ride over at full speed.
‘His Excellency wanted me to hurry over and give this letter to you before you leave.’
Taking the envelope, Judge Dee said, ‘Tell Mayor Pei that I will read the letter during the journey.’
Sitting in the front, Yang appeared to be shaking his head in silent resignation and cracking his whip loudly. It would be useless, he knew, to try to dissuade Judge Dee from reading the letter instead of taking a much-needed nap in the carriage.
Judge Dee pulled out the letter, as he had promised the messenger, the moment the carriage started rolling along the bumpy road.
After the usual, official pleasantries at the beginning, the letter recaptured the main points of the talk between Xuanji and Mayor Pei the previous day, which had happened shortly after Judge Dee left the prison.
In a nutshell, she made a new, different statement about the murder case. In accordance with this latest version, she killed Ning not in a drunken blackout but in a jealous rage because that afternoon, when she got back from her shopping, she discovered the affair between Ning and Wei in the nunnery.
For a fairly long time, Xuanji had been crazy about Wei, calling him ‘a true-hearted lover’ in a poem written in the days when the two of them had first met. She believed him to be one capable of playing fine tunes for her poems, saying all the sweet words to her ears, and pledging fidelity to her, not to mention his proving to be a tireless stud in bed. He was poor, but with those ‘visitors’ of hers lavishing gifts and money on her, she was in a position to help him out financially. It was not just men who were capable of buying things for a woman like her; she, too, had the satisfaction of being able to take care of a man like Wei, purchasing all sorts of things for him, including the hut close to the nunnery. Later on, she was disappointed with the discovery that Wei received favors and money from other women as well, but she found herself already addicted to him, physically, if not metaphysically, as in those lines she had composed for him in the moment of their rolling about in clouds and rain in bed. As long as he declared his fidelity to her face, she acquiesced. After all, she, too, had been seeing other men all the time.
But on that eventful second day of the month, Xuanji was in for a devastating surprise. With the maidservant Ning scheduled to leave in the morning, Xuanji went out shopping by herself. Upon her return to the nunnery, however, she was shocked to see Ning still there, running out barefoot, her face flushed and her hair disheveled. What’s more, she saw that a man’s hat – Wei’s – was left on the mahogany chair. When she confronted Ning, the latter mumbled that Wei had come and gone, unable to explain why she had not left as scheduled in the morning. Then Xuanji stepped into the bedroom to a more shocking scene of a pillow thrown on the floor, of a wet patch on the bedsheet, and of a pubic hair curled up on the rumpled bed, which Xuanji remembered having made herself in the morning.
It dawned on her that Wei must have arrived before Ning’s departure, had a ‘quickie’ with her, and fled upon Xuanji’s return in such a hurry – with no time even to clean up the mess in the bedroom, or to retrieve the hat left on the chair.
That discovery proved to be too much for Xuanji, who was crushed with the humiliation of having lost Wei to a maid in her service. Flying into a blinding rage, she started beating, whipping, and kicking Ning with all her strength. In fact, she was not really aware of what she was doing in the hysterical fit – until it was too late. Ning dropped dead, all of a sudden, with a thud on the floor of the bedroom.
Shortly afterward, Wei came over to the nunnery again – to the shocking scene of Ning’s body lying cold there. He managed to calm Xuanji down and hurried out to dig a shallow hole in the backyard, as if doing some tree-planting yardwork. Later on, under the cover of the black night, he and Xuanji carried out the body of Ning and buried her in the hole.
But they were too nervous to do a proper job in the backyard, so Ning’s bloody body began to smell from under a thin layer of soil and attracted the flies over the next day, a scene that appeared too suspicious to the guests there, who immediately reported it to the local authorities.
Xuanji had not confessed in the courtroom because it was too humiliating for her to acknowledge, so it seemed to her, that a celebrated, beautiful poetess could have lost her man to a humble maid like Ning.
Magistrate Pei and Xuanji then also discussed the death of Wei. It seemed to Xuanji, after she was
thrown into prison with the mounting pressure brought to bear upon her, that Wei must have become panic-stricken. He thought it would only be a matter of time before she cracked and gave him up. So he decided to take flight after scooping up the valuables in Xuanji’s bedroom into a large bundle, but he could have been seen sneaking out of the nunnery with the bundle on his back. Someone in the neighborhood – possibly a villager – must have noticed his furtive movements and come up with the mugging plan. And that’s how Wei ended up being mugged and killed on the road in front of the nunnery.
As for the flower girl’s death, Xuanji said she did not know anything about it. It happened late at night, with hardly any people moving around, so the mayor seemed to believe that it was done by a local criminal. The flower girl was a ‘bit coquettish,’ according to some of the villagers, and it was possibly a sex crime that happened at night. The examination done at the crime scene later also fitted with the scenario, though no one could really tell why the flower girl was there. In appearance, it was unrelated to Xuanji’s case, and Mayor Pei saw no point connecting it with the other deaths. Particularly for a nobody like the flower girl, it made sense for the death not to be considered as part of Xuanji’s case. Any further complication would not have been in the interests of the mayor.
‘I don’t know how I can ever thank you enough, Judge Dee,’ Mayor Pei concluded in sincerity. ‘It’s a very convincing confession, I have to say, particularly about her motive. After so many cruel letdowns in her life, the betrayal by Wei and Ning became the last straw for her. She killed the maidservant in an uncontrollable rage that afternoon. As for the burial of the body in the backyard, it’s no longer something unimaginable with Wei acting as her accomplice in the night. She said repeatedly she had not told the truth because it was too mortifying for her to admit such a defeat to a low-life maidservant like Ning; and because she still cared for Wei in her way, she tried hard not to drag him into the trouble. However, his death changed everything.
