by Qiu Xiaolong
‘Soon he became known for his expertise among his mother’s friends, some of whom appeared to be quite envious. Those days, it was one of the few things his mother chose to pride herself on.
‘Then a special challenge presented itself with the coming Chinese New Year. Usually, the holiday celebration would last from the first till the fifteenth day of the first month in the lunar calendar, during which people’s relatives and friends would come visiting, greeting, gift-giving and dining at each other’s homes. In accordance with the time-honored tradition, “big fish, big meat” and other presentable dishes had to appear on the dining table, or the host would lose face big-time – the Chinese New Year time. And the guests would be so understanding, for instance, as to not touch the fish in the platter; and if they did, their chopsticks would touch just one side of the fish without ever turning it over, claiming a superstitious taboo that it could symbolize something unlucky like an overturned boat in the new year’s fortune. In reality, it was done so that the other side of the fish might still be served on another occasion. That might have illustrated what a matter of importance it was for people to stock up as much as possible before the market closed for the holiday.
‘Consequently, that meant a tough job for him. With all the families of the neighborhoods seized with the holiday anxiety at the food market, those thick-skinned approaches of his might not work out like before. What made it even tougher was an unexpected request from Auntie Qing of Red Dust Lane, a friend of his mom’s, who wanted C to take her daughter, nicknamed “Little Phoenix”, along with him for the holiday shopping. He was panic-stricken with the responsibility for a slip of a girl like Little Phoenix, several years younger, who knew nothing about the jungle of the street food market.
‘But there was no choice for them, Little Phoenix and C, saddled with the joined blessings and urgings of the two families. He racked his brains for possible tricks. Among them, one was to put baskets, ropes, bricks or whatever into those lines in the street food market, as early as eight or nine o’clock the previous evening. It was like sticking flags into the soil to indicate sovereignty, so they could come to claim their recognized positions before the market opening bell. For the long shopping list for the Chinese New Year, they had to secure positions in at least seven or eight lines. But these “flags” might not prove to be that reliable. Others could kick them away – if unprotected – in the middle of the night. Consequently, after placing them, he made a detailed plan to patrol around their “flags” throughout the night. He insisted on his coming to the street market earlier, like a protective elder brother, but Little Phoenix too made it there shortly after midnight, unwilling to stay at home any longer.
‘It had snowed earlier that night. A good sign for the coming year, but not for the two kids shivering out there. Her nose red, her hands chapped, she followed him around in high spirits like a little phoenix tail with admiration shining in her large eyes. A naughty little girl, she traced her fingers on the snow-covered back of his cotton-padded coat. When he discovered what she had written was “elder brother”, she giggled like crazy. “So I won’t lose sight of you, my elder brother.”
‘Near five o’clock, he had her stand in the line with a sign for “pig trotter”, a must for the Shanghai families during the holiday season. And he himself kept shuttling back and forth among the other lines. When one of those lines began edging close to the counter, either she or he could run over to jump in.
‘About fifteen minutes before the opening bell, however, a commotion broke out about the unexpected shifts of the produce signs over the concrete counters. The moment people discovered themselves lining up to the wrong counters, they rushed around helter-skelter, pushing, shoving, crashing and elbowing their way in the market. Most of their “flags” got lost in the chaos. He managed to secure only two previous positions – for pork steaks and a frozen goose – before he turned to look toward her line, which appeared to be much shorter than before, leading to the counter under a new sign of “green cabbage”.
‘As it turned out, the original sign had inexplicably shifted to another counter near Fujian Road, so the line formed overnight for “pig trotter” had moved too. But he failed to spot her there. Alarmed, he searched back and forth until a wailing sound was heard over the chilly wind, like that of a lost kitten, wafting from behind the once pig trotter counter. He hurried over to the bizarre sight of something like black dates twitching under a stack of overturned wire boxes. In the earlier stampede, she had stumbled and fallen under the empty boxes which cushioned her like a shield. She was not too badly hurt, except for her shoes being trodden off and her toes crushed black – like broken dates, frozen in the snow.
‘After the fiasco that morning, his confidence in his “market touch” vanished. The snow-covered memory of his kneeling helplessly beside her haunted him. He could not bring himself to see her again. And he avoided the sight of her in the lane. Things were said to be much worse for her there. Because of her failure to bring back anything good that morning, not to mention the loss of a new bamboo basket and valuable ration coupons in the pandemonium, her family lost face during that holiday season, with nothing presentable on the dining table. Her father slapped her in a fit …’
Chen paused, accepting a cup of Dragon Well tea handed over from a younger man in the audience, and having a China cigarette lit respectfully by another of his own age.
‘Perhaps that was one of the reasons that he continued his path to becoming a cop after his initial positioning. The realization did not hit home until after he started taking a psychology course as part of his career training. Childhood trauma and subsequent compensation. The subconscious urge for him to be able to protect the helpless ones like Little Phoenix.’
A spell of silence ensued. In the socialism of China’s characteristics, a cop could more or less throw his weight around, maneuvering in the midst of corruptions and connections under the one-Party system, which leaned heavily on the police force. So C was no longer helpless, to say the least, not like on that long-ago snow-buried morning in the street market. But a question then quivered around the narrator’s cigarette in the deepening dusk. After all, that incident had happened years earlier. What was the point of recapturing it this evening? Little Phoenix must have moved away long ago. No one in the audience knew or remembered anything about her.
‘Sometimes C could not help wondering at the long chain of causality in terms of misplaced yin and yang. With all these links inexplicably connected came the unexpected, unimagined result. Had he not succeeded earlier in the street food market, he would not have brought her into trouble on New Year’s Eve.’ Chen seemed to have lost himself in the philosophical diversion, taking another deep draw at the cigarette.
That did not sound like the end of a story. The audience waited. The chain of misplaced yin-and-yang causality had to be longer. Or the narrator would not have chosen to tell the story in front of Red Dust Lane.
The cigarette burned Chen’s fingers before he resumed. ‘Not too long ago, the narcotics squad of the city police bureau talked to C about a junkie captured behind the Great World on Ninghai Road. With the street food market long gone, that section of the street remained squalid, with cheap and shabby eateries, and with suspicious characters hanging around. She was not just one of them, but connected with drug dealers in that shady corner, and possibly with one of the Big Brothers too. She refused to say anything in custody. It was a no-brainer to figure out why. With her lips sealed, she would be punished on account of drug possession. But it could turn into something far more serious if she spilled.
‘After the successful conclusion of the old gourmet murder case, Party Secretary Li, the number one boss of the police bureau, had hinted about the possibility of C’s promotion as a young intellectual Party cadre in accordance with the new Party policy, even though C had received no training in the field of police work. Li wanted him to take a look into the case.
‘“It’s not just because of the connections you hav
e made with Red Dust Lane, but also because of the course you have taken in psychology,” Party Secretary Li said in earnest. “In the event of the successful conclusion of another case, I would talk to people in the city government about your extraordinary work. Indeed, a couple of politically important cases in a row, and none of your colleagues will ever complain again about your lacking experience in the line of our work. In the last analysis, it’s a matter of following the Party’s policy of having more young intellectual cadres in the Party system.”
‘It was an unmistakable signal. But unlike the first case, C had no idea about the new one, except that the suspect in custody had been an erstwhile resident of the lane.
‘Besides, C was not sure that was the only reason for the assignment from Party Secretary Li. While a good change from the police procedure translation he had been doing in the bureau reading room because of his college major in English literature, he had heard that the new assignment could have been designed for him to lose face. Some of his “real cop” colleagues were not so pleased with his “nosiness” around their investigations. So they pushed the difficult, impossible mission to him, and the failure expected of him would serve as further proof of his incompetence in the field.
‘Nevertheless, C headed to the interrogation room, thinking of the clichés about “treating a dead horse in whatever way possible, as if it were still kicking and alive”.
‘The junkie in question sat alone in the room, emaciated, disheveled, probably in her late twenties or early thirties, looking haggard yet still defiant. A hard nut to crack, he knew for sure. Like in another old saying, “a dead pig worries not about the scalding water”. She was done in, she knew, so why should she worry any more?
‘He started routinely, sitting opposite her across the desk, pressing the start button of the recorder, and quoting Chairman Mao for the first sentence. “Confess, you’ll have leniency; resist, you’ll take punishment. This is our Party’s policy, you surely know that. So now start to talk.”
‘“Talk and I’m dead, that I know only too well,” she said, flicking cigarette ashes to the floor, setting one bare foot on the edge of the chair. “Do you really think I’m so stupid as to do that for your credit?”
‘He had no answer to that. But he went on mechanically. He did not really care about promotion in the police bureau, as Party Secretary Li had discussed with him. It was not exactly a job he had dreamed about. At the end of half an hour, having exhausted the standard questions reservoir, he rose with something like a touch of relief, ready to give up. Still, he handed her a business card.
‘“Here is my card. If there’s anything you think of later and want to talk, just let me know.”
‘“No. There’s nothing whatsoever, I’ve already told you,” she said, scratching her ankle, with blue veins standing out like mutilated earthworms, before she cast a glance at the card.
‘To his confusion, she suddenly looked up with a visible change of expression, turning to stare hard at him like a demented addict caught red-handed with a hidden package. Uneasy with her focused gaze, he lowered his head, dropping his glance to the floor, to a discolored toe with the nail not painted, but possibly damaged in a recent scuffle, looking like a black date.
‘“Elder Brother – C!” she blurted out.
‘“What?”
‘“That night before New Year’s Eve – in the street food market near Red Dust Lane, you still remember?”
‘“Little—”
‘“Yes, you still recognize me!”
‘Then, all of a sudden, she started talking, gushing out non-stop as if from a crumbled dam, oblivious of the recorder blinking with a faint red light like a monster’s eye in the haunted night woods.
‘Not long after that street market fiasco, as it turned out, her family moved across the river to Pudong. C had not seen Little Phoenix again, nor heard anything about her move, nor had he asked about her, for he remembered her only by the nickname.
‘It was a page he thought he had turned over, and he was in no mood to read it again.
‘Like in an old saying, a lot of water had gone by, first in the gutter of the street food market, and then with the street market itself also gone, so when he got the case file from the bureau Party boss, he did not know anything about her identity. Nor about what had happened to her through all these years.
‘But there might have been nothing too surprising about that journey of hers – from that broken line in the street market to the shady corner near the Big World. In terms of physical distance, it was less than half a mile. And still on the same Ninghai Road.
‘Actually, it turned out to be just like one of the often-heard stories about an unlucky girl in present-day China. After her failure to enter high school, and to find a job because of her family lacking any connections, she helplessly turned into a loser in the eyes of the increasingly materialistic society. And it was only a matter of time for her to fall into bad company, and then as prey to drugs.
‘What she said in the interrogation room regarding her involvement in drug trafficking incriminated her beyond any hope of redemption. It was all recorded. Unerasable.
‘But why had she suddenly chosen to spill out like that? Perhaps the shock of the recognition broke through her psychological defense. It was not until toward the end of her narration that she spoke in a subdued voice, clearing her throat, gazing up at him in afterthought.
‘“You still remember that night, Elder Brother? What a pathetic loser I was, and I still am, incapable of doing anything good. Believe it or not, the realization hit home for the first time with all the wire boxes collapsing and burying me in the street market on that morning. Now I’m totally finished, I know. You don’t have to worry about me. I’m glad that I’ve talked to you today—”
‘“No, you don’t have to talk like that! I’m so sorry about what happened—”
‘“You put the steak and goose into my crushed bamboo basket, I still remember, and you went back home almost empty-handed that morning. Of all the people, you were the only one being really nice to me, helping me at your own expense. But I’m worse than nothing – nothing but trouble.”
‘She simply believed he had gone out of the way for her, but it was just because he’d felt so guilty at the sight of her crushed toes under the stack of wire boxes that snow-covered morning in the street market. Still, people choose to see what they want to see, from a perspective preferable or acceptable to themselves.
‘But the question remains, why should she have chosen to speak out at such calamitous expense for herself?’
No one chose to make a comment as Chen came to an unexpected stop in his narrative. There was no missing the question he did not raise in so many words. Could it have been a favor to C – if favor was the word for it – that she did for him in the interrogation room of the police bureau?
‘As a cop, your friend had to do his job,’ someone nicknamed ‘Amateur PI Huang’ said in the audience, rubbing his hands as if they, too, had got frost-bitten that cold morning, years earlier, ‘particularly at this important juncture of his police career.’
‘Anyway, he succeeded where other cops had failed to make her talk,’ Chen resumed, with a sarcastic edge to his voice. ‘Some of his colleagues were not pleased with the unexpected outcome on his part, but Party Secretary Li seemed very much satisfied with his work, raving about it in a bureau meeting and recommending that C start working as an inspector in charge of the special case squad. After all, several notorious dealers were apprehended as a result. It was a huge breakthrough for the city police.
‘After the meeting, C tried to say something on her behalf to the Party secretary. He maintained that it was in line with the Party’s policy that those who confess should be dealt with leniently. But those years, narcotic arrests were few, and the unwritten regulation was very strict. Those caught had to be most severely punished. Period.
‘“A really harsh blow to the dealers,” Party Secretary Li declared. �
��It’s a credit to our bureau. You were the only one who succeeded in making her talk. Indeed, a fantastic job you have done. Who says that college education is not helpful to our line of work?”
‘It would not have made any difference, C realized, to tell the truth about why she had spilled out. The always politically correct Party Secretary Li was capable only of seeing things from a higher political level, “The good job you’ve done speaks volumes for our Party’s new policy regarding young intellectual cadres. They are playing an important role in the unprecedented reform of our socialist country, and in our police force too.”
‘So his effort to introduce the narrative of the long-ago street food market experience to Party Secretary Li for her benefit – though how it could have worked out, he had not thought – was brushed aside even before he had started.’
‘Nothing would have mattered any more for her,’ another one in the audience said. ‘There was no way for her to climb out of the fathomless abyss. Confess or not, she was beyond help, she knew that better than anybody else.’
That sounded like a plausible interpretation. None in the audience supposed, however, that the cop had come to the evening talk to hear it.
Perhaps there was another question not raised, and not answered, either. What exactly had happened to Little Phoenix in the end? But then the words ‘most severely punished’ seemed to have covered all.
What cannot be said has to pass over in silence.
Chen passed a pack of cigarettes around, and lit one respectfully for an elderly man nicknamed Old Root, an authoritative figure in the evening talk, before he took his leave.
Presently, Old Root said, ‘Did you notice his fingers trembling while trying to light the cigarette for me?’
‘Yes, but what about it?’
‘Like a guilty man burning a candle for forgiveness. Hold on – I have a vague feeling that I may have seen him here years ago – at the evening talk. Possibly still a kid at the time. Anyway, guess who Inspector C could possibly be?’
