“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?”
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