Don't Cry Tai Lake

by Qiu Xiaolong

  Chen decided not to think too much about it. He could see no interpretation that applied to the investigation.

  “You’re no schoolteacher, are you?” Uncle Wang said, breaking into his thoughts.

  “Sorry, I’ve just had a phone call from Shanghai.”

  The old man, perhaps having overheard some of the phone call, studied him closely.

  “Shanshan can be stubborn, but she’s a nice girl,” Uncle Wang went on wistfully as he seated himself on a bench opposite Chen. He picked up a cup from another table. “Let me tell you something about myself.”

  “Go ahead,” Chen said, wondering what the old man wanted to tell him. He poured himself a cup of tea.

  A few doors away, a middle-aged woman with a bamboo basket of wet, green shepherd’s purse blossom looked at the two in curiosity, and then smiled pleasantly.

  “I used to be a school teacher in the Anhui Province. During summer vacation several years ago, I came to Wuxi and fell in love with the city. To be honest, it was mostly because of the lake fish and shrimp. The three whites, you know. So after I retired, I moved here and started this eatery. I didn’t do it for business reasons exactly. I have to cook for myself, and I like cooking anyway. A single retiree with grown children in Xinjiang with their own lives, I simply wanted to enjoy the remaining years of my life with a cup of Southern rice wine and a platter of steamed lake fish. But it was a decision no one seemed to understand.”

  “But I do, Uncle Wang. In ancient times, a poet-official missed a particular fish that was available only in his hometown, so he resigned his position to return home. I think his name was Jiying. No, your decision was no mistake.”

  “So you know the story. That’s great. ‘With the west wind rising, / Jiying’s still not back.’ The world is meaningful only in what has meaning to you. Anyway, I didn’t think it was a mistake, at least not at the time. Then the lake became less clear, and the fish and shrimp less fresh, and, at the same time, the city an increasingly commercial tourist destination. Alas, it’s too late for me to go back.”

  Chen didn’t comment, wondering what the old man was driving at.

  “That’s why I’m so sympathetic to Shanshan’s efforts to protect the environment,” Uncle Wang resumed, nodding. “I’m just an old man; nothing really matters for me now. But it’s an issue that affects so many people—all people, you might say. She really believes in what she does, no matter what others might say. It takes an extraordinary man to appreciate someone like her in today’s climate.”

  Chen was more than impressed, and not just because of Uncle Wang’s story. One way or another, people pick up a given discourse, that which makes the world meaningful or sensible to them. Then they live in accordance to it, even though what they do may not make any sense to anyone else. Peiqin apparently just said something to the same effect, as reported by Yu in the recent phone call.

  Indeed, things could be connected by an invisible net. Years earlier, Uncle Wang happened to recall a story about a fish-loving scholar while enjoying the lake fish here, so he decided to move and set up a small eatery in Wuxi. That might appear to be the last link in the chain of cause-and-effect for the old man, but no one lives in a vacuum. Years later, because of the environmental crisis at Tai Lake, he formed a bond with Shanshan, and eventually, the chief inspector from Shanghai, on a compulsory vacation, walked into Uncle Wang’s eatery by chance, where he met Shanshan. So many links, mysteriously connected. If only one piece had been missing or misconnected, it could have turned into a different story. In Buddhism, as is sometimes said, one peck, one drink, is all predetermined, and is predetermining too.

  “For whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee—”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, that was just a quote. I’m thinking of the environmental disaster in China.”

  But he was also thinking of the present murder case.

  The people were connected and interconnected. Liu, Mrs. Liu, Mi, Jiang, Shanshan, Uncle Wang, Fu, and perhaps many others, all in a long chain of yin/yang causality. It could be difficult for him to determine whether or not those links existed in reality. For instance, he had tried to look into the remote possibility that there was something in common between Mrs. Liu and Fu due to their frequent trips to Shanghai, but there didn’t prove to be a link there.

  However, one piece was falsely connected in the official investigation—Mi’s statement about Jiang having met and argued with Liu on March 7. That is, unless Shanshan was purposely trying to mislead the investigation. After all, she might be another “unreliable narrator.” But he chose to believe in her. More importantly, he appreciated “someone like her in today’s climate,” as Uncle Wang put it. So Chief Inspector Chen would check into it.

  Now, Mrs. Liu might not remember clearly a particular date from a couple of months ago. But her husband coming home at midnight, which might have woken her up, might be a different story.

  But how was he going to approach her? The last time he was in the company of Sergeant Huang. Would that be necessary this time? The way things went, it was probably only a matter of time before his involvement became known to Internal Security. If he could manage it alone, it’d be better not to drag Huang into it.

  Decided, he abruptly stood up and said, “Thank you, Uncle Wang. You’ve really been a help, but now I have to leave. Call me if Shanshan comes here.”

  He took leave of the old man and hailed a taxi.

  TWENTY

  CHEN RANG THE DOORBELL at Mrs. Liu’s place.

  A tall, thin, long-limbed young man opened the door. He was wearing a white Chinese-style shirt with black characters printed all over. He was in his early twenties, and looked like a college student.

  “She’s at church and I don’t think she’ll be back until later this afternoon. What do you want with her?”

  “So, you’re her son, Wenliang?”

  “Yes, I’m Wenliang.”

  “So nice to meet you, Wenliang. My name is Chen,” Chen said, producing two business cards—one that identified him as a chief inspector, and another provided by the Writers’ Association. “I recognize you from a photo of you and your father. Since she’s not at home, I may as well talk to you.”

  “Wow, you’re a chief inspector from Shanghai,” Wenliang said, beginning to examine the second card. “And a poet too!”

  He led Chen into the living room, where the detectives had spoken to Mrs. Liu a few days earlier. The only change Chen noticed there was a new large color photo of the Liu family on the wall, with Wenliang posed between his smiling parents.

  “Tea or coffee?”

  “Tea, thanks,” Chen said. “I’m in Wuxi on vacation, and I am helping to investigate your father’s death. In the course of the investigation, I heard about you and your internship at the company last year. Is there anything you can tell us that might help us in our work?”

  “What do you want to know, Chief Inspector Chen?”

  “To begin with, why an internship at the chemical company here? You’re studying literature at Beijing University, right?”

  “My father had a plan for me after graduation.”

  “What kind of plan?”

  “He wanted me to work at the company. According to him, he had a position ready-made for me, and so my internship was part of that plan. I believe he wanted me, eventually, to be his successor. As a man of his generation, he was anxious to keep the business in the family, and he talked to me about it several times.”

  “How would that work? As far as I know, the cadre appointments at a large state-run company, particularly for a position like your father’s, are decided by the higher party authorities.” Chen added, “It will still be a state-owned enterprise even after the IPO.”

  “I asked the same question, but according to him, everything is possible with connections, and he had a lot of connections in the city government, and even above. Needless to say, I wasn’t supposed to become his successor overnight.”

 
“I see. No wonder he kept that picture of you two at his home office. It was the only picture I remember seeing there.”

  “Which picture are you talking about?”

  “The one of the two of you standing in front of the bookshelf—before a row of the shining statuettes. It was taken during your internship, I believe.” Chen opened the briefcase, pulled out a bunch of pictures, and picked one out.

  “Oh, that one. Yes, that was from last summer. He was so proud of the company’s achievements, winning a statuette year after year. He kept all of them on the shelf in his office.”

  The sight of the glittering statuettes in the background of the picture touched something at the back of Chen’s mind. He had photographed the framed picture as it was the only one he had of Liu. In his experience, pictures sometimes helped to establish a sort of bond between the investigator and the victim. He had examined it several times back in the center.

  “Didn’t he win another one,” Chen asked, “at the end of last year?”

  “Of course he did, but why do you ask?”

  Instead of responding, Chen took out some of the other pictures taken by the police, along with those he had shot. In the background of all of them, he counted the statuettes. Nine of them.

  “He insisted on us posing in front of the statuettes,” Wenliang said, gazing at the picture of the father and son. “He lined them all up on the shelf.”

  But one was missing, Chen thought. In the crime scene photos, there should have been ten statuettes, including the one that was awarded last year. But there were only nine of them.

  “He had each of them gold-plated—using a special company fund set aside just for the purpose. He called me at the end of last year to tell me about it. ‘Now we’ve won ten statuettes in succession under my leadership, but the eleventh or the twelfth should be won under you.’”

  So the tenth one was missing from Liu’s home office. What could that possibly mean? It wasn’t the time for him to get too engrossed in speculation, especially when it might turn out to be irrelevant to the investigation.

  “So are you still going to have a position at the company, Wenliang?”

  “I don’t think so. A new emperor must have the ministers of his own choosing.”

  “What’s your plan then?”

  “Believe it or not, my real passion is for Beijing opera. So I’m thinking about studying for an MA in the field.”

  “That’s interesting,” Chen said, immediately aware that it was the exact same response people offered him when they learned about his passion for poetry.

  “It may not sound like a reasonable choice in today’s society, but with what my father left us, I think I can manage.”

  “I understand. But as with poetry, there would be little money in a career in Beijing opera.”

  “My father toiled and moiled for money his whole life, but could he take any of it with him?”

  “Yes, I understand. You can’t live without money, but you can’t live for it.”

  “Besides, no one else really wants me to work at the chemical company anymore.”

  “Fu, the new boss, was going to offer your mother a job, I heard.”

  “What sort of a job will he offer her? Something at the entry level. It’s nothing but a gesture.”

  “But Fu didn’t seem too bad to the people who worked under your father. For instance, Mi was promoted.”

  “Don’t talk to me about her,” Wenliang said with an undisguised look of disgust on his face. “It’s just like in the Beijing opera ‘Break Open the Coffin.’ Oh what a horror!”

  “‘Break Open the Coffin’?”

  “Don’t you know the story of Zhuangzi’s sudden enlightenment about the vanity of the human world?”

  “I know of Zhuangzi, of course. I remember some story about his enlightenment. He dreamed of being a butterfly, but when he woke up, he couldn’t help wondering whether it was the butterfly that dreamed of being him. But he was a great philosopher, and we don’t have to take that story too seriously.”

  “There’s a popular Beijing opera version you might not know. Indeed, this version is totally different. According to it, Zhuangzi had a young loving wife, who was the one thing that, for all his profound philosophy, he still couldn’t let go of in this world of red dust. One day, he suddenly took ill, and she swore at his bedside that there was only room enough for him in her heart. The moment he breathed his last, however, she started searching around for a new lover. That same day, she had the luck to find one, but he, too, got sick overnight. According to a quack doctor, the sick lover could be saved only by a medicine that consisted of someone’s heart, so she broke open the coffin, which was not yet buried, to cut out Zhuangzi’s heart. It turned out to be a test Zhuangzi set up with his supernatural powers. Shame-stricken, she committed suicide, and he was enlightened about the vanity of human passion.”

  Chen remembered having heard a folk tale version of the story, but it was far less gruesome than the one he had just learned from Wenliang.

  “So you mean—”

  “You know what it means. Mi is nothing but a little secretary kept by her Big Buck boss,” Wenliang said with a sneer. “So she needs a new one to keep her in the same style.”

  “Well—”

  “A younger one was already waiting backstage in the dark before the old one exited.”

  “Oh, like in Hamlet.”

  “Exactly. They staged a Beijing opera of Hamlet several months ago at the university. It’s a universal story. Mi, too, carried on with someone else. When I was working in the office last summer, I saw something. It was none of my business, of course. But Father didn’t really trust her, he knew better.”

  Wenliang, of course, could be just another unreliable narrator, understandably biased against her, Chen mused.

  “You’re sure about that, Wenliang?”

  “I saw it with my own eyes. I wasn’t wind-chasing or shadow-catching, I can assure you,” he said broodingly. “It’s not a crime for a little secretary to carry on with the second-in-command behind the back of the boss. What could I have done? I hated to bring it up to my father, who might not have taken my word on it, and it could have been a huge scandal. One’s father being cuckolded isn’t something to be proud of, so why would I make up such a story?”

  “That’s true…”

  With the sunlight streaming through the window, the chief inspector thought of what he’d heard over the last few days. They were mostly fragments, to which he hadn’t paid any real attention, such as the story of a younger man seen at night in the company of Mi, the fox spirit. Pieces such as the stories narrated by the two drinkers in the pub, or like the melodrama in the hotel on Nanjing Road, as reported by Detective Yu a short while ago.

  Now those pieces were beginning to connect, in a way he had never imagined.

  “Thank you so much, Wenliang. We’ll surely do our best to get justice for your—”

  He was almost finished with the sentence when Mrs. Liu opened the door and, with a sour expression on her face, stepped inside.

  “Oh, you’re here again, Mr. Chen.”

  “Yes. I’ve had a good talk with Wenliang, Mrs. Liu. Now, I have just one question for you. In early March, Liu came back from a business trip in Nanjing. He got back quite late that night, I’ve learned, so he might have woken you up when he came in. Do you remember anything about it?”

  “Yes, I do. He was coming back from a business meeting in Nanjing, and it was raining heavily that night. He took a taxi home.”

  “Can you remember the date?”

  “It was March, early March, I think. He apologized for waking me up, saying that because of something unexpected in Nanjing, he had to take the last train back to Wuxi,” she said contemplatively. “Oh, I remember, it was the day before the Women’s Day. He had bought me a gift for the holiday, which was the next day.”

  “Thank you so much, Mrs. Liu. You’ve really helped our investigation. And thank you too, Wenliang.” Ch
en stood up abruptly. “But now I have to leave.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  SERGEANT HUANG WAS CONFOUNDED by Chief Inspector Chen’s request when the older detective called early Monday morning.

  “Bring Mi over to my place at the center. Immediately. You don’t have to give her any explanation, just let me do the talking. Once she’s here, then you can jump in and play your part when it’s appropriate.”

  They had talked to Mi once before in her office. Why did Chen need to talk to her again, and why at the center? Over the course of the investigation, Chen had mentioned her a couple of times, but not once had she come up as a suspect. It might be because of Mrs. Liu, Huang thought. But he didn’t believe that Mi had much more to tell. She would be the last one to cover up something for the widow.

  Nor did he think there was anything Chen could really do to alter the conclusion of the case. Internal Security had already gotten approval from Beijing to proceed. Still, Huang was eager to see if the legendary chief inspector would, like in those translated mysteries, be able to achieve the impossible at this late stage.

  Huang hurried over to the chemical company, where Mi was just leaving the office for a business meeting downtown. She looked surprised when Huang asked her to accompany him, but she complied without protest.

  The Cadre Recreation Center wasn’t far away, and she might not be as apprehensive about going there as she might be about visiting the police bureau.

  It took them less than ten minutes to get to the center. Security examined Huang’s badge and waved them both in.

  The white villa looked majestic standing on the hill, set off from the other buildings, with its stainless-steel fence glittering in the morning light and an armed guard standing in front. Huang had heard that Chen enjoyed extraordinary status as a cadre who was rising fast, but he was still more than impressed. The villa was one of the most magnificent buildings in the center, standing out against other buildings designed for the use of high-ranking cadres.