Red Mandarin Dress (21 page)

“I like traveling. So I should consider myself lucky to have a husband capable of affording the vacation package. By the way, are you so interested in an academic career?”

“Well, I don’t know,” he said. “You just quoted a line concerning the woman’s status in the Tang dynasty. At the time, she might not have had much choice for herself. Do you think her problem was a result of her arranged marriage?”

“A problem of an arranged marriage? No, I think that’s too simplistic an explanation. My parents had an arranged marriage. A most happy one, as far as I know,” she said, taking another drink. “But think about the divorce rate today among young couples who have pledged their love by mountains and seas.”

“That’s some statement from a scholar on women’s studies!” he said. “The Confucian classics talk about nothing but arranged marriage. So I wonder how the Chinese people lived for two thousand years without talking about romantic love.”

“Well, the world is in your interpretation. If you believe it—I mean the interpretation that parents understand and always work in the best interest of the young people—you then live accordingly. Just like today: if you believe a materialistic basis is essential to any superstructure—with romantic love as a decorative vase on the mantelpiece—then you won’t be surprised by all the personal ads seeking millionaires in our newspapers.”

“This is indeed a Chinese brand of socialism.”

“You can say that again. Do you believe that love is something that has always been there, from time immemorial?” she said cynically. “According to Denis de Rougemont’s
Love in the Western World
, romantic love didn’t exist until it was invented by the French troubadours.”

He felt shaken, sitting there inhaling the scent of her hair. For the last few years, with one case after another on his hands, he hadn’t had much time for reading, while she like so many others had been reading things he hadn’t even heard of.
Seven days up in the mountains, thousands of years down in the world
. Perhaps it was already too late for him to dream of another career.

“So are you reading Confucian classics for a project on arranged marriage?” she asked.

“I have been reading a number of classical love stories, and there is one aspect they have in common. Inevitably, the heroines seem to be demonized in one way or another, and the love theme is thus deconstructed.” He added, “You’re a scholar in the field. Can you enlighten me on it?”

“I like your choice of terms. Demonization of women and the deconstruction of love,” she said. “Long ago Lu Xun said something on that point. Chinese people always put the blame on women. The Shang dynasty collapsed because of the Imperial Concubine Da; King Fucha lost himself, as well as his kingdom, through the beautiful Xishi; Minster Dong Zhu fell prey to the charms of Diaochan. The list could be much longer. Even today, we all blame the Cultural Revolution on Madam Mao, though everyone is aware of the fact that without Mao, Madam Mao would have been nothing but a B-movie actress.”

“But that’s not something one finds only in China,” Chen said. “In the West, there is a similar concept—the femme fatale. And stories of vampires too, you know.”

“Good point. But have you noticed one difference? There are male as well as female vampires. Can you think of anything similar here? Besides, the femme fatale isn’t the most common image of women in the mainstream of Western thought, not the most important one in the dominant or official discourse.”

“That’s true. Arranged marriage was definitely an inherent part of Confucianism. So do you think that the stories in question became distorted under the influence of those dominant ideologies?”

“And those lovely women cannot but be crushed—in one way or another. It cannot be helped.”

“Cannot be helped—” he echoed as he thought of the case again.

Perhaps an author was somehow like a serial killer, who couldn’t control himself. According to postmodernist criticism, people are spoken by the discourse, rather than the other way around. Once a particular discourse takes control, or, as in a Chinese expression, once the devil takes over the heart, it’s the devil that acts, in spite of the man himself. In Freudian theory, the man’s actions are dictated by something in the subconscious, or the collective unconscious. It would be easy to write the murderer off as a nut, but it would be hard, yet important, to discover what discursive system was dictating him to do the killing. And how that system had been formed for him—

“For instance, in
Plum Blossom in Golden Vase
,” Sansan went on, taking his preoccupation as being induced by her words, “Ximenqin has to die because he has too much sex with women, ending with a final image of his semen gushing nonstop into Pan Jinlian, the shameless slut who literally sucks him dry.”

“Yes, I remember that.”

“And in another novel,
Flesh Cushion
, the hero has to castrate himself in the end because he can’t resist the sexual attraction of women.”

Apparently her work focused on the unfair representation of women. The talk was a lucky random harvest for his paper, for it indirectly supported his thesis.

“Yes, I can think of several common expressions that support the idea,” he said. “
Hongyan huoshui
, disastrous water of beauty, and
meiren shexie
, a snake and a spider of a pretty woman.”

He was encouraged by this train of thought. Indeed, it could prove to be something that hadn’t been previously explored. Not specifically, anyway. An original paper, as Professor Bian had put it.

“The expressions speak for themselves,” she said, then she changed the subject. “You quoted a line from Wang Wei. A lone stranger. So you have traveled to write your paper here?”

“Well, the paper is part of it.” He added, “I was sort of stressed out, so I thought a vacation would do me good.”

With that, their conversation drifted toward other topics.

“When the only criteria for a man’s value is in terms of his money, how long can an individual hope to hide himself in something like Tang dynasty poetry? For a romantic morning, perhaps. That’s how my moneymaking husband can be so important to me.” She added, “Don’t be so hard on yourself. Repression won’t do you any good.”

It was a comment he hadn’t expected. It was almost a Freudian echo, and he was slightly uneasy about her. Not because there was something cynical about her or because she was a feminist. His glance fell on the bangle of red silk string and silver bells around her shapely ankle.

Taking a deep breath, he dispelled the confusing ideas. He was not a scholar, perhaps not meant to be. Nor a Big Buck having his fling at a luxurious hotel—not the man in her imagination.

He was but a police officer, incognito, on a vacation paid for by someone else.

He noticed the pool beginning to empty. Perhaps it was time for it to close.

“There will be a ball here this evening. Will you be attending?” Her voice came soft in the afternoon sunlight.

“I would love to go,” he said, “but I may have to make several phone calls.”

Was that a professional excuse or was he really a busy businessman, like her husband?

“We’re staying in the same building, I think. My room number is 122. Thank you for the wine,” she said. “See you again soon.”

“Bye.”

He watched her leave, her long hair swaying across her back. At the turn of the path, she looked back and waved her hand lightly.

“Bye,” he said one more time, and then audible only to himself, “Have fun tonight.”

TWENTY

IT WAS THE WORST
blow Yu had suffered in his career as a policeman.

After a sleepless night first at the cemetery, then the bureau, he rubbed his bloodshot eyes and decided to go again to the Joy Gate, where a young colleague of his had been abducted and murdered while he was stationed outside, entrusted with the duty of protecting her. He could think of nothing else.

At the Joy Gate, the police were still searching and re-searching all the rooms, hoping against hope that they might find some undiscovered evidence left behind. He didn’t think joining them would be of any help.

He went to the front desk and asked for a list of regular customers. The criminal must be familiar with the building to be capable of having made such a plan. At his insistence, the day manager produced a printout.

“It really doesn’t mean any—anything,” the manager stammered, swallowing hard. “They are just good, regular customers.”

“Good customers, I see,” Yu said. “How regular?”

“The basic fee is not expensive, but with drinks and tips, it could be easy to spend five or six hundred Yuan an evening. A regular customer comes at least once a week.”

“Has any of the regulars stayed in the hotel above?”

“The hotel is not so fancy. Not too many care to stay here, what with the noise all night long. Nor is it always a good idea, either. People make assumptions about what a customer and a dancing girl are up to in a room upstairs. So many would rather go to another place.”

“That makes sense,” Yu said, nodding.

It was a list of names, addresses, and phone numbers. Some of them also indicated their profession or preferences. It was possibly a PR list.

“When we have special events,” the manager explained, “we like to notify them.”

He would make calls to some of the people on the list, Yu thought. Then one of the names seemed to jump out at him. Jia Ming, his profession indicated as a lawyer. It was a name Yu remembered. Chen had asked him to check into him with regard to a high-profile housing development case.

It was strange that Jia, a well-known lawyer, busy with a controversial case, would have the time to be a regular customer here.

“Can you tell me something about this man?”

“Jia Ming,” the manager said with an apologetic smile, “I am afraid I cannot tell you much. He’s not that regular.”

“What do you mean?”

“Most of the people on the list are Big Bucks. They come here to ‘burn money,’ squandering it on girls and services. Jia comes, but he pays only for an entrance ticket, sits in a corner, watching over a cup of coffee, seldom dancing, and never asking anybody out. He’s here just once or twice a month.”

“Then why is he on your list?”

“We wouldn’t have noticed him but for a phone call from the city government several months ago. Someone wanted us to report on any of his improper behavior here. But he didn’t do anything out of line—we’ve never seen him taking out a girl—and we reported truthfully. A strange request, you may say, but we always cooperate with the authorities.”

So the authorities had been following Jia, trying to find something against him in an effort to wreck the housing development case. Jia’s visits here might not mean anything. Intellectuals could be eccentric. Chief Inspector Chen, for me, still met with an ex–singing girl.

Yu grew upset at the thought of his partner. Since Wednesday, he’d repeatedly tried to contact Chen, but without any success. Last night Yu marked his call “urgent,” requesting an immediate call back, but still no response. Early this morning, he had Little Zhou drive over to Chen’s place, but no one was there.

How could the chief inspector have disappeared at this particular juncture?

Yu decided to revisit the cemetery. He didn’t really think he would find something new there. Still, in the daylight, he might be able to see more.

The cemetery was taped off as a crime scene. In the distance, a mud-covered hut stood silhouetted against the rugged hills. No one seemed to be caring for the place. He moved to the spot where they had found her body. He lit a cigarette against the chilly wind, shivering, as if going through the nightmare again. The image would be with him forever: she had been lying with the top part of her body half hidden by the tall wild weeds. Her legs, wide apart, were stretched out on the damp ground. Her skin appeared slightly bluish, with her black hair falling across her cheek. She was barefoot, and dressed in a mandarin dress that slipped up her waist, leaving her thighs bare. . . .

A lone crow was circling overhead, crying, homeless in the winter.

In the bureau, there were wild theories about the location. Unlike the places where the first three victims were dumped, the cemetery was far from the center of the city. Party Secretary Li declared that the criminal had dropped the body there because of police pressure. Little Zhou incorporated a Qing dynasty ghost story into his earlier theory. Yu didn’t believe either of them, but he didn’t have a convincing theory of his own.

To his surprise, he saw a boy coming over to him carrying a bag of newspapers, shouting, “Special edition! Red mandarin dress victim found in the cemetery here!” Giving him a handful of coins, Yu grabbed several of them.

It turned out that the man who patrolled the cemetery was a superstitious and garrulous man. While he had lost no time informing the police, he was also spreading the news around. The mention of the red mandarin dress was like a loud siren cracking the night sky, and people shivered.

As Yu dreaded, the newspapers were full of the latest victim in the red mandarin dress case. These reporters hadn’t yet discovered her identity, but some of them had already sensed something unusual about the commotion at the Joy Gate last night. One reporter even hinted at a connection between the dance hall and the cemetery.

In the newspapers, Yu read a number of superstitious interpretations about the latest twist in the case.

Wenhui
, for instance, had a special report titled “Lianyi Cemetery!” Narrated from the collective perspective of local residents, the reporter launched into a lurid, superstitious interpretation.