by Cai Jun
The only positive aspect of the letter was that Shen Ming had not revealed the secret of her infertility.
President Gu was furious about the end of the letter. Shen Ming wrote: “My future father-in-law, well, he is a hypocrite. If I am a thief, then he is the biggest thief. One day, his despicable secret will be revealed.”
Her father locked the letter in his safe and told her not to mention it to anyone.
The postmark told Gu Qiusha that Shen Ming had written the letter six months earlier. When He Nian made a serious mistake at work and was demoted back to the city Education Bureau, he was assigned to the Youth League Committee. He Nian learned that Shen Ming would be named the next committee secretary—jealousy infected everyone, especially among college friends. After graduation, someone like Shen Ming with no connections had only gotten a high school teaching job, while He Nian secured a prestigious job in Beijing. How could He Nian stand being Shen Ming’s underling now?
Gu Qiusha had her doubts about the letter’s authenticity. People loved to kick someone who was down, as her father often said. But whether the letter was real or fake no longer mattered. Shen Ming was already down and could not get up.
She changed the locks on their new apartment, and her father canceled the wedding.
When Shen Ming was in jail, Huang Hai went to Gu Qiusha twice to get more information. She told the policeman the facts, including how Shen Ming had been acting oddly.
Huang Hai asked, “Ms. Gu, do you trust your fiancé?”
“First of all, I trust no one. Second, he is no longer my fiancé.”
She’d said this calmly, not caring how it would affect the police investigation. Huang Hai’s face stiffened, and he left without saying anything more.
It only took a week for President Gu’s insider connections to make the Education Bureau terminate Shen Ming’s teaching position and Party membership.
On June 16, Lu Zhongyue visited the Gus. He told them Shen Ming had been released—that he’d been acquitted by the police and needed their help. President Gu was nervous. The terminations couldn’t be reversed or undone. Shen Ming must know about them already; he would probably look for them that night. President Gu canceled all work appointments. He had the driver take him and his daughter to the airport so they could depart for a seven-day vacation to Yunnan province’s Dali and Lijiang.
June 19, 1995—10 p.m.
While Gu Qiusha and her father enjoyed the sights and sounds of Yunnan, Shen Ming died underground on a thunderous night.
Who killed Shen Ming?
This question had plagued her for the last nine years. True, she’d long ago married someone else, but she had never forgotten her former fiancé.
Gu Qiusha wanted to find out more about that boy, Si Wang.
CHAPTER 14
October 12, 2004. Tuesday. Longevity Road. Number One Elementary School at 4:00 p.m.
Gu Qiusha sat inside the BMW. She rolled down the window to watch the kids leaving school. Many parents waited for their children, their cars idling in a long line. Si Wang walked alone behind a group of chattering kids. No one greeted him. He wore the blue school uniform. His heavy book bag was covered in sand and his red school scarf had holes.
Gu Qiusha opened her door and blocked his way. Si Wang looked up at her. His face was expressionless but he spoke politely. “Ma’am, excuse me.”
“You don’t remember me? I was in your class yesterday.”
“I do.” The boy tugged at his clothes. He knew to keep up appearances in front of ladies. “You like Yuan Zhen’s poems.”
“Where do you live? I can take you home.”
“It’s OK. I always walk home. I don’t need a ride. But thank you for the offer.”
The way he spoke, neither proud nor bashful, seemed familiar. She was glad that she’d worn flats today. “OK, I’ll walk with you.”
Si Wang didn’t want to refuse again, so he allowed this stranger to accompany him. Suzhou River ran behind the school, and the small path along the riverbank was a shortcut. It had been too long since Gu Qiusha had taken a walk. The scent of river clay rose up; some dead leaves floated down. Fall was in the air. The river burbled along, exposing the riverbed’s foundation of mud and trash, and maybe some animal bones. A boat motored by, its wake crashing against the shore. After the quiet shortcut, sparrows sang in the dusk. Feral black cats clambered on the walls outside the factory. The walls’ shadows stretched tall: one red, one blue, one tall, one short.
“Si Wang, I have a question. How does no one know how smart you are?”
He kept walking quickly but didn’t answer. Gu Qiusha continued. “I saw your exam papers. I noticed that you intentionally answered some questions incorrectly. You wrote the right answer and crossed it out to write in something wrong, something ridiculously wrong. Your handwriting seems bad—but it’s unnaturally bad, like you faked it.”
“If I get everything right, I’m afraid someone might pay too much attention to me.”
“Finally, an honest answer. Your teacher said you have no friends and don’t go on play dates, either. No one has been to your house. Why are you such a loner?”
“My home is small and shabby. I don’t want anyone to see it.”
“So you’re hiding yourself? Then why did you surprise me yesterday?”
“The teacher wanted to talk about Yuan Zhen, but no one answered. I was afraid she would get in trouble with the principal. She is always good to me, so I helped her out. Someone had to answer. I was familiar with Yuan Zhen anyway.”
The kid’s gaze seemed very sincere. Gu Qiusha’s doubts dissipated.
“Do you also like novels?”
“Auntie, are you testing me?”
She crouched down and rubbed his adorable face. “You can call me Ms. Gu.”
“OK, Ms. Gu.”
“Have you ever read Jane Eyre?” The book was a bit mature for a kid his age, but Gu Qiusha wasn’t testing him for that.
“Of course I’ve read it.”
In English, Gu Qiusha effortlessly recited the beginning of Jane Eyre’s speech to Rochester.
Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong!
She didn’t think the boy could meet this challenge. It would be amazing if he even knew the Chinese translation, let alone recognize it in English.
But shockingly, Si Wang picked up where Gu Qiusha left off to recite the rest of the impassioned speech—and he did so in English:
I have as much soul as you, and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh; it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God’s feet, equal, as we are!
As Si Wang finished, Gu Qiusha was afraid to look into his eyes. Ten years ago, she’d given Shen Ming an English copy of Jane Eyre. Her father had brought it back from a trip to the US, and she remembered Shen Ming trying to memorize the passage.
“Just as if both had passed through the grave.”
She couldn’t resist repeating the lines in Chinese.
Si Wang lowered his eyes, hiding his gaze behind long lashes. “Sorry, but I have read the original—and I remember this speech.”
“Si Wang, do you understand what it means?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Like you have lived it?”
He paused and shook his head, saying, “I don’t know.”
She, too, was at a loss for words. The pair walked silently. A dilapidated vintage jeep sat on the road by the quietest part of the Suzhou River. The vehicle seemed familiar to her. Two of the four wheels were flat, and the front of the car had almos
t completely fallen off. There were no car registration stickers, only an out-of-state license plate tucked into the back. A red rose among white skeletons was spray-painted on the back window.
Si Wang said, “The car has been here for two years. I remember it from when I was in first grade and my grandfather walked me.”
Technically, this was a corpse of a car. A rotting corpse.
Someone was calling a name. Gu Qiusha turned around in a panic. She hadn’t noticed anyone else in the area. She got closer to the car. The doors were locked and the windows were securely shut. Thick dust had settled on the handles. She bravely put her ear next to the window. Her heart was still beating too fast. She wanted to hear that name again. She quivered and looked around. There was nothing but the quiet, barren land, a freezing river on one side and a factory wall on the other.
Plus, a strange boy.
Dusk—5:00 p.m.
No one else passed by. She leaned against the windshield and tried to look in through the dark windows. She made out some debris on the empty seats: newspapers, instant noodle cups, some mysterious and disgusting stains.
She smelled an odor so bizarre that it freaked her out. Was it from this car? Gu Qiusha wanted to break into the car. She knew that she needed to know its secret—just like an autopsy was necessary to reveal someone’s actual cause of death.
She circled the jeep twice and thought the trunk looked like it could be opened. Maybe years of rain and sleet had rusted the lock? She found a steel bar from nearby and located a gap in the seam of the trunk. Using the bar and all her strength, she began trying to pry it open.
“What are you doing?”
Si Wang was finally acting like a normal schoolkid, confusedly watching her crazy behavior.
“Can you help me?”
Gu Qiusha wasn’t strong enough, but luckily the boy was eager to help—though he looked around nervously, afraid to be taken for a car thief.
The trunk opened.
The intensity of the odd smell inside almost knocked them out. Gu Qiusha covered her nose and looked into the open truck. Flies as big as butterflies flew out and listlessly fell at their feet.
The wind picked up, blustering Si Wang’s red neckerchief.
There was a thick roll of carpet in the trunk. The third-grader did something most adults would never dare—he lifted the tightly wound carpet.
“No!”
Before Gu Qiusha could stop Si Wang, he’d exposed a body. Technically, it was a decomposed, almost skeletal male corpse. The remains were riddled with maggots. A leather loafer indicated the victim’s gender. He’d been dead for at least two years.
Gu Qiusha ran and hid behind a tree. Si Wang seemed very calm, however. Gently, he closed the trunk so as to preserve the crime scene. The boy acted like a seasoned detective. He looked around carefully, not touching anything so as to avoid leaving fingerprints. It was hard to believe he was only nine years old.
Gu Qiusha already knew who the man was.
CHAPTER 15
“The medical examiner confirmed that the dead man is He Nian,” Huang Hai said. “He’s been missing for two years.” Huang Hai was in his forties now, and his voice was husky and dull. The past nine years had leathered his skin, though he was still big and imposing. He sat inside the GM’s office at Erya Education Group, studying everything in the room.
Gu Qiusha had not forgotten this man. He’d talked to her twice in 1995 while Shen Ming was jailed as a murder suspect.
“When I saw the rotting jeep by the river, I thought of He Nian. Very few people drove cars like that, plus it had an out-of-town plate. Then there was that rose and skeleton art on the back. I was sure it was his car.”
“Can you tell me what happened? Why did you leave your car to walk with that student?”
“I’m sorry for getting that kid involved. I was just curious, and now he’s seen a scary dead body. I am worried about what this will do to him.” Gu Qiusha sighed, and crow’s feet appeared around her eyes. “Si Wang is a genius. I’ve never met anyone like him. Kids like that are priceless, and very rare.”
“I understand. Can you tell me more about the victim?”
“He Nian worked as the vice GM at our company. He was the Youth League Committee secretary for the city Education Bureau. He resigned a few years ago to start his own business. He was one of the first bureaucrats to go into the private sector. I worked with him for two years. He was quite capable. His personality was a bit off, but he never had any enemies.”
Huang Hai said, “The autopsy determined that he died in December 2002, back when he went missing. The body was so decomposed it was hard to pinpoint an exact cause of death. But it appears that he was stabbed in the back. The killer wrapped him in the rug, locked the body in the trunk, and dumped the car. Very few people walk along there, and the winter slowed the decomposition process. By the next summer, all the trash made the whole area smell bad, so no one paid any attention.”
“When he went missing, we thought he went to work for a competitor,” Gu Qiusha said. “We ran missing person ads online and in newspapers, then we filed a report with the police. We never imagined that he’d been killed.”
Gu Qiusha was still shaken by the whole experience. Something had made her discover He Nian’s jeep.
“There is one other thing,” Huang Hai said. “According to He Nian’s file, he also graduated from Peking University in the class of ninety-two, a Chinese major. I think you know what I’m getting at.”
Gu Qiusha was prepared for the policeman’s fierce look. Calmly, she said, “Shen Ming.”
“It was quite a coincidence. When I interrogated Shen Ming in 1995, he said he was being transferred to the Education Bureau and had been internally chosen to be the next Youth League Committee secretary. He was killed a few days later. Instead, He Nian got the job and was transferred to the Bureau just a month before Shen Ming’s death.”
“What are you saying? He Nian’s death had something to do with Shen Ming? Or the other way around?”
“Anything and everything is possible.”
Gu Qiusha’s heart beat rapidly. She thought of that letter from Shen Ming, the one He Nian had given to her father. He Nian had betrayed his college friend and gotten the secretary’s position.
She avoided Huang Hai’s gaze. “I don’t know.”
“Thanks for your cooperation. If you think of anything else, let me know.”
Huang Hai left a business card before leaving. Her hands were sweaty from keeping the secret about the letter from nine years ago. As far as she knew, her father still had it in his safe. If he wanted to keep it a secret, what good were her words?
Gu Qiusha was restless. She called her driver to take her to Number One Elementary School.
Another crowded school pickup. She saw him walking out of school.
His vision was good enough to pick hers out among the many cars. He walked up to her BMW and said, “Ms. Gu, did you need something?”
“I wanted to apologize for what happened.”
“The body in that car by the river?”
“You are just a nine-year-old. How could I have let you see something that horrific? It was all my fault.” She opened the door for him. “Please come inside.”
Si Wang was timid and shook his head. “I don’t want to dirty your car.”
He had obviously never been in a fancy European car before; boys knew all about cars these days. Gu Qiusha smiled. “It’s OK! Just come in.”
The boy frowned. He gingerly entered and checked out the car’s interior. “Ms. Gu, don’t worry about that body. I won’t have nightmares because of it.”
“Really?”
“I’ve seen dead bodies. My grandfather passed away last year—and my grandmother, too, this year. I saw their bodies going into the cremation chamber.”
She hugged him. “
Poor baby.”
The boy’s breath was warm next to her ear. “Everyone dies. Life is just an endless cycle. Birth and death go round and round.”
“Si Wang, you must also like philosophy, and not just Chinese and English.”
“Do you know of the Six Realms?”
“Tell me.”
“The Heaven realm, Human realm, Asura realm, Animal realm, Hungry Ghost realm, and the Hell realm. Humans are forever in the Six Realms. Bad people become animals, Hungry Ghosts, or even go to Hell. Good people reincarnate as humans or go to Heaven. Only Asura, Bodhisattva, and Buddha can get out of the Six Realms.”
“Well, that is a Buddhist theory. I am a Christian,” she replied, taking out the cross she wore around her neck.
The third-grader looked at her strangely, as if lemon juice had been squirted into his eyes. He retreated to the car door and said, “Do you really believe in Jesus?”
“Why would I lie to you?”
“Do you believe a soul exists after death, that we’re all waiting for Judgment Day, and that someone who believes in Jesus will be saved and go to Heaven and others go to Hell?”
“I . . .” Gu Qiusha was stumped by the question. She’d only started going to church after Shen Ming died. “I do!”
“Some books say death is only a stage between this lifetime and the next. On Judgment Day, every dead person will reincarnate and be judged. If you believed in the right thing and did good, you would go to Heaven and live forever, otherwise you would go to a fiery Hell.”
“Little genius, have you read all religious books?”
Si Wang kept talking. “Maybe only Taoism is exempt. They value life and look for eternal life. But the ghost world is parallel to the human world. Have you seen a ghost?”
