Enigma of China

TWENTY-THREE

Chief Inspector Chen knew that the investigation had reached a critical point and that he had to make a decision.

But, instead, he decided to visit his mother.

At least for the moment, he wanted to put aside all the confusing and conflicting thoughts that were plaguing him, no matter how urgent the situation was. He couldn’t shake the feeling that this would be his last case. The people involved were far better connected and more powerful than a chief inspector could deal with. This was a feeling that was intensified by the bits and pieces he’d been picking up over the last few days including, paradoxically, the conversation he’d had with Sheng, the Internal Security officer he’d met with at the City Hotel. The scenario he’d spun out for Sheng turned out to be almost self-fulfilling.

Whatever the flash drive contained, the chief inspector could choose to do nothing. No one knew about his discovery in Zhou’s office. Chen was only consulting on the case; he wasn’t really expected to make any breakthroughs on it. He wasn’t supposed to carry out any secret missions for Comrade Zhao, despite the poem he cited for Chen. The power struggle going on in the Forbidden City was way beyond his grasp and his interest. It might be just as well to be nothing more than an ordinary cop.

But would that work? He wasn’t sure. Others might not even let him keep his position as chief inspector.

As an alternative, he could give the flash drive to his immediate superiors, like a loyal Party member who believed in the system. But he shuddered at the thought in spite of himself.

For the early summer, it was an extraordinarily warm day. He looked up to glimpse a spray of red apricot blossom stretching out over a white wall on Zuzhou Road, trembling in a fitful breeze.

With so many details unknown to him, he couldn’t properly analyze the situation. He thought once more of the metaphor of a blind man riding a blind horse toward a deep lake during a dark night. Any move he might make felt risky, unguided. What’s worse, any move could play right into a political situation beyond his control, and out of his depth.

Even if he did decide to do what was expected of him in his position as a chief inspector, taking all the risk on himself, what about the people close and dear to him-particularly his old, sick mother?

He found himself walking over to the old neighborhood. Like the rest of Shanghai, it had been changing as well, though not much beyond new food stalls, restaurants, and convenience stores appearing here and there. Near Jiujiang Road, he saw a new whiteboard newsletter standing at the corner of the side street, on which was written, “To build a harmonious society.”

It was another reminder that, as a Party member police officer, his job was supposed to be nothing more than damage control. As repeatedly urged in the People’s Daily, everything he did was supposed to be for the sake of a “harmonious society.”

But how was he supposed to do that?

He took a shortcut through a lane once familiar to him. He wasn’t particularly surprised to feel a drop of water splashing on his forehead. He tilted his head to see a line of colorful clothing, freshly washed and dripping from bamboo poles overhead. It was another ominous sign for this assignment. According to a folk superstition, it was bad luck to walk under women’s underwear, let alone under ones dripping from above-

“Damn! What a shitty taste!”

Chen was startled by a curse echoing from a middle-aged man who was eating from a large rice bowl, shaking his head like a rattle drum over a shrimp that he’d spat out onto the ground.

An elderly woman bending over a common sink beside him cast an inquiring look at the shrimp. “Oh, it was dipped in formalin so that it would look like a Wuxie white shrimp.”

“It fucking tastes like Chairman Mao.”

“What?”

“Isn’t he still preserved in formalin in that crystal coffin?” The man stood up, raging in high dudgeon, dumping the remaining portion forcefully into the lidless garbage can. “What retribution!”

“Come on. Under Chairman Mao, you wouldn’t have had shrimp like this.”

“That’s true. Then there was no shrimp at all at the market.”

Lately, there had been a fashionable “rediscovery” of shikumen houses and longtang alleyways, which was probably nothing but a nostalgic myth conjured by some of the “already rich,” wistfully thinking that the traditional way of living was still viable.

With an increasing income and lifestyle gap between the rich and the poor, with blatant corruption and injustice everywhere, with hazardous chemicals in the everyday food, how could ordinary people sit outside contentedly in a scruffy, shabby lane, as if in some old photograph?

The people who lived here were anxious to move out of one of the city’s forgotten corners into new apartment buildings, but they remained helplessly stranded.

Near his mother’s residence, Chen saw a fruit stall. Next to it, a gray-haired man was sprawled out in a ramshackle chair, its original rattan replaced by plastic straw rope or whatever stray material was capable of keeping it in a recognizable shape. Spread out over his face was a newspaper with a partially legible headline: “Reading… Paradise of Intelligence,” and his stockinged feet dangled just above the cigarette-butt-strewn sidewalk. He seemed totally oblivious of everything going on around him, but he nodded at Chen mechanically, like a windup toy soldier.

Chen recognized him as a middle school classmate. He’d been laid off from his factory job years earlier, now managing to eke out a meager living with this fruit stall at the corner. He sat out here every day, barely moving, as if slowly turning into an unmistakable street marker. Chen stopped at his stall and bought two small bamboo baskets, one of apples and one of oranges, then went on to his mother’s.

With the baskets in his hand, he knocked on her door.

Thanks to the help of the neighborhood committee, she’d moved down from the attic room to a corner room on the first floor, which was about the same size. The neighborhood committee went out of their way to look out for her, not because she was a good, old resident of many years but because her son was now a “big shot” in the Party system. Since she was still unwilling to move in with him or to leave the old neighborhood, the influence his position carried was about all he could do for her.

After knocking on the door a couple of times, Chen pushed it open and stepped inside. He saw her dozing on a bamboo deck chair, a cup of green tea sitting on a tiny table beside her. She looked fairly relaxed but lonely in the sudden shaft of light streaming in through the door. She was hard of hearing and hadn’t heard his knock. Awakened by the sun in her eyes, she looked up, surprised at the sight of him in the room.

“Oh, I’m so glad you could come over today, son. But you didn’t have to buy me anything. I’m really doing fine,” she said, trying to get up, leaning heavily on a dragon-head-carved bamboo cane. “You didn’t call.”

“I had something to do at the City Government Building, so I decided to drop in on my way back.”

“What’s up?”

“Nothing particular, but your birthday is coming up next month. We must do something to celebrate, Mother. So I wanted to discuss it with you.”

“For an old woman like me, a birthday doesn’t call for celebration. But times have really changed. Several of your friends have called to talk to me about their plans to throw a birthday party.”

“You see, people all want to do something.”

“Peiqin came over yesterday and cooked several special dishes for me. It’s so nice of her; she doesn’t have to come, since I have the hourly maid coming in to help. Peiqin insisted, however, that I should have a special diet. She suggested that she cook for the occasion. White Cloud dropped in the other day, too, and declared that she would buy a large cake for the birthday party.”

“That was so kind of them,” he said, feeling even guiltier at her mention of both Peiqin and White Cloud. The old woman’s one regret in this world of red dust was that her son remained single. In her eyes, Peiqin had always been a model wife, and White Cloud had, at one time, been a possible candidate. He hadn’t seen White Cloud for quite a while, though he still thought of her occasionally. He was the one to blame for their estrangement, recalling a song she’d once sung for him in a dimly lit karaoke room.

You like to say you are a grain of sand, / occasionally fallen into my eyes, in mischief. / You would rather have me weep by myself / than have me love you, / and then you disappear again in the wind / like a grain of sand…

It was a sentimental piece titled “Sobbing Sand,” but he remembered the melody. People invariably get sentimental when it’s too late.

Chen started peeling an apple for his mother. Putting it on a saucer on the small table, he nearly tipped over the teacup.

Visiting her was perhaps just an attempt to delay the crucial decision, which he nonetheless had to make.

“You have something on your mind, son,” she said, picking up a piece of apple and pushing it over to him.

“No, I’m fine-just too busy. Things can be so complicated in today’s society.”

“This world is too new, too capriciously changing for an old woman. I’ve been reading the Buddhist scripture, you know. It says that things may be difficult for people to see through. It’s simply because everything is only appearance, like a dream, like a bubble, like a dewdrop, like lightning. So are you yourself.”

“You’re so right, Mother.”

“Perhaps it’s also like a painting. When you are deeply involved in it, you never really have perspective on it. You never really see yourself in the painting. Once you gain some distance, you might become aware of something you never saw before. Enlightenment comes when you’re no longer part of anything.”

It reminded him of several lines by the Song dynasty poet Su Shi, but for her, it came from Buddhist scripture. He was grateful that she retained her perspective and remained clear-headed, in spite of her frail health. But there was also something disturbing in her remark.

“I remember a favorite quote of your father’s: ‘There are things a man will do, and things he will not do,’” she said. “It’s that simple, and that’s all there is to it.”

That was a quote from Confucius. Chen’s late father was a renowned neo-Confucian scholar, who drew such lines for himself, and consequently suffered a great deal during the Cultural Revolution.

Where would Chief Inspector Chen himself draw the line today?

It didn’t take long for his mother to appear tired. She started yawning repeatedly, without even finishing the apple he’d peeled for her. It might not bode well for her recovery, and he didn’t want to add to her discomfort by staying any longer. So he took his leave of her, gently pulling the door closed as he left.

He walked through the neighborhood, becoming aware of people’s occasional curious glances. Some of them might have recognized him, so he kept walking, his head ducked down. Soon he reached Yun’nan Road, where he stopped and waited for the traffic light to change before crossing the street.

In existentialism, one makes a choice and accepts the consequences. That’s where freedom comes from. But what if the choice brought about consequences to others?

His mother, for instance.

The traffic light turned green.

Looking up, he saw a relatively tall building with its gold-painted name, Ruikang, shining on the façade. It wasn’t exactly a new, upscale building, but because of its excellent location, one square meter here cost no less than thirty thousand yuan in the present market.

Then he remembered that Lianping lived in this building. It was close to his mother’s, as she’d told him, and was just one block behind Great World, an entertainment center built almost a century ago that was now closed for restoration. For a non-Shanghainese girl, she was doing quite well. She had an apartment at the center of the city, her own luxury car, both symbols of the Shanghai dream.

He glanced around the subdivision but didn’t see her car. Perhaps it was parked in back. He wasn’t in any mood to drop in on her, but he was surprised that his thoughts kept returning to her even though he was in the midst of a developing crisis.

That was probably because she’d been so helpful with the investigation. He was impressed by her cynical criticism of the unbridled corruption in the nation’s socialism with Chinese characteristics, though he’d known her for only a couple of weeks and known her real name, Lili, for only a couple of days. He was aware of the gaps that separated them-between their backgrounds and their ways of looking at society, not to mention their age difference. Still, it wasn’t too much to say that she already left a mark on his police work. Not only had she provided him a general grounding in the world of the Internet, she had also given him a sense of the ways people used it to resist and expose corruption. It was also her suggestion that he go to Shaoxing, and prior to that she had helped him set up the meeting with Melong, both of which affected the course of his investigation.

Again, he restrained himself from thinking of her other than in a professional capacity. He walked down Guangxi Road, stopping abruptly at the corner of Jinling Road.

There was an Internet café at the corner called Flying Horse. It was the one mentioned by Lieutenant Sheng, the one from which the e-mail with the photo had been sent to Melong. The evening when Chen met Melong, at the cross-bridge noodle place, Melong had told him that the Internet café was nearby.

Next to the Internet café there was a Chinese herbal medicine store. There was a line of people waiting outside the herbal medicine store, obscuring the entrance to the Internet café. Like most others, Flying Horse was open twenty-four hours a day, and through the line of people Chen could see that the door stood ajar.

Suddenly, he realized that there was something he might have overlooked. Transfixed at the idea of it, Chen shuddered in spite of himself. He crossed the street and stepped into the Internet café. A smallish girl at the front desk asked him for his ID with a sleepy yawn. As at the other Internet cafés, the new regulation requiring that users provide ID and sign the register was being observed.

Chen showed her his police badge and pointed at the register.

“I need to make a copy of all the entries for this month.”

She blinked at him as if desperately trying to rouse herself out of a stupor.

“My manager won’t be back until eight o’clock.”

“Don’t worry about him. Here’s my business card. Tell him to call me if he wants to talk. Now give me the register. You must have a copy machine in the office, and it’ll only take me about ten minutes to copy the pages I need. I’ll pay you accordingly.”

She hesitated and then pushed a button, which brought the owner to the front desk. He was a stout man with a large head and broad shoulders. He appeared to be flabbergasted, having recognized Chen and realized his position.

“What wind has brought you here today, Chief?”

“So it’s you-Iron Head Diao. That’s your nickname, right?”

“Wow, you still remember me. We went to the same elementary school, but you were my senior. You’re really somebody now,” Iron Head Diao said obsequiously. “What can I do for you?”

“Let me see the register.”

“This one?” he said, handing it to Chen.

Chen glanced at the first two pages. The register was a new one, with the first entry in it being from just three days ago.

“Let me look at the two before this one.”

“Sure,” Iron Head Diao said, reaching below the counter and pulling out two more register books.

“Is there anywhere I can check through them in peace?” Chen asked.

“Come back to my office. It’s up in the attic.”

Without any further ado, Iron Head Diao led him to the back and up a shaky ladder. In the office there was a desk as well as a copy machine.

“It’s all yours,” Iron Head Diao said before climbing down the squeaky ladder. “Stay as long as you like.”

It wasn’t much more than a retrofitted attic: small, dimly lit, but with enough privacy for Chen’s purpose. What’s more, there was also a surveillance monitor, which commanded a view of the whole place. While he could watch what was going on downstairs, no one would be able to see up into the attic office.

He started looking through the entries. The second register covered the period he wanted to check. It only took him five or six minutes before he came to the date, the time slot, and a name, even though it didn’t correspond to the number of the computer from which the e-mail with the photo had been sent to Melong.

Another piece of the puzzle fell into place.

Gazing at the page, Chen heaved a long sigh.

He looked at the surveillance monitor, which showed Iron Head Diao pacing about, smoking and glancing up furtively. His enormous head hung low, as if weighed down with worries.

Chen then did something quite unusual for him. He tore out a couple of pages from the register and stuffed them into his pocket. It surprised even himself, as it was something he couldn’t have envisioned doing even a minute before.

It was unprofessional and unjustifiable, particularly for a police officer.

There were things that took precedence over being a cop, however, he hastened to assure himself. And he might not have to worry too much about it. A couple of missing pages from an outdated register might not be noticed.

He closed the registers, climbed down the ladder, and handed them back to Iron Head Diao.

As he left the Internet café, with Iron Head Diao waving at him from the door, still grinning from ear to ear, Chen realized that he hadn’t written his name in the register. That might be just as well. Like the other day, at the Internet café in Pudong, there were always loopholes in regulations.

On the street corner, he saw a white-haired man in rags shuffling out of a sordid lane across Yunnan Road, despite the superstition that people should avoid walking under wet clothing, which was hanging from bamboo poles that crisscrossed the alley overhead. But what could an old man do, moving slowly, leaning on a bamboo cane? Possibly born, raised, and then grown old in that same narrow lane, he would have had to enter and exit the lane here, day in and day out, likely to be down and out until the very end.

Chen was about to cross the street when a black BMW convertible sped along Jinling Road, splashing muddy rainwater on him.

“You’re blind!” The young driver cursed at him with one hand on the wheel and the other on the shoulder of a slender girl sprawled beside him, her bare legs stretched out like fresh lotus roots.

That such a contrast had become a common sight in the city depressed him.

Perhaps he was blind. At the moment, he really had no idea where he was heading. Then he got a phone call from Young Bao at the Writers’ Association.

“I’ve got it, Master Chen,” Young Bao said breathlessly. “And something more-hopefully, something that will surprise you.”