Shanghai Redemption (39 page)

Authors: Qiu Xiaolong

BOOK: Shanghai Redemption

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“Now, this afternoon, I happened to get a phone call from a friend, who suggested that I go abroad as soon as possible, and with the help of a visa official in the American consulate. It was a practical suggestion, but even if I didn't have to worry about the blacklist at customs, I don't think I'll do it.”

“What do you mean, Chief Inspector Chen?”

“With the death of the American, the evidence on the video clip, and with the e-mails, plus what you have in your handsâthe phone records and bank transaction receiptsâif you take it all with you to the American consulate, as a holder of a green card in real danger, the consulate will have to protect you. Then it could turn into an international scandal, something too huge for the Party authorities to cover up. After all, there are ways the ensuing scandal could be interpreted as being in the Party's interest.”

“Yes, that's a possibility,” she said with an incredulous note in her voice. “But what about you, Chief Inspector Chen? With all the evidence, you could do this for yourself.”

“A couple of weeks ago, I would never have dreamed of having such a discussion with you,” he said with a rueful smile. “In my college years, I dreamed of being a poet, not a Party member cop. But when you have given so much to the work, for so many years, it becomes a part of you, even though that part isn't pleasant. There are obligations to being a cop, there's no point in denying that. I can't write that off in one stroke. It's inconceivable to me, as a Shanghai police officer, to go and seek protection in an American consulate.

“That's not the case with you, Wei. When all is said and done, you shouldn't be the next victim.”

She looked at him, her large eyes brimming over with disbelief.

“Do you have a copy machine here at home?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Make copies of the bank transactions, and of the phone records showing the calls to Lai. Give them all to me. They'll be kept in a secure place,” he said. “In the meantime, you'll have the evidence I'm holding, the video clip and the e-mails.”

“I'm still lost. What will happen to you?”

“You don't have to argue with me anymore, Wei. We are fighting against impossible odds. There's no time left for us to discussâ”

Suddenly, he heard something like a bell ringing out in the lane, moving ever closer, as an old woman's voice, tremulous in the depth of the night, spoke.

“Close your windows and doors. Be careful with fires. Be on the alert against the sabotage of the class enemy.”

It was like something he'd heard many years ago, possibly during the Cultural Revolution, or even earlier.

“The neighbor security committee used to do that at midnight back in the seventies. Liang told me about those years of class struggle under Mao,” she said, as if relieved by the unexpected change of topic. “It's all coming back now, like something fashionably nostalgic.”

It was a surreal touch. Was it part of Lai's campaign of singing red songs? The slogan-chanting at midnight through the lane sounded like a parody of the past.

“So it's a new day,” he said, rising. “We have to hurry.”

EPILOGUE

IT WAS THE MORNING
of the fourth day after Chen returned to Suzhou.

He'd been busy with the renovations, staying there most of the time, supervising, running errands, making suggestions, though he had no idea if all that really helped. But he was racing against time to see that it was completed, before anything happened to him. He kept telling himself that this was perhaps the only achievable redemption for him.

He felt much calmerâ“the boat burnt, the wok smashed,” as the
Art of War
described.

When he left Wei's place early in the morning, he thought he'd done all he could.

Perhaps it was more than he should have. He didn't know.

But he didn't want to think about it anymore. There was no point in doing so anyway. There were too many possible outcomes, like wild weeds overgrowing the cemetery hills.

He'd turned off his phone, and his computer too. Already there had been too much collateral damage; he didn't want to do anything that might implicate or incriminate anyone else. He himself was beyond worrying about, to use Wei's own words, but he still had to worry about others.

Helpless the water flows, and petals drift
. He wondered how things had been going with her, but he knew better than to make any calls or inquiries. He didn't want to be distracted by any more new information, glimmering like the will-o'-the-wisp in the dark.

So that morning he was sitting out in the hotel garden, at the stone table, sipping tea like a leisurely tourist, before going out to the cemetery to oversee the completion of the renovation project. He carried with him the book written by his late father, which he was going to place in the casket that afternoon.

The waitress brought him the
People's Daily
, a hot water bottle, and an engaging smile, as usual.

Raising his teacup, he cast a glance at the headlines on the front page.

LAIKAI IN CUSTODY AS SUSPECTS IN THE DANIEL MARTIN MURDER CASE

What in the world did that mean?

It was unprecedented. In China, after 1949, a married woman kept her maiden name. So it was as an unmistakable message to have the two surnames of Lai and Kai juxtaposed in the official newspaper. It was too eye-catching to miss. Even with no real news about Lai in the
People's Daily
, the fate of the ambitious red prince appeared to be sealed.

The editorial in the Party's newspaper mentioned in one short sentence, among other things, the cooperation of the American consulate in Shanghai in the investigation.

Wei had managed to do something for Liang in the end.

Chen scrambled to turn on both his phone and his laptop.

There were no voice messages from Wei. That was no surprise. She knew better. As for the messages left by others, he would check those later.

There was an e-mail, however, from Comrade Zhao sent last night from Beijing, marked urgent.

I've been in the hospital with no access to a computer until this evening. Sorry for having not written back earlier. You have been doing a great job at the Shanghai Police Bureau. So I've made a suggestion to the Party Central Committee: While you start your new job at the Legal Reform Committee, you should keep the old job at the police bureau.

I'm old, sick, so there's nothing I can really do. I'm still reading Wang Yangming. He put it so well, “It's easy to kill the enemy in the mountains, but it's difficult to kill the one in the heart.”

What could that mean? Chen had no idea how to respond, but he knew he wasn't in a hurry.

He spread out the newspaper and began to read in earnest.

“Another corruption and conspiracy story,” he said to the waitress, who was bringing over a dish of white-sugar-covered scarlet yang mei berries, his favorite sweet in the ancient city of Suzhou.

“Just like so many stories in today's China,” she said, shaking her head like a rattle drum. “Are you writing another poem this morning?”

“No, I was thinking of a poem by Du Mu from the Tang dynasty. â
At the bottom of the river still lies / the broken anchor, which I wash and wipe / for traces of the bygone dynasties. / If the eastern wind had not turned, miraculously, / in favor of General Zhou Yu / the two beauties would have been locked up / in the Bronze Sparrow Tower, deep in the spring
.'”

“I think I read that poem in school,” she said with a slight frown, “but what does it mean?”

“There's a real historical event behind the poem. In the Three Kingdoms period at the beginning of the third century, a war broke out between the Wu State and the Wei State. Cao Cao, the prime minister of the Wei State, was allegedly motivated by his wanton lust after two celebrated beauties in the Wu State, so he led a powerful fleet down the river. Cao Cao even composed a fu poem about it, bragging about the construction of the Bronze Sparrow Tower to house the two beauties there. Now, one of the two in question happened to be young General Zhou's wife, so the enraged general was determined to fight him against incredible odds. Luckily, in a crucial battle near the Scarlet Cliff, the wind changed in Zhou's favor, and with it he burned out Cao Cao's fleet.”

“But why these lines this morning?”

“It's a poem about the contingency of history. I was reading about the LaiKai case just now. You know what it's about, don't you? The editorial acclaims it as another triumph in the government's unwavering battle against corruption, no matter how high-ranking the officials involved. Hence all the credit goes to the great, glorious Party,” he said, pointing at the newspaper article. “But what about the contingenciesâ¦”

“Like the eastern wind, right? Lai was such a powerful figure only yesterday, with a mighty fleet of the red songâsinging leftists following him all the way. You're truly a man of learning, sir,” she said with admiration. “So, you're a university professor?”

“I would love to teach that poem to a class,” he said, “if there were enough students interested.”

He wondered whether that poem was included in Qian's CD, as a new wave of sadness washed over him.

He took the CD out. An insect started chirping somewhere in the garden. It was as if he were taking it from her slender hand in Cai's Noodles only this morning.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

DURING THE WRITING OF
the book, a lot of people have helped, in one way or another, and I want to mention here Quynh-Thu Le, Harlan A. Pinto, and Anna Fu in a list too long for me to go through. I am so grateful to all of them for their help, which makes the writing possible. I also want to thank my editing team, Keith Kahla, Margit Longbrake, and Hannah Braaten, for their extraordinary work.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

QIU XIAOLONG
was born in Shanghai. A poet and a translator, he is the author of several previous novels featuring Inspector Chen, as well as
Years of Red Dust
. He lives with his family in St. Louis, Missouri. You can sign up for email updates
here
.

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QIU XIAOLONG

FICTION

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A Loyal Character Dancer

When Red Is Black

POETRY TRANSLATION