A Case of Two Cities

6

GOLDEN ISLAND WAS ONE of the new restaurants on the Bund.

For most Shanghainese, the Bund still constituted one of the most glamorous areas in the city, with its picturesque waterfront and the magnificent buildings stretching along Zhongshan Road. In Chen’s childhood, most of these buildings, though in government use then, were seen as evidence of the imperialist exploitation, for they had housed prestigious Western companies in the pre-1949 era. In the nineties, the city government had released those buildings to the original or new Western companies. Consequently, high-end restaurants reappeared around the area.

Golden Island was popular not only because of its location but also because of its architectural design. The swelling restaurant had been converted from the original rooftop of an old business building, with ceilings, tall windows, and walls added on a modern note.

As Chen stepped out of the elevator, a young waitress came over to him. “Have you made your reservation, sir?”

“Under the name of An or Chen.”

“Oh, Miss An has already reserved a special room. Lovers’ Nest, please.”

“Oh-”

He had heard of the Lovers’ Nest. While the main dining hall did not look so different from other restaurants, across the entrance, on the side overlooking the Bund, stood a row of cubicles named Lovers’ Nest, well-known among young people. He had learned about them from White Cloud.

It was a tiny room, with only two bench seats inside, a wood table in between, and hardly enough space for two to dine without accidentally touching each other. Lovers might not mind that, though. The windows boasted a broad view of the Bund with the vessels moving along the river, and those sitting by the window would enjoy a sensation of being up above the crowd.

It was surprising that she had reserved such a room, but nonetheless a good choice, considering what they were going to talk about. He took his seat and noticed that there was a “do not disturb” sign available on the table.

“You can put the sign outside the door,” the waitress said with a knowing smile. “We will knock before coming in.”

While he waited for An, he took a picture out of a large envelope. He had accomplished only one thing that day-the identification of the middle-aged lover in those pictures. He was Jiang Xiaodong, the Director of the City Land Development Office. It was a relatively new position and not exactly a big fish in terms of the cadre rank, but it was a crucial position in terms of the property market. Especially to the locusts of real estate developers. Now Ming’s use of An’s PR company made perfect sense. Of course, Jiang might not be the only one behind the scenes. Chen put the picture back into the envelope and picked up the menu.

Chen did not have to wait long. Halfway through looking at the menu, he heard a light knock, and he looked up to see An entering with a familiar smile. It was as if they had never fallen out of touch all these years.

She wore the same scarlet silk cheongsam, high-slitted, sleeveless, and an elegant pearl necklace shimmered around her neck. The dress clung to her body like caresses, hugging her sensual curves as she moved. She looked barely changed from their reading-group days.

“The room is lit by your presence,” he said, standing up.

“The room is great because of a great man like you,” she said, holding out her hand. “So now we have had our exchange of literary compliments.”

Hers, too, sounded like an echo from a classical essay. An was a popular anchor woman not merely because of her pretty face: she also spoke in a cultured manner.

There was another knock on the door. The young waitress came in and lit the candle in a glass bowl. It added a romantic touch to the occasion. She then placed a bottle of Dynasty on the table and uncorked it for them.

“Compliments of the house.”

He shook the glass, sipped at it, and made a gesture of approval.

The candlelight flickered on their faces. The dancing flame carried Chen back to the old days of their passion for reading literature. Now, he joined her in reading the menu instead. The restaurant claimed to have invented a new Shanghai cuisine, which, according to a brief introduction on the front page, consisted of a combination of other cuisines, subtly modified to a taste acceptable to the city. A Sichuan dish was made less spicy, or a Ningbo dish, less salty.

“When it is everything,” Chen commented, “it is nothing.”

“How about lovers’ table d’hôte? It contains all of our chef’s specials. It will be a dinner you two cannot forget,” the waitress recommended.

Not a bad idea, he thought, and it saved him from taking the time to choose. The two resumed their talk. It was the first time they had ever been alone together for a dinner. The cubicle felt like a sampan room. The river came to life under their gaze, as the neon lights formed and transformed fantastic patterns.

He was not in a hurry to question her. They would at least enjoy some of the meal first. While he might not have much to say about himself, he found it not at all difficult to listen to her story. Perhaps with the unexpected reunion, with the wine, with the scene spreading outside the window, she would grow sentimental.

Hers wasn’t a new story, not the personal part of it, which he had already learned from other sources. Narrated from her perspective, though, it sounded nonetheless tragic, albeit ordinary.

“Han says that he will not come back without success. When? God alone knows. But for my mother, who takes care of our son, I couldn’t have managed these years all by myself,” she said wistfully. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have put so much pressure on him.”

She couldn’t be blamed for being such a celebrity, but her husband’s dilemma wasn’t difficult to understand-it was hard to have such a well-known wife. Still, it was not for Chen to judge who was responsible for her failed marriage. Deep in his heart, he guessed there was something parallel in his life-a peg, a string-he didn’t want to touch at the moment.

“Thank you for telling me all this,” he said. “Indeed, every household has a difficult account. Look at me. Still a bachelor, about which my mother worries all the time. I wish we could all be back in the days of our reading group.”

“No need to be too hard on yourself,” she said, reaching across the table to pat his hand. “The past is past, but we still have the future in our hands.”

A clever remark, echoing perhaps another book they had read together in the group.

“Gather the flower while you may,” he said, taking a drink, “or you have only a barren twig in your hand.”

“Exactly.” She then tried to make him talk about his work, which he managed to evade.

“You’re not that unfamiliar with the official world, An. Nothing but sordid details. I don’t think we should spoil the evening with those things. On the other hand, you have a PR company. It’s a huge success, I’ve heard. Tell me more about it.”

“How long do you think I can work as an anchorwoman, Chen?”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s a star-making age. As a woman, how long can I remain attractive to the public? I have to be realistic. Several people have been coveting my position at the TV station, and you should see them-younger, and much prettier too. In the entertainment industry, new young faces come along every year. Xie Donghong at CCTV, you know, is only in her midtwenties, and with an MBA degree from an American university.”

“But you have so many loyal fans who watch you every night. I’m one of them.”

“Come on, Chen. A man may blossom in his forties, but a woman goes downhill in her thirties. I’m thirty-seven. It is a fact I have to acknowledge,” she said, gazing into the wine, as if in search of her own reflection. The early summer evening spread peacefully outside the window, while autumn waves rippled in her eyes. “But you are different, a rising star in the political world.”

It reminded him of two lines of a poem-As always, a general is like a beauty, / there’s no seeing a white hair. In China ’s new cadre policy, age became a crucial criterion. He was lucky, but he had better seize the moment too.

“The car, the apartment, and the new boarding school for my son, all these I have to pay for,” she went on. “Do you think my state company salary is enough? I have to earn money for the future of my son, if not for myself.”

There was real worry in her voice. Spoiled by her success, she might not be able to envision the life of an ordinary woman. It wasn’t something she had planned, but it wasn’t something she could help, he understood.

“I know what you mean. I have to do translation to make up for my bureau salary.”

“Besides, I have to keep myself busy. Because of my working schedule at the TV station, and my son studying away at school, I am all alone when I come back,” she said, taking a sip of the wine. “One or two solitary evenings may not be too bad, but-”

“You are multitalented,” he said, in an effort to change the topic. “You have so many fans of your show. Now you have so many clients for your PR company.”

“It’s nothing but connections,” she said. “You can do it too. In fact, you can help me a lot.”

Was she going to include him as one of her connections? If so, she would talk more freely.

“Well, you never know,” he said.

“Heaven and Earth of Connections. That’s the name of another PR company, my biggest rival in the city. The company owner is the son of an ex-politburo member. All he needs to do is to make phone calls to important people, ‘Hi, Uncle, my father asks about you,’ or ‘Oh, Aunt, I’ve just talked to my father about you,’ and he then slips in a few words for his clients. These ‘uncles’ and ‘aunts’ are in powerful positions, capable of making decisions. So he charges for the calls-”

Abruptly Chen felt something moving in his pants pocket-throbbing. His cell phone began vibrating instead of ringing. He must have accidentally pressed a button. As he took it out, the caller hung up. He was clumsy with the new gadgets and he fumbled with it a bit, unsure how to restore the ringing function.

She took the phone from his hand, pushed a few buttons, and it rang with a pleasant tune he had never heard before.

“Thank you so much.” He refrained from asking how she’d done it. To her, he must have appeared awkward enough.

The lovers’ table d’hôte started to arrive. First, the cold dishes. One was salted cucumber skin in green rolls, crisp and clear. Another presented red shiny dates steamed with sticky rice stuffed inside. Not only sweet, it was also sensual in its color suggestion, the soft white rice inside the scarlet date skin. It took enormous imagination to invent this small wonder-like something from The Dream of the Red Chamber.

“Scarlet and white, as in a classical Chinese love poem,” An said. “People call the dish ‘your soft heart.’”

She seemed to be at home. Possibly a regular customer in the company of Jiang, or of some high-ranking officials. After the limelight, after the wine, she must have found it hard to turn back to those old days. A company of hers would ensure the luxurious lifestyle she enjoyed. There was perhaps nothing wrong with it in this materialistic time, he admitted.

She drank a little, set the glass on the table, and held a scarlet date between her red lips, her white teeth glistening in an amorous way. There was a subtle, mature voluptuousness about her. She must have sensed his glance, her eyes mirroring the response in his imagination.

According to one of his favorite poets, what might have been points to infinite possibilities. Years earlier, this could have been a most wonderful night, with two of them sitting together there, wrapped in a cocoon of intimacy, ready to burst into unknown realities. But time flies. People change. It was an evening for police investigation. He could not help it. The way he could not help being Chief Inspector Chen.

Another knock on the door. The waitress sent in more dishes. It turned out to be a feast of delicious nostalgia, in tune with the latest trend of the city. He was particularly impressed with the Old Subei Chicken Soup, which smelled rich and pleasant with a subtle flavor of wistfulness. Its very name sounded like a call for a bygone era. Another call was the Granny Pork in the small urn with the shining homely color of brown soy sauce. As in a granny’s traditional home cooking style, the pork had been fried and then steamed for such a long time that it melted on their tongues.

An recommended the pigeon of the house, its skin fried to a golden brown, a crisp crust covering the tender meat. She started tearing the bird with her slender fingers. “The wing is the best part, its muscle juicy out of constant movement,” she said, placing a pigeon wing onto his plate.

“I have to tell you something, An,” he said abruptly and apologetically, putting down the glass as he moved on to explain the real purpose of the evening.

“It is an official investigation under the Central Party Discipline Committee. I need your cooperation,” he concluded. “Our friendship is very important to me, but for a cop, work has to come first. That’s what I am, whether I like it or not.”

“I thought,” she said slowly, “that you wanted to see me for old time’s sake.”

“It’s for old time’s sake, An, that I wanted to meet you here, first.”

That was both true and not true. Or, like the much-quoted couplet in The Dream of the Red Chamber: When the true is false, the false is true. / Where there is nothing, there is everything. An official investigation in the name of the Party Discipline Committee could have a disastrous impact on her business. No one would have engaged any service from such a PR company. As well as a disastrous effect on her reputation. There would be no way for her-an embodiment of political correctness-to appear on TV again.

“How could you have listened to those people?” she said, her face flushing in indignation.

“I would not have listened, but then I received something.” He produced the large envelope that contained the pictures.

Her face blanched at the sight of the photographs. He watched her closely. An was an experienced anchorwoman, her feelings always deftly hidden behind a professional mask, but she failed to conceal her immediate reaction. The hand that held her glass began to quiver. She put her wrist on the table to steady it.

He sat back, crossed his knees, and selected a cigarette from his case with deliberation.

“That’s what an old friend is for,” she said between her teeth. Putting her spoon into the fish soup, leaving it there, and digging a cigarette from her crumpled pack, she was trying to pull herself together, but not successfully. She was doing anything to keep herself from looking up at him.

“I wish I had an alternative. So I want to talk to you first as an old friend.”

“What do you mean?”

“What if I had turned these pictures in to the committee first? You don’t need me to tell you. In a worse scenario, if somebody else-not necessarily in the committee-got hold of those pictures, God alone knows what could happen. An unscrupulous rascal could have sold them to a tabloid magazine for a fortune.”

She didn’t say anything for a minute or two, staring at the pigeon head, which stared back at her with its dead eyes.

“Your company would be closed, your job lost, your property taken, and your apartment would be gone too. What a nice apartment! I don’t think it would be easy for you to move back to your tingzijian room of eight or nine square meters, An. If that room it is still there.”

“You don’t have to be sarcastic, Comrade Chief Inspector Chen.”

He did not have to be sarcastic, but sitting in a “lovers’ nest” he had to justify himself. He went on, “Don’t believe those high up will try to help you. They have their own necks to save. Beijing means business this time, and they know it. An anticorruption bureau will be set up in Shanghai. Do you want to sacrifice yourself for those who would throw you out as a pawn? In the end, they may get away scot-free, but you’ll have to pay the full price.”

She studied him up and down, still in disbelief over her humiliating downfall in front of an old friend.

His cell phone started ringing again. “Nothing important,” he said, turning it off after looking at the number.

“You think you can pull this off?” she said. “Evidence like this may not be permissible. As a cop, you know better.”

“Let me put it this way, An. When I got the assignment, a leading comrade in Beijing joked about me being the emperor’s special envoy with an imperial sword. You know what it means, don’t you? In ancient China, such an envoy could kill without having obtained official approval first. Believe me, the evidence will be more than permissible.”

“So I have no choice? Listen, Chen,” she said hoarsely, “I want you to know something-”

He did not say anything, waiting to hear what she wanted him to know. But the waitress knocked at the door again. She came to light a new candle for them, bowing before she left with a smile. In the fresh candlelight, he noticed that An was without makeup. Her face clear and clean, suggestive of an innocent purity, untouched by evil. She looked up at him, in a long gaze, as if the autumn waves were breaking against the shore in her large black eyes.

“Xing has so many connections in Shanghai,” she finally said. “But why have you chosen me, a helpless woman, of all the people? Are the others too monstrous for you to touch?”

She was sharp. The accusation hit home. He did not wince. It was not that he did not have the guts, he told himself.

“I have no choice, An. The investigation is under the committee,” he said. “If you collaborate, I won’t mention your name in the report. I give you my word.”

“So what do you want from me?”

“You tell me everything related to Xing-or to Ming-and I’ll return those photos to you. Your choices in your personal life are not my business. The anticorruption campaign, however, is a matter of life and death for our country.”

“Can I have some time to think?”

“About what?”

“It may be a matter of life and death for me.”

He lit another cigarette for her and pushed the window slightly open. Unexpectedly, a mosquito came buzzing in. An incredible nuisance at such a height, like a tedious song coming from next door during a sleepless night.

An then began to tell about the business deal she had helped to arrange for Ming. A long, complicated story. The beginning part of it had little to do with An, comprehensible only in a larger context. With the development of the economic reform, there were a large number of state-run factories that had fallen in terrible shape. In the old days, they manufactured products in accordance to the state planning, without having to worry about profit or loss. Now they had to struggle for survival in the market economy. Shanghai Number Six Textile Mill was such a factory. Its products were poor quality, and it could not obtain the raw material at the state price as before. Most of the workers, iron-bowl holders, were hardly in a position to help. Still, they clamored for the same socialist pay and benefits, desperate as ants crawling on a hot wok.

According to the People’s Daily, the problems might be insignificant, “inevitable in the historic transition.” But these factories became an increasingly impossible liability. So with a new government policy, a state-run company was allowed-for the first time since 1949-to go bankrupt. Interested entrepreneurs were encouraged to buy them at a discount, and even enjoy a further reduction by retaining its workers. That, too, was considered contributing to the political stability. The buyer for Number Six Mill was none other than Ming, who, without revealing a specific plan, promised to keep five hundred employees and so got the factory at a “symbolic sum.” No one knew anything about Ming’s coup until after the deal was done. He razed the factory for residential property construction. The location turned out to be close to a not-yet-announced subway route, so it attracted a number of investors the moment word got out. The value of the land proved to be five times more than what he had paid for the factory.

To meet the government requirement for keeping the factory in operation, Ming set up a small workshop of about ten people for equipment maintenance. He reached a housing development agreement with a construction company, through which he was able to retain the ex-state employees as temporary construction workers. Upon completion of the project, he would own one-third of the apartment complex.

In an inside report to the city government, Ming’s maneuver was described as one arrow that killed three birds. It helped the state stop losing money through a bottomless hole; it kept ex-state employees holding their rice bowl-though no longer made of iron-for a couple of years; and it met the housing needs of the city. Of course, the report did not touch on the profit Ming had walked away with. He did not pay a single penny out of his own pocket. With an official copy of the factory buying-over document as the mortgage, he had acquired a low interest loan from the government bank. In short, it was like “capturing a white fox empty-handed.”

Nor did the report mention a snag hidden in the operation. It was against government policy to turn a factory into a commercial construction lot. Otherwise Ming would have not gotten the land at such an incredibly low price.

Everything had been achieved through his connections, or rather, through Xing’s. The large network of corruption worked. The PR service provided by An also contributed: among other things it represented the small workshop for equipment maintenance as the factory’s continuous operation, a claim accepted by Dong for the Shanghai State Industry Reform Committee, and it obtained the land development permission from Jiang for the City Land Development Office. All this was not difficult, as An put it, just offering incense to every god in sight. She knew the doors, both the front and the back.

“Perhaps not simply because of your knowledge about the doors,” Chen said, casting another glance at the pictures on the table. But the deal was big: even with all her connections, it was probably too big for the sweet words she had whispered on the phone or in the bedroom. Still, there was no denying her part.

She did not respond to his remark.

He said simply, “Now tell me more about Ming.”

“Ming keeps a low profile. He stays in the shadow of Xing. As far as I know, he’s focused in Shanghai, and Xing takes good care of his little brother. They are much closer than ordinary stepbrothers. Xing does whatever his mother says, and Ming is her favorite son.”

“Really!”

“Xing is not a monster throughout. A filial son in his way, like you,” she added in hurry. “Of course, I’m talking about you as a monster.”

“No one is good or evil a hundred percent. You are right about it.”

“But they didn’t tell me everything. Like the inside information about the subway-neither Ming nor Xing mentioned a single word about it to me. That’s the most important part of the operation and a number of people higher up were involved.”

The Bund was enveloped in the night. Across the river, numerous neon lights on the eastern bank started projecting fanciful attractions for a new part of the city. She might have been telling the truth, except the part about her own activities.

“How did you get those photos?” she said.

“Somebody sent them to me. Don’t worry about it. No one knows anything about our meeting tonight. No one could have suspected-in a lovers’ nest.”

“A penny for your thoughtfulness.”

“Now, you mentioned that Ming contacted you as late as the Chinese New Year. According to my information, Xing got away in early January. If that’s true, Ming got out later than Xing.”

“I can’t be sure of the exact date. Ming may still be here, I’ve heard something about it, but I’m not sure. I’m going to make phone calls, and I’ll let you know as soon as I find out.”

“That will really help. You know how to contact me.” He put down his cell phone number on the back of his business card and rose from the table.

At the restaurant exit, the elevator door opened like a grin, and she leaned over, whispering in his ear, “You promise that you will return the pictures?”

“I give you my word.”

“Get rid of them in your memory too.”

He was surprised at the coquettish way she made her second request. It was not like her-not in the days of their reading group. But he did not know her anymore, not after so many years.

“I will, An.”

“I will come or call, Chen,” she said. “If not tomorrow, then the day after tomorrow.”