Death of a Red Heroine

Chapter 40

It was the fourth day of the National Police Cadre Conference. The Guoji Hotel, located at the intersection between Nanjing Road and Huanghe Road, overlooking the central area of the city, had been the highest building in Shanghai for many years.

Chief Inspector Chen had been provided with a luxurious suite on the twenty-second floor. Looking out of the window to the east, in the first gray light of the morning, he could see the building of the First Department Store joining various stores on Nanjing Road in a colorful parade towards the Bund. But he was in no mood to enjoy the spectacular view. He hurried to put on his clothes. The last few days had been so hectic for him. Not only was he a representative of the Shanghai Police Bureau, he also had to serve as a conference host, coordinating all kinds of activities. Most of the representatives were superintendents or Party secretaries from other cities. He had to build his connections with them. For himself as well as for the bureau.

As a result, he had hardly had any time to think about the progress of the case. Still, the first thing he did that morning, as he had for the past few days, was to sneak out of the hotel to a public phone booth across the street. He had asked Yu not to phone him in his room except for an emergency. With Internal Security working in the background, they had to be extremely cautious.

At their agreed-upon time, he dialed Yu’s number. “How are things going?” he asked.

“Positive. Tell you what, even Director Yao Liangxia, that Marxist Old Woman, called our office. She declared that the Party Discipline Committee stood behind us firmly.”

“Was anything said by Party Secretary Li?”

“Last night, a telephone conference was held between the Bureau Party Committee and the mayor. Only Party Secretary Li and Superintendent Zhao were present. Closed-door discussion, of course. Politics, I imagine.”

“Li will not say a single word about those meetings, I understand. Is there any news from other sources?”

“Well, Wang Feng has also contacted us, saying they are going to run a front-page story in the Wenhui Daily tomorrow.”

“Why?”

“Wu’s on trial today! Haven’t you heard, Chief Inspector Chen?”

“What!” he said. “No, I haven’t.

“That’s surprising,” Yu said. “I thought they would have informed you immediately.”

“Will you appear in court?”

“Yes, I will be there, but Internal Security will run the show.”

“How are you getting along with the Internal Security people?”

“Fine. I think they’re serious. They’re gathering all the documents.” Yu then added. “Except they haven’t really double-checked some evidence and witnesses.”

“What do you mean?”

“Take Comrade Yang, the one at the gas station, for instance. I suggested that they call him in for identification, and then use him as a witness in court. But they said that it would not be necessary.”

“So what do you think the result will be?”

“Wu will be punished. No question about that. Or it does not make sense to have all the fanfare going on,” Yu said. “But the trial could last for days.”

“Death sentence?”

“With reprieve, I bet, with the old man still in the hospital. But not anything less than that. People will not consent.”

“Yes, I think that’s most likely,” he said. “What else has Wang told you?”

“Wang wanted me to convey her congratulations to you. And Old Hunter, too-a salute from an old Bolshevik. Old Bolshevik- that’s his word. I haven’t heard him say it in years.”

“He’s an old Bolshevik indeed. Tell him I’ll treat him at the Mid-Lake Teahouse. I owe him a big one.”

“Don’t worry about that. He’s talking about treating you. The old man does not know what to do with his adviser’s allowance.”

“He absolutely deserves it after his thirty years in the force,” Chen said, “not to mention his contribution to the case.”

“And Peiqin is preparing another meal. A better one, that much I can promise you. We have just got some Yunnan ham. Genuine stuff.” Detective Yu, who should have been years beyond such overexcitement at concluding a case, kept rambling on. “What a shame. You are missing all the fun here.”

“Yes, you are right,” Chen said. “I’ve been so busy with the conference. I’ve almost forgotten that I’m in charge of the case.”

Putting down the phone, he hurried back to the hotel. He had a presentation to make in the morning, and a group discussion to attend in the afternoon. In the evening, Minister Wen was scheduled to make an important concluding speech. Soon he was overwhelmed by the conference details.

During the lunch break, he tried to make another call to inquire about the trial but in the lobby he was stopped by Superintendent Fu, of the Beijing Police Bureau, who talked to him for half an hour. Then another director came up to him. And he had no break at all during dinner, as he had to toast all the invitees, table after table. After dinner, Minister Wen, who seemed to be especially well-disposed toward him, sought him out. Finally, after the long speeches, well after nine o’clock, Chen stole out of the hotel to another phone booth on Huanpi Road. Yu was not at home.

Then he dialed Overseas Chinese Lu. Wang Feng had called him. “She’s so happy for you,” Lu said. “That much I could tell. Even in her tone. A really nice girl!”

“Yes, she is,” Chen said.

When Chen got back to his room, the maid had prepared everything for the night. The bed was made, the window closed, and the curtain partly drawn. There was a pack of Marlboros on the night stand. In the small refrigerator, he saw several bottles of Budweiser, an imported luxury that suited his status here. Everything signified that he was an “important cadre.”

Turning on the bedside lamp, he glanced at the TV listings. The room had cable, so there were several Hong Kong martial arts movies available. He had no desire to see any of them. Once more, he looked out toward the First Department Store silhouetted against the night by the ever-changing neon lights.

Had there been an emergency, Yu would have contacted him.

After taking a shower, he put on his pajamas, opened a Budweiser and began studying the newspaper. There was not much worth reading, but he knew he could not fall asleep. He was not drunk-certainly not as drunk as Li Bai, who had written a poem about dancing with his own shadow under the Tang dynasty moon.

The he heard a light knock on the door.

He was not expecting company. He could pretend to be asleep, but he had heard of stories about hotel security checking rooms at unlikely hours.

“Okay, come in,” he said with a sense of resignation.

The door opened.

Someone stepped through the doorway, barefoot, in a white robe.

He stared at the intruder for a few seconds, fitting the image against his memories before recognition came to him.

“Ling!”

“Chen!”

“Imagine seeing you-” he broke off, not knowing what else to say.

She closed the door after her.

There was no suggestion of surprise in her face. It was as if she had just come from the ancient library in the Forbidden City, carrying a bundle of books for him, the pigeons’ whistles echoing in the distance in the clear Beijing sky; as if she had just come walking out of the Beijing subway mural painting, an Uighur girl carrying grapes in her arms, infinite motion, moving yet not moving, light as a summer sky, under her bangled bare feet, scraps of the golden paint flaking from the frame…

And Ling was the same-despite the lapse of years-except that her long hair, undone for the night, fell to her shoulders. A few loose strands curled at her cheeks, giving her a casual, intimate look. Then he noticed the tiny lines around her eyes.

“What has brought you here?”

“An American library delegation. I am serving as their escort. I told you about it.”

She had touched upon the possibility of accompanying an American library delegation to southern cities, but she had not mentioned Shanghai as one of the places they were going to visit.

“Have you had your supper?” Another silly question. He was annoyed with himself.

“No,” she said. “I just gotten in. I just had time to take a shower.”

“You have not changed.”

“Nor have you.”

“Well, how did you know I was staying here?”

“I telephoned your bureau. Somebody in your office told me. Your Party Secretary, Li Guohua, I believe. At first he was rather guarded, so I had to tell him who I am.”

“Oh.” Or whose daughter

Ling took out a cigarette. He lit it for her, cupping his hand over the lighter. Lightly, her lips brushed against his fingers.

“Thanks.”

She sat in a casual posture, drawing one bare foot under her. As she tapped the cigarette into the ashtray, leaning over, her robe parted slightly. He caught a flash of her breasts. She was aware of his glance, but she did not close her robe.

They looked into each other’s eyes. “Wherever you are,” she said jokingly, “I can get hold of you.”

She certainly knew how to get hold of him. There was no withholding information from her. As an HCC, she had her ways.

In spite of her joke, he felt tension building between them. It was illegal for man and woman to share a hotel room without a marriage license. Hotel security was authorized to break in. A loud knock at the door was to be expected at any time. “Routine checkup!” Some rooms were even equipped with secret video recorders.

“Where is your room?” he asked.

“In this same section for ‘distinguished guests,’ because I’m the escort to the American delegation. The security people won’t check up here.

“It’s so nice of you to come,” he said.

“It is difficult to meet, and also difficult to part, / The east wind listless, and flowers languid …” Ling quoted the couplet about star-crossed lovers to good effect. She understood his passion for Li Shangyin.

“I’ve missed you,” she said, her face soft under the light, though etched with travel fatigue.

“So have I.”

“After all the years we’ve wasted,” she said, dropping her eyes, “we’re together tonight.”

“I don’t know what to say, Ling.”

“You don’t have to say anything.”

“You’ve no idea how grateful I am,” he said, “for all you have done for me.”

“Don’t say that either.”

“You know, the letter I wrote, I did not mean to-”

“I knew,” she said, “but that was what I wanted.”

“Well-”

“Well,” She looked up at him, and her eyes lost the tentative look and grew hazy. “We’re here. So why not? I’m leaving tomorrow morning. No point repressing ourselves.”

An almost forgotten phrase from Sigmund Freud, another Western influence in his college days. In hers, too, perhaps. He saw her moisten her lips with her tongue; then his glance fell to her bare feet, which were elegantly arched with well-formed toes.

“You’re right.”

He moved to turn off the light, but she stopped him with a gesture. She stood up, undid the belt, and let the robe fall to the floor. Her body gave off a porcelain glow under the light. Her breasts were small, but the nipples were erect. In a minute they were on the bed, aching for the time they had spent apart, their long wasted years. The haste was his doing as much as hers, touched with a sort of desperation that affected them both. There was no salvaging the past, except by being themselves in the present.

She groaned, wrapping her arms around his neck and her legs around his back. Moving under him, she arched herself up, her fingers long, strong, sliding down his back. The intensity of her arousal sharpened his. After a while, she changed position and lay on top of him. With her long hair cascading over his face, she was provoking sensations he had never known. He lost himself in her hair. She shuddered when she came, panting in short, quick breaths against his face. Her body suddenly grew soft, wet-insubstantial as the clouds after the rain.

They lay quietly in each other’s arms, feeling themselves far above and beyond the city of Shanghai.

Perhaps due to the height of the hotel, he suddenly seemed to see the white clouds pressing through the window, pressing against her sweat-covered body in the soft moonlight.

“We’re turning into clouds and rain,” he said, invoking the ancient metaphor.

She whispered a throaty agreement, curling up with her head on his chest, gazing up at him, her black hair spilling.

Their feet brushed. Touching her arched sole lightly, he felt a grain of sand stuck between her toes. Sand from the city of Shanghai-not from the Central South Sea complex in the Forbidden City.

Their moment was interrupted by the footsteps moving along the corridor. He heard the sound of the hotel people producing a bunch of keys. A key turning-once, only once-at a door across the corridor. The suspense made their sensations even more intense. She nestled against him again. There was something in her features he had never seen before. So clear and serene. The autumn night sky of Beijing, across which the Cow Herd and Spinning Girl gaze at each other, a bridge woven of black magpies across the Milky Way.

They embraced again.

“It’s been worth the wait,” she said quietly afterward. Then she fell asleep beside him, the stars whispering quietly outside the window.

He sat up, took a pad from the nightstand and started writing, the lamplight falling like water on the paper. The stillness around them seemed to be breathing with life. Amidst the images rushing to his pen, he turned to see her peaceful face on the pillow. The innocence of her clear features, of the deep-blue night high above the lights of Shanghai, charged through him in waves of meaning.

He had a feeling that the lines were flowing to him from a superior power. He just happened to be there, with the pen in his hand…

He did not know when he fell asleep.

The ring of the telephone on the night stand startled him.

As he stirred from his dream, blinking, he realized Ling was no longer beside him. The white pillows were rumpled against the headboard, still soft, cloud-like in the first morning light.

The telephone kept on ringing. Shrill and sharp, so early in the morning, like an omen. He snatched it.

“Chief Inspector Chen, it’s all finished.” Yu sounded edgy, as if he too had hardly slept.

“What do you mean-all finished?”

“The whole thing. The trial is over. Wu Xiaoming was sentenced to death, guilty on all the charges against him, and executed last night. About six hours ago. Period.”

Chen glanced at his watch. It was just past six.

“Wu did not try to appeal?”

“It’s a special case. The Party authorities put it that way. No use making any appeal. Wu was well aware of that. His attorney, too. An open secret to everybody. Appeal or no appeal, it would have made no difference.”

“And he was executed last night?”

“Yes, just a few hours after the trial. But don’t start asking me why, Comrade Chief Inspector.”

“Well, what about Guo Qiang?”

“Also executed, at the same time and on the same execution ground.”

“What?” Chen was more than shocked. “Guo had committed no murder.”

“Do you know what the most serious charge against Wu and Guo was?”

“What?”

“Crime and corruption under Western bourgeois influence.”

“Can you try to be a bit more specific, Yu?”

“I can, of course, but you will be able to read all the political humbug in the newspapers. Headlines in red print, I bet. It will be in the Wenhui Daily. Now it’s part of a national campaign against ‘CCB’-corruption and crime under Western bourgeois influence. A political campaign has been launched by the Party Central Committee.”

“So it is a political case after all!”

“Yes, Party Secretary Li is right. It’s a political case, as he said from the very beginning.” Yu made no effort to conceal the bitterness in his voice. “What a great job we have done.”

Chen went downstairs. He saw Ling again in the hotel lobby.

Several members of the American delegation had gathered around the front desk to admire a Suzhou embroidered silk scroll of the Great Wall. Ling was interpreting. She did not notice him at first. In the morning light, she appeared pale, with dark rings visible under her eyes. He did not know when she had left his room.

She was wearing a rose-colored Qi skirt, the slits revealing her slender legs. A small straw purse hung from her shoulder, and a bamboo briefcase was in her hand. An Oriental among the Occidentals. She was about to leave with the American delegation.

As he gazed at her in a flood of morning light, he was awash in gratitude.

She did not disengage herself immediately. As soon as she was free, he asked, “Will you call me when you get back to Beijing?”

“Of course I will.” She added after a pause, “If that’s all right with you.”

“How can you ask that? You have done such a lot for me-”

“No, don’t. You’re under no obligation.”

“Then we’ll see each other in Beijing,” he said, “in October. Maybe earlier.”

“Remember the poem you recited for me in the North Sea Park that afternoon?”

“That afternoon, yes.”

“So it’s just a couple of months.”

A small American woman with a slight limp came shuffling toward her.

“Are we done with what we have come for?”

“Yes, I’m done with what I came for,” she said, looking at him before she turned to join the delegation members.

Outside, it was a bright, shining morning. A gray mini-van awaited the delegation on Nanjing Road. She was the last to get into the van, carrying a leather suitcase for someone. As the car started moving, she rolled down the window and waved her hand at him.

He watched as the van pulled out

I’m done with what I came here for. That was what she had said.

What had he come here for? He wished he could say the same, but he couldn’t.

It had happened. It might never happen again. He did not know. He did know, however, that there was no stepping twice into the same river.

But he had to run back into the hotel. Some representatives were leaving. As the host, he had to say good-bye to them and bestow various gifts on behalf of the Shanghai Police Bureau. Smiling, shaking hands with one representative after another, he realized that his responsibilities at the Guoji Hotel had been designed to get him out of the way.

“The order of the acts has been schemed and plotted, / And nothing can avert the final curtain’s fall.”

By noon, he was free to go downstairs to the newspaper stand in the lobby. There were several people gathering in front of it, reading the newspaper over each other’s shoulders. As he walked toward them, he saw a headline printed in red:

CORRUPTION AND CRIME UNDER WESTERN BOURGEOIS INFLUENCE

There was a full page editorial in the People’s Daily about Wu’s case. What struck Chen as most absurd was that Guan’s name was not even mentioned. She was just one of the unnamed victims. The homicide was treated as an inevitable effect of Western bourgeois influence. Chief Inspector Chen’s name was not mentioned either, which was probably well-meant, as Party Secretary Li had explained. But Commissar Zhang was cited as a representative of the old high cadres determined to push through the investigation. Zhang’s commitment was seen as the Party’s determination. It is not people that make interpretations, but interpretations that make people.

The editorial concluded impressively, authoritatively:

Wu Xiaoming was born of a high cadre family, but under Western bourgeois influence, Wu turned into a criminal. The lesson is clear. We must always remain alert. The case shows our Party’s determination to fight corruption and crime caused by Western bourgeois influences. A criminal, of whatever family background, will be punished in our socialist society. Our Party’s pure image will never be soiled.

Chief Inspector Chen did not want to read more. There was another piece of news, shorter, but also on the front page, about the conference, with his name listed as one of the important cadres who attended it.

He became aware of other people talking in front of the newsstand. They were engaged in a heated discussion.

“How easily those HCC can make tons of money,” a tall man in a white T-shirt said. “My company needs to apply for a quota for textile exports every year, but it is very difficult to get one. So my boss goes to an HCC, and that S.O.B. just picks up the phone, saying to the minister in Beijing, ‘Oh, dear Uncle, we all miss you so much. My mother is always talking about your favorite dish… By the way, I need an export quota; please help me with it.’ So this ‘nephew’ immediately gets his quota on a fax signed by the minister, and sells it to us for a million Yuan. You call this fair? In our company, one-third of the workers are being laid off, with only one hundred and fifty a month of so-called ‘waiting for reassignment’ pay-not enough to buy a moon cake for their kids at the Mid-Autumn Festival!”

“It’s much more than quotas, young man,” another man said. “They get those high positions like they were born to be way above us. With their connections, power, and money, what can’t they do? Several well-known actresses were involved in the case, I’ve heard. All of them stripped naked, as white as lambs, scratching and screeching all night long. Wu has not wasted his days.”

“Well, I heard that Wu Bing still is in a coma in Huadong Hospital,” an elderly man cut in, apparently not comfortable with the direction of the discussion.

“Who is Wu Bing?”

“Wu Xiaoming’s father.”

“Good for the old man,” the man in the white T-shirt said. “He will be spared the humiliation of his son’s downfall.”

“Who cares? The father should be responsible for his son’s crime. I’m glad, for once, our government has made the right decision.”

“Come on, you think they’re serious? It’s just like the old saying, ‘Kill a chicken to scare monkeys.’“

“Whatever you say, this time the chicken is an HCC, and I would like to make a stew of it, delicious, tender, plus a pinch of MSG.”

As he stood listening to the discussion, the various aspects of the case came together.

It was so politically complicated, this homicide case. In the inner-Party struggle, Wu’s execution was a symbolic blow to the hard-liners, so that they would not continue to stand in the way of reform, but it was also a message modified by Wu’s father being sick and away from the center, so that it would not upset those still in power to the point of shaking the “political stability.” In terms of ideological propaganda, the case was conveniently presented as the consequence of Western bourgeois influence, which protected the Party’s credit. And finally, to ordinary Chinese people, the case also served as a demonstration of the Party’s determination to fight corruption at all levels, especially among the HCC, a dramatic gesture demanded by China’s politics after the summer of 1989.

The combination of all these factors had made Wu Xiaoming the best candidate for an example. It was possible that failing Wu Xiaoming, another HCC with a similar background would have been chosen for such a purpose. It was proper and right that Wu should be punished. No question about it. But the question was: Had Wu been punished for the crime he had committed?

So Chief Inspector Chen had played right into the hands of politics.

The realization came to him as he left the hotel and walked slowly along Nanjing Road with heavy steps. The street was as crowded as ever. People were walking, shopping, talking, in high spirits. The sun cast its brilliance over the most prosperous thoroughfare of the city. He bought a copy of the People’s Daily.

In his high-school days, he had believed in everything published in the People’s Daily, including one particular term: proletarian dictatorship. It meant a sort of dictatorship logically necessary to reach the final stage of communism, thus justifying all means toward that ultimate end. The term proletarian dictatorship was no longer used. Instead, the term was: the Party’s interests.

He was no longer such an unquestioning believer.

For he could hardly believe in what he himself had done.

Wu Xiaoming had been executed at the moment when he had been sleeping with Ling. What had happened between Ling and him was, by the orthodox Communist code, another instance of “Western bourgeois decadence.” The same crime Wu had been accused of-”decadent lifestyle under the influence of Western bourgeois ideology.”

Chief Inspector Chen could tell himself, of course, a number of convenient things-that things are complicated, that justice must be upheld, that the Party’s interest is above everything else, and that the end justifies the means.

But it was more than that, he realized: the end could not but be transformed by the use of certain means.

“Whoever fights monsters,” Nietzsche said, “should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.”

His thoughts were interrupted by a request in an Anhui accent, “Could you take a picture for me, please?” A young girl held out a small camera.

“Sure.” He took the camera from her.

She began posing in front of the First Department Store. A provincial girl, new to Shanghai, she chose the glamorous models in the store window for a background. He pressed the button.

“Thank you so much!”

She could have been Guan, ten or fifteen years earlier, her eyes sparkling with hopes for the future, Chen reflected with a sinking heart.

A successful conclusion to an important case. The question for him was: How had he managed to bring the case to a triumphant close? Through his own HCC connection-and a carnal connection-with a politburo member’s daughter.

What irony!

Chief Inspector Chen had sworn that he would do everything in his power to bring Wu to justice, but he had not supposed that he would have been brought to connive in such a devious way.

Detective Yu had known nothing about it. Otherwise, Chen doubted that his assistant would have collaborated. Like other ordinary Chinese people, Yu was not unjustified in his deep-rooted prejudice against the HCC.

Even though Ling might prove to be an exception. Or just an exception with him. For him.

He saw a number of similarities between Guan, the national model worker and Chen, the chief inspector. The most significant was that each had a relationship with an HCC.

There was only one difference.

Guan had been less lucky in her love, for Wu had not reciprocated her affection. Perhaps Wu had cared for her a bit. But politics and ambition had happened to be in their way.

Had Guan really loved Wu? Was it possible that she, too, was driven by politics? There could not be a definite answer-now they were both dead.

How about his own feelings toward Ling?

It was not that Chief Inspector Chen had deliberately, coldly used her. To be fair to himself, he had never allowed such an idea to come to the surface of his mind, but what about subconsciously?

Nor was he sure that there had been nothing but passion on his part last night.

Gratitude for her magnanimity?

In Beijing, they had cared for each other, but they had parted, a decision he had not really regretted. All those years, he had often thought of her, but he had also thought of others, made other friends-girlfriends, too.

When the case first came to his attention, he was dancing with Wang at his house-warming party. In the following days, it was Wang who had accompanied him through the early stages of the investigation. In fact, he had hardly thought of Ling at all in those days. The letter written at the post office had been anything but romantic; it was inspired by a moment of desperation-by the instincts of a survivor.

He was a survivor, too ambitious to perish in ignoble silence. It was the haunting image of Liu Yong, the deplorable Song dynasty poet, who had only a prostitute to take pity on him at his deathbed, that had spurred him into desperate action. He had resolved not to end up a loser like Liu Yong. You have to find a way out, he’d told himself.

That’s the way she came back into his life.

Maybe just for the one night.

Maybe more than that.

Now what was he supposed to do?

In spite of the difference in their family background, there ought to be some way for them to be together. They should be able to live in the world of their own discourse, not just in other people’s interpretations.

Still, he could not help shuddering at the prospect before him. For it was not going to be a world of their own, but in which he would, perhaps, begin to find his life much easier, even effortless. He would never be able to shake off the feeling that nothing was accomplished through his own efforts. She did not need to go to this or that minister, claiming him as hers. He would have become an HCC himself. And people would be eager to do a lot of things for him.

There was no point going back to the bureau at the moment. He was in no mood for Party Secretary Li’s recital of the Wenhui Daily editorial. Nor did he want to go back to his own apartment, alone, after such a night.

He found himself walking toward his mother’s place.

His mother put down the newspaper she had been reading, “Why didn’t you call?”

She rose to set a cup of tea before him.

“Politics,” he said bitterly, “Nothing but politics.”

“Some trouble at work?” She looked puzzled.

“No, I’m all right.”

“Politics. You mean the conference? Or the HCC case, today’s headline? Everybody is talking about it.”

He did not know how to explain to her. She had never been interested in politics. Nor did he know whether he should tell her about Ling although that was what his mother would really be interested in. So he just said, “I’ve been in charge of the Wu case, but it has not been concluded properly.”

“Was justice served?”

“Yes. Politics aside-”

“I’ve talked to several neighbors. They are all very pleased with the outcome of the trial.”

“I’m glad they are pleased, Mother.”

“In fact, I have been doing some thinking about your work since our last talk. I still hope you will take your father’s path one day, but in your position, if you believe you can do something for the country, you should persevere. It helps a little if there are a few honest policemen around, even though it may not help much.”

“Thank you, Mother.”

After he had his tea, she walked downstairs with him. In the hallway crowded with stoves and cooking utensils, Aunt Xi, an old neighbor, greeted them warmly, “Mrs. Chen, your son is a high cadre now, Chief Inspector Director or some high ranking position. This morning I was reading the newspaper, and his name with an important title jumped out at me.”

His mother smiled without saying anything. His rank might have appealed to her a little too.

“Don’t forget us in your high position,” Aunt Xi continued. “Remember, I’ve watched you grow up.”

Out on the street, he saw a peddler frying dumplings in a gigantic wok over a wheeled gas burner, a familiar scene from his childhood, only a coal stove would have been used back then. One fried dumpling would have been a lavish treat for a child, but his mother would stuff him with two or three. A loving mother, beautiful, young, and supportive.

Time, as Buddha wrote, passes in the snapping of the fingers.

At the bus stop, he turned around and saw her still standing in front of the house. Small and shrunken and gray in the dusk. Though still supportive.

Chief Inspector Chen would not quit the police force.

The visit had strengthened his determination to go on.

She might never fully approve of his profession, but as long as he did his job conscientiously, he would not disappoint her. Also, it was his responsibility to support her. He would purchase a pound of genuine jasmine tea for her the next time he went to visit. And he would think about how to tell her about his relationship with Ling.

In the words of the poem his father had taught him, a son’s return for his mother’s love is always inadequate, and so is one’s responsibility to the country:

Who says that the splendor of a grass blade returns

The love of the spring that forever returns?