by Qiu Xiaolong
‘None other than Chen himself?’
‘Exactly, he feels so guilty, he has to come and tell the story here.’ Like Chen, Old Root took a long pull at the cigarette before resuming, ‘It’s like people burning netherworld money at a spot particularly meaningful to the deceased. If that’s the case, he may turn out to be a conscientious cop.’
EIGHT
He comes to a standstill, so horrified at the sight of a blindfolded man riding desperately along a treacherous mountain trail, whipping at a blind horse like crazy, as if being chased by invisible soldiers in the depth of the night. The darkness lies motionless, like a patient etherized on a white-sheet-covered table. Under the crumbling cliff, along the narrow trail stretching on like an extra-long footnote to a foregone conclusion, the horse is tearing headlong to the brink of a fathomless lake—
And he is galvanized by the realization that the rider is none other than himself, cursing, pushing on to the dark shore, and at the same time watching the horrendous scene helplessly from a distance. To his confusion, there seems to be another voice saying to him in persuasion, ‘You have to keep going, going in the dark—’
It’s then that the horse stumbles toward the water’s edge—
The dream had probably come, he supposed, from a couplet in an ancient collection of absurd anecdotes titled New Tales of the World, in which a Chinese scholar tried to excel in representing the most horrible scene imaginable in a poem: ‘A blind man is riding a blind horse / to the lake shore deep at night.’
Chen must have been thinking too much about the hazardous approach to the netizen named Huyan in Red Dust Lane the next morning, so the dream arose as a vivid projection from his subconscious. As in an old Chinese saying: ‘What comes into one’s dream at night comes from what he worries about during the day.’
And the next morning – to be more exact, this morning – he would be the blind rider racing toward Red Dust Lane, with no idea about what disaster he was heading towards, and with nothing visible around in the pitch blackness for him to make any possible judgment.
A text message came in from Detective Yu.
‘You have to be there, keep going all the time, even when you are going nowhere, and with luck, you may be able to have a breakthrough.’
And just one or two minutes later, another message from Peiqin came vibrating into his phone. She, too, must have gotten up early.
‘Huyan appears to be a professional photographer, with his photos frequently posted online, and occasionally in the company of others’ poems or stories. It is said that those pictures actually bring in a sizable income. His works have been displayed in exhibitions. Huyan’s a rare family name, but I’m not one hundred percent sure about his being the very one in Red Dust Lane.’
Another crucial clue. So Huyan could have been connected with Dragon Brother because of the juxtaposition of poetry with photography. It was not an uncommon practice for netizens, as their posts would attract more readers that way – in imitation of a popular practice of combining poems with paintings in classical Chinese literature and art. It was conceivable that Huyan liked the poem, added a photo relevant to the contents, and a repost with the two together was seen by Webcops. While it did not necessarily mean Huyan knew Dragon Brother personally, it surely narrowed the range of door-knocking and question-raising for Chen. Like doing an Internet search, the combination of two key words could help to produce a faster and more reliable result.
But once again, searching his memory down Red Dust Lane’s history did not yield anything new. He was unsure if he remembered any photographers in the lane, and definitely not one – or any lane resident – surnamed Huyan. It was perhaps no surprise. For the last ten years or so, he had been too busy to step into Red Dust Lane again, and to learn things that had happened there. So how could he find out?
Some people he knew long ago in the lane, but they did not necessarily know him – especially not now. Like Mr Ma in the tiny bookstore before the Cultural Revolution, and then in a herbal medicine store afterward, but he was not even sure if Mr Ma was still there. There was an elderly man nicknamed Old Root, a prominent figure in the evening talk of the lane, who might remember him. But Old Root must be really old – too old to come out like before. Only once had Chen disclosed his police identity through a story told in front of the lane. Now no one knew or remembered him, so how could he presume—
But wait. There was one in the lane who might remember him, and that with the knowledge of his being a cop. He jumped up, almost hitting his head against the attic beam. A teacher in his middle school during the years of the Cultural Revolution. He had visited her in the days just before his promotion to the chief inspectorship in the police bureau. She’d talked to him about things happening to some lane residents she knew, including one that got into trouble because of his picture development in the attic. But his name was not Huyan, Chen felt pretty sure. Afterward, she wrote Chen a thank-you card for his help, which was nothing, and respectfully called him ‘Chief Inspector Chen’.
It was not that likely that there were two photographers in the lane. Still, he might be able to locate Huyan through the one his middle school teacher had told him about. If Huyan was there, truly connected with the poet, he might be able to ferret out more about Dragon Brother; if not, it would not hurt for Chen to talk to him and give some advice about what to say to Internal Security …
Then he heard his mother moving light-footedly, stepping out and closing the door quietly after her. She was going shopping, even though the street food market had long disappeared.
It was time for him to get up too. The ‘case’ was waiting for him in Red Dust Lane. His effort might be just like the scary dream scene, but failing to make the attempt meant he was beyond any hope of redemption.
In China, people might have one scenario after another about a political case, but more often than not, the true one would turn out to be much wilder and stranger than imaginable in a fiction book. It was useless to work on those theories in the attic, just as Detective Yu had said in the message.
After a long night of dreaming and looking back at how far he had come, he finally found himself ready to confront the possible end of his police career … or a new beginning.
‘Even if you know it’s something impossible for you to do, you have to try your best as long as it’s the right thing to do.’ That was another Confucius maxim his father had taught him so many years earlier. Whether or not he could achieve a breakthrough, or continue to be a chief inspector, he had to go to Red Dust Lane.
Because of Doctor Zhivago II
Mr Ma of Red Dust Lane was released one day in 1987, several years ahead of time. He had been wronged, it was said, when thrown into jail as a ‘current counter-revolutionary’ at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution.
It came as a huge surprise to Red Dust Lane.
Even more so to Comrade Jun, the head of the neighborhood committee. Usually, the higher authorities would have contacted the neighborhood cadres first about such an unexpected development.
Things were changing, of course, after the end of the Cultural Revolution. A number of ‘wrong cases’ had been rectified. For instance, Chairman Liu Shaoqi, the Chairman of the People’s Republic of China, had been wrongly accused by Chairman Mao Zedong, the Chairman of the Communist Party of China, and brutally killed like a naked rat in prison. Liu’s pictures now reappeared in the People’s Daily, though Mao’s portrait still hung high on Tiananmen Square.
Mr Ma was a nobody in comparison. Still, people were truly happy for Mrs Ma in Red Dust Lane. Like in a Beijing opera about Wang Baochuan, a virtuous wife in the seventh century who waited for eighteen long years in an impoverished earthen cave for her husband’s return in triumph as a general, Mrs Ma, too, finally had her man back, even though Mr Ma was by no means like a great general returning home in the Tang dynasty.
All those years, Mrs Ma had fared far worse than the heroine in the classical Beijing opera, sweeping the fa
llen leaves all alone in the lane, day after day in rain or shine. She’d turned into a taken-for-granted scene of Red Dust Lane – a fragile woman dragging a long bamboo stick broom taller than herself, invariably carrying a humble smile on her face and a plastic waste basket on her back. Ironically, her health appeared to have somewhat improved because of the physical labor. At least red spots were seen in her cheeks, though some people argued it was because of her constant exposure to the sunlight. During the Cultural Revolution, it was a matter of course that she suffered humiliations and persecutions as a black family member, but probably not much worse than other ‘birds of the same black feathers’. And all those years she made her monthly visit to him in the prison. Eventually, the lane came to respect the woman for her unwavering dedication to her husband.
‘The man may not be too bad after all. No, not with a good wife remaining so loyal to him these years,’ Old Root commented at the news of Mr Ma’s release.
So a group of the neighborhood residents poured out to the entrance of the lane that morning, waiting to pay a sort of respect to the Mas. For a wronged man, but also for a virtuous woman who believed in the innocence of her man.
But it was a totally changed Mr Ma they witnessed – silver-haired and silver-browed, like a white owl in the mountains. He dragged his unsteady steps into Red Dust Lane, leaning heavily on the shoulder of his frail wife, wearing a pair of glasses as thick as the bottoms of beer bottles, his eyes blinking incessantly in the sunlight. He was said to have damaged his vision reading too much in the black prison cell. Nevertheless, the couple presented a touching sight: a white-haired man in the company of a rosy-cheeked woman, hand in hand, as if walking out of an ancient Chinese love story, though their age difference was not large in reality.
Afterward, Comrade Jun delivered a well-prepared speech at a special neighborhood meeting. ‘It was politically necessary – politically correct – for the Party authorities to maintain high alert against any possible sabotage attempts made by the class enemies during the Cultural Revolution. All in the interests of socialist China, as we understand. You, too, have to take a positive attitude toward that part of the history, Mr Ma. And it is now correct, politically correct, of course, to redress those wronged cases. Look forward, not backward. That is our Party’s new slogan. If there’s anything the neighborhood committee can possibly do for you, please let us know.’
‘There’s one thing the neighborhood committee can do,’ Mr Ma said slowly. ‘My wife does not mind going on with the lane-sweeping job, but I, too, have to do something for my living.’
That came as a legitimate request. At his age, it was impossible for Mr Ma to find a new job for himself. If he had worked at a state-owned company before, he might be able to go back there in accordance with the new Party policy. But he had not. No one claimed responsibility for that.
Comrade Jun suggested that the Mas resume their book business. It was providential that Mrs Ma had kept those books, dust-covered, yet otherwise intact, in the back room all these years. In the mid-eighties, private bookstores or book booths had started to reappear in the city. It should not be too difficult for them to have their license renewed, for which Comrade Jun offered to apply on their behalf. In addition, he returned to the old couple the front room which had been used for the storage of the neighborhood propaganda material. It was another surprising move, but no one said anything about it. After all, the Mas had suffered so much.
‘No, a bookstore will serve only as a daily reminder of my prison years,’ Mr Ma said, his eyes blinking like an owl. Instead, he wanted to open a Chinese herbal medicine store in the front room.
The next week, Mr Ma submitted the license application. Comrade Jun took it upon himself to smooth the process. At the evening talk, Old Root asked the audience to help in whatever way possible. Weeks passed with the application traveling from one bureaucratic desk to another, without having made any progress. Mr Ma looked more and more like a withered white owl, sighing in a hollow voice, which sounded like eerie hooting in the night woods.
Then, all of a sudden, a business license was express-delivered to Mr Ma. Comrade Jun and other neighborhood committee members appeared to be totally in the dark about the unexpected development.
As it turned out, somebody in the city police bureau had put in a word for the old man. Again, it confounded the lane. People had never heard of Mr Ma’s connections there. Comrade Tang, the head of the neighborhood police office, shook his head without saying anything. It was said that he had recently got into some trouble, and would soon be transferred to a smaller neighborhood office in the far-away Jinshan district.
Whatever interpretations and speculations there may have been in the lane, a new signboard was soon made with the eye-catching name: Old Ma’s Herbal Medicine Store.
‘Congratulations, Mr Ma! The Wheel of Fortune is finally turning in your favor.’ Comrade Jun added in an official tone, ‘The Party authorities are now encouraging private business in our socialist country.’
‘Thank you, Comrade Jun. We owe everything to the Party’s new policy,’ Mrs Ma said, clasping her fingers in a sincere gesture of appreciation.
Amidst the people gathering in front of the herbal medicine store on its opening, Old Root struck a match to a long chain of firecrackers dangling from the tip of a bamboo pole. It was a celebration practice that was no longer encouraged in the city for safety concerns, but for once it was allowed in the lane because of its supposed potency in scaring away the evil spirits associated with a place and ushering in the good Fortune.
‘You surely know your way around, Mr Ma!’ Old Root said in the chorus of the firecrackers. ‘Your business will gallop for thousands of miles, like a horse after a break!’
The comments referred to a clever combination of Mr Ma’s surname and old Chinese sayings. The character ma, a Chinese family name, can also mean a horse. So old sayings came in handy, such as ‘An old horse knows its way around’ and ‘Though taking a break in the stable, the old horse still wants to run for thousands of miles’. To all appearances, Old Ma’s Herbal Medicine Store seemed to be a well-chosen name for the business.
An old horse could also turn out to be a dark horse, and the lane prayed for his successful venture into the new, unfamiliar line of business.
For all the blessing and firecrackers, concerns lingered in the lane. Those days, the majority of people working for state-owned companies still enjoyed the state medical insurance, and it did not appear likely that they would come to a small, privately-run herbal drug store at their own expense, not to mention the fact that it took time to build up a customer base. For an old man like Mr Ma, newly released from prison, how could he become known to people out of Red Dust Lane?
But the lane was proved wrong. It hardly took any time at all for his business to begin galloping ahead. Soon, visitors were lining up outside the herbal store, and Mrs Ma had to move out two wooden benches for the customers waiting in the lane.
Was it because of his expertise as a self-made doctor? An old horse, Mr Ma might know his way around the herbs, but such popularity could not have materialized overnight. The people in the lane could not help wondering and speculating again.
Then foreigners, too, came to the herbal store – almost like in the good old days of the bookstore. Perhaps there had been something truly inexplicably suspicious going on in the small front room, one of his old neighbors declared, to make the Party government put him behind bars in the sixties.
Finally, Old Root decided to take a closer look into the matter. Comrade Jun more than approved, though it was no longer the age of the class struggle.
Old Root went to the store with the excuse of sending the Mas an urn of Shaoxin sticky rice wine. The wine was supposed to serve as a token of his gratitude for those books he had read for free in the bookstore years earlier.
That morning he stepped in and found Mr Ma’s front room furnished like a combination of a doctor’s office and a herbal medicine store. Its whi
te walls were lined with oak cabinets sporting numerous tiny drawers, each of them bearing a label for a particular herb, and in the midst of it all, Mr Ma sat at a mahogany desk, a white-haired, white-bearded man wearing silver-rimmed spectacles and a long string of carved beads. An immaculate image of a Taoist recluse enjoying longevity in harmony with nature. Beside the desk, a glass counter exhibited an impressive array of herb samples, along with unfolded books, magazines and pictures, all illustrating the beneficial effects of the Oriental herbs.
But there was a ‘foreign devil’ in the room, too. A young girl, her long blonde hair falling over her bare shoulders, was sitting in a chair opposite Mr Ma, her wrist like white jade shining on the mahogany desk.
‘Let me take a look at your tongue,’ Mr Ma said in a serious voice.
He examined her tongue, nodded, and then pressed her wrist for the pulse with his eyes closed.
‘Nothing seriously wrong. The yang appears slightly high at the expense of the yin. So the energy does not flow in perfect harmony within your body’s system. Perhaps too much on your mind, young girl. I’m writing you a prescription, with some herbs for the yin-yang balance, and some for the blood circulation to the benefit of the whole system. It’s a holistic approach. And all fresh herbs here, I guarantee you.’
‘That’s fantastic,’ the girl said in Chinese. ‘No way to get these fresh herbs in the United States.’
Mr Ma flourished a skunk-tail-blush pen over a piece of bamboo paper and handed the prescription to Mrs Ma. ‘You choose the freshest herbs for her.’
The business practice appeared truly impressive. The consolidation of handing out the prescription and herbs in one visit proved so convenient to the customers.
But how could an American girl have learned of the herbal medicine store hidden away in a lane, which had been in business for only two or three weeks?
‘You’re busy with your customers, Mr Ma,’ Old Root said. ‘So I’m leaving the wine here. It’s nothing, free from my nephew who now operates a wholesale chain supplying Shaoxin sticky rice wine to hotels and restaurants. I’ll come back when you are not busy.’
