Shanghai Redemption

TWENTY-THREE

CHEN CAME BACK TO Shanghai the next morning.

But this time, he wasn’t coming in quite so surreptitiously, Chen thought, as he walked out of the Shanghai Railway Station. It felt good to be back in the city so familiar to him.

He was exhausted after reading and rereading all those e-mails yesterday. Some of the clues in those messages needed to be investigated more thoroughly. What direction those clues would lead, he had no idea.

Unexpectedly, an empty taxi came to a stop right in front of him, before Chen got into the long taxi line. Chen liked that. It was a stroke of luck and not a bad beginning to the day. Also, for once, the driver turned out not to be very talkative. Chen liked that almost as much.

The traffic was terrible, as always, but he was in no hurry. The car stereo was playing some classical music, not too loudly, and Chen tried to sort out some of his tangled thoughts during the ride.

He had made the trip back to Shanghai today for a conference where he was going to be a keynote speaker. It had been scheduled months ago, and he’d practically forgotten about it. Party Secretary Li had called him last night and said, “The conference sent a notice to the bureau. The organizers must not have gotten your new office address. We know you’re busy in Suzhou, but your speech is important to the building of a harmonious society. There are newspaper and TV reporters who will come to cover it.”

The event would also function as proof that Chen retained a high-ranking position, thus heading off any speculation about disharmony in the “harmonious society.”

Chen, however, thought he’d better attend for his own reasons. The meeting was cosponsored by the Shanghai Writers’ Association and the Shanghai Entrepreneurs’ Association. He was supposed to deliver a speech about a writer’s responsibility to reflect the changes in today’s society, focusing on the contribution of entrepreneurs to the unprecedented economic reform. In Mao’s time, the proletariat had been portrayed as the sole masters of society, and entrepreneurs as capitalists of the most egregious sort. Now, the role of entrepreneurs was totally reversed. As far as the Writers’ Association was concerned, the conference was also arranged to push an undeclared agenda-to solicit financial support from the Entrepreneurs’ Association. As a member of the former, Chen considered it his duty to help this effort.

While in Shanghai, Chen also wanted to see his mother, who had returned home from the hospital but remained weak.

Time permitting, he wanted to have another bowl of noodles at Peiqin’s place as well.

He felt a net closing in on him, and he knew that any move he made-even a move he didn’t make-could pull him deeper into the mire. The consequences of his going to talk to Sima, for instance. He thought he’d had a plausible pretext for the conversation, but then what happened? Immediately, their conversation was reported to someone higher up as evidence that Chen was trying to make trouble. And the consequences of his contact with Qian…

It hurt for him even to think about it.

You left, like a cloud drifting away, / across the river. The memory / of our meeting is like a willow catkin / stuck to the wet ground, after the rain.

He’d decided the best thing to do was to attend the lecture as originally scheduled, while taking all possible precautions.

His cell phone buzzed. It was a text message, and it looked to be one of those chain messages that spammers occasionally sent around. Often the message was a joke at the expense of the government. The sender usually used a fake name, so it was difficult to trace. Chen didn’t receive too many, since not many people knew his number.

But today’s text was strange. It sounded more like a vicious, practical joke in the form of a bit of doggerel:

Prelude

You are sick, dangerously sick / too sick for the higher-up’s pick / like her cat tongue’s old trick / purring, trying to suck your dick.

Like most doggerel, it didn’t make much sense. But he couldn’t help reading it again. It wasn’t like the usual work composed by a youngster who spent all day and night on the Internet. Then he realized what struck him as strange. As a rule, run-ons don’t appear in the syntax of Chinese doggerel. This one was more like a piece written by someone familiar with Western poetry. And then there was the title, which seemed to echo an early poem by Eliot-full of ominous hints and suggestions. It was likely a coincidence-but Chen didn’t believe in coincidences.

Then his cell phone rang: another call was coming in. This time, it was his mother. The driver looked over his shoulder and turned the volume down on his radio.

“Where are you, son?”

“I’ve just gotten back to the city,” he said. “How are you, Mother? After I get out of a morning meeting, I’ll come to visit you this afternoon.”

“Don’t worry about me. I’m fine. I know you’re busy.”

“I have some new pictures of the renovation of father’s grave in Suzhou. I’ll bring them to show you.”

“Don’t go out of your way on this renovation project. Things in this world are fleeting. It’s a large sum of money on a policeman’s salary. Buddha watches. You act with a clean, clear conscience and you’ll be protected.”

It was a subtle warning from her. She’d long since given up pushing him to change his career, but she still insisted that he follow the right path. She had no idea that he wasn’t a cop any longer, and he doubted he would be protected by Buddha, either.

Ironically, that night at the Heavenly World, he’d been protected by the phone call from his mother, a call related to his filial duty. Karma.

He’d just gotten out the taxi when he received another phone call from Party Secretary Li.

“So you’re back in Shanghai. That’s great,” Li said cordially. “As you haven’t yet started work at your new office, I’m sending a bureau car to pick you up.”

“There’s no need. I can take a taxi.”

“It’s going to rain today. On a rainy day, it’s not easy to hail a taxi. Remember, you’re not speaking at the conference for yourself alone. Your speech there will be a credit to our bureau. So, don’t worry about it. People here miss their chief inspector. Skinny Wang will arrive before nine thirty.”

There was more than an hour before the car was due to arrive.

Back at his apartment, Chen checked in his refrigerator, since he’d left the hotel in Suzhou too early for breakfast. There was only a half a bag of frozen dumplings from a long time ago. He boiled a pot of water and threw in the dumplings. While he was waiting, he began jotting down some points for his talk. He’d given speeches like this before. It wouldn’t be too difficult to pull this one together.

Halfway through his outline, however, he got another spam text message on his phone. This one was even more bizarre than the first. It actually consisted of nothing but the last stanza of “Sweeney among the Nightingales” by T. S. Eliot, by no means a frequently quoted poem. Chen recognized it because of its inclusion in the new volume of Chinese translations. In an intertextual twist, the Eliot stanza alludes to the fatal scene of Agamemnon walking across the purple carpet, entirely unsuspicious, the moment when he’s murdered by his wife.

But how could that possibly be a practical joke sent as a spam text?

What… what if it was the message meant for him alone? From someone familiar with Eliot, sent to him as a warning about some imminent disaster, from something or someone he didn’t suspect at all.

He shuddered at the possibility.

Then he was reminded of Rong, whom he had met at the Heavenly World the night he was set up. Rong was familiar with Eliot, and familiar with Chen’s knowledge of Eliot. Chen hadn’t had the time to check into the background of the banker yet, but judging from the e-mails gathered by Melong, Rong hadn’t been involved in the setup at the book launch party. As a literature-loving banker, and possibly a designated donor, Rong might have heard about something that was going to happen at today’s conference.

It might be a wild guess, but Chen was starting to think that perhaps it wasn’t so important that he attend the conference this morning…

He was startled by a metal smell wafting over from the stove’s gas burner. The water had boiled away, and the dumplings had burned into a black and reddish mess at the bottom of the pot. He quickly threw the pot into the sink.

Glancing at his watch, he decided to leave.

He tried to think while he was heading out. He turned off his cell phone, lest his thoughts be interrupted by the phone.

As he walked past, several people stood by side of the road, waving frantically at taxis, shouting in vain. Party Secretary Li was probably right about needing to send over a bureau car. Still, it didn’t look like it was about to rain anytime soon.

Abruptly, he stopped walking and took out his phone. He checked the weather forecast, and an image of a smiling sun beamed at him. He pondered for a moment, then composed a short text message to Li. In the message, Chen said that there was an accident during the renovation of his father’s grave site and that he had to rush back to Suzhou. Then, turning off the phone, Chen headed to the train station.

He wasn’t ready to go back to Suzhou. Instead, he planned to continue his research from the train station until evening, when he would go visit his mother. This way, it would be possible for him to claim that he’d actually hurried to Suzhou and then come back to Shanghai.

In Zhuangzi, there is a well-known saying: “To hide most effectively is to hide in the busiest section of the city.” So here he was, bent over his laptop at a train station café like many others, surrounded by the nonstop flow of commuters. From the train station, if need be, he could easily take the subway to Peiqin’s restaurant. She might have something new to share from her firewall-climbing efforts on the Internet. In the meantime, he’d try to sort through more of those e-mails.

Soon the e-mails overwhelmed him again with their conflicting, contradicting currents of possibilities. As he was working on his second cup of coffee, he decided to try a new approach. In the three files of e-mails, was there some intersection, something that all of them touched upon?

There was. To his surprise, it was the death of the American.

The topic came up in various contexts. In the e-mails between the ernai, it seemed it was just a curiosity to gossip about. Though such a death touched upon his work in the Foreign Liaison Office, Sima’s e-mails seemed very cautious on the subject. What struck Chen as particularly suspicious was the connection in those e-mails to someone named FL.

Was foul play involved in the American’s death?

If so, the death would become an international scandal, which would be far more disastrous to the city government than all of the other cases combined.

Perhaps his having gulped two cups of coffee without any breakfast was making him too intense and paranoid. He was beginning to feel something like coffee sickness.

A waitress came to refill his water glass. “Are you all right, sir? You look so pale.”

“I’m fine. I just need to sit by myself for a while.”

He turned on his cell phone to check for messages, and immediately the phone started ringing. Chen picked it up.

“Where are you, Chief?” Yu said breathlessly.

“At the Shanghai Railway Station.”

“Thank Heaven,” Yu said, with an audible sigh of relief.

“What happened?”

“Earlier this morning, Skinny Wang said that he was going to drive for you. He was excited…”

“Yes, I was told that a bureau car was being made available and to wait for the pickup,” Chen said, “but I had to leave before he arrived. Something urgent came up, so I sent Li a text message.”

“Skinny Wang had a car accident.”

“A car accident!”

“Just about an hour ago. There was a deafening bang, something like an explosion, apparently, and the car went out of control. There are different accounts about the accident, but it happened on his way back to the bureau. It’s so hard to understand. He’s such an experienced driver.”

“How is he?”

“He’s still at the emergency room. His life isn’t in danger, but he might end up paralyzed.”

“Go to the hospital for me and bring some money with you.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll be there. You take care of yourself,” Yu said and ended the call.

Chen was reminded of the “spam” text messages he’d received, particularly the one that quoted “Sweeney among the Nightingales.” Now the warning was unmistakable.

Whoever sent that message was someone who had been informed that something devilish was being orchestrated but was too shrewd to send Chen an explicit warning.

For the moment, however, Chen decided not to speculate about who sent the warning. And not to contact Peiqin as he’d originally planned.

He was reminded of a proverb she’d quoted, which she’d gotten from Old Hunter: Treating a dead horse as if it were still alive.

He stood up, shaken but ready to move.