by Qiu Xiaolong
‘About a year and a half ago, Fu hired a young woman named Meihua as a live-in maid, and Xiaoqiang and Hongxia asked me to look out for anything between Fu and her. Meihua took good care of him, but it would not have been fair to his children, I agreed with them, if the old man had chosen to leave everything to that young maid.
‘Meihua’s in her late twenties, coming from a small village in Jiangxi Province. Fu was the first person or family she had served in the city of Shanghai. At first, none of the neighbors believed that a “provincial sister” like her was capable of satisfying a sophisticated gourmet like Fu.
‘But to our surprise, he turned out to be very patient teaching her in the kitchen, and she appeared more than willing to learn, absorbing his instructions like a sponge. One of the first specials she made in the shikumen house was a platter of steamed live perch. The Jiangxi village being close to a river, she was quite knowledgable about preparing fish, and she also showed a natural preference for the taste of the fresh food itself instead of bothering with MSG or other fancy sauces of dubious natures. The only suggestion from him was about how to pour the boiling oil over the fish strewn with chopped scallion and ginger. It turned out to be a huge success. That evening, he insisted on her sitting out and sharing the fish with him in the courtyard, their chopsticks crossing each other’s over a folding table in the gathering dusk.
‘It surely was a good job for her, as was the consensus of the residents of the shikumen house. Board and food free, she could save all the money paid by him. And for a relatively healthy old man like Fu, there was not that much for her to do. After about a month, he let her do all the shopping without checking her list of expenses, and soon afterward he simply gave her a monthly amount for the household in advance.
‘So it was more than natural for her to try to prove herself as a capable, conscientious maid. Also, she could have been touched by all his suffering during the Cultural Revolution. At least that’s what she said in the common kitchen of the shikumen house, killing a turtle trodden under her blood-speckled bare foot.
‘“After the national disaster of those ten years, that’s the only thing Mr Fu enjoys. And that’s all I can do for him.”
‘The street food market being located just behind the lane, she would jump out of bed in the early morning and trot over there in two or three minutes, carrying the bamboo basket. But not just in the morning, she made a point of going there two or three times a day. What remained unsold from the morning would be sold at a discount in the late afternoon, though she did not have to worry about the expense. She appeared to be just naturally practical, like other housewives in the neighborhood. If there was anything still not Red-Dust-like about her, she talked little to her neighbors, perhaps too self-conscious of her Jiangxi accent.
‘As Fu came to enjoy the home-cooked meals more and more, she spared no time or energy in developing the homely menu, such as tofu mixed with green onion and sesame oil, plain egg soup steamed with clam, pork slices wok-fried with red fermented wine dredge, and so on and so forth. Those simple dishes seemed to delight him. And she put her youthful imagination further to work. With big croakers extremely rare in today’s market, for instance, she used instead the tiny croakers by carefully deboning them, and then made the fish soup with pickled cabbage over a small fire for hours until the soup turned deliciously milky with a fragrance that permeated the whole shikumen house.
‘It’s just like in an old saying: “The best way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.”
‘And she cared about more than just the need of his stomach. I’m not talking about all the washing, cleaning, mending there, such as would have been expected of a well-paid maid. She went so far as to remodel the old wing unit, bustling around in a dudou-like top and shorts, bare arms and feet covered with water and concrete, together with a couple of handymen in the courtyard.
‘Now, you’re all familiar with the layout of Fu’s unit – except for our visitors tonight. Enter through the living room door, you turn right into the front room, also Fu’s bedroom, and across the living room to the left is the all-purpose room with a retrofitted attic and partitioned-out notch for the chamber pot, and further to the left, the back room. Not too long after her arrival, dramatic changes appeared in the unit. An electronic toilet and a shower head with a water heater were installed in the all-purpose room, and then an air conditioning unit on the window of Fu’s front room. These modern conveniences proved terribly satisfying for the old man, who had the money but neither the energy nor the mood for the remodeling. In recognition of her extraordinary job, he purchased a large color TV for her in the back room. That’s something unusual between an old man and his maid.
‘Naturally, like other neighbors, I wanted to find out more about her. Indeed, she turned out to be much more than an ordinary provincial sister. Mind you, it was not just because of the request made by Xiaoqiang and Hongxia. It was more like an intriguing drama unfolding in the shikumen house around us.
‘What I managed to gather about her background was rather sketchy, though. She came from Jiangxi Province, where she lost her husband in a tractor accident less than one year after their marriage. His family blamed her for the rotten luck she brought on him, calling her a “white tiger”. It was a poor, backward village, where people had a lot of superstitious beliefs and practices, so she left for Shanghai. After working in temporary jobs here and there, she landed herself in Red Dust Lane.
‘Then came the questions. With all those things she did for him, we began to notice her staying in his front room a lot. Particularly in the evenings. For summer, it might be understandable with the air conditioning installed at his bedroom window, but what about those days and evenings when it was not so hot?
‘In the cover of the night, she had frequently been seen throwing the water out of a wooden basin into the courtyard. Why? The shower head with the water heater had been installed for the unit. Soon, as one of the neighbors discovered, she made a point of washing his feet in the evening, claiming that he could enjoy better sleep afterward. In a way, it was not too surprising. Quite a number of provincial girls started as foot-washing girls in the city of Shanghai. It was more than possible that she had served in one of those dubious salons before coming to serve Fu in Red Dust Lane.
‘But behind the closed door, was she doing nothing but washing his feet?
‘Sitting out in the courtyard with him, fanning him intimately with a round paper fan, she appeared to be quite a presentable companion. And she was fast losing the provincial about her, wearing a white tank top and short jeans like a Shanghai woman. If you saw the two of them for the first time without knowing her as a maid in his household, you could have taken them as a couple in spite of the huge age difference. Gold digger or not, she was doing an exceptional job for him.
‘According to Hongxia, it was just too obvious that Meihua was trying so desperately to win his affection – and then, of course, his money. If she had not yet achieved the goal, it was because of his loyalty to the memory of his late wife. But how long could a lonely old man hold out to a cute, cunning, calculating young woman? The way things were going, it would only have been a matter of time for him to eventually succumb to her.
‘Well, talk of the devil,’ Four-eyed Liu suddenly said in a subdued voice, adjusting the glasses on the ridge of his nose, ‘and here she comes.’
‘What do you mean?’ Chen said.
‘Meihua, the devil that bewitched the old man.’
Chen saw a young woman moving out of the lane. She was wearing a white T-shirt with a black crepe fastened on the short sleeve, white pajama pants, barefoot in wooden sandals with canvas stripes. From a distance, she looked the picture of a Shanghai widow in mourning. True, she was not exactly a beauty, but with fine features and a youthful figure.
‘No one can really tell what she’s up to – going out alone at this hour.’
Chen made no comment, but he did not agree with Liu’s implication. Dressed like t
hat, she would not be planning to go too far.
In less than five minutes, she was seen hurrying back to the lane, her wooden sandals clinking; they looked almost antique, but possibly fashionable in the city, which was busy rediscovering itself through the memories of the old glories. She was carrying a pack of bulbs in her hand. The light in her room must have suddenly gone out.
‘What’s her reaction to Fu’s death?’ Chen raised a question instead.
‘She cried like a heartbroken widow. Little wonder about it.’
‘Is she leaving?’
‘No, she’s staying. Fu did something for her. Something truly uncommon, unimaginable. He managed to obtain her city residence permit in the family register of Fus.’
‘How could that have been possible?’ Old Root too seemed astonished. ‘It may take years to do so, even for a real family member. And she’s not a member of his family – not yet.’
‘No one knows. That’s why I’m saying there was much more going on behind the closed door. Yesterday morning, Xiaoqiang and Hongxia tried to evict her, but she took out the family register. So there’s nothing they can possibly do about it.’
‘Now I see why they failed to drive her out. But what does that mean?’ another one in the audience asked.
‘I don’t know what it means. Legally, she’ll be able to have the apartment to herself now. In a way, she may be seen as the only legal resident of the wing. At least she can stay there as long as she likes.’
‘Come on, Four-eyed Liu,’ Little Huang said incredulously. ‘Why should Fu have done that?’
‘Likely as a first step for her to live with him,’ Four-eyed Liu said. ‘A sort of private arrangement between the two.’
‘Is there anything particular she is doing for the moment?’ Chen cut in again.
‘That I cannot tell. She shuts herself up in the room most of the time. She’s heard crying at night. She still goes to the food market, but only for the sake of the “seven seven sacrifice” – at least that’s what she told us while preparing all the dishes for the first seven sacrifice in the common kitchen of the shikumen house.’
‘Wow! Seven seven sacrifice!’ It referred to a Buddhist ritual lasting seven weeks after one’s death, according to which, on every seventh day the family members would prepare a good meal, with candles and incense burning on the table, and with the netherworld money burning in front of the table, so that the spirit of the deceased would get the signal in the wind and come back for the meal and the money.
‘She said to the neighbors, “He likes what I cook for him, so he is bound to come back on every seventh. I could truly feel his presence at the table. The moment I served his favorite dishes, the candle started flickering without any draft coming through the closed window.” So she went to the food market so early this morning – the first seventh day – carrying back a full basket, and spending at least half a day preparing for the banquet. She plans to observe the seven seven sacrifice to the last day.’
‘But where does she get the money?’
‘According to her, he had given her the household expenses for a month, and she vowed to use every penny on him. But that’s no more than a make-believe pretense, you know, since the spirit would not touch the food. Afterward, it’s for her to enjoy all the untouched specials alone for the whole week.’
‘For the whole week, how?’ Old Root asked out of nowhere.
‘Fu has bought a small refrigerator for her. That will not be a problem. To be fair to her, it does seem she seriously plans to live on the leftovers for days. Before the first seventh day, she only went out for some vegetables at a discount in the late afternoon. Of course, that could have been just a part of the cover for her.’
‘The cover for what, Four-eyed Liu?’ Little Huang asked sharply.
‘She wants people to believe that she’s devoted to him – to him alone.’
‘And do you have any reason to believe otherwise?’
‘For one, there’s the handyman who installed the air conditioning. He seemed to know her quite well, speaking with a Jiangxi accent, as the neighbors noticed at the time. It’s most likely that he’s from the same countryside. Now for a provincial sister like Meihua, how could she have known so much about those modern facilities in the city of Shanghai?’
‘Supposing she had learned all that from Fu, so what?’
‘No, Fu’s so old-fashioned. In fact, months after the job was done, the handyman came back to the lane, where she had a long talk with him just outside the shikumen – quite a long, heated talk.’ Liu added deliberately, ‘And then about a week later, Fu was killed.’
‘That’s your theory about the murder case?’
‘You can never tell the thing between the two, can you? She could have known the handyman back in the countryside. A man about her age, maybe just a few years older – tall, strong, virile. Just like Ximen Qing in Plum in the Golden Vase!’
‘That’s absurd! She’s no beauty, but possibly not without youthful attraction for an old man like Fu,’ Old Root said, shaking his head like a rattle drum. ‘But for someone from the same countryside, she’s but an ill-starred widow. If there’s anything attractive about her, it’s the possibility of her getting the money from Fu. So why now – before the old man left everything to her?’
‘Well, that handyman could have believed she had already got everything from Fu. Alternatively, he could have been helplessly smitten, unable to bear the thought of her dumping him for the old man—’
‘Come on,’ Little Huang jumped up from his bamboo chair. ‘They might have been arguing about the payment for the service he had done. I happened to overhear two or three fragmented sentences. She called him a greedy nuisance with an unmistakable expression of disgust on her face.’
‘Whatever,’ Liu said, suddenly losing steam and shifting the subject. ‘Whatever it could be, it’s none of our business. No point us getting too excited in the evening talk here.’
‘Indeed the world is but a stage,’ Little Huang too said in reconciliatory tone, ‘with some people playing, and some people watching. It’s just good or bad luck for the men on the stage, as Old Root has summed up well. After all, if Fu had not been that rich, he would not have gone to the restaurant that night and got killed afterward. Up above, there must have been something way beyond us.’
‘If it was a chance street mugging gone wrong, how could the murderer have known that Fu was such a rich man?’ Chen added in haste, ‘And that he was going there that night?’
The moment he blurted out the questions, he became aware of Old Root eyeing him with a focused sharpness before making a response, and waving the fan slowly like a Suzhou opera singer.
‘There are more things in heaven and earth, young man, than are dreamed of in our evening talks. Thanks again for your tasty treat. It’s quite late now. And it’s the time for an old man like me to go to bed.’
Chen rose, bowing, and saying in earnest, ‘Thank you all so much. I’ve had a wonderful evening here. Trust me, I’ll come back.’
But Chen was in no mood to go back home right now. Like after a full meal, he wanted to walk for a short while to digest what he had just taken in.
He had learned nothing too substantial from the evening talk, though intriguing details here and there contributed to a more comprehensive background picture.
As for the thing between Fu and Meihua, that might have been tantalizing fodder for the spicy gossip in front of the lane – but not for the investigation.
Besides, both Old Root and Four-eyed Liu fell into the category of ‘unreliable narrators’, in that their personal interests were involved in the narration, though understandably so. For Old Root, the loyalty to his late friend; and for Four-eyed Liu, the need to top Old Root with salacious details, like those about her washing Fu’s feet at night and her arguing with the Jiangxi handyman about a week before the murder.
It was quite late. Chen kept strolling on, far from being tired. Nanjing Road came into view,
striking him as unexpectedly deserted, with the well-known restaurant named Shen Dachen on the intersection of Zhejiang Road standing closed, lost in the surrounding darkness. There was only a lonely, shabby-looking man smoking, leaning against the restaurant window with one foot raised backward against the wall, and connecting one half-burned cigarette to another, which seemed to tremble like a long, sleepless antenna probing into the eerie darkness.
Soon, he found himself moving across Beijing Road, drawing close to the bridge over the Suzhou Creek, breathing in the familiar tang given off by the darksome, polluted water. Once a familiar route to him during his days studying English at Bund Park, a lot of water had gone under the bridge since then. There seemed to be something elusive, inexplicable in the somber recesses of his mind as he walked on, making a couple of turns absentmindedly.
Again, he thought of the investigation in the Inspector Martin Beck mystery, with the hard-working Swedish inspector pursuing a lot of interviews, all of which proved irrelevant, though perhaps not unhelpful for a panoramic picture, in which some of the details then took on new, unexpected meanings.
A sudden train whistle pierced the night from a close distance. He must have moved near to the railway station, and to the restaurant of Aixin’s Imperial Recipes again, as if he had been pulled by an invisible hand in the dark.
He took out the crime scene report from his shoulder bag. Following its description, he arrived at the street corner, presumably on the route for Fu to go back home, or to the railway station. It did not appear to be such a likely area for a mugging, with lots of people coming and going, he contemplated, because of its closeness to the railway station.
