Enigma of China (17 page)

He sat down at the computer and pressed the power button. A boy sitting next to him was noisily wolfing down a steaming bowl of instant beef noodles, his eyes still locked onto a game in a crisis as it played out across his screen.

Signing on to his account, Chen found among his incoming mail a reminder from Lianping about this evening’s concert. She was also still pushing him to write something for her from the point of view of an ordinary cop.

He then decided to check his Hotmail account, which he had acquired while visiting the United States as part of a delegation. Some of his friends in the States kept complaining about difficulties reaching him through his usual Sina e-mail account. He didn’t check the Hotmail regularly, but it was still early, and he had some time to kill.

But he had problems gaining access to the Hotmail account. An assistant came over, tried several times, but with no more success than Chen. Chen was ready to give up when the assistant pointed him to another computer.

“Try that one.”

Chen moved to the new one, which seemed to work better but was still mysteriously slow. After three or four minutes, he conceded defeat. He decided to do some research through Google instead but was again informed that he couldn’t have access to it.

Shaking his head, he switched back to his Sina account and retrieved a draft he’d saved.

Crumpling a rejection slip, I step back into my role / shadowed by the surrounding skyscrapers. / I try in vain to make the case reports yield / ›a clue to the bell tolling over the city. / For all I know, what makes a cop makes me. / And I investigate through the small lanes / and side streets, the scenes once familiar / in my memories: a couple snuggling like / paper-cutouts on the door, a loner connecting / cigarettes into an antenna for the future, a granny / bending over a chamber pot in her bound feet / like a broken twig, a peddler hawking out of debris, / almost like a suspect… A sign DEMOLITION / deconstructs me. Nothing can avert the coming / of a bulldozer. It is not an easy task to push, / amidst the disappearing scene, the round to an end.

He wondered whether the poem had been inspired by Lianping’s insistence. The images weren’t new, but the idea of an ordinary cop’s persona provided a framework, in which he found it easier to put what he wanted to say. He still wasn’t satisfied with it, but he thought that was about all he could afford to do with it for the moment. After reading it one more time, he sent it out as an attachment.

He then noticed a new e-mail from Peiqin, who had also received the pictures Lianping had taken of the Buddhist service.

Thank you so much, Chief, for coming to the service, and for bringing along your pretty, talented girlfriend. The digital pictures she took are high-resolution. They can be enlarged as much as you like. On one of the pictures I discovered something I didn’t even see at the temple-the address on the paper villa.

Chen turned to click Lianping’s photo file. The picture Peiqin talked about was that of the paper villa burned as sacrifice in the temple courtyard. He enlarged the picture and, sure enough, could see the address clearly on the door-123 Binjiang Garden. It was the same thing Lianping had pointed out to him at the time. It was one of the most expensive subdivisions in Shanghai, a symbol of wealth and status in the city.

Once again, an elusive idea flashed through his mind like a spark. He stared hard at the screen. Possibly there was something he’d overlooked. However, the idea vanished before he could really get hold of it. The screen stared back at him.

Finally, he stood up from the computer.

At the front desk, the clerk checked the time he spent on “Computer 51” and another clerk charged him accordingly. They didn’t bother to record that he’d moved to a different computer, he observed. After all, the employees weren’t netcops. For them, the regulation was only an inconvenience, so it wasn’t realistic to expect them to observe it conscientiously. He pushed over a five-yuan bill, and the clerk handed him the change.

He stepped out and made his way back to the concert hall. He was still about twenty minutes early. The concert hall was an ultramodern construction with a huge glass façade that incorporated metal sheeting of variable density. From where he stood near the entrance, he caught a glimpse of the interior partially covered with enamel ceramic, which alone must have cost an obscene amount of money.

He was startled out of his observation by a car pulling up alongside him, a slender hand waving out of the window.

“Have I kept you waiting long, Chief Inspector Chen?”

“Oh, no.”

“Sorry, the traffic was terrible,” Lianping said. “I’ll park the car in the back and join you in one minute.”

In four or five minutes, she emerged from the crowd with two tickets in her hand. She was wearing a light beige cashmere cardigan over a white strapless satin dress, and she had on silver high-heeled slippers, as if she was walking around in her living room.

She belonged to a different generation: “born in the eighties,” as it was sometimes called. The term wasn’t just about the time but about the ideas and values imbued by that time.

The lights in the concert hall were dimming as they entered and took their seats.

Tonight it was Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 by the Singaporean Youth Orchestra. He had read and heard about Mahler, but he didn’t usually have time to go to concerts in the city.

Somewhere backstage, a musician was erratically tuning his instrument. Lianping opened the program and studied it. In the semidarkness, Chen found himself beginning to miss, somehow, the career he’d once designed for himself. It was during his college years, when he went to concerts and museums quite regularly. Like the rest of his generation, he had a lot to catch up on because of the ten years lost to the Cultural Revolution. But then he was assigned to the police bureau. Half closing his eyes, he tried in vain to recover the dream of his youthful days…

Turning to Lianping, he saw the rapture on her face as the symphony began, developing swiftly into emotional intensity. She was so enthralled she leaned back, slipped off her shoes, and, dangling her bare feet, subconsciously kept time with the melody.

He, too, was losing himself in trancelike impressions from the transformative performance, in the midst of which some fragmented lines came surging to his mind, carrying him to a transcendental understanding of the music, a vision breaking out in the splendid notes.

During the intermission, they chose to step outside.

In the magnificently lit lobby, Chen bought two cups of white wine. They stood drinking and talking while people were milling around.

“So you can get complimentary tickets?”

“Not for the most sought-after performances, but frequently, yes. In this new concert hall, the ticket prices are so high that there’s no possibility that all concerts will sell out, so why not give a couple of free tickets to a journalist? A mention in
Wenhui
could be worth much more.”

“You have to write a review of it?”

“A short piece will be enough. One paragraph. Nothing but clichés. All I have to do is say something about the excellent performance, something about the enthusiastic audience. Occasionally all I have to do is change the name and date. It will be nothing like the poem you sent to me.”

“Oh, you’ve received it.”

“Yes, I like it very much. It’ll come out next week,” she said, then pointed at a poster. “Oh, look; a red song concert-also next week.”

“What a comeback,” he said.

Of late, people were being urged to sing revolutionary songs again, particularly those that were popular during the Cultural Revolution, as if singing them could once again make people loyal to the Party.

“It’s like black magic,” she said. “Remember the Boxer Rebellion? Those peasant soldiers chanted, ‘No weapons can hurt us,’ as they rushed toward the bullets. Of course, they bit the dust.”

It was a scathing comment, an echo from a scene in an old movie. For the moment, however, he found himself standing so close to her that the perfume from her body made his mind digress.

“I have a question for you, Chen,” she said. “In classical Chinese poetry, the music comes from subtle tone patterns for each character in a line. With no such tone pattern in free verse, how can you come even close to music?”

“That’s a good question.” It was a question he’d thought about, but he didn’t have a ready answer that could meet the expectation in her gaze. “Modern Chinese is a relatively new language. Its musicality is still experimental. So
rhythm
may be a better word for it. For instance, the varying length of the lines. It is called free verse, but nothing is really free. None of it is totally with or without rhythm or rhyme.”

She was becoming something of an enigma. At one moment, she seemed so young and fashionable, but in the next moment, sophisticated and perceptive. That didn’t keep him from appreciating her; if anything, it made him appreciate her even more than before.

A ringing bell announced that the second half of the concert would soon start.

“By the way, I almost forgot,” she said, seemingly as an afterthought. “Here.”

She held out a small card, on which was written Melong’s name and phone number.

“Thank you. It’s so thoughtful of you, Lianping. But you gave the number to me back at the restaurant.”

“He changes his number every two or three months. Only those who are really close to him can keep track. I just got it from someone else,” she said, draining the glass.

In the fading light, she took his arm, as if lost in thought.

They made their way back to their seats. Then the second half of the concert began, which they enjoyed all the way to the end. He was aware of her holding her breath, leaning toward him during the fantastic finale.

When the curtain fell, she still seemed enthralled by the music, clapping her hands longer than most people.

They walked out with the rest of the crowd. It felt suddenly noisy out in the open. Yet there was a pleasant breeze to greet them, ruffling a wisp of hair off her forehead.

“Thank you so much. I had a great evening,” he said.

“The pleasure was mine. I’m so glad you enjoyed it.”

He started looking for a taxi, which he knew might be difficult to find, with all the people still pouring out of the concert hall.

“You didn’t drive?”

“No, I don’t have a car.”

“Surely there is a bureau car you could use.”

“Yes, but not for a concert, and not when I’m in the company of an attractive young journalist.”

“Come on, Comrade Chief Inspector Chen,” she said. “Look at the line of people waiting for a taxi over there. It’ll take you at least half an hour to get one. Let me give you a ride. Wait right here for me.”

She came back around in her car, a silver Volvo. The model had a clever Chinese transliteration-
Fuhao
, which could also mean “rich and successful.” She opened the door for him. The car was brand new and had a GPS system, which was particularly helpful in still-expanding Pudong.

Her hands on the wheel, she looked confident as she maneuvered the car dexterously in and out of traffic, like a fish in water. The shimmering neon lights outlined and re-outlined the night outside. He enjoyed the play of the lights on her face as she turned toward him, pressed a button. The moon roof pulled back luxuriously. She flashed a starlit smile. He couldn’t help but feel that this city belonged to young, energetic girls like her.

She started to tell him bits and pieces about herself. She was born in Anhui, where her father had a small factory. Like a lot of non-Shanghainese, her father held on to a dream that his daughter, if not he himself, would be able to live and work in the city of Shanghai. To his great gratification, she obtained a job at
Wenhui Daily
after graduating from Fudan University. In spite of majoring in English, or perhaps because of it, she did well covering the financial news.

“You’re the number-one finance journalist. It says so on your business card, as I remember,” he commented as she took a sip from a water bottle.

“Come on. It simply means that you’re the one trusted by the Party boss, the top journalist in the section. It does come with a bonus of one thousand yuan per month.”

“That’s fantastic.”

“But it also means that to keep it, you have to write every piece with the interest of the Party in mind.” The car took an abrupt turn, and she went on, “Oh, look at the new restaurant on your right. That is the number-one-restaurant choice for lovers, according to the Mass Recommendation Web Forum. It is totally dark inside, like a cocoon. The young people can’t even see the food-instead, they are touching and feeling and groping the whole time.”

She had a way of talking about things, jumping from one topic to another, like a sparrow flitting among the boughs, but she surely knew more than he did about the young, glamorous parts of the city.

“I grow old-”

“What do you mean, Chief Inspector Chen?”

“Oh, it just reminds me of a line.”

“Come on. You’re still the youngest chief inspector in the country,” she said, patting his hand lightly. “I’ve researched it on the Internet.”

When the car slowed down in the jam-packed tunnel to Puxi, he asked her where she lived.

“It’s close to Great World. My father is a businessman, so he was able to make the down payment for me on an apartment there. It’s been a good investment, having quadrupled in value in less than three years.”

“Oh, so it’s close to my mother’s place.”

“Really! Drop by my place next time you visit her. I’ve got the latest coffeemaker.”

The car was already pulling up, however, by his subdivision near Wuxing Road.

She got out of the car at the same time as he did and was now standing opposite him, her clear eyes sparkling under the starry sky. It was an intoxicating night with a balmy breeze.

“Thank you so much. I’ve really enjoyed the evening. Not just the music, but also the conversation.” He awkwardly added, “It’s late, and my place is a mess. Perhaps next time-”