Red Mandarin Dress

THIRTY

IT WAS A NEW day, technically speaking.

Chen finished his wine in a gulp, looking up at the mahogany clock. The restaurant owner had done a good job reviving the money-intoxicating and gold-glittering atmosphere of old Shanghai, paying extra attention to the details. The clock appeared to be a genuine one, having survived all those years, with its brass pendulum burnished like new.

He might have broken the cycle. It was Friday now. There was practically no possibility of Jia’s trying to claim another victim before the trial.

So he picked up the silver bell from the table and rang it.

White Cloud came to the table in a floating florid dress, blossoming like a night flower. “Yes?”

“The special course for the night,” Chen said. “Don’t forget any details.”

“All the details,” she said, lighting two candles on the table before leaving.

Jia watched, making no comment about Chen’s unusual instruction to her.

Chen lit a cigarette. A sudden silence wreathed the room; only the pendulum of the antique clock remained audible.

Suddenly, the lights went out in the room and there was only candlelight, shivering in the draught as the door reopened.

She returned in a red mandarin dress, with its slits badly torn, several of her bosom buttons undone, and her bare feet shining on the carpet.

Jia stood up, his face suddenly bleached of all color, as if having seen a ghost.

In a Song dynasty tale of Judge Bao that Chen had read, a criminal was shocked into confession by the apparition of a murdered woman. At that time, people were still superstitious, groveling before the fury of a ghost.

Jia was making an effort, however, to pull himself together as he slumped back in his seat. He kept his head low, wiping his forehead with a paper napkin, to avoid the sight of her.

She carried a glass pot on top of a gas stove in her hands. As she put the stove on the table, leaning over to light it, her breasts became visible through the opening of her unbuttoned dress.

There was a turtle swimming in the pot above the stove. Unaware of the water temperature that was beginning to change, it looked out at leisure. Another cruel course, that live turtle soup. With the fire turned on low, it could cook for quite a long while.

“A special soup made of chicken and scallop broth,” she explained. “The turtle absorbs the essence of the soup in its struggle, so its meat, when cooked, will have an extraordinary flavor. Its movement will also make the soup more delicious.”

“A strange course, an unusual restaurant,” Jia said, regaining his composure, though still sweating profusely. “Even the waitress is dressed so dramatically.”

“This used to be a mansion, and its mistress was a legendary beauty, especially in an elegant red mandarin dress,” Chen said. “I wonder if she ever wore the dress like this. Or if she ever served such a cruel course, which is like a murder, with the young girl suffering, struggling against a sense of inevitable doom.”

“You’re full of associations,” Jia said.

In a way, Jia had suffered a similar fate, helpless, doomed in spite of all his struggles. Looking into the glass pot, Chen had a momentary vision of the turtle turning into a boy, holding out his hand against the inevitable. He felt a sick knot churning on his stomach.

But as a cop, Chen was responsible for punishing the man for his crime against Jasmine, against the other girls, and against Hong, his colleague.

“So inhumanly cruel,” he muttered in spite of himself, “but I can do the same.”

“You are lost in the flight of your imagination, Chief Inspector Chen.”

“No, I’m not,” Chen said.

He rose, scooped up his trench coat from the clothes tree, and put it over White Cloud’s shoulders. Reaching his hand out, he buttoned a breast button for her before he said, “Thank you so much for all your help. You are done here. Keep yourself warm. It’s Dongzhi night, and you may want to join your family.”

“No.” She blushed, looking more attractive than he had ever seen before. “I’ll wait outside for you.”

After she left the room, he said to Jia, “No, it’s not a night for stories, or special courses, you know, Mr. Jia.”

“You mean it’s Dongzhi night? Yes, I know.”

“I want to thank you first for filling in the holes in the red mandarin dress case,” Chen said, “but it’s time for a showdown between us.”

“What? What are you driving at? You said you wanted to tell a story. Perhaps there’s something else in the story, that much I guessed, but now it is becoming the red mandarin dress case!”

“We don’t need to pretend any longer. You are the protagonist in the story, Mr. Jia, and also the murderer in the red mandarin dress case.”

“Now, Chief Inspector Chen. You can write any story you like. But such a fictional accusation-you don’t have anything to support it. Not a single shred of evidence, or the shadow of a witness.”

“Evidence and witnesses there will be, but they may not even be necessary. The murderer will talk-with or without them.”

“How? Now you’ve crossed the line into fantasy. As a reader, I don’t see how you as a cop could do anything to prosecute such a case as described in your story.” Jia remained calm, hanging onto his role as a reader. “If a cop were really so confident, he would be writing a case report instead of fiction.”

“You keep using the word fiction, Mr. Jia. But there is also nonfiction. Nonfiction sells better in today’s market.”

“What do you mean by nonfiction?”

“A real story about Mei and her son. Authentic, nostalgic, graphic, and tragic as the Old Mansion itself. A lot of people will be intrigued. For the time being, I may not even have to elaborate on the mandarin dress case aspect. Just some hints here and there. You can bet it would be a sensational bestseller.”

“How could you stoop so low, Chief Inspector Chen, for the sake of making a bestseller?”

“It’s about the tragedy of the Cultural Revolution, and its tragic repercussions even today. As a cop and a writer, I don’t see anything low about it. If it becomes a bestseller, I’ll donate the money to a private Cultural Revolution museum in Nanjing.”

“A nonfiction writer has to be wary of being sued for slander, Chief Inspector Chen.”

“I am a cop, and I write like a cop, basing every detail on evidence. Why should I worry about a lawsuit? It will bring in a lot of publicity, and a large number of reporters too. They are hunting for anything related to the red mandarin dress case. Don’t expect them to miss the point in the book. And along with the text, I have something that will grab their interest.”

“What cards have you not yet put on the table?”

“Remember the pictures I’ve told you about on the phone-oh, I’m so sorry. I should have shown them to you earlier,” Chen said. “The old photographer used five or six rolls of film. I’ll have all of them published.”

He produced the pictures from his briefcase and spread them out on the table.

It must have taken all Jia’s willpower not to snatch up the pictures. Instead, he cast a casual glance at them in nonchalance.

“I don’t know what pictures you are talking about, but you don’t have the right to publish them.”

“The photographer’s widow has the right. For a poor old woman, the money from the pictures may help a little.” Chen helped himself to a spoonful of the snakeskin before he took up the magazine again. “When I first looked at the picture, it reminded me of several lines from Othello: ‘If it were now to die, / ’Twere now to be most happy; for, I fear, / My soul hath her content so absolute / That not another comfort like to this / Succeeds in unknown fate.’ Absurd, you may say, but I came to understand your insistence of putting each victim in a red mandarin dress. You want to remember her at her happiest moment, your happiest as well. To do you justice, you might have wanted those victims to be happy, and beautiful too, for that moment.

“So I’ll call attention to the similarities between the pictures and the murder case. In a couple of the pictures, the bosom buttons of her dress appear slightly undone. And in several of them, she walks barefoot. Not to mention the mandarin dress itself. The same material and style. The same craftsmanship too. An authority I have consulted about the mandarin dress will back me up. And what about the background of the original mandarin dress? A private garden. Now except for the last victim, the scenes where the victims were found invariably had something to do with flower and grass. The symbolic correspondence is impressive too. In fact, the flower-bed background for the first victim is only a stone’s throw from the music institute.”

“You are misleading people-”

“No, I don’t think I have to,” Chen pressed on. “The pictures of the beautiful hostess of the Ming Mansion-nowadays the celebrated Old Mansion-shall prove more than enough. There are about eighty pictures in all. Apart from using them in my story, I’ll sell one or two to a newspaper or a magazine-to achieve the maximum effect. Also, let’s think about a title for it. How about ‘The First Red Mandarin Dress’? People will surely unearth all the details. Dirty details. Sensational details. Sexual details. It will be a feast for the reporters. And I will do my best to help them.”

“We don’t have to talk anymore, Chief Inspector Chen. You invited me here for a story of yours, and I listened patiently to the end. Now you are suddenly talking about a felony, accusing me of being the murderer. I don’t think I need stay here any longer. As an attorney, I know my rights,” Jia said, looking at Chen in the eye. “You can come to me tomorrow with a warrant, either before, during, or after the trial.”

“Don’t leave, Mr. Jia.” Chen made a gesture for his patience. “I haven’t even started telling you about another selling point. For romantic suspense, I’ll include part of my interview with Xia.”

“You contacted Xia!” Jia said. “Yes, to undermine the housing development case, you are capable of anything.”

“No. A romantic affair between a successful attorney and a celebrated model is just another selling point for ‘The First Red Mandarin Dress.’ ”

“You are grasping at straws. We parted such a long time ago. It has nothing to do with your fiction or nonfiction.”

“People meet, people part, no one can help it. But why part? There are interpretations and interpretations. She may not say a lot, not to begin with, but I bet those paparazzi won’t let her get away. Sooner or later, they will be able to dig out more intimate details about your personal life, fitting them to the psychological profile of a sex killer. They will be especially interested to learn about the source of one peculiarity of the murder case: the fact that all the victims were stripped naked but not sexually attacked. It has already riveted the attention of the reporters.”

“You are making a serious mistake,” Jia retorted, standing up indignantly. “Before you can lock up the attention of the reporters, there may be one or two more victims. I don’t think people would be grateful to an irresponsible cop lost in his fantasy of a bestseller.”

That was a threat Chen had to take seriously. Like in a Chinese proverb, a desperate dog jumps over the wall. Jia was capable of striking out again, like he did at the Joy Gate, in spite of the police surveillance.

White Cloud came into the room again, still wearing the red mandarin dress.

“Sorry, it’s the time to put in the seasoning for the soup.” She lifted up the lid and poured in the seasoning. She also changed the spoons and saucers for them before she turned to Jia, smiling an apologetic smile. “Please be seated.”

She could have seen or heard what was going on through the frosted glass of the door. The turtle was swirling frantically in the pot, splashing out the soup.

Neither Chen nor Jia said anything in her presence. She left, lightfootedly. The room was silent except for the turtle hissing in the pot.

“It is Dongzhi night tonight. A night for family reunions, for the living and the dead,” Chen resumed. “My mother wants me to be with her. But in terms of Confucian priority, a matter for one’s country is more important. I have no choice. So I have to make sure there’s not another victim in a red mandarin dress, and I’ll take responsibility for it.”

“Then it’s your responsibility,” Jia said, “if you hang on to your wild story at the expense of letting the real criminal slip away.”

“The real criminal won’t slip away. No more than the turtle in the soup. Incidentally, it is a great boost to yin and yang, fantastic ambrosia.” Chen took a look into the pot. “Readers will really enjoy the part about sexual desire of the son for the mother. A taste of Oedipus complex as delicious as the soup!”

“Chinese people will not be bamboozled by your psychological terms like Oedipus complex.”

“Exactly. Our readers will not care so much about the difference between the conscious and unconscious. They will say, ‘He’s so damn horny for his mother, he can’t fuck any other women, and he kills them in a perverted way, achieving an orgasm in the imagined company of his mother.’ ”

Jia did not speak, gazing into the glass pot, in which the turtle was still moving, but much slower.

“In one of the thrillers I translated,” Chen went on, “a serial killer cares little about what happens to himself, for his life is just a long tunnel without a light at the end, but he cares about the one he loves. In our case, what about her? Again, her memories will be dragged through the mire of shame and disgrace-even worse than in the Cultural Revolution-with every detail examined and exaggerated. What will those reporters really do? I have no control over that.”

“Now that you have concocted such a story, you will move ahead, regardless of your responsibility as a cop,” Jia said, looking up. “But there is something else you have to think about, Chief Inspector Chen. The housing development case is at a critical juncture. Any action against the plaintiff attorney could be seen as a political trick to cover up the government corruption. It is a case closely followed by media.”

“I’ll let you in on something too, Mr. Jia. About a month ago, somebody in the city government wanted me to look into the housing development case. I said no. Why? I, too, want to have those corrupt officials punished. However, they have kept updating me about the latest developments. A short while ago, I got a phone call about it in this room. A compromise has been reached in Beijing for the trial here, as you may know through your own channels.”

“A compromise indeed! So you know how dirty all this is.” After a pause Jia resumed, “In this case, not only are a number of high-ranking officials involved, but they are also interlocked in a power struggle at the top. You are no novice with politics, Chief Inspector Chen. If Beijing had really wanted to put an end to the case, I wouldn’t have been allowed to move it to the present stage. So do you think they want to see a dramatic twist at this juncture?”

“Yes, I’ve heard of the power struggle in the Forbidden City,” Chen said.

“Under normal circumstances, an attorney has to strive for the best interests of his clients. Some sort of deal is understandable. If the trial was interfered with, however, anything would be possible. Deal or no deal, the case might end up with all those official connections exposed, all the dirty details uncovered. The dogfight in the Forbidden City could come out too. What a political disaster! It is too much of a responsibility for a cop. You have to think about the consequences, Chief Inspector Chen.”

“I’ve thought about them, Mr. Jia. Whatever the scenario, the killing of innocent people has to be stopped. When people read the story together with the pictures, they will judge.”

“Some journalists are well-informed. I, too, know quite a few of them. When they learn about the politics behind the scene, do you think they will still be so enthusiastic about the story?”

“Let me assure you, Mr. Jia. I have some other pictures that will lock in their enthusiasm, in spite of all the politics.”

“What pictures are you talking about?”

“The pictures taken that fatal afternoon. A neighborhood cop, Comrade Fan, came to the scene. Suspecting foul play, he took pictures-at the foot of the staircase, before the medical people came to throw a blanket over her nude body.”

“You mean a picture of her lying on the ground that afternoon-”

“Yes, pictures of her lying there on the hard ground, cold, naked, as you may have imagined the scene in your mind thousands of times.”

“But that’s impossible-I mean those pictures-Fan never told me about them. No, it’s not true. You are bluffing.”

For the first time Jia didn’t bother to speak like an unrelated outsider, denying his part in the story.

“Let me show you one,” Chen said, taking out a picture. “A small one. I’m having all of them developed and enlarged. A number of pictures.”

It was a close-up of her lying on the ground, without a shred of clothes covering her body, an image Jia hadn’t looked back to see that afternoon, but which must have haunted him all these years.

Grasping the picture in his hand, Jia didn’t question its authenticity.

Again the turtle started floundering frantically in the pot, in a desperate effort to climb out, yet slipping off the slippery glass surface, repeatedly. An absurd, doomed effort.

“It is horrible, isn’t it?” Chen said, raising his chopsticks toward the pot.

Indeed it was, that scene under Jia’s gaze, not to mention the thought of its being examined anew by millions of readers.

Unearthing a buried body was considered the most horrendous act in traditional Chinese culture, but displaying a dead naked body could be far worse. That was why Comrade Fan had withheld the pictures all these years. Still, it was likely Chen’s last card.

“If the reporters were to get hold of them, together with those in the garden taken by the old photographer, and with the pictures at the crime scenes of the red mandarin dress case-”

“Stop, Chen. It’s so despicably low,” Jia struggled to say, his voice hissing, as if coming out of the pot too. “It’s beneath you.”

“To solve this case, nothing is really beneath a cop,” Chen said. “Now, let me say something about ‘despicably low.’ Something despicably low I initially encountered while working on my literature paper, as I’ve told you, about the deconstructive turns in classical love stories. As I’ve discovered, it’s at least partially because of the projection of a despicable male fantasy about women and sex-a fantasy archetypal in the unconscious of Chinese culture, or the collective unconscious, which I call the demonization of women in sexual love. It’s not a moment for literary theories, I know, but I want to say that you were possessed of it.”

He lifted the grass lid from the pot, ladling out the soup into a bowl for Jia, and another bowl for himself.

“When you were locked up in the back room of the neighborhood committee, your mother went to Comrade Fan. She was so worried about you. In desperation, she told him she was willing to do anything for your sake. Comrade Fan understood what she meant, but he declined, saying that Tian alone had the power to release you. To his regret, she took his advice. Not for one moment did Fan doubt that her concern for you was the cause of her being with Tian that afternoon. She did all that for you.

“You might have thought about such a possibility, but you couldn’t bring yourself to accept it. In that dark back room, what sustained you was the unsullied memory of her taking your hand in the garden-‘Mother, Let’s Go There.’ The world had collapsed around you, but she’s still yours, yours alone.

“So upon your return, the scene at home was absolutely appalling, an immaculate goddess shattering into a shameless slut in the arms of your persecutor. An unforgivable betrayal of you in your mind. It pushed you over the edge.

“But you’re wrong. According to my investigation, Tian had gone out of his way to assign himself to the institute. Like others, he probably watched her perform and became smitten with passion. The Cultural Revolution gave him the opportunity. He worked his way into the Mao Team to be close to her, but she tried her best to avoid his company in spite of his power. If she had succumbed to his pressure, he wouldn’t have come to your neighborhood and led the joint investigation. He didn’t get his opportunity until you got into trouble. She loved you more than anything else in the world. More than herself. Even under the circumstances, it was to Fan, not to Tian, that she first turned to for help.

“Now, it was only a couple of days later that you were unexpectedly released. If there was anything going on between them, it must have happened during that short period-for your sake. How desperate and painful it must have been for her to give herself to Tian, you can imagine.”

“But she didn’t have to. Nothing would have happened to-” Jia was unable to finish the sentence.

“Nothing would have happened to you? I doubt it. In those years, you could have been sentenced to death for such a ‘political crime.’ An old man was executed in the People’s Square, I remember, for the crime of carrying a Mao statue on his back by wrapping a rope around its neck. It’s symbolic of hanging Chairman Mao, the revolutionary people ruled. She knew better. She understood that Tian was capable of anything.

“But you kept imagining it from your perspective alone, never hers. The scene of her writhing and wallowing under another man crushed you. You were incapable of thinking rationally. That’s how you finally stumbled on an outlet in the serial killings, an outlet for both love and hate-”

Again he was interrupted by the shrill ringing of the cell phone. This time, it was Detective Yu.

“Sorry, I have to take another phone call,” Chen said, rising to move to the window. The garden outside was entirely submerged in darkness.

“Nothing in the car, Chief,” Yu said. “I studied the parking spot. It’s true that he could move from there and in through the side door without being seen by others. The front is hidden from view by a grove of bamboo. So I got in with the key.”

“Anything in his office?”

“It’s a large suite. In addition to the office, a reception room, and a study, there is also a small bedroom with a bathroom.”

“That’s not surprising. According to Xia, he often stays overnight there.”

“But that made it possible for him to wash Jasmine’s body.”

“That’s true.”

“I haven’t seen any bloodstains or anything like that there. The carpet must have been cleaned of late. It still has a detergent smell, and I saw a steam vacuum cleaner. But that’s something. In those high-end offices, cleaning is usually taken care of by professional people. Why would an attorney have done the cleaning himself?”

“That’s a good question.”

“Then I noticed something else, Chief. The color of the carpet. It matched that of the fiber stuck on the foot of the third victim.”

“Yes, he brought her in without being seen, but he failed to notice a fiber stuck between her toes.”

“But any result from the fiber test won’t be available until tomorrow morning. Besides, fiber evidence may not be conclusive for a homicide case.”

“It will be enough to hold him for a couple of days, and to justify a full search.” Chen added, “At least he can’t do anything during that period.”

“Should we start tonight?”

“Don’t rush. Wait for my call.”

When Chen moved back to the table, the turtle was turned over with its belly upward, a ghastly white belly, motionless in the pot.

“As a cop,” Jia said, “you have written a compassionate story.”

Chen wondered whether it was a sarcastic comment or if it indicated a subtle change on the part of Jia.

“Compassionate characterization is essential for any story,” Chen said, facing Jia. “You may think no one understands you, informed by all the absurdities and atrocities you suffered during the Cultural Revolution. You are like software written by all these events, and as a result, you can operate only one way; it’s beyond your own comprehension. But let me say that I tried to understand. Learning about all of your experiences, I kept saying to myself: but for luck, what happened to Jia could have happened to me.

“I couldn’t help identifying with the boy in the picture. How happy, holding her hand like the world, how unprepared for the disaster already drawing close to the horizon. I tried to think from your perspective. I felt like I was going mad.

“In the days after her death, whenever your neighbors looked at you, you thought they were seeing her running out after you in her nakedness. It was like a demon eating you up. So you moved out, tried to leave everything behind you. Later you even changed your name. But as in a poem by Su Dongpo, you were ‘trying not to think, but forgetting not.’

“Cop or not, I don’t want to condemn you for taking justice into your own hands-at least in the beginning, delivering those relentless blows to Tian. What a blinding force revenge can be, I understand. I, too, was beside myself over the death of a young colleague of mine. In the Jing’an temple, I swore I would do anything to avenge her.

“But things were getting out of your control. You discovered your sexual problem, the cause of which you must have guessed. As a celebrated attorney, known for politically controversial cases, it was too much of a risk for you to go to a shrink. So you had to hang on, like you did in the black back room of the neighborhood committee, except then you still had hope, with her waiting outside for you.

“Then you collapsed with the crisis over Jasmine. Panic turned you into a killer. When you put your hand on her, the repressions or suppressions built up in you all these years erupted. As for the rest, I don’t think I need to repeat any more.

“I’ve come here not as a judge, Mr. Jia, but I can’t help being a cop. That’s why I have made special arrangements, hoping we may be able to find a different way-”

“A different way? What difference will it make to a man who, as you’ve said, sees no light at the end of the tunnel?” Jia said slowly, deliberately. “Now what do you want?”

“What I want, as a cop, is for the killing of innocent people to stop.”

“Well, if tomorrow’s trial goes on as scheduled. If nothing happens to it-”

“That’s what I hope. Nothing happens to it,” Chen said, glancing at his watch. “Nothing out of the way.”

“Oh, it’s Friday already. You don’t have to worry about it,” Jia said, as if reading his thoughts. “And those pictures have to be destroyed.”

“They will be destroyed. All the negatives too. I give you my word on it.”

“Are you still going to write your story, Chief Inspector Chen?”

“No, not as long as I can help it; not that nonfiction, I mean.”

“Not that nonfiction, and not that particularly or personally, but so far, there isn’t a single good book written about the Cultural Revolution.”

“I know,” Chen said. “What a shame.”

“And I have a personal request.”

“A personal request?”

“Don’t quit. This may sound condescending coming from me. But you are quite unusual for a cop, and you know stories are not simply black and white. Not too many cops share your understanding.”

“Thank you for telling me that, Mr. Jia.”

“Thank you for having told me the story, Chief Inspector Chen. Now, it’s time for me to go back and prepare for the trial tomorrow-today,” Jia said, rising. “After the trial, you may do whatever you want, and I’ll try my best to comply.”

When they walked out, they saw White Cloud still staying outside. She must have fallen asleep while waiting there, curled up on the leather sofa, her mandarin dress rumpled, and her feet bare. She wore nothing under the dress.

Jia recoiled. It was the weird hour of the night when fantasies suddenly flipped like bats, and a vision like that startled him.