The next morning when Fong opened his office door he saw a bearded white man behind his desk, sitting in his chair. With a kind of jolly hop, this fireplug of a man stood up and, with his right hand extended, approached Fong, “Your assistant let me in. In fact, he was in here when I arrived.”
Fong was about to reply that he had no assistant then understood that Shrug and Knock must have been in his office. That one never learns! He turned his thoughts back to the Long Nose in front of him.
The man wore large glasses on his oval face, which Fong guessed were designed to keep his eyes apart, because whenever he laughed, which clearly happened often, his face threatened to fold in at the centre. He was barrel-chested and had tufts of greying hair sprouting from the top of his tight-fitting shirt. The man must have thought this stylish but no Chinese man would be caught dead wearing clothing that was too tight. And of course few had chest hair.
Something about the man made Fong want to laugh out loud. He didn’t because he was too stunned by what Westerners call serendipity but what he knew was actually meaning manifesting itself. He’d seen this strange white man before! But where? The man was already talking, something about being the West’s foremost Shakespearean scholar. Fong nodded. He wanted to speak to an expert on Shakespeare’s plays in performance because he wanted to follow up Geoff’s assertion that “great directors put their present lives into everything they direct,” and Geoff was, as far as Fong was concerned, a great director. Fong suspected that clues to what was going on in Geoff’s life were embedded in his production of Hamlet. To that end, they’d found this man for him to interrogate.
“Donny,” the man said.
“That’s your name?” Fong asked.
“Donny. Some call me Don.”
“And you’re a . . . ”
“A professor of dramatic literature in performance.”
Fong thought about that for a moment. Literature in performance, what could that mean? An image of books dancing about a stage spouting lines leapt into his head.
“Would you like to see my passport?”
“Sure,” Fong said, while he thought, “Why is this man offering me his passport?”
Donny handed him his American passport and Fong quickly understood. There it was. Don or Donny had a Class 2 visa status. Only politicians and big businessmen came in on higher classification. Directors and actors came in usually as Class 4 or Class 5 visitors. It had always pissed off Fu Tsong that academics were allowed into China on a higherstatus visa than artists who came over to actually do something. Fong handed back the passport, didn’t know where to start, so he said, “So you teach.”
“For almost thirty years.”
Fong wanted to say those were probably the longest thirty years of most of his students lives but didn’t. “Tell me your name again.”
“Don. Donny to my friends.”
Fong stared at this pumpkin of a man.
Donny put a thick, hairy fist on the desk and assumed a professorial air, clearly something he had done many times before. “At any rate, I saw Mr. Hyland’s Hamlet. Very interesting.”
“Good,” Fong said nodding, not knowing whether it was his turn to speak or not.
“It was good, quite good, I thought,” Don said answering a question that Fong had not asked.
“Me too, I thought it was excellent.”
“Are you an aficionado, Detective?”
“No, but I liked Mr. Hyland’s Hamlet very much.”
“I see,” Don or Donny said noncommittally.
“Was there anything about the production that struck you as out of the ordinary . . . ?”
“Donny. I prefer it to Don, which is so East Rutherford, don’t you think?”
Fong had absolutely no idea if he thought that or not but said, “Donny. So was there anything that struck you as unusual in Mr. Hyland’s production?”
“Well, the opening . . . ”
“Yes, I grant that.” Fong knew that the opening with Hamlet almost naked and screaming on the platform was unique, but he assumed that anything going on in the director’s head would worm itself into the production on a more subliminal level. “Other things . . . ”
“Call me Donny.”
Donny! Donny, Donny, Donny! Got it! The memory came back whole. Donny! It was years ago and his wife Fu Tsong had dragged him to the theatre. Sometimes she made him accompany her on what she called her “obligation.”
“Come on, Fong. Do it for me,” she’d said as they rushed to flag down a cab on Nanjing Lu. Fong agreed, held out his badge and a cab immediately swerved across six lanes of traffic to pick them up.
He loved Peking Opera, but modern spoken drama left him cold.
“What is this play?” he asked as the cab busted its way through a twelve-cyclist-deep line.
“This new thing, Fong. About the Qin Dynasty.”
“A new play about the Qin Dynasty? Does that make any sense?”
She gave him a be-good look.
Their seats were, thankfully, near the back of the auditorium. He was pleased to see that the four seats in front of them were empty. If boredom gave way to yet more boredom he could put up his feet and take a snooze.
She looked at him with an oddly sad expression on her face then put a slender index finger to her lips, “Shh.” The buzzer sounded and the play began although that did nothing to silence the audience who continued to chat, prepare full dinners at their seats and call across the auditorium when the fancy took them. Fong had brought along a snack, a dumpling wrapped in rice then steamed in a large grape leave, but he decided against eating it just yet.
The opening scene had something to do with trouble in ol’ Xian, a princess, a tax collector – something else. Fong had already lost interest and was about to “assume the position” when three white people and an elderly Chinese lady hustled in and took the seats in front of them.
The Chinese lady was clearly a party member with pretences of importance. Fong’d met her type before. She was of little interest to him, but the Caucasians were another matter. As head of Special Investigations in Shanghai he’d dealt with a lot of North Americans. But none quite like these three! Two were women. One was tall and darkish, pretty but somewhat put-upon – Tall Lady; the other, who Fong surmised was married to the man, was short and had a wide expanse of curly hair – Big Hair. Fong wondered for a moment if her head was just very wide. The man, Donny they called him, seemed to think he had to look after the women although it was obvious that these women needed no supervision.
The Chinese woman, one of the 40 million-odd Madame Cheungs in the People’s Republic of China, spoke loudly although she seemed to have only a fleeting grasp of the English language. Even her Mandarin seemed a bit shaky. Fong wondered if some malicious bureaucrat had stuck these three white people with a person suffering from gentle dementia. It wouldn’t be the first time it had happened.
Suddenly the play inexplicably stopped and a long pantomime followed wherein most of the costumes were paraded.
“Lots of hats,” Fong whispered.
“Careful,” Fu Tsong hissed back.
Then Tall Lady leaned over toward Big Hair and said, “They do talk in this play, don’t they? I mean this isn’t a mime, is it? I hate mime.”
“Really?” asked Donny in mock surprise.
“I hate mime’s nasty little cousins, ventriloquists, too,” said Big Hair.
“Ventriloquists are only mimes with attitude,” said Tall Lady.
“Mimes who can’t keep their mouths shut,” said Big Hair.
“Mimes whose lips move,” chirped Donny.
Listening to the chatter of the three Caucasians was an unexpected treat. Fong wanted to applaud. Give a hardy “Hoa.” Cleverness, never much in abundance in this kind of theatre, was a welcome relief.
Madame Cheung responded, “Is noble – no?”
Donny gave a get-this-broad look to Big Hair and Tall Lady then put an expansive smile on his face and turned to Madame Cheung, “It’s a fascinating mix of styles, the surreal and the naturalistic.”
Tall Lady let out a groan.
Fu Tsong whispered in Fong’s ear, “I like her and she has taste too.” The warmth of her breath made his heart miss a beat.
The play finally got to its story line, something about an emperor whom everyone was trying to kill because he was sleeping with too many young girls in an effort to maintain his youth or something. Fong couldn’t understand why the other characters didn’t just rush at him and knock him off the stage and save everyone a lot of aggravation.
Near the end of the act, a large map lowered inexplicably from the flies.
Madame Cheung leaned over Donny and intoned, “It is a map.”
Tall Lady asked, “How long has this play been running?” The question was relayed down the line to Madame Cheung and the answer was relayed back from Donny, who announced completely straightfaced, “Just over an hour and a half.”
Tall Lady let out a loud, “Oh, god” and returned to some deep inner space.
In the middle of the fourth scene, someone offstage began singing “I Did It My Way” – very loudly. Fong saw the back muscles of Big Hair begin to quiver, then she spluttered. Madame Cheung leaned over and said gravely, “Flank Sinatra.”
“Flank?” exploded Donny. That was too much for Tall Lady who burst out laughing. But Donny kept his face blank and asked smoothly, “Is that part of the play?”
Madame Cheung pondered Donny’s question for a moment then the map came down again and she pointed out, “It is a map.”
In the next scene, someone, Fong had by this time totally lost track of the characters, committed suicide. Fong cheered. Many others in the audience joined him. Every bad actor killed is a step in the right direction. Upon the death, the curtain fell and the house lights came up. Before the Caucasians could rise, the intrepid Madame Cheung announced loudly, “Good. It’s intercourse,” and headed to the bathroom.
The three foreigners managed to hide their faces but Fu Tsong, who had been following the scene in the row ahead as closely as Fong, lost it completely. Donny pointed at Fu Tsong and then broke out laughing. Through his laughter he said to Big Hair, “I like her,” to which Big Hair, tears of laughter streaming down her face, said, “I can see why.” The Tall One had crumpled in her chair clutching her sides and barked out, “Good, it’s intercourse. And she’s an English teacher.”
Donny announced to all and sundry, “I’ve been bored to tears in theatres in every language in every country in the world.” To which the Tall One replied through tears of laughter, “And whose fault is that?”
Donny was still talking, evidently oblivious to that fact that Fong had just taken a rather extended internal voyage. “As I said, Detective, I’ve been bored to tears in theatres in every language in every country in the world.”
“And whose fault is that?” Fong replied, immensely pleased with his own cleverness. Donny looked at him. “That sounds familiar.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, but I can’t quite place it,” Donny said, for the first time eyeing Fong as something more than a student asking for an extension on a term paper.
Fong avoided Donny’s eyes and said, “ Let’s start with the text of the play. It’s usually cut, isn’t it?”
“Yes. It’s only a myth that Hamlet’s a quick play. It’s ponderous and long, so everyone cuts it.”
“Was Mr. Hyland’s cutting unusual?”
“Well, he left in the Reynaldo scene and the whole Rosencrantz and Guildenstern plot, which is out of the ordinary. As well, he played up the relationship between Polonius and Claudius. Made Polonius a smart guy in disguise.”
“Yes, he did,” said Fong. “Is the Reynaldo scene about spying?”
“Yes. Reynaldo is sent to follow Laertes and make sure that he behaves himself and cover for him when he doesn’t behave himself. Yes, Mr. Hyland also left in the Voltaman plot.”
“More spying and deceiving?”
“Yes and of course so is the R and G plot.”
“R and G?”
“Rosencrantz and Guildenstern – ah, gentle Rosencrantz and wise Guildenstern.”
“These are the men sent to murder Hamlet on the boat to England.”
“Yes, but Hamlet finds their orders, switches the names on the letter and the two of them are murdered.”
“Spying again.”
“That’s a little crude, but yes spying, if you will. He’s also used what’s thought of as the American cutting. By removing the subplot of Fortinbras the entire evening drifts toward the demise of a great soul, Hamlet. It makes sense when you see the opening he’s devised but it does make the evening more personal and less political. The Europeans have a tendency to make the play about succession and politics. For that you need the history of Fortinbras and he must arrive at the end to solve the problem.” Donny smiled, “Capiche?”
“Pardon me?’
“You understand?”
Fong nodded. Oh, yes, he understood more than this odd bowling ball of a man could ever imagine. Geoffrey Hyland and spying. Geoffrey Hyland arriving without a visa three months ago. Geoffrey Hyland eluding his surveillance team for thirty-six hours. Geoffrey Hyland and two Beijing handlers. “Do you know much about Shakespeare’s use of flowers, Donny?”
“Everything about Shakespeare’s use of flora, I know.”
“Everything?” Fong wanted to ask but let that slide. Instead he asked, “What did primroses mean in Shakespeare’s writing?”
“They represented things unfinished. Things that die before they are old or done or consum-mated.”
Fong thought about that then asked, “And marigolds?”
“Flowers for middle age – a mid-life flower.” Donny smiled. His eyes twinkled. He was being impressive and he liked being impressive.
Fong nodded, “And forget-me-nots?”
A darkness crossed Donny’s round features. A vein suddenly pulsed in his forehead just over his left eye. “Forget-me-nots? I don’t believe there are any mentions of forget-me-nots in Shakespeare.” The smile returned to his face. “But I’ll check. That’s what graduate students are for, don’t you think?”
Fong had no idea if that was what graduate students were for but asked, “Anything else I should know about Mr. Hyland’s Hamlet production?”
“Well there’s the standard Laertes-Ophelia attachment.”
“Attachment?”
“Well, Laertes does seem to be a little more than just expressing a brotherly concern for his sister.”
“Thus his anger at Hamlet?”
“Absolutely. Well, there is also the fact that Hamlet killed his father and Ophelia committed suicide when Hamlet dumped her.”
“Don’t you think those two little things just might be enough to lead to a bit of animosity from Laertes toward Hamlet?”
“I guess it could, do that, that is,” said Donny in all seriousness.
He guesses! Fong shook his head; he’d never understand academics. The watermelon of a man smiled. Fong didn’t. “Thanks.” He ushered Donny toward the door. The man was still talking. Then he stopped and looked at Fong for a long moment. “Hey, I’ve met you before.”
“No, I’m sure you’re . . . ”
“No, I have a really good memory for faces. Yes. Fuck the Dean then do the Bishop!”
“Excuse me?”
“At that stupid play. Right. I saw you at that stupid play.” Donny rubbed his hands in satisfaction then looked hard at Fong. “Hey, you were with a really pretty lady, right?”
“Right.”
“An actress, right?”
“Right.”
“Hey, how’s she doin’?”
“She’s dead. A long time ago.”
“Sorry to hear that. Beautiful girl. Really beautiful.”
Fong finally manoeuvred Donny out the door and shut it. He took a deep breath. That was hard. Too hard. Fu Tsong was still so completely present. So entirely there – her ghostly weight almost too heavy to bear – and Fong knew it.
Only the hulls of the junks that, before the war, used to ply the Su Zu Creek were still extant. In these rotting containers lived the poorest of the poor in Shanghai. The Su Zu Creek is not what is meant when real estate agents advertise “with river view.” The stink of the creek announces its presence well before one sees the turgid, shallow waterway. But water is water and summer is summer so kids are in the creek – and so is the body of a woman who used to hand out keys at Geoffrey Hyland’s guesthouse.
Two children throw a colourful button they pulled off one of their grandmother’s blouses into the water then dive after it. It’s a challenging game because the Su Zu Creek is thick with silt that is constantly churned up by wakes coming up the creek and produced by passing barges on the Huangpo River. It made every dive for the button an adventure. None more so than the dive when the young boy reached into the silt and touched something rubbery and yucky – something that had been a lady who gave out keys in Geoffrey Hyland’s guesthouse.
A pug-nosed Shanghai detective watched the flesh thing that used to be a body emerge from the creek’s dark water. He’d been an investigating officer for almost thirty years and although he had only a few years left on the force, he wasn’t looking forward to his retirement. With almost no money saved and very little pension, he knew his future was uncertain. After surviving all the regime changes in the Shanghai police force to be left maybe literally out in the cold struck him as particularly unfair but somehow infinitely Chinese. He smiled and indicated that the divers should put what was left of the body on the far shore. He didn’t believe they’d find out much about the death of this old woman – or at least she seemed to be an old woman. The eels in the creek had already eaten away most of the extremities of the body, the gelatinous facial parts and the liver. He lit a cigarette and allowed himself a fulsome cough. Then he saw the button the boys had been diving for. It had snagged on a string extending from the pocket of her quilted Mao coat. He pulled on the string and out came a key. A key to what? There had been a tag attached to the key but the acidity of the creek had removed the writing. He bagged the key, checked for ID and, finding none, instructed the officers to remove the body. Old people died all the time. Some fell into the creek. Some were dropped there. He allowed the key to roll around in his palm and wondered how he’d find out into what lock this key fit.
The rest of Fong’s afternoon was filled with disappointments – to be expected – but disappointments nonetheless. Like clockwork, cops appeared at his office door with confirmations of alibis from the theatre people. The only one of any real interest was the confirmation of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s alibi. Several gay men, after a little bullying, verified Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s presence at the party. Not surprisingly, both party members who had been named by the actors had denied any knowledge of either the gathering or Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Both had demanded Fong’s phone number and made the usual threats. That was fine with Fong. He filed away the two men’s names and phone numbers. They could prove to be very useful at some time in the future. Then he sat back in his office chair and stared at the Pudong out his window. The dozens of new buildings stood proud against the fading August sunlight. He thought about how the Pudong only ten years ago had been nothing but a swamp across the Huangpo River. Now it was the Pudong Industrial District, the very centrepiece of the new China. Fong thought about how power had brought those buildings into being. He thought about how power worked. Then he thought about how good it was to have diverse attitudes like those of the two gay party members within the halls of power of the Middle Kingdom and he allowed himself a smile.
It was the third locksmith that the Shanghai detective went to that informed him that the key was newly minted and probably was from a guesthouse because it had markings that indicated there could be a master key to override it.
A guesthouse? This could be trouble. Guesthouses were used by foreigners. He was a basic Shanghai street cop. He didn’t deal with crimes that had to do with foreigners. That was done by those damn snobs down on the Bund. Well, so be it. He picked up the phone and gave Special Investigations a call.
The call was received at general dispatch at Special Investigations just before sunset. Because the general dispatcher was a party hack’s son he didn’t mark it as urgent. Since there was no way of knowing if it was a murder and no way of knowing if it was committed by a foreigner, he filed the gist of the report in the boxes for Fong, Li Chou and the commissioner and didn’t give it a second thought. All three glanced at it before day’s end. All three had more important things on their desks than the remains of an old lady who probably had too much to drink, hit her head on the side of the junk and fell into the creek.
In accordance with the department’s new policy of limiting expenditures, an autopsy was put on hold. It wasn’t until days later that Fong asked for the full report of the old lady’s death that had the reference to a key to a guesthouse buried in the bottom.