by [Chief Inspector Chen Cao 05] Red Mandarin Dress [v1. 0] [epub]
YU: That’s strange. At that time, few would have sued for something like that.
WENG: Do you know how he was paralyzed?
YU: A stroke, right?
WENG: He was so desperate that he tried to reverse his luck on a mahjong
table. And he was caught by the neighborhood cop the second time he sat down at the table. A heavy fine and a lecture. He suffered a stroke right there and then.
LIAO: Karma indeed. Now, what about Jasmine’s bad luck?
WENG: It was hard for a little girl, but she turned out to be a good student. On
the day of the college entrance examination, however, she was knocked down by a bike. Not badly hurt, she told the biker not to worry, but he insisted on having her checked at a hospital. When everything was finished, she had missed the examination.
YU: It was an accident. A responsible biker could have done that.
WENG: Perhaps. But what about her first job?
YU: What about it?
WENG: She couldn’t afford to wait for the examination the next year. So she
started working as a salesgirl for an insurance company. Not a bad job, with a sizable bonus for her. Insurance was then new in the city. During her third or fourth month on the job, however, someone sent a letter to her boss, complaining about her “promiscuous lifestyle and shameless tricks” in selling policies. Her boss didn’t want the company’s image affected by a scandal and fired her.
YU: Well, that’s the version from her perspective.
WENG: There’s no point in making up things like that. I never raised a question
about her past.
YU: Did she herself make any comment about her bad luck?
WENG: She seemed to have always lived in the shadow of it. So she came to
believe that she was born under an unlucky star. She applied for other jobs, but she had no success until she came to this shabby hotel, taking a dead-end job.
YU: How did she come to tell you all this?
WENG: She suffered from a sort of inferiority complex. When we first started
going out, and I talked about our future, she could hardly believe the change in her life. But for the incident in the elevator, she would never have agreed to go out with me. She was a little superstitious, taking the incident as a sign. With so much bad luck in her young life, you understand.
YU: One more question: when did you plan to marry her?
WENG: We did not have an exact date, but we agreed that it should be as soon
as possible—after the divorce. . . .
Chen fast-forwarded the tape toward the end, but Yu didn’t make any comments, as he had sometimes did. There were no comments on the written report, either.
Chen rose to make a cup of coffee. A cold morning. Outside the window, a yellow leaf finally tore itself from the twig, trembling, as in a story he had read a long time ago.
He moved back to bed, putting the coffee mug on the nightstand, tapping his finger on the cassette player.
Chen could see Yu tapping his finger on a go chessboard, grappling with a possible opening, not exactly identified—not yet.
It was Weng’s statement about Jasmine’s curse.
While Tian deserved the punishment, most of the people like Tian remained unpunished after the Cultural Revolution, with Chairman Mao’s portrait still hanging on the Tiananmen Gate. As a Chinese proverb goes, to kill a monkey is to scare the chickens, and Tian happened to be the monkey, that was perhaps just his luck.
But what about Jasmine? The bike incident might have been an accident. The anonymous letters, however, went too far. She was only seventeen or eighteen. How could anyone have hated her that much?
The cell phone rang, breaking into the gloomy thoughtful morning.
“Let’s have brunch at the Old City God’s Temple Market,” White Cloud said, her voice sounding close by. “You like the mini soup bun there, I know.”
Probably a good idea to take a break. Talk with her might help— about the paper, and about the case too.
“There are several boutiques selling mandarin dresses there,” she went on before he responded. “Quite a variety of them—not good quality, but fashionable, and some of them nostalgically fashionable.”
That clinched it for him.
“Let’s meet at Nanxiang Soup Bun Restaurant.”
It was for the sake of the investigation, he told himself. She might serve as a fashion consultant in a field study, though he was slightly uneasy about it.
Was it because of something he had been studying for the paper—a femme fatale? There seemed to be a weird echo from the story he had just read. According to one critic, Yingying, in “The Story of Yingying,” was actually someone of dubious background, like a K girl in today’s society.
Chen started dressing for brunch.
* * * *
About twenty minutes later, he found himself walking in under the familiar entrance arch of the Old City God’s Temple Market.
For most Shanghainese, the temple represented not so much of an attraction in itself, but simply a name for the surrounding market of local snacks and products—originally booths and stalls for the temple festivals. For Chen, the attraction came from those eateries, whose offerings were inexpensive yet unique in their flavors, such as chicken and duck blood soup, soup buns in small steamers, radish-shred cakes, shrimp and meat dumplings, beef soup noodles, fried tofu and vermicelli. .”. . All these he had liked so much, in the days when society was still an egalitarian one, in which everyone made little money and enjoyed simple meals.
Things were also changing here. There was a new tall building rising behind the Yu Garden, which had originally been the back garden of the Shanghai mayor in the late Qing dynasty and was built in the traditional southern architecture style of ancient pavilions and grottos. In Chen’s childhood, his parents, unable to afford the trip to Suzhou and Hangzhou, had taken their son to the garden instead.
Moving past the garden, he stepped up onto the Nine Turn Bridge—allegedly with nine turns so that the evil spirits wouldn’t be able to find their way around. An old couple stood on the bridge, throwing breadcrumbs to the invisible golden carps in the pond and nodding at him. It was too cold for the fish to come to the surface, but the old couple remained standing there, waiting. The last turn of the bridge brought him to the Nanxiang Soup Bun Restaurant.
The first floor of the restaurant appeared little changed: a long line of customers waited outside for their turn to get in, watching through the large kitchen window, the never-boring scene of the kitchen assistants picking out the crab meat deftly on a long wooden table and mixing it with minced pork meat. He took the winding stairs up to the second floor, which was quite crowded in spite of the double price charged there. So he climbed up another flight of steps to the third floor, which charged three times as much for the same soup buns. The table and chairs were of imitation mahogany, not too comfortable, but there weren’t too many people there. He took a seat overlooking the lake.
As a waiter came to pour him a cup of tea, White Cloud walked up the staircase, tall and slender in a white imitation-fur overcoat and high heels. Helping her take off the overcoat, he saw her wearing a modified backless pink mandarin dress. The dress fit her well, accentuating her curves. Once more he was reminded of that famous Confucian statement, A woman makes herself beautiful for the man who appreciates her.
“You are floating over like a morning cloud,” he commented before ordering four steamers of soup buns stuffed with minced crab and pork meat. The waiter took the order from him, stealing a look at her.
“Your appetite is good today,” she said, placing on the table a pink silk purse that matched the color of her dress.
“A beauty is so delicious that people want to devour,” he said, quoting Confucius.
“You are being romantic.” She tore open a small packet with an alcohol-soaked cotton ball that she carried in her purse, wiped his chopsticks first, and then hers. Nanxiang was one of
the few old Shanghai restaurants that still resisted using disposable chopsticks.
“Nostalgic, perhaps,” he said, immersing the ginger slices into saucers of vinegar. One of the saucers was cracked, just like in the old days, as on that afternoon with his cousin Peishan.
In the early seventies, Peishan had been one of the first educated youths to “go to the countryside for reeducation by the poor and lower-middle-class peasants.” Before leaving Shanghai, Peishan took Chen to this restaurant, which, like other restaurants at the time, was supposed to serve only working-class people “in the Party’s glorious tradition of hard working and simple living.” Culinary enjoyment was denounced as a decadent bourgeois extravagancy. People were supposed to eat simply for the sake of making revolution. A number of high-end restaurants were closed. Nanxiang Soup Bun survived as a lucky exception owing to its incredibly cheap price: a bamboo steamer for only twenty-four cents, affordable by any working-class standard. That afternoon, Peishan and Chen patiently waited no less than three hours for their turn. Consequently they gave a huge order: four bamboo steamers for each of them, after the long wait and Peisan’s sentimental comment, “When, when can I come back to Shanghai—to the delicious soup buns?”
Cousin Peishan did not come back. In the far, far away countryside, he suffered a nervous breakdown and jumped into a dry well. He might have starved to death there.
Twenty years has passed like a dream.
What a surprise I am still here, today!
Chen chose not to tell White Cloud of this episode from the Cultural Revolution, which was not fashionably nostalgic. A young girl of another generation, she probably wouldn’t understand.
But the soup buns appeared and tasted the same, fresh, steaming hot in the golden bamboo steamers, rich in the combined flavor of the land and river, with the scarlet crab oval so tantalizing in the afternoon light. The soup inside the bun came bursting out at the touch of his lips, the taste so familiarly delicious.
“According to a gourmet book, the soup in the bun comes from the pork skin jelly mixing with the stuffing. In a steamer over the stove, the jelly turns into hot liquid. You have to bite carefully, or the soup will splash out, scalding your tongue.”
“You have told me about it,” she said, smiling, nipping gingerly before she sucked the soup.
“Oh, you brought a bag of them to me during the New World project.”
“It was a pleasure to serve as your little secretary.”
“I have to ask you another favor today,” he said. “You are a computer pro, I know. Can you do an Internet search for me?”
“Of course. If you want, I can also bring Mrs. Gu’s laptop back to you.
“No, I don’t think I have the time,” he said. “You must have heard of the red mandarin dress case. Can you do a search on the dress—a comprehensive search, about the history, the evolution, and the style during different periods? Anything directly or indirectly related to such a dress—not just currently, but also in the sixties or fifties.”
“No problem,” she said, “but what do you mean by anything directly or indirectly related?”
“I wish I could tell you more specifically, but let’s say any movie or book that has a mandarin dress as an important part of it, or somebody known for it, either wearing or making it, any relevant comments or criticism about it, and of course any mandarin dress bearing a resemblance to the one in question. And I may need you to run a couple of errands for me too.”
“Whatever you want, Chief.”
“Don’t worry about the expense. A portion of the chief inspector fund hasn’t been spent this year. If I don’t use it up soon, the bureau will cut the fund next year.”
“So you are not going to quit, Chief Inspector Chen.”
“Well—” He cut himself short, the soup spurting out of the thin-skinned bun despite his caution. She was perceptive, handing over a pink paper napkin to him. It was not too bad to be a chief inspector, after all, to have a “little secretary” sitting beside, like an understanding flower.
At the end of the meal, she asked the waiter for a receipt as Chen was producing his wallet.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “Let me buy this meal for you. No need to ask for government reimbursement.”
“I know, but it’s for the government’s benefit.”
The waiter gave her something like two receipts, one for fifty Yuan, and another for a hundred.
“The city’s tax income has increased more than two hundred percent last month, because of the newly invented official receipt with a lottery number on it,” she said, scratching the receipt with a coin. “Look! You bring me luck.”
“What?”
“Ten Yuan. Look at the lottery number printed on each receipt.”
“That’s a novel idea.”
“Capitalism in China is like nowhere else in the world. Nothing but money matters here. In restaurants, people didn’t ask for the receipt except for ‘socialist expense,’ so most restaurants reported losses. With the lottery practice, everybody is asking for receipts. It’s said that one family won twenty thousand.”
Chen also scratched a receipt. No luck, but no disappointment, with her hair touching his face over the number on the receipt.
They then walked out to the oriental clothing boutiques scattered in the back area of the market. A sort of niche business created for foreign tourists, the small stores displayed an impressive array of mandarin dresses in their windows. Taking his arm, she led him into one of them.
“The dress you are investigating is old-fashioned, not like any of these you may see here,” she said, examining around. “He is perverse, humiliating the victim in such a dress.”
“Oh, you mean the murderer? Elaborate for me.”
“He wants to display her as an object of his sexual fantasy. The graceful mandarin dress, elegant yet erotic with the torn slits and loose buttons. I have seen several pictures in newspapers.”
“You’re talking like a cop,” he said. At this moment, everybody in the city seemed eager to be a cop, but she had a point. “Surely you know a lot about the fashion.”
“I have two or three mandarin dresses. Occasionally, I have to put one on in haste, but I have never ripped the slits.”
“He might have put the dress on her after her death—her body rigid, and her limbs uncooperative.”
“Even in that scenario, the ragged, torn slits don’t make sense. Whatever way you put it on, you won’t damage it like that,” she said, turning to him. “Would you like to do an experiment—on me?”
“An experiment, how?”
“That’s easy,” she said, scooping a scarlet mandarin dress from the hanger and dragging him into the fitting room. Closing the door, she handed the dress to him. “Put it on me as roughly as possible.”
Kicking off her shoes, she was peeling off her dress, and in less than a minute, she was standing in her white panties, wearing a lace bra.
It was only for his work, he told himself. Drawing in a breath, he found himself in a clumsy attempt to put the dress on her.
She held herself still and rigid—like a lifeless victim—against his rough hands. No expression on her face, hardly any flex in her muscle, her limbs unresponsive, yet her nipples visibly hardened. She blushed as he yanked the dress down on her.
No matter how hard or violently he tried to pull the dress down, the slits were not damaged.
And he noticed her lips trembling, losing color. There was no heat in the fitting room. It was hard for her to play a half-naked, lifeless model for long.
But she had already confirmed her point. The slits must have been deliberately torn. And that was an important fact.
He insisted on paying for the dress. “Don’t take it off, White Cloud. It looks wonderful on you.”
“You don’t have to do that. It’s for your work,” she said, producing a small camera. “Take a picture of me in it.”
He did, having her stand in front of the boutique store. And then
he put her coat over the dress.
“Thank you,” she said wistfully. “I have to go to school now.”
Afterward he decided to walk back, alone, at least for a while.
It required strenuous effort to expel the image of her body struggling in and out of the mandarin dress. The image got juxtaposed with another, of her standing naked in a private room of the Dynasty karaoke club, in the company of other men.
He was disappointed with himself. She had done that for his police work, but he kept thinking of her as a K girl, imagining things about her, in a mandarin dress or not.
And that excited him.
