Enigma of China

TWENTY-SIX

The door opened, and the waitress stepped into the room, carrying a large silver tray.

“I’m sorry for the interruption, sir. There’s one special course before the hot dishes. We thought you might enjoy that.”

She placed a white plate in front of each of them, and then a large platter in between. Each plate had on it a deshelled steamed blue crab, still in crab shape, with the legs and claws arranged meticulously. The platter contained chunks of liquor-immersed raw crab.

“It’s not river crab season yet,” the waitress said, introducing the course, “so we use live blue crabs flown in special from the sea. The deshelled crab is a favorite among Western customers here. The liquor-immersed crab is a celebrated dish in Shaoxing cuisine. We use live crabs, plus Maotai liquor, and it’s stored at fifty degrees, so there’s no need to worry about the freshness of it.”

“Thank you. Liquor-immersed crab is my mother’s favorite.”

“Why not have it boxed and take it to her?” Lianping asked.

“Good idea. I hardly touch raw seafood myself.” He turned to the waitress, “We’re in no hurry for the hot dishes.”

“We can box the crab for you after you finish dinner. It’s seven now,” the waitress said, “and we’ll wait for your order to start cooking the hot dishes.”

She left, again closing the door after her.

Outside, the glittering splendors began to surge up along the Bund. Across the river, the ceaselessly changing neon lights from the jostling skyscrapers projected intoxicating fantasies of the new century on the shimmering water.

Lianping sighed. “What a feast!”

“I have no idea how long it takes to deshell a crab like that.”

“By the way, do you know the Internet joke about a river crab? ‘River crab’ in Chinese is a homophone for ‘harmony.’ When an online post is banned, people will say it was harmonized, deleted for the sake of harmony of our socialist society. Now they simply say the post has been river-crabbed.”

“The connotations are unmistakably negative, just like they are in the idiomatic expression about the chain of crabs.”

“Mr. Gu certainly went out of his way to have the Shaoxing style meal prepared for you,” she said, picking up a glistening white crab leg with her slender fingers. “But you were saying that there was something else left to resolve in your investigation.”

“Yes, there was another part. Remember the other clue in Detective Wei’s phone call to Party Secretary Li?”

“You mean the visit to Wenhui he planned to make?”

“Yes. From what his wife said, I thought it might have had something to do with the picture that got Zhou into trouble in the first place. That was certainly the focus of Internal Security, and to some extent, of Jiang too. For me, this part is still mostly guesswork.”

“So…”

Chen helped himself to the golden crab roe, which was displayed like a dainty chrysanthemum petal on the white plate. It tasted scrumptious, just as he remembered it from many years ago. It wasn’t an evening, however, for him to savor delicacies.

A shrill siren blared all of a sudden from a distance and reverberated along the darksome water.

“It’s an aspect of the case that is not only informed by a lot of guesswork, but also involves some people that you or I may know. Still, I wanted to tell you about it tonight-and not as a cop.”

“This is intriguing,” she said uncertainly.

“As I may have told you, it can be tiresome to be stuck in one’s professional role all the time. So for the sake of convenience, we might as well switch to something different, more like storytelling.”

“Storytelling?” she said, surprised by his sudden shift in manner. What was the enigmatic chief inspector up to?

“Do you remember what you suggested with regard to the poems you wanted me to write for Wenhui? You suggested that I adopt a persona. A persona that didn’t have to be the writer himself. Adopting such a persona has helped me with a couple of poems. It’s a pity that I don’t have more time for poetry.” He poured himself another cup of the aromatic and heady rice wine, which he drained before he went on. “In a police report, in some situations, people may be referred to as John Doe or Jane Doe. Or in some novels, characters might be referred to by letters such as C or L.”

“So… tell me a story, if you like,” she said, the wine rippling in the small cup in her hand, “Chief Inspector Chen.”

“This story flows more smoothly if it’s told from a third person perspective. More important, remember that you’re listening to something fictional. As such, the narrator doesn’t have to worry about possible liability and the listener doesn’t have any responsibilities. For the record, I’m just a storyteller at the moment, not a cop with any professional obligations, and you are just listening to a fantasized scenario, nothing that concerns you as a professional journalist.”

Whatever Chen was about to say, Lianping thought it would have direct bearing on her. She thought she should have guessed as much earlier.

There was a subtle change in his tone as he started to tell his story.

“C was a cop investigating the death of a shuangguied corrupt official named Z. It was a complicated case with different people from different agencies investigating different aspects, and needless to say, each of them had their own agenda. One of the aspects of the case concerned the subversive role in today’s society that the most devoted Internet users-the netizens-can play through those increasingly frequent human-flesh searches. The case in question could be said to have started with a picture posted online, which prompted just such a search, and which in turn exposed Z.

“As a cop, C didn’t think that the person who originally sent the picture to the Web forum did anything wrong. On the contrary, C had his reservations about the government’s control of the Internet. As for the other investigators, including Internal Security, they were focused on punishing the ‘Internet troublemaker’ in the name of maintaining social stability. But their target was clever and had sent the picture from a computer at an Internet café, thus making it impossible for them to track down the sender.”

Chen paused to pick up his cup again. She reached out, unexpectedly, and snatched the cup out of his hand.

“No, you’re drinking too much.”

“I’m fine, Lianping,” he said with a wan smile. “In the course of his investigation, C came to know a young journalist named L. He was drawn to her, not merely because she was attractive and intelligent but also because she was passionate about justice in socialism with Chinese characteristics. To his pleasant surprise, she helped him with the investigation, familiarizing him with the Internet users’ resistance to governmental control of the Internet. She introduced him to a computer expert who was able to break down some barriers for him. In the meantime, in some of the pictures she sent to him and his friends electronically, C came upon clues that had eluded Internal Security. While he was picking up some e-mail from her, C happened to discover a loophole in the new Internet café regulations. From there, he was astonished to learn that the identity of the original picture sender was none other than L.” Chen paused for a moment, then started up again. “Now, what was C going to do?

“As a cop and a rising cadre, he was supposed to report this to the higher authorities, but L didn’t post the picture out of any personal grudge. She was merely upset with the brazen, widespread corruption that was taking place while those responsible were pretending that their actions were in the Party’s interests. Her desire to cause Z trouble was, in fact, a spontaneous protest against the injustices of an authoritarian society. Her action led to a call to dig into the background of Z, which in turn resulted in a flood of responses. What happened to Z subsequently was beyond her imagining, and for which she wasn’t to blame, C concluded.

“So, if what she did was done on the spur of the moment, did he…” Chen trailed off.

In the silence that ensued, they heard footsteps moving closer to the door, and then trail off down the hall.

“So that’s it, the end of the story?”

“Yes, that’s the end. As I mentioned earlier, for C, that was an aspect of the investigation he has to wrap up, a missing piece to the puzzle. But there are things above and beyond playing one’s part in the system. Things far more important, like justice, however partial and paradoxical, in the present society. Of course, the persona in this narrative doesn’t have to be a real person. It’s just a story between you and me.”

Chen then produced an envelope containing the page he’d torn from the register at the Flying Horse Internet café and handed it to her. “Oh, this is for you. I almost forgot.”

“What is it?” she asked, as she opened the envelope. She looked briefly at the name “Lili” on the register page, and her face drained of color. Only a few knew that was her childhood name. Her ID card bore her new name, but the people in the Internet café in the neighborhood knew her well and never noticed or bothered about it. “I don’t know what to say, Chen.”

“What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence. I think it was Wittgenstein who said that. A fitting paradigm. After all, exposing the original picture sender wasn’t the aspect on which C focused at all.”

He reached out to pour himself another cup of wine, but she didn’t stop him this time.

“But enough of that story; let me go back to the case that I’ve been working on. What am I going to do?”

“Chief Inspector Chen?”

“You’ve gotten lost in this story, Lianping,” Chen said, taking a deliberate sip of wine. “As a cop with professional commitments, I’m supposed to report developments in the investigation to Party Secretary Li. Alternatively, I’m required to report to the Shanghai Communist Party Discipline Committee. But then what?”

“Then-”

“You can easily imagine. There’s no need for me to get into the possibilities.”

“What if you choose to do nothing?” she asked with bated breath. “No one else knows any of this.”

“If I do nothing, then Detective Wei died for nothing. I would never be able to look you in the eye again, not with any self-respect as a cop.”

“Then-” Impulsively, she reached across the table and grasped his hand, only to quickly withdraw hers, the diamond ring dazzling on her finger.

“You mentioned hearing something about the mission of the Beijing team in Shanghai, Lianping.”

“No one knows about these things for certain,” Lianping said, her eyes downcast. “It’s possible that what I heard was all hearsay.”

“Maybe or maybe not. This might be my last case as a police officer, and I want to go ahead.”

She looked up in confusion and alarm.

“I don’t know how things really stand at the top levels in Beijing, but as a Party member, I’m also supposed to report to the Central Party Discipline Committee in Beijing.”

“I’ve heard of your personal connection to Comrade Zhao, the retired Secretary of that Committee,” she said.

“Don’t believe what people may have said about the connection. Believe it or not, the Beijing team has never contacted me. For me, it has been just like the proverb about a blind man riding a blind horse to a fathomless lake in the depths of a dark night. Incidentally, I thought of that back at the Shaoxing hotel. I don’t know what will happen to me, but I have to take the plunge.”

She stared at him, and then lowered her head into her hands. When she looked up a few seconds later, her eyes were glistening.

“You make me feel so wretched,” she said in a wavering voice. “Here I am, trying to be smart and sophisticated, trying to realize the Shanghai dream, seize the moment, go with the flow, and lodge an occasional protest on the sly. That’s about it. But here you’re putting your career on the line…” She stopped to wipe her eyes with the back of her hand.

“There’s no need to say that,” he said, tapping her hand, soft, yet a little wet. He touched the trail of a tear on her cheek before he reached again for his cup. “Perhaps it’s time for me to think of finding another job. I might not be too bad a translator, as Gu just told you. Well, something else for your ‘biography’ of me is that I’ve been translating some additional classical Chinese poems, also on the sly. Poems such as this one by Wang Han, from the eighth century: ‘The mellow wine shimmers / in the luminous stone cup! / I’m going to drink it on the horse / when the Army Pipa suddenly starts / urging me to charge out. // Oh, do not laugh, my friend, / if I drop dead / drunk on the battlefield. / How many soldiers / have come back home?’”

“Please stop, Chen-”

“I cherish your friendship, Lianping, so I’m going to ask you to do one thing for me. But you can certainly say no.”

“Tell me.”

“When I give the evidence left by Zhou to the Central Party Discipline Committee in Beijing, they might choose to act on it, or to do nothing at all. Whatever they do, it’ll be what is in their political interest at that moment, possibly for all the right reasons, or maybe for all the wrong ones. For them, justice is like a colored ball in a magician’s hand; it’s capable of changing in a heartbeat. That’s why I need you-to make sure the truth comes out, in case my quixotic attempt ends up like a rock sinking silently to the bottom of the sea. With your computer and Internet skills, I believe you’ll know how to do it effectively, yet safely.”

“I’ll do anything you want me to do,” she said with a catch in her voice, her eyes locking his.

“And you’ll do it without risking exposure. Promise me, Lianping.”

“Yes, I know how to do that.”

She reached across to clasp his hand. The starry night came streaming through the curtain that rustled once, and once only. The candle-projected shadows flickered in the background.

Fair waves of the moon fading, / a jade handle of the Dipper lowering, / we calculate by counting on our fingers / when the west wind will start blowing, / unaware of time flowing like a river in the dark…

They once again heard a melody drifting over from the big clock atop the Shanghai Customs House.

“It’s ‘The East Is Red’ again,” he said, “a song proclaiming Mao as the savior of China.”

“Yes?”

“The customs house used to play a different melody a few years ago. When they changed it back, I don’t know. Time really flows-in the dark.”

“It seems as if I’ve known you for years, Chen,” she said softly, “but then, as if just meeting for the first time.”

“I remember when we met at the Writers’ Association. Professor Yao was giving a talk, titled ‘The Enigma of China.’ It reminded me of a painting I’d seen in Madrid.”

“What painting?”

“The Enigma of Hitler by Salvador Dalí. It is a singularly haunting painting. I saw it years ago, but the memory of some surrealistic details has never faded from my mind. The wilted tree, the torn photo of Hitler on the empty plate, the gigantic broken telephone with a teardrop, perhaps symbolic of the ideological control of people. Here, today, we could simply change the telephone speaker to an Internet cable, and the photo of Hitler to one of Mao. In the painting, I remember there’s also a shadowy figure emerging out from behind an umbrella. But what does the figure represent? It could be anybody or even a projection of the collective illusion. But I’ve never really figured that out. It could be me or you. Yesterday, my mother said something truly enlightening. ‘You never really see yourself in the painting.’”

“A painting called The Enigma of China?”

“For too long, I’ve been in the painting-or in the system, as you might well say. Perhaps it’s time for me to get out of it.”

“But I doubt that, Chief Inspector Chen,” she said. “Enigma or not-”

There came another knock on the door.

They were both startled.

“What!”

“Mr. Chen, is it time for the hot dishes?”