Red Mandarin Dress (24 page)

It was a black and white picture, as Xiong had described. The woman wearing the mandarin dress in the picture was a stunner. Chen couldn’t tell the exact color of the dress, but it was apparently not a light color.

She was in a garden, standing barefoot with a tiny brook shimmering behind her, where she might have just dabbled her feet. The boy holding her hand was about seven or eight years old, wearing the Red Scarf of a Young Pioneer. Nobody else was visible in the background.

Chen borrowed a magnifying glass from Susu and made a careful study of the mandarin dress.

It appeared identical in design to those used in the murders—short sleeves and low slits, conventional in its general effect. Even the double-fish-shaped cloth buttons looked the same.

If there was any difference at all, it was that she wore the dress gracefully, with all the buttons buttoned in a demure way. She was barefoot, but standing in the background, in the company of her son, the suggestion more of a young happy mother.

The photographer was named Kong Jianjun. In the index of the magazine Chen found that Kong was also a member of the Shanghai Artists Association.

A siren was coming from the eastern end of Nanjing Road when Chen stepped out, carrying the magazine. He was close to believing that it was Hong—her soul, or whatever it was—that had guided him.

He made a phone call to the Shanghai Artists Association.

“Kong Jianjun passed away several years ago,” a young secretary said in the office. “He was mass-criticized during the Cultural Revolution, I’ve heard.”

“Do you have his home address?”

“The one in our record is old. He had no children—left behind only his wife. She must be in her seventies. I can fax his file to your office.”

“To my home. I’m on vaca—hold on, fax it to this number,” he said, giving her the library fax number.

“Okay. You might also talk to the neighborhood committee if she still lives there.”

“Thanks. I’ll do that.”

He went back to the library to pick up the fax. The pages were delivered to him by Susu, who also brought him a cup of fresh coffee and a nut cream cake.

“It’s hard to owe a beauty favors,” he said.

“You are quoting Daifu again,” she said with a sweet smile. “Come up with something new next time.”

What came to mind was, unexpectedly, a scene from years earlier, in another library, in another city. . . .
There is only the spring moon / that remains sympathetic, still shining / for a lonely visitor, reflecting / on the petals fallen / in a deserted garden.

Time flows like water. He gulped down the strong coffee. Black and bitter, perhaps he should have declined. Susu didn’t know about his recent problem.

He began studying the file. Kong had worked as a photographer at Wangkai, one of the well-known state-run studios in Shanghai. He was also a member of the Artists Association, with several awards to his credit. He passed away shortly after the Cultural Revolution. His wife was still alive, alone and living in the Yangpu district. As for Kong’s trouble in connection to the picture, there was no mention of it at all. Like other “bourgeois artists,” he suffered mass-criticism during the Cultural Revolution.

There wasn’t any mention of the prize-winning picture of the woman in her mandarin dress, either.

Getting up from the desk, he fought down the temptation to have another cup of coffee.

TWENTY-TWO

IT WAS CLOSE TO
one thirty when Chen arrived at Kong’s house on Jungong Road.

From the discolored wood mailboxes at the foot of the cracked concrete staircase, he supposed that it was one of the “new homes for workers” built in the sixties. It now looked old, shabby, and overcrowded. He found her name on one of the mailboxes.

He went up and pushed open a door. It turned out to be a three-bedroom apartment shared by three families. What he saw there first was a common kitchen crammed with stoves, which supported his hypothesis. She lived in a single room of the unit.

He knocked on the door marked 203. A white-haired woman opened the door, staring out through her silver-rimmed glasses.

“Are you Mrs. Kong?”

“Everybody calls me Auntie Kong here,” the old woman said, letting him in.

She wore a cotton-padded coat, cotton-padded pants, and a pair of scarlet jasmine-embroidered slippers. The room was as small as a piece of tofu, stuffed with all sorts of nondescript items. A lone chair, three-legged, leaned against the wall. At the foot of the chair was an old-fashioned rice-pot warmer made of straw, which might serve her as an ottoman. It was cold in the room, in spite of the windows’ being paper-sealed.

“You may sit on the chair,” she said.

“Thank you,” he said, perching on the edge of the chair gingerly. “Sorry to bother you like this, Auntie Kong.”

He explained the purpose of his visit, taking out his business card and the magazine.

She studied the picture in the magazine. The expression on her face was inscrutable. For two or three minutes she didn’t say a word.

Chen waited, becoming aware of a smell that permeated the room. He noticed a small can boiling above the gas tank in the corner. Possibly the cat’s meal. For most Shanghainese, cats were kept for the purpose of catching rats, as in the classic statement made by Comrade Deng Xiaoping: “It does not matter whether it’s a black or white cat; as long as it catches rats, it’s a good cat.” While the young and fashionable had started introducing the concept of “pet” into the city, in such an old building, a cat still functioned above all else as a rat-catcher. For Auntie Kong, the can of leftover rice flavored with fish bones was perhaps the only cat food she could afford. But cooking in the room could be hazardous for an old woman who lived by herself. The gas tank stood by a tiny wood table with a plastic basin that contained moldering bowls and cups.

“Yes, that’s a picture my old man took. In the sixties,” she said in a slightly tremulous voice, “but he passed away such a long time ago. How could I remember anything about it?”

“The picture won him a national award. He must have talked to you about it. Try to recall, Auntie Kong. Anything you can think of may be important to our work.”

“A national award! It brought him nothing but bad luck. That picture was a curse.”

“A curse,” Chen echoed. A weird word indeed. And yet a familiar word in the investigation. She must remember something about it. Something ominous. “Please tell me what kind of a curse it was.”

“Who really wants to talk about those things from the Cultural Revolution?”

The memories of those years might still be too painful, he understood. Nor was it easy for her to open up to a stranger. But he was determined to be patient.

“Do you mean the people connected to the picture were cursed, Auntie Kong?”

“He was criticized because of the picture—for the crime of ‘advocating the bourgeois lifestyle.’ Now, after so many years, please leave him in peace.”

“It’s a great picture,” he went on imperturbably, taking out another business card—that of the Chinese Writers Association. “I am a poet. To me, it’s a masterpiece. A poem in a picture.”

“A poem in a picture” had been the highest praise in traditional Chinese criticism, but Chen thought he was sincere in applying the cliché.

“It may or may not be so. But so what? Look at me. Left all alone here like a dirty, worn-out mop.” She pointed to the propane gas tank. “I can’t even cook in the common kitchen here. Everybody bullies me. Tell them about the so-called masterpiece. What difference will it make?”

She rose and shuffled to the stove and stirred the food boiling in the can with a chopstick. Abruptly, she turned toward the straw rice pot warmer, cooing as if there was no one else in the room.

“Black. Lunch is ready.”

The lid of the warmer lifted and a cat jumped out, rubbing its head against the old woman’s leg.

Chen rose to leave, reluctantly. She didn’t ask him to stay.

As he pushed open the door, he cast one more look into the kitchen. There were two ramshackle tables packed in there, littered with unprepared vegetables and leftover dishes and fermented bean curd and unwashed chopsticks and spoons.

Stepping out of the building, he saw the wooden sign of the neighborhood committee across the lane. He strode over to the office. It was almost a routine practice for a cop.

In the office, he produced his business card, which, to his surprise, made little impression on a gaunt, gray-haired man surnamed Fei, the head of the committee. Chen talked to him about Auntie Kong, emphasizing that her husband had been an award-winning artist and that the committee should try to help with her living condition.

“Is Auntie Kong your relative?” Fei said curtly, combing through his hair with his frostbitten fingers.

“No. I just met her today, but she should have access to the common kitchen.”

“Let me tell you something, Comrade Chief Inspector Chen. The squabbles among neighbors over the common area can be a tough issue for us. As far as I know, the resident in that room before her didn’t have any space in the common kitchen—he was a Party cadre who had practically worked and lived in his factory. Besides, her neighbors still use coal briquette stoves. It’s dangerous for her to move the propane gas tank into the same kitchen.”

“Well,” Chen said after a thoughtful pause, “can I use your phone?”

He called the head of the district police station, which functioned like the security boss for the neighborhood committee. After getting through to the director, Chen handed the phone to Fei, who listened with surprise registered on his face.

“Now I remember you, Chief Inspector Chen,” Fei said in a changed tone. “You’ll have to excuse a man of my age. As a proverb goes, an old man has his eyes only not to recognize Mountain Tai. Sure, I’ve seen you on TV, and heard stories of you, too.”

“You may have heard stories of me,” Chen said. “According to one of them, I always repay a debt.”

“You don’t have to say that, Chief Inspector Chen. It’s difficult to deal with disputes among neighbors, but we should try our best. You are right about that. Let’s go there.”

Chen didn’t bother to guess what the director had said to Fei. They went back together to Auntie Kong’s building.

All the residents in the unit came out, standing in their doorways, and Fei and Chen stood in the narrow corridor. Fei announced that a decision had been made jointly by the neighborhood committee and the district police station. A small space was to be cleared for Auntie Kong in the common kitchen. Not large, but enough for a propane gas tank. Out of safety considerations, the committee would put up a partition between the gas tank and coal stoves. No one argued or protested.

After the decision was announced, Chen was about to leave when Auntie Kong sidled up and said, “Comrade Chief Inspector Chen.”

“Yes, Auntie Kong?”

“May I have a word with you?”

“Of course.” He turned to Fei and said, “You may go back first. Thanks for your great help.”

“So you are somebody,” she said, closing the door when they were back in her room. “For more than ten years, I’ve had to cook in this room, and you’ve solved the problem for me in half an hour.”

“That’s nothing. I admire Mr. Kong’s work,” he said. “The neighborhood committee office is just across the lane, so I stepped in and told them of your difficulties.”

“I guess you tried to oblige me,” she said, “and I am obliged. There is no free white bun falling from the blue sky, I know.”

The black cat was moving back. She scooped it up and placed it on her lap, but it jumped down, ran onto the windowsill, where it curled itself against the windowpane.

“No. Don’t worry about it. That’s what a cop should do.”

“I have just a question for you. You are not going to use the picture at the expense of other people, are you? That was my old man’s worst nightmare.”

“Let me tell you something, Auntie Kong,” he said, putting his hand on the wall, which felt sticky—perhaps from too much cooking in the room. “Earlier this afternoon, I was in the Jin’an Temple, where I made a pledge to Buddha: to be a good, conscientious cop. Believe it or not, shortly after making the pledge, I learned about the picture.”

“I believe you, but is the picture really that important to you?”

“It may throw light onto a homicide investigation, or I wouldn’t have come to you without notice.”

“A picture taken almost thirty years ago is related to a murder case today?” She was incredulous.

“At this moment, it is just a possibility, but we can’t afford not to check. Let me assure you: I don’t believe it has anything to do with you or your husband.”

“If I still remember anything about that picture at all,” she started hesitantly, “it’s because of his passion for it. He used up all his vacation days for the project, working like one possessed. I even suspected that he had fallen for a shameless model.’ ”

“A good artist has to throw himself totally into a project, I know. It takes a lot of energy to produce such a masterpiece.”

“Well, she turned out to be a decent woman of a good family. And he joked about my imagination: ‘Me fall for her? No, it would be like a mud-colored toad watering its mouth at an immaculate white swan. I’m so excited because no photographer has approached her yet. For a photographer, it’s like discovering a gold mine.’ ”

“Did he tell you how he discovered her?”

“At a concert, I think. A violinist onstage. At first she refused to pose for him. It took him a couple of weeks to bring her around. She finally agreed on the condition that the picture be taken with her son. That gave him new inspiration—a mother and son instead of just a beautiful woman.”

“She must have loved her son very much.”

“I thought so too. Looking at the picture, people couldn’t help but be touched.”