by Qiu Xiaolong
It wasn’t that much, about fifteen hundred, but she had made the right decision. His luck couldn’t last that long.
“Well.” He pulled several bills out of his wallet. “Let’s make it two thousand and send the money to Little Huang’s family-in the name of our delegation.”
“Damn it,” Shasha said, emptying the money out of her purse. “Only twenty bucks. That’s all I have left today.”
“We don’t have to do that,” Bao said, clutching his full cup. “The Beijing authorities will take care of things in the proper way.”
“We don’t have to do this, and to do that,” Chen snapped. “Little Huang died for us-because of us. He was not even a so-called writer like you and me.”
28
IT MIGHT BE HIS last day in St. Louis, Chen supposed, stepping into the shabby motel near Jefferson Road. Behind the motel, not too far away, the Arch stood silhouetted against the gray sky, still, splendid as always.
He had been told to meet with Feidong, a military attaché from the Chinese Council in Chicago. The meeting was arranged more out of formality, though the location of it intrigued Chen. They could have met in the hotel where the delegation stayed.
Feidong conveyed his congratulations to Chen on behalf of the Culture Ministry and the Foreign Ministry. Then basically the same message: in view of the new situation, the delegation would return to China. Speaking as a government representative, Feidong showed proper respect to the chief inspector.
“The leading comrades in Beijing are pleased with your work.”
“What work?”
But there was no point arguing with Feidong, or even raising the question. He might not have any clue what work Chen was really engaged with here.
“Well, they are concerned with the safety of the delegation,” Feidong went on without directly responding to his question. “If anything else happens, it would be a diplomatic disaster. Then, huge responsibilities.”
So the meeting was not merely one of formality. It functioned as double insurance. After Zhao’s talk, the message was reiterated more like a warning. Chen had to lead the delegation back. Period.
Chen remained polite, saying little throughout the meeting, because it was a decision he had to accept. There was no point in fighting it.
“Also, there will be no mentioning Comrade Huang’s case whatsoever to the Chinese media. The delegation members are not supposed to talk or write about it upon their return.”
“Why?”
“It’s in the Party’s interests.”
Of course, anything would be so justified. There was little Chen could do about it. A case might be given to him one minute, and taken away the next. It was a fact he had long known. The final decision was always made in the interests of the Party.
The meeting was shorter than Chen had anticipated. There was hardly anything new to him. He had to be content, he tried to comfort himself, with whatever role was assigned to him-with the appearance that he had played the role successfully. He should not have felt so frustrated. He left the motel and started walking along the deserted street.
A blue jay flushed up, swirling around overhead before it flew away, as if carrying the sun on its back.
Had General Li met with the First Emperor of Han, / he could have easily been a duke. The lines Zhao had quoted in Shanghai came back to mind. In some of his cases, Chief Inspector Chen might not have gone all the way- for one reason or another. This time, he believed he had gone the extra mile, but for what?
A taxi slowed down beside him. An Arabic driver tentatively rolled down the window. Chen got in and gave the hotel name absentmindedly. As the car started out, he realized he was in no hurry to go back. He didn’t know how to explain the government’s decision to the delegation, though they probably wouldn’t make too much of it. It was about time for them to go back.
He didn’t have to announce the decision immediately. The delegation was having a meeting with a group of local Chinese writers with a Chinese dinner afterward. They all knew he had a meeting with the embassy people. A meeting no one would try to question. Not even Bao.
So Chen had the late afternoon for himself. He had done what he could, he kept telling himself, and further speculation would not help. Because things were beyond his control. Because he knew his limits. Because it depressed him to think. He did not have to be a cop or a delegation head every minute-at least not toward the end of his last day in the city.
For him, it remained an unfamiliar city, tall buildings looming up along the way like indecipherable signs against the horizon, ebbing to stunted slums before rising up again. He saw a Budweiser billboard of an eagle ceaselessly flapping its neon wings. The brewery had its successful joint ventures in China, its beer so cool and refreshing in Chinese TV commercials, and promoted everywhere by those scantily-clad Bud girls. The company already made a huge profit in only a few years after its entry into China ’s market, he had read. He thought of Tian and his ex-Bud-girl wife, whistling softly. Reaching into his breast pocket, he took out the address book, and read out a street name to the driver.
“So that’s where you want to go now?” the driver said without looking over his shoulder.
“Yes. Sorry about the change.”
“No problem. It’s not far away. In University City.”
He had not made any plan with Catherine for the evening, for he’d had no clue how long his meeting with the embassy official would last. So he’d told her he would be busy that afternoon, and perhaps that evening too. As most of the local writers at the afternoon meeting were bilingual, her services were not needed. She’d mentioned that instead of staying with them, she might go home.
As the taxi reached the intersection of Delmar and Skinker, he told the driver to stop. Handing the man a twenty-dollar bill, he didn’t ask for a receipt, which might reveal his whereabouts. Everybody knew about his “important” meeting this afternoon.
“Let us go,” he murmured to himself.
That section of Delmar was lined with bars and restaurants. He strolled past a café. A number of customers sat outside. A young girl was singing with an electric guitar near the entrance, her bare feet beating out the rhythm on the sidewalk, as if in correspondence to what had been already lost in his memory, distantly, with a string and a peg. Next to the neon sign was a secondhand bookstore. He resisted the temptation to step in.
Her apartment building was an old brownstone near the beginning of a quaint side street. One of the second-floor windows was decorated with a spreading cluster of dark green ivy underneath. He thought he recognized it from a picture she had once shown him.
He believed he had learned some things during the trip. Among others, people had to make appointments to visit here. No one simply dropped by, like in Shanghai. It wouldn’t do for him to knock on her door like this.
He pulled out his cell phone and called her home number. No one answered. Then he tried her cell phone, which was turned off, unfortunately. It was about four-thirty. She would probably come back soon. He thought he might as well wait awhile here. A nice surprise for her. And he found himself quite contented with the anticipation of it.
For the moment, he didn’t want to think about his responsibilities- being a government delegation head or being a chief inspector. Simply being a man waiting for a woman.
He turned into a street corner bar. Instead of sitting outside, he chose a table inside, leaning against the window, keeping her building in sight. It was a small, cozy bar; its walls presented an impressive array of old trophies and posters in a nostalgic statement against time. There was also a stuffed deer head gazing down, forever forlorn. A young waitress in high-heeled slippers came over, blowing out a gum bubble, and put a menu on the table. He wasn’t hungry so he had a glass of Chardonnay, and started sipping, watching out. He saw a bald man in shirtsleeves leaning out the window above hers, with a curl of smoke rising peacefully from a pipe.
Raising his glass, he became aware of the other customers there wa
tching him. A Chinese sitting alone in an American bar, he didn’t feel comfortable. He wondered whether it was appropriate for him to sit here drinking without any appetizer. The bar was not as hilarious as in the TV show he had watched. No one said anything to him here.
He decided to think over the latest development in the Xing case. Sipping at the wine, he took out a notebook and drew several connected lines across a page. He tried to figure out what had really happened between Xing and the Beijing government.
Apparently, Beijing ’s agents had been working behind the scenes in the States before Chen’s arrival. Xing was a calculating businessman, everything being negotiable. However sordid the bargain, it would be justified as being in the interest of the Party. After all, it was a case concerning the very top, or the very basis, of the Beijing government. Its full consequences would be comprehensible, as Comrade Zhao had suggested, only if viewed from a higher position. That was probably why Zhao had copied out that Tang poem for him.
But if so, why send Chief Inspector Chen to the United States? To get him out of the way for one or two weeks? He didn’t think so. It would have been much easier to do that in China, one way or another. Nor did he believe he had been chosen for the delegation on his merit. So here was the heart of the matter. Why all the bother? To the agents working here, the presence of Chen could only prove to be obstructive.
For the first time another possibility occurred to him. He might have been dispatched for a different reason. To attract the attention of the Americans, who had long known about his law enforcement background, and to whom his last-minute delegation appointment must have appeared suspicious. Now it made sense that Party Secretary Li had talked about his investigation at a press conference-so the Americans would learn about it through the Chinese media. Then the agents could work on Xing without being noticed or discovered.
As Detective Yu had guessed from the beginning, it was a show investigation, perhaps never meant to be taken seriously. But Chen had thrown himself headlong into the role, like an earnest yet effective Don Quixote, flourishing his lance, to the annoyance of some people in the Forbidden City. First in China, then on the trip abroad. Literally following Comrade Zhao’s talk about a general’s free decisions, the chief inspector proved to be a serious threat to the red rats, especially through his exploration into Xing’s connection with Little Tiger, leading to the very top. That had triggered the pursuit of his mother in Shanghai, and the attempt against him in St. Louis. Unfortunately, Little Huang fell instead.
Now as for Xing’s return to China, it might be another ironic casualty of misplaced yin and yang. Chen’s effort here, while unpleasant to the secret agents, brought about some surprising results. Through unforeseeable circumstances, Chen and his partners managed to arrest Ming, which, at least on the surface, appeared to be the last straw for Xing. Chen knew better, though; far more complicated factors had been working behind the scene.
But Chen still had no clue how Xing and his associates had learned that Chen had suspicions about Little Tiger. One possibility pointed to Tian. Not that Tian would have talked to anyone, but Bao and his mysterious L.A. man knew Chen had spent an afternoon with Tian. Still, two friends’ unexpected reunion wouldn’t have appeared so suspicious. The fact that nothing had happened to Tian spoke for itself. Other than Tian, Catherine was the only one aware of his secret work. He didn’t have to consider the possibility. Some of the most crucial information had come from her.
A more likely scenario would be that his phone discussions with Yu had been overheard. After the first few times, they had largely given up their weather terminology. A necessary yet disastrous decision. He had gambled on Yu’s home line not being tapped. In one of their discussions, he had mentioned Little Tiger in the context of the Xing…
But then these thoughts began depressing him. There would be time enough for him to think, once back in China, about whatever he was going to do or not do, as a cop.
He rose and took a local newspaper from a rack. The waitress came to him again. He had another glass of wine. Reading rather absentmindedly, he noticed three or four grammatical mistakes in one short article. He recalled what American writers had said of his English writing.
You can be a good writer here.
Perhaps he would be able to launch a new career here. The long-faded dream of his college years, of writing whatever he wanted to, and of not worrying about politics and corruption. It wouldn’t be a choice, he told himself, made out of any materialistic consideration. It might not be too late-with a wonderful friend staying in the background.
These thoughts had barely come crowding into his mind when he started to drive them out. Even in the confusion of a fleeting moment, he knew he had moved too far from the cherished vision of his college years. Like a green light he had read about long ago, already beyond his reach there and then. Or perhaps like Tian, who, with his booming business in L.A., like it or not, had found a new self with a young wife and a million-dollar mansion. Chen, too, had come to find himself more and more, ironic as it might appear, through those fatal investigations.
Besides, what about the people who stood by him all the way?
Looking out, he tried to refocus his thoughts on her, which seemed to be the only thing that could possibly cheer him up. With so many gloomy things surrounding him, with the memory of a poet musing at such an evening, with something like a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floor of the subconscious, however, even those self-indulgent fantasies took on a self-debunking color…
He suddenly felt an impulse he had not experienced for a long time. Turning to a blank page in his notebook, he started scribbling-to his surprise, in English, in a quite different strain, almost like a parody.
Shall I go, shall I go
with my Chinese accent, and a roast
Beijing duck, to her home,
when the evening is spreading out
like a gigantic invitation poster
against the clouds of doubt?
I’ll go, across the Loop, where
a young girl hums a little air,
her shoulder-length golden hair flowing,
lighting the somber wall, singing.
My necktie asserted by a pin,
my alligator leather shoes shining.
(They will think: “How yellow his skin!”)
What will they say-to my quoting
from Shakespeare, Donne, and Hopkins,
In short, I am not sure.
(They will say: “But how strong his accent!”)
He took a gulp of his wine, as if smashed with a bizarre combination of rhythm and rhyme-in a language not really his own, and with those lines coming out of nowhere. It appeared doubtful whether they would make their way into a poem, or into anything readable. But he’d better put them down, he knew, while the inexplicable urge still clutched him.
Would it be worthwhile
to bite a Mac with a smile,
to squeeze the difference and all
into a small Ping-Pong ball,
to dream of her white teeth
nibbling at cheddar cheese,
and in a mirror, a dull toad
with a fair swan, when all is told?
Is it her red-painted toenail
that makes me so frail?
Her toes tapping on a bronze
plaque dedicated to Eliot,
in an evening breeze of songs.
Oh am I not an idiot?
Should I explain a Chinese joke
with the help of an English book-
after baseball, chips and dips
and helpless tongue slips,
after deconstructing the character “ai”
into radicals-heart, water, friend and eye,
after the pallid sleepless stress
smoothed by her golden tress
on the rug of an iron tree,
after turning on the TV
without understanding why
those players laugh and cry.
It’s impossible to say
what I want to say!
What if she, kicking
off her sandals and trimming
her toenails, should say,
“That is not it at all,
that is not what I meant, at all.”
Then how should I begin
to spit out all the butt-ends
of my days and ways
and how shall I pray and pay?
I should be a dragon glazed
along the wall of the praised
Forbidden City. I’m no Li Bai dreaming,
but a damned, chained
monkey gesticulating,
with the name label pinned
on the bosom of a Tang vest.
In short, I am not sure,
walking along a twilight-flooded beach.
I have seen the mermaids dancing
on TV, beyond reach,
beyond reality’s pinching.
I don’t think that, singing on the sea,
they will shell their tails for me.
He was shocked by the lines rising out of the unlikely moment. In his college years, he had read about surrealist poets writing automatically, as in a trance. He wondered how such a similar experience befell him. Perhaps he could think of a number of explanations, but he was not in an analytical mood.
Because he would never be able, he knew, to squeeze the moment into a ball, to start it rolling toward where he would like to go. Not just about what he described in those lines, but more symbolically, like Eliot. No, he was not what he had imagined himself to be-not even in those lines. It was just a moment, and then it was gone.
And it was not a long moment.
He saw a black car pull up in front of her building. A man emerged from the driver’s side and opened the passenger door. She stepped out in that black dress with spaghetti straps.
The man did not go in with her, but they hugged outside the door, his hands lingering on her bare shoulders.
A long, passionate hug.
He kissed her on the cheek before moving back into the car. A shining black Jaguar. She stood on the doorstep, watching, waving her hand, until the car rolled out of sight in the growing dusk.
