Red Mandarin Dress

by Unknown

  “Like his victims,” Chen said, “without understanding their doom, still trying to escape.”

  “You’ve spared no pains in preparing this feast, Chief Inspector Chen.”

  “Now I’m coming to the climax of the story. For this part, I still need to fill in some details here and there, so the story may not read that polished yet.

  “Turning, turning, turning, like a caged animal, he found himself dazed against thousands of bars. So he decided to take a most controversial case, at the possible cost of his professional career. In China, an attorney has to stay on good terms with the government; this was a case that could damage the government’s image, exposing a number of Party officials who were involved in a housing development scandal, though also a case that could bring justice to a group of poor, helpless people. Whether it was a desperate effort to find some meaning in his life or an attempt at self-destruction, an end—possibly any end—to his straw-man-like existence might not be an unacceptable alternative to his subconscious. Unfortunately, the difficulties of the case added to his tension too.

  “Prior to the case, he was already on the verge of breaking down. Despite how he appeared to the outside world, he was torn and tormented by a split personality—an advocator for the new legal system and a lawbreaker in the most devilish way. Not to mention the helpless mess of his personal life.

  “And of all a sudden, Jasmine was killed.”

  “So are you saying, Chief Inspector Chen, that he turns into a killer because of his breakdown under too much stress?”

  “The crisis had existed long before the breaking point. But in spite of all the abovementioned factors, there must have been something else that set him off.”

  “What set him off?” Jia echoed in a show of nonchalance. “Beats me.”

  “It was panic that his plan for revenge was falling through. He had intended to see Jasmine into depravity, supposing that her complete downfall was just a matter of time. But she then met a man who was going to marry her and take her away to the United States—out of his reach. J had reduced her to a dead-end job in the hotel, where she met the love of her life. What an irony! The prospect of her living happily with a man in the States was more than he could stand. That pushed him over the edge. So he took her out one night.

  “It’s difficult to say what exactly he did to her—sexually, there was no real penetration or ejaculation. But he strangled her, put her into a dress similar to the one his mother wore in the picture, and dumped her body in front of the music institute—a location symbolically important to him. It was like a sacrifice, a statement, a message to his mother, in revenge for those wronged years, but also a message he could hardly analyze for himself. So many were entangled together in his mind.

  “But the story doesn’t end there. As the girl breathed her last, he experienced something new and unexpected, something like total freedom. It was all he could do to hold on to the appearance of his old self. Once the demon was out, like the genie out of the bottle, it was beyond his control. Considering the repression or suppression he had suffered all those years, it’s understandable to an extent why the murder provided him a release. A satisfaction previously unknown to him. A sort of mental orgasm—I doubt he attacked her sexually in an exact sense. It was a sensation so liberating that it worked like a drug, and he craved the experience.”

  “Now that reads like something from one of your mystery translations, Chief Inspector Chen,” Jia commented. “In those books, a madman kills for the thrill of it, like a drug addiction. It’s easy to write him off as a psycho. You don’t really buy such crap, do you?”

  The mahogany clock started striking, as if in echo of his question. Chen looked up. It was eleven. Jia didn’t appear so eager to leave. Rather, he was talking in earnest. That didn’t bode too badly for Chen.

  “Let me go on with my story first, Mr. Jia,” Chen said. “So he started his serial murders. It was no longer revenge, but an uncontrollable killing urge. He knew the police were on high alert, so he focused on three-accompanying girls, who were easy to pick up, and also suggestive of depravation. He was totally possessed, not caring that the women weren’t related to his revenge, that they were innocent victims.”

  “Innocent victims,” Jia echoed. “Few would so describe them. Of course, a narrator has his own perspective.”

  “Psychologically, it was also crucial,” Chen went on without directly responding to him. “He’s not delusional. Most of the time, he may be just like you and me, like ordinary people. So he still has to justify what he does, consciously or subconsciously. In his twisted mind, these girls, because of their possible sex service, deserved such a disgraceful ending.”

  “You don’t have to launch into a lecture in the middle of a narrative. As you have said, it’s an age of the individual’s perspective.”

  “From whatever perspective, serial murder is inexcusable. And he knows that too. He’s not so willing to see himself as a murderer.”

  “You are full of brilliantly creative imagination, Chief Inspector Chen,” Jia said. “Let us say that you are going to publish the story, but what then? It’s not a work of high taste, not becoming a well-known poet like you.”

  “A story is told for an implied audience, the audience that will be most affected by it. In the present case, that is, of course, J.”

  “So it’s like a message to him? I know you did it, so you’d better confess. But what would be J’s reaction?” Jia said deliberately. “I can’t speak for him, but for me, as a common reader, I will say that the story doesn’t hold up. It’s conjecture about things that happened over twenty years ago, and all based on a psychological theory totally foreign to Chinese culture. So do you think J will turn himself in? There is no evidence or witness. It’s no longer the age of proletarian dictatorship, Comrade Chief Inspector Chen.”

  “With four victims in the city, evidence will be found. I’m working on it.”

  “As a cop?”

  “I am a cop, but I’m telling a story here—at the moment. Let me ask you a question. What makes a story good?”

  “Credibility.”

  “Credibility comes from vivid and realistic details. Here, except for a couple of paragraphs, I’m only giving you something like an outline. For the final version, I’ll include all the details. I don’t have to use abstract terms like Oedipus complex. I’ll simply elaborate on the boy’s sexual desire for his mother.”

  Jia rose abruptly, poured another cup for himself, and drained it in one gulp.

  “Well, if you believe your story can sell, that’s great. It’s none of my business. You’ve finished, and I think I’d better leave—to prepare for the trial tomorrow.”

  “No, don’t leave in such a hurry, Mr. Jia. Several courses are not served yet. And I need more of your specific opinions.”

  “I think you are trying to tell a sensational story,” Jia said, still standing there, “but people will take it as a sordid fantasy embraced by a cop without a shred of evidence. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have resorted to storytelling.”

  “When they learn that the story is written by a cop, they will pay more attention to it.”

  “In China, a story from official channels would more likely than not be discredited.” Jia added, “In the last analysis, your story has too many holes. No one would take it seriously.”

  Their talk was once again interrupted by the arrival of White Cloud. This time she was dressed like a country girl, wearing an indigo homespun top, shorts, and a white apron. Her feet were bare. She was serving them a live snake in a glass cage.

  At their first meeting in the Dynasty karaoke club, Chen recalled, she had also served a snake platter, but now she was preparing the snake before their eyes.

  She proved to be up to the task, swooping the snake out in a quick motion, striking it like a whip on the ground, and slicing open its belly with a sharp knife. With one pull, she took the snake’s gall bladder in her hand and put it in a cup of spirits. She must have recei
ved professional training.

  Still, her bare arms and feet were splashed with snake blood, and the blood spatters looked like peach blossom petals falling on her fan-shaped apron.

  “This is for our honored guest,” she said, handing Jia a cup that contained the greenish gall in the strong liquor.

  The scene produced little effect on Jia, who swallowed the gall in the liquor in one gulp, producing a hundred Yuan bill for her.

  “For your service.” Jia reseated himself at the table. “He must have gone to great lengths to find you.”

  “Thank you.” She turned to Chen. “How do you want the snake cooked?”

  “Whatever way you recommend.”

  “In Chef Lu’s usual style then. Half to fry, half to steam.”

  “Fine.”

  She withdrew, treading high-footed on the carpet.

  “It’s not so convenient to talk in a restaurant,” Chen said to Jia. “But you were talking about holes in the story.”

  “Well, here is one hole,” Jia said. “In your story, Jasmine must have had opportunities of getting out from under of his control, yet he managed to keep control of the situation all those years. Why not this time? He’s a resourceful attorney; instead of resorting to killing, he could have thwarted her plans some other way.”

  “He might have tried, but for one reason or another, it didn’t work out. But you have a point, Mr. Jia. A good point.”

  It was obvious that Jia was trying to undermine the whole basis of the story, and Chen welcomed his engagement in the exercise.

  “And here is another such hole. If he were so passionately attached to his mother, then why would he strip his victims and dress them in such a way? That kind of attachment is a skeleton in the family closet, to say the least—one he would be anxious to keep hidden.”

  “A short, simple explanation is that things are twisted in his mind. He loves her, but he can’t forgive her for what he considers to be her betrayal. But I have a more elaborate explanation for this psychological peculiarity,” Chen said. “I’ve mentioned the Oedipus complex, in which two aspects are mixed. Secret guilt and sexual desire. For a boy in China during the sixties, the desire part could be more deeply embedded.

  “Now, the memory of her most desirable moment, the afternoon when she was wearing that mandarin dress, was juxtaposed with that of another moment, the most horrible memory, that of her having sex with another man. Unforgettable and unforgivable because in his subconscious, he substitutes himself as the one and only lover. So those two moments are fused together like two sides of a coin. That’s why he treated his victims as he did—the message was contradictory even to himself.”

  “I am no expert or critic,” Jia said, “but I don’t think you can apply a Western theory to China without causing confusion. For me—as a reader—the connection between his mother’s death and him subsequently killing appears groundless.”

  “About the difficulty of applying a Western theory to China, I think you’re right. In the original Oedipus story, the woman is no devil. She doesn’t know, she’s just doing what’s commonly expected in her position. It’s a tragedy of fate. J’s story is different. And it happens to involve something I’ve been exploring in a literature paper. I’ve been analyzing several classical love stories in which beautiful and desirable women suddenly turn into monsters, like ‘The Story of Yingying’ or ‘Artisan Cui and His Ghost Wife.’ No matter how desirable the woman is in the romantic sense, there’s always the other side—which is disastrous to the man with her. Is it something deep in Chinese culture or in the Chinese collective unconscious? It’s possible, especially when we take into consideration the institution of arranged marriage. Demonization of women, especially of women involved in sexual love, is therefore understandable. So it’s like a twisted Oedipus message with Chinese characteristics.”

  “Your lecture is profound but beyond me,” Jia said. “You should write a book about it.”

  Chen, too, wondered at his sudden exuberance here, in the company of Jia. Perhaps that was what he had been struggling with in his paper, and it took an unexpected parallel to the case to make him see the light.

  “So for J, his peculiar way of killing proved overwhelming, with the force coming not just out of his personal unconscious, but out of the collective one as well.”

  “I’m not interested in the theory, Chief Inspector Chen. Nor do I think your readers will ever be interested. As long as your story is full of holes, you can’t make a case.”

  Jia evidently believed that Chen had played all his cards and was unable to touch him. In return, Jia was picking up the holes in the story to let Chen know that he thought the cop was merely bluffing in a game at psychological warfare.

  Indeed, there were holes that Jia alone could fill, Chen thought, when he was struck by a new idea. Why not let Jia do the job?

  Unworkable as the idea seemed, Chen instantly decided to give it a try. After all, Jia might be tempted to tell the story from his perspective—with different emphases and justifications, as long as he could maintain, psychologically, that it was nothing but a story.

  “You are a good critic, Mr. Jia. Now, supposing you were the narrator, how could you improve the tale?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “About the holes in the narrative. Some of my explanations may not be enough to convince you. As the author, I wonder what kind of explanations you as a reader might expect, or might try to provide.”

  The look he gave Chen made it clear Jia knew it was a trap, and he didn’t respond immediately.

  “You are one of the best attorneys in the city, Mr. Jia,” Chen went on. “Your legal expertise surely makes the difference.”

  “Which particular holes are you talking about, Chief Inspector Chen?” Jia said, still cautious.

  “The red mandarin dress, to begin with. Based on the research done about the material and style, he had the dresses made in the eighties, about ten years before he started killing. Was he already planning it? No, I don’t think so. Then why such a large supply of them, and in different sizes too, as if he had anticipated the need to choose for his victims?”

  “That defies explanation, doesn’t it? But as an audience, I think there may be a scenario more acceptable to me, and also consistent with the rest of the story.” Jia paused to take a sip at the wine, as if deep in thought. “Missing his mother, he tried to have the dress in the picture reproduced. It took him quite a while to find the original material—it was long out of production—and to locate the old tailor who had made the original dress. So he decided to use up the material, having several dresses made instead of just one. One of them must be close to the original. He didn’t foresee that they would be used years later.”

  “Excellent, Mr. Jia. He still lives in the moment of having his picture taken with her. It isn’t surprising that he tried to hang on to something of it. Something tangible, so he could tell himself that the moment had existed,” Chen said, nodding. “Now, about the other hole you pointed out. You were right about his capability of thwarting Jasmine’s plans in some other way. Besides, Jasmine wasn’t like the other victims. How could she have been willing to go out with a stranger?”

  “Well,” Jia said. “How can you be so sure that he had planned to kill her? Instead, he might have tried to talk her out of her passion. Then something just happened.”

  “How, Mr. Jia? How could he try to talk her out of love?”

  “I’m not the writer, but he might have found out something about her lover—something suspicious in his business or in his marital status. So he arranged to meet her to discuss it.”

  “Oh yes, that explains why she would go out with him. Fantastic.”

  “He wanted her to stop seeing the man. She wouldn’t listen. So he threatened her with the possible consequences, like disclosing their secret affair, or accusing her lover of bigamy. During their heated argument, she started shouting and screaming. He put his hand on her mouth to silence her. In a trance,
all of a sudden, he saw himself turning into Tian, and doing to her what Tian had done to his mother. An uncanny experience like reincarnation. It was Tian who was attacking her—”

  “Except that in the last minute,” Chen cut in, “the memory of his mother still unmanned him. He strangled her instead of raping her. That explains the bruises on her legs and arms, and his washing her body afterward. He was a cautious man, worried about evidence left behind in the failed attempt.”

  “Well, that’s your account, Chief Inspector Chen.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Jia, you have fixed the problem,” Chen said, draining his cup. “Just one more hole. He dumped the bodies at public locations. A defiant message, I understand. But the last victim was left in the cemetery. Why? If the grave robber hadn’t stumbled upon the body, it could have been left undiscovered for days.”

  “You aren’t familiar with the cemetery, are you?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “In the fifties, it was the cemetery for the rich. So there is a simple explanation. His family members were buried there.”

  “But both his parents were cremated, with their ashes disposed of. The cemetery, too, was turned upside down. No immediate members of his family were buried there.”

  “Well, some families used to buy their cemetery plots far in advance. His grandfather and parents could have purchased their plots like that. So in his imagination, it was still the place where his mother lay in rest—”

  Chen’s cell phone started ringing at this unlikely hour. Chen picked it up in haste. The call was from Director Zhong.

  “Thank God. I’ve finally found you, Chief Inspector Chen,” Zhong said. “The Central Party Committee in Beijing has made a decision about the housing development case.”

  “Yes?” Chen said, turning to one side. “You mean the outcome of the trial?”

  “It’s a difficult case, but it’s also an opportunity to show our Party’s determination to fight corruption. The people see Peng as representative of it. So let’s make an example of him.”