A Loyal Character Dancer

by Qiu Xiaolong

  She scratched at a vicious mosquito bite on her arm.

  Nor did she feel very compatible with Chief Inspector Chen, though his being assigned as her partner suggested that the Chinese were seriously trying to honor their commitment. Not merely because of his rank. There was something else about the man; he seemed sincere. But he could have been chosen to play a deceptive role. In fact, he might not even be a chief inspector. Maybe he was a secret agent with a special assignment: to string her along.

  She called Washington. Ed Spencer was not in the office. She left a message, giving him the hotel phone number.

  Putting down the phone, Catherine started to read the files Chen had left. There was not much about Feng that was new to her, but the information about Wen was fresh, plentiful, and well-organized.

  It took her almost an hour to read it through. In spite of her background, she found several recurring Chinese terms hard to understand. She underlined them, hoping she might dig out definitions in a large dictionary the next day. Then she tried to frame her report to her supervisor.

  What was there for her to do in China now?

  She could simply wait, as Chief Inspector Chen suggested. Alternatively she might offer to join the investigation. It was an important case for them. Feng’s testimony was needed and, to obtain it, they had to reunite him with his wife, if she was still alive. She decided it would be best for her to take part in the investigation. The Chinese had no reason to refuse the request unless there really was a cover-up effort on their side. Chen seemed certain that Wen was alive. But if she had been killed, no one could know how that would affect Feng’s testimony.

  Inspector Rohn had not been pleased with her special status as something of an expert on China in the Marshals Service, though it was that status that brought her here. Taking part in the investigation would be an opportunity to prove that her major in Chinese studies was not irrelevant to her position, and would also give her an opportunity to learn about the real Chinese people.

  So she started writing a fax to Ed Spencer. After briefing him on the unexpected development, she requested that he look for a tape of Feng’s phone call on April fifth, being especially alert to a possible coded message. She then asked his approval for her joining the investigation. At the end, she made a request for information about Chief Inspector Chen Cao.

  Before she went down to the hotel’s fax room, she added one sentence, asking Ed to send his reply to the hotel around 10 a.m. Shanghai time, so she could be waiting by the fax machine. She did not want anybody else to look at the contents, even if written in English.

  After the fax went through, she had a quick meal in the dining room. Back in her own room, she took another shower. She was still not sleepy. Wrapped in a bath towel, she looked out again at the illuminated expanse of the river. She caught a glimpse of a ship bearing a striped flag. At that distance, she could not make out its name. It might be an American cruise ship anchored for the night in the Huangpu River.

  Around four in the morning, she took two tablets of Dramamine, which she had brought with her in case of motion sickness. Its soporific side effect was what she needed. In addition, she took a bottle of Budweiser out of the refrigerator; its Chinese name was Baiwei meaning-”a hundred times more powerful.” The Anheuser-Busch brewery had a joint venture in Wuhan.

  As she turned from the window, she thought of a Song dynasty poem she had studied in a class. It was about a traveler’s loneliness, in spite of the marvelous scenery. Trying to recall the lines, she fell asleep.

  ***

  She was awakened by the bedside alarm clock. Rubbing her eyes, she jumped up, disoriented. It was 9:45. She had no time to take a shower. Pulling on a T-shirt and a pair of old jeans, she left her room wearing the hotel’s disposable slippers which were almost paper thin, and seemed to be made of the same material as that used for transparent plastic raincoats. Hurrying down to the hotel fax room, she straightened her hair in the elevator with a pocket comb.

  The fax for her came at the time she had specified. The feedback was more substantial than she had expected. First, the fact of Feng’s phone call on April fifth was confirmed, and there was a tape. Ed was having its contents translated. As a potential witness, Feng was not allowed to disclose anything about his status in the program. Ed had no idea what he might have said to precipitate Wen’s disappearance.

  Second, her proposal to join the investigation was approved.

  In response to her request for the background information on Chen, Ed wrote: “I’ve contacted the CIA. They will send us Chief Inspector Chen Cao’s file. From what they told me, Chen is someone to watch. He is associated with the liberal reformers in the Party. He is also a member of the Chinese Writers’ Association. He is described as an ambitious Party cadre, on the rise.”

  As she stepped out of the room with the fax in her hand, she saw Chen seated in the lobby browsing through an English magazine, a bouquet of flowers lying on a chair beside him.

  “Good morning, Inspector Rohn.” Chen stood up, and she realized he was taller than the other people in the lobby. He had a high forehead, penetrating black eyes, and his expression was intelligent. Dressed in a black suit, he looked more like a scholar than a policeman, an impression enhanced by the information she had just read.

  “Good morning, Chief Inspector Chen.”

  “This is for you.” Chen handed the flowers to her. “There were so many things happening at the bureau yesterday, I forgot to prepare a proper welcome bouquet for you in my rush to the airport. For your first morning in Shanghai.”

  “Thank you. It’s beautiful.”

  “I called your room. No one answered. So I decided to wait for you here. I hope you don’t mind.”

  She didn’t mind. The flowers were a surprise, but as she stood beside him in her plastic slippers, with her hair in such a mess, she couldn’t help a feeling of annoyance at his formal courtesy. This was not behavior she expected from a colleague, and she didn’t quite care for the veiled reminder that she was “just” a woman.

  “Let’s go up to my room to talk,” she said.

  As they entered her room, she gestured for him to sit and picked up a vase from the corner table. “I’ll put the flowers in water.”

  “Have you enjoyed a good night’s sleep?” Chen asked, glancing around the room.

  “Not really, but it should be enough,” she said. She refused to be embarrassed by the disarray of the room. The bed was not made, her stockings were thrown down on the rug, pills were scattered on the night stand, and her rumpled suit had been tossed over the back of the chair. She made a curt excuse, “Sorry, I had to pick up a fax.”

  “I should have given you notice. My apologies.”

  “You are being very polite, Comrade Chief Inspector Chen,” she said, trying to keep the sarcasm from her voice. “Last night you were up late too, i imagine.”

  “Last night, after I left you, I discussed the case with Superintendent Hong of the Fujian police. It was a long discussion. Early in the morning, my assistant, Detective Yu, phoned me. He explained that at his hotel, there’s only one telephone at the front desk, and after eleven o’clock the night manager locks up the telephone and goes to bed.”

  “Why lock up the phone?”

  “Well, a telephone is a rare commodity in the countryside,” Chen explained. “It’s not like in Shanghai.”

  “Is there new information this morning?”

  “About your question concerning the delay in our passport approval process, I’ve got an answer.”

  “What is that, Chief Inspector Chen?”

  “Wen would have received her passport several weeks ago, but she did not have her marriage certificate. No legal document to prove her relationship with Feng. She moved in with Feng in 1971. Government offices were all closed at the time.”

  “Why were the government offices closed?”

  “Mao labeled a lot of cadres as ‘capitalist roaders.’ Liu Shaoqi, the head of the People’s Rep
ublic, was thrown into jail without a trial. The offices were shut. The so-called revolutionary committees became the only power.”

  “I’ve read about the Cultural Revolution, but I did not realize that.”

  “So our passport people had to search the commune records. It took time. That’s probably why the process has been so slow.”

  “Probably,” she echoed, tilting her head slightly to one side. “So in China, every rule is to be strictly followed-even in a special case?”

  “That’s what I learned. Besides, Wen only initiated her application in mid-February, not in January.”

  “But Feng told us she applied in January-mid-January.”

  “That’s my information. Even so, it has taken a long time, I have to admit. There may have been another factor. Wen does not have any guanxi in Fujian. This word may be translated as ‘connections,’ only guanxi means far more than that. It’s not merely about the people you know, but about the people who can help you with what you want.”

  “The grease that keep the wheels turning, so to speak.”

  “If you like. Perhaps, like anywhere else in the world, the wheels of bureaucracy move slowly, unless there is some lubrication for the bureaucrats. That’s where guanxi comes in. Wen has remained an outsider all these years, so she had no guanxi whatsoever.”

  She was astonished by Chen’s frankness. He made no attempt to gloss over the way the system worked. This did not seem to be characteristic of an “emerging Party cadre.”

  “Oh, there is something else. According to one of Wen’s neighbors, there was a stranger looking for Wen on the afternoon of April sixth.”

  “Who do you think that might have been?”

  “His identity is still to be determined, but he was not local. Now, any news from your side, Inspector Rohn?”

  “Feng did make a phone call to Wen on April fifth. We’re having it translated and analyzed. I’ll let you know as soon as I hear more.”

  “That may contain the answer to Wen’s disappearance,” Chen said, taking a look at his watch. “Tell me, what’s your plan for the morning.”

  “I have no plan.”

  “Have you had your breakfast?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “Excellent. My plan is to have a good breakfast,” Chen said. “After my long discussion with Detective Yu this morning. I hurried over without having had a bite.”

  “We can have something downstairs,” she proposed.

  “Forget the hotel dining room. Let me take you to another place-genuine Chinese flavor, typical Shanghai atmosphere. Only a few minutes’ walk away.”

  She looked for reasons for not going out with him, but came up with none. And it would be easier for her to ask to have a part in his investigation over a congenial breakfast. “You keep amazing me, Chief Inspector Chen, a cop, a poet, a translator, and now a gourmet,” she said. “I’ll change.”

  It took her a few minutes to shower, to don a white summer dress, and to comb her hair into obedience.

  Before they left the room, Chen held out a cellular phone to her. “This is for your convenience.”

  “A Motorola!”

  “You know what it is called here?” Chen said. “Big Brother. Big Sister if the owner is a woman. The symbols of upstarts in contemporary China.”

  “Interesting terms.”

  “In Kung Fu literature, this is what the head of a gang would sometimes be called. Rich people are called Mr. Big Bucks nowadays, and Big Brother and Sister carry the same connotation. I have a cell phone myself. It will make it easier for us to contact each other.”

  “So we’re a Big Sister and a Big Brother, going out for a walk in Shanghai,” she said with a smile.

  Strolling along Nanjing Road, she saw the traffic was completely snarled. People and bikes kept cutting in and out of the smallest spaces imaginable between cars. The drivers had to keep braking all the time.

  “ Nanjing Road is like an extended shopping center. The city government has imposed restrictions on traffic here.” Chen spoke like a tourist guide again. “It may become a pedestrian mall in the near future.”

  It took them no more than five minutes to reach the intersection of Nanjing Road and Sichuan Road. She saw a white Western-style restaurant on the corner. A number of young, people were sipping coffee behind the tall, amber-colored windows.

  “Deda Cafe,” Chen said. “The coffee here is excellent, but we are going to a street market behind it.”

  She looked up to see a sign at the street entrance, the central market. It marked a narrow street. Shabby, too. In addition to a variety of tiny stores with makeshift counters or tables displaying goods on the sidewalk, there was a cluster of snackbars and booths tucked into the corner.

  “Formerly, it was a marketplace for cheap and secondhand goods, like a flea market in the United States.” Chen continued plying her with information. “With so many people coming here, eating places appeared, convenient, inexpensive, but with a special flavor.”

  The snackbars, food carts, and small restaurants seemed to fill the air with a palpable energy. Most appeared to be cheap, low-class, in sharp contrast to those near the Peace Hotel. A curbside peddler spread out skewers of diced lamb on a makeshift grill, adding a pinch of spices from time to time. A gaunt herbalist measured out ancient medicinal remedies into a row of earthen pots boiling under a silk banner declaring in bold Chinese characters: medical meal.

  This was where she wanted to be, at a clamorous, chaotic corner that told real stories about the city. Fish, squid, and turtles, were all displayed alive in wooden or plastic basins. Eels, quails, and frog legs were frying in the sizzling woks. Most of the bustling restaurants were full of customers.

  They found a vacant table in a bar. Chen handed her a dogeared menu. After looking at the strange names of the items listed, she gave up. “You decide. I’ve never heard of any of them.”

  So Chen ordered a portion of fried mini-buns with minced pork stuffing, shrimp dumplings with transparent skin, sticks of fermented tofu, rice porridge with a thousand-year-egg, pickled white squash, salted duck, and Guilin bean curd with chopped green scallions. All in small dishes.

  “It’s like a banquet,” she said.

  “It costs less than a continental breakfast in the hotel,” he said.

  The tofu came first, tiny pieces on bamboo sticks like shish kebabs. In spite of a wild, sharp flavor, she started to like it after the first few bites.

  “Food has always been an important part of Chinese culture,” Chen mumbled, busily eating. “As Confucius says, To enjoy food and sex is human nature.’”

  “Really!” She had never come across that quotation. He could not have made it up, could he? She thought she caught a slight suggestion of humor in his tone.

  Soon she became aware of curious glances from other customers-an American woman devouring common food in the company of a Chinese man. A pudgy customer even greeted her as he passed their table with an enormous rice ball in his hand.

  “Now I have a couple of questions for you, Chief Inspector Chen. Do you think Wen married Feng, a peasant, because she believed so devoutly in Mao?”

  “That’s possible. But for things between a man and a woman, I don’t think politics alone can be an explanation.”

  “Did many of the educated youths remain in the countryside?” she said, nibbling at the last piece of tofu.

  “After the Cultural Revolution, most of them returned to the city. Detective Yu and his wife were educated youths in Yunnan, and they came back to Shanghai in the early eighties.”

  “You have an interesting division of labor, Chief Inspector Chen. Detective Yu is busy working in Fujian, and you stay in Shanghai to enjoy delicious snacks with an American guest.”

  “It is my responsibility as a chief inspector to welcome you on the occasion of your first trip to China, and of the first instance of anti-illegal-immigration cooperation between our two countries. Party Secretary Li made a special point of it. ‘Make Insp
ector Rohn’s stay in Shanghai a safe and satisfactory one’ are my orders.”

  “Thank you,” she said. His self-mockery was apparent now, which made their talk easier. “So when I go back home, I’m supposed to talk about the friendship between our two countries, and the politics in your newspapers.”

  “That is up to you, Inspector Rohn. It’s the Chinese tradition to show hospitality to a guest from a faraway country.”

  “In addition to entertaining me, what else are you going to do?”

  “I’ve made a list of Wen’s possible contacts here. Qian Jun, my temporary assistant, is arranging for me to interview them this afternoon or tomorrow morning. In the meantime, I will keep exchanging information with you.”

  “So I am to sit in the hotel all day, waiting for phone calls, like a switchboard operator?”

  “No, you don’t have to do that. It’s your first trip to China. Do some sightseeing. The Bund, Nanjing Road. I’ll serve as your full-time tour escort over the weekend.”

  “I would rather join you in your work, Chief Inspector Chen.”

  “You mean take part in the interviews?”

  “Yes.” She looked him in the eye.

  “I don’t see any reason why not, except that most people speak the Shanghai dialect here.”

  His answer was a diplomatic one, she thought, but nonetheless an excuse.

  “I had no problem talking with my fellow travelers in the airplane. They all spoke Mandarin to me. Can’t we ask our interviewees to do the same? And you can help me out, if need be.”

  “I can try, but do you think people will talk freely in front of an American officer?”

  “They will be more earnest,” she said, “if they believe we mean business-an American officer plus a Chinese one.”

  “You have a point, Inspector Rohn. I’ll consult Party Secretary Li.”