Red Mandarin Dress (35 page)

“Shortly after the photo session, the Cultural Revolution broke out. J’s family suffered disastrous blows—”

His narration was interrupted by the appearance of White Cloud carrying four cold dishes of the house specials on a silver tray.

“Fried sparrow tongues, wine-immersed goose feet, stewed ox eyes, ginger-steamed fish lips,” she said. “They are made in accordance to a special menu left in the original mansion.”

Lu must have gone out of his way to prepare these “cruel dishes,” and he spared no cost. A small dish of sparrow tongues could have cost the lives of hundreds of birds. The fish lips remained slightly red, transparent, as if still alive, gasping for air.

“Incidentally, these dishes remind me of something about the story, something so cruel,” Chen said. “Confucius says, ‘A gentleman should stay away from killing and cooking in the kitchen.’ No wonder.”

Jia appeared disturbed, which was the effect expected.

“So the picture represents the happiest moment in J’s life, now forever lost,” Chen resumed, a crisp sparrow tongue rolling on his tongue. “His grandfather died, his father committed suicide, his mother suffered mortifying mass-criticisms, and he himself turned in a ‘black puppy.’ They were driven out of the mansion, into an attic room above the garage. Then something happened.”

“What?” Jia said, his chopsticks trembling slightly above the ox eye.

“Now I’m coming to a crucial part of the story,” Chen said, “for which your opinions will be invaluable. So I’d better read from my draft instead—it’ll be more detailed, more vivid.”

Chen took out his notebook, in which he had scribbled some words the previous night in the nightclub, and then again early this morning in the small eatery. Sitting across the table, however, Jia wouldn’t be able to read the contents. Chen began to improvise, clearing his throat.

“It was because of a counterrevolutionary slogan found on the garden wall of the mansion. J didn’t write it, nor did he know anything about it, but ‘revolutionary people’ suspected him. He was put into so-called isolation interrogation in a back room of the neighborhood committee. All by himself, all day long, he was denied all contact with the outside world, except for interrogations by the neighborhood committee and a stranger surnamed Tian, who came from the Mao Team stationed at the music institute. J had to stay there until he admitted his crime. What supported him through those days was the thought of his mother. He was determined that he would not get her into trouble, that he could not leave her alone. So he would not confess, nor do something in the footsteps of his father. As long as she was outside, waiting for him, the world was still theirs, as in that picture in the garden.

“But it wasn’t easy for a little boy. He fell sick. One afternoon, unexpectedly, a neighborhood cadre came into the room and, without any explanation, told him that he could go home.

“He hurried back, anxious to surprise her. He climbed up the staircase soundlessly. Opening the door with his key, he was anticipating a scene of reunion, of rushing into her arms, a scene he had dreamed of hundreds of times in the dark back room.

“To his horror, he saw her kneeling on the bed, stark naked, and a naked man—none other than Tian—entering her from behind, her bare hips rising to meet each of his thrusts, groaning and grunting like animals—

“He shrieked in horror, whirling back down the staircase, lost in a nightmare. For the boy, who had worshipped his mother like the sunshine of his existence, the scene delivered a shattering blow, as if the whole earth had been snatched out from under his feet.

“She jumped up from the bed, unclothed, and ran out after him. He quickened his steps frantically. In his confusion, he might not have heard her stumbling down the staircase, or he might have mistaken it for the sound of the world tumbling behind him. He tore down the stairs, across the garden, and out of the mansion. His instinctive reaction was to run, his mind still full of the bedroom scene, so vivid with her flushed face, her hanging breasts, her body reeking of violent sex, her raven-black pubic hair still dripping wet. . . .

“He didn’t look over his shoulder once, as the image of the moment had fixed and transfixed him—of a naked woman, distraught, disheveled, rushing like a demon after him—”

“You don’t have to go into all these details,” Jia said in a suddenly husky voice, as if reeling under the blows.

“No, those details are important for his psychological development, and for our understanding of it,” Chen said. “Now, back to the story. J ran back to the back room of the neighborhood committee, where he broke down and fainted. People were puzzled at his return. In his subconscious, the room was the place where he could still believe in a wonderful world with her waiting for him there. An act of psychological significance, like trying to turn back the clock. And in that back room he wasn’t aware of her death that same afternoon.

“When he finally woke up, it was to a changed world. Back in the empty attic, alone, in the company of her picture in a black frame. It was too much for him to stay there. He moved out,” Chen said, putting down the notebook. “No need dwelling on that period. I don’t have to read sentence by sentence. Suffice it to say that now an orphan, he went through the stages of shock, denial, depression, and anger, struggling with all the emotions twisted and embedded deep inside him. As a Chinese proverb goes, a jade is made out of all the hardships. After the Cultural Revolution, J entered a college and obtained a law degree. At that time, few were interested in such a career, but his choice was motivated by a desire to bring justice for his family, particularly for her. He managed to track down Tian, the Mao Team member.

“But there was no possibility of punishing all of Mao’s followers. The government didn’t encourage people to rake up their old grievances. Besides, even if he succeeded in bringing Tian to court, it wouldn’t be on a homicide charge, and it would probably come at the expense of dragging her memory through the mire again. So J decided to take justice into his own hands. From his perspective, he was justified, because there was no other way. He had Tian punished in what seemed to be a series of misfortunes. He extended the revenge to people related to Tian. To his former wife and to his daughter as well. And like a cat watching a mouse making pathetic efforts to escape, he prolonged the process of their suffering, as resourcefully as the Count of Monte Cristo.”

“It reads like the story of Monte Cristo,” Jia cut in, “but who would take the story seriously?”

“Well, I actually read it during the Cultural Revolution. The book enjoyed an extraordinary lucky reprint at a time when all other Western novels were banned. Do you know why? Madam Mao made a positive comment about it. In fact, she herself wreaked her revenge on the people who had looked down on her. She took it seriously.”

“A white-bone devil,” Jia commented, like a responsive audience. “Before she married Mao, she was only a B-movie actress.”

“She must have seen her actions as justified too, but let’s leave Mao and Madam Mao alone,” Chen said, moving his chopsticks to the ox eyes, which appeared to be staring back. “But there is one difference. For Monte Cristo still has his own life, but for J, his life was, and still is, devoid of any other meaning except revenge.”

“I would like to make a comment here,” Jia said, tearing the fish lips with his chopsticks, though he didn’t pick them up. “In your story, he’s a successful attorney, and quite well-to-do too. How could there be no life for him?”

“A couple of reasons. The first one came out of his disillusionment with his profession. Working as an attorney, he soon found himself not exactly in a position to fight for justice. As before, major cases were predetermined in the interests of the Party authorities, and then later, in the nineties, they were rigged in the interest of money as well, in a society lost in uncontrollable corruption. While his career as an attorney became a lucrative one, his idealistic passion had long ago proved impractical and irrelevant.”

“How can you say that, Chief Inspector Chen? A successful cop, you must have been fighting for justice all these years. Don’t tell me you, too, are so disillusioned.”

“To be honest, that’s the reason I am taking a literature course. The story is part of the effort.”

“No wonder I haven’t seen your name in the newspapers for a while.”

“Oh, you have been following me, Mr. Jia?”

“Well, the newspapers have been full of the serial murder case, and full of cops too. You’re a star among them,” Jia said, raising his cup in mock admiration, “so I have sort of missed you of late.”

“For J, the second reason may be the more important,” Chen went on without responding to Jia, who, having recovered from the initial shock, seemed capable of teasing his host. “He is incapable of having sex with women—an aggravated Oedipus complex. Which is the identification of his mother as his sexual object in his unconscious, as you know. In every other aspect, he appears a healthy man, but the memory of the naked, soiled body of his mother falls like a shadow, inevitably, between the present desire and the past disaster. Whatever professional success he achieves, he can’t live a normal life. Normal life was forever fixed at that moment of his grasping her hand in the picture. And it’s a picture that was broken to pieces at the moment she fell down the stairs. He’s worn out from all the endless effort of keeping all this secret and fighting the demon—”

“You sound like a pro, Chief Inspector Chen,” Jia said sarcastically. “I didn’t know that you studied psychology too.”

“I have read one or two books on the subject. You surely know much more, so that’s why I would really appreciate your opinion.”

There was a light knock on the door again. White Cloud came in carrying a large tray that held a glass pot, a glass bowl of shrimps, and a miniature stove. The shrimps were immersed in a mixed sauce, but under the bowl lid, they still squirmed energetically. Within the stove there was a layer of pebbles, burning red above the charcoal at the bottom. She first poured the pebbles into the pot, and then the shrimps. In a hissing steam, the shrimps were jumping and turning red.

“Like his victims,” Chen said, “without understanding their doom, still trying to escape.”

“You’ve spared no pains in preparing this feast, Chief Inspector Chen.”

“Now I’m coming to the climax of the story. For this part, I still need to fill in some details here and there, so the story may not read that polished yet.

“Turning, turning, turning, like a caged animal, he found himself dazed against thousands of bars. So he decided to take a most controversial case, at the possible cost of his professional career. In China, an attorney has to stay on good terms with the government; this was a case that could damage the government’s image, exposing a number of Party officials who were involved in a housing development scandal, though also a case that could bring justice to a group of poor, helpless people. Whether it was a desperate effort to find some meaning in his life or an attempt at self-destruction, an end—possibly any end—to his straw-man-like existence might not be an unacceptable alternative to his subconscious. Unfortunately, the difficulties of the case added to his tension too.

“Prior to the case, he was already on the verge of breaking down. Despite how he appeared to the outside world, he was torn and tormented by a split personality—an advocator for the new legal system and a lawbreaker in the most devilish way. Not to mention the helpless mess of his personal life.

“And of all a sudden, Jasmine was killed.”

“So are you saying, Chief Inspector Chen, that he turns into a killer because of his breakdown under too much stress?”

“The crisis had existed long before the breaking point. But in spite of all the abovementioned factors, there must have been something else that set him off.”

“What set him off?” Jia echoed in a show of nonchalance. “Beats me.”

“It was panic that his plan for revenge was falling through. He had intended to see Jasmine into depravity, supposing that her complete downfall was just a matter of time. But she then met a man who was going to marry her and take her away to the United States—out of his reach. J had reduced her to a dead-end job in the hotel, where she met the love of her life. What an irony! The prospect of her living happily with a man in the States was more than he could stand. That pushed him over the edge. So he took her out one night.

“It’s difficult to say what exactly he did to her—sexually, there was no real penetration or ejaculation. But he strangled her, put her into a dress similar to the one his mother wore in the picture, and dumped her body in front of the music institute—a location symbolically important to him. It was like a sacrifice, a statement, a message to his mother, in revenge for those wronged years, but also a message he could hardly analyze for himself. So many were entangled together in his mind.

“But the story doesn’t end there. As the girl breathed her last, he experienced something new and unexpected, something like total freedom. It was all he could do to hold on to the appearance of his old self. Once the demon was out, like the genie out of the bottle, it was beyond his control. Considering the repression or suppression he had suffered all those years, it’s understandable to an extent why the murder provided him a release. A satisfaction previously unknown to him. A sort of mental orgasm—I doubt he attacked her sexually in an exact sense. It was a sensation so liberating that it worked like a drug, and he craved the experience.”

“Now
that
reads like something from one of your mystery translations, Chief Inspector Chen,” Jia commented. “In those books, a madman kills for the thrill of it, like a drug addiction. It’s easy to write him off as a psycho. You don’t really buy such crap, do you?”

The mahogany clock started striking, as if in echo of his question. Chen looked up. It was eleven. Jia didn’t appear so eager to leave. Rather, he was talking in earnest. That didn’t bode too badly for Chen.