Instead of going through the pictures, however, Chen decided to compose an e-mail to Comrade Zhao in Beijing. The tone he intended to take was that of a very respectful long-time-no-report letter to the ex-secretary of the Party Central Discipline Committee. In fact, there was very little Chen could really report. He didn’t mention the Zhou case in any detail, but he did express his concern about absolute corruption coming out of the absolute power of the one-party system. In passing, he touched upon the Beijing team now at the Moller Hotel. He hoped that Comrade Zhao would write back, throwing him some hints about what was going on at the top or the true reason for the Beijing team’s having been sent.
To his surprise, Lieutenant Sheng of Internal Security gave Chen a call just as he was about to send the e-mail. Sheng was some sort of computer expert dispatched from Beijing, but he seemed to have bogged down in his assignment in Shanghai. Sheng didn’t discuss his work in any detail; it was just a polite, base-touching phone call. Could Sheng’s work or the call have something to do with the Zhou case? Chen didn’t push for clarification. He hadn’t been on too-friendly terms with Internal Security.
Shortly after noon, Detective Yu popped into his office with a brown paper bag containing some of the sacrifice cakes from the previous day.
“According to Peiqin, it’s a time-honored convention that anyone present at the service must have some of the cakes from the sacrifice table. It’s called heart-comforting cake. In our hurry, we forgot all about it. If it’s convenient, Peiqin also wants you to take some to your journalist girlfriend.”
“Peiqin never gives up, does she?” Chen said. “I only met Lianping a week ago-as an author meeting his editor.”
“I simply repeat what Peiqin told me to say, Chief,” Yu said, “but the cake isn’t too bad. It’s made of sticky rice. According to her, you can eat it as it is, but if you prefer, you can also steam or warm it first, and it will taste better.”
After Yu left, Chen took out a cake shaped like a silver ingot with a red imprint in the center. He might as well have it for lunch.
He had hardly taken one bite of the slightly sweet cake when he got a call from Lianping. It turned out to be an invitation to a concert at the new Oriental Art Center in Pudong.
“A ticket for a concert there costs more than a thousand yuan, but they gave me two for free. It would be too much of a waste if I were to go by myself.”
It was a tempting invitation. A trip to the concert hall would be an acceptable excuse for him to take a break. He’d worn himself out thinking and speculating about all the possibilities, but to no avail. A change of scene might help to clear his mind.
Besides, considering her willingness to come over to the temple last Saturday and her promptness in delivering the pictures to him and Peiqin, he wasn’t in a position to say no.
“That’s nice. I’ll be there.”
When he put down the phone, he noticed that it had started raining outside, a slow drizzle. He wondered at the promptness with which he had accepted her invitation. A siren was sounding in the distance.
He went back to the unfinished e-mail. It took longer than he expected to compose one to Comrade Zhao. He experienced a sense of relief when he finally sent it out.
Then he settled back to concentrate on the paperwork on his desk.
It was near four o’clock when he looked up again. The drizzle seemed to have continued off and on.
It could be a headache getting hold of a taxi on a rainy day, especially during rush hour. The Oriental Concert Hall was in Pudong, an area relatively new to him. He wasn’t sure if he could get there by subway or how bad the traffic would be. It would be better to leave early, he concluded, putting a paperback and a paper-wrapped heart-comforting cake into his shoulder bag.
He decided not to take the bureau car. It would be too much to have the driver wait there until the end of the concert, and he might also tell stories afterward. It took Chen more than forty minutes to get there by the subway, but it was still faster than he’d expected. When he emerged from the subway, the rain was finally easing off, with a suggestion of a rainbow stretching out against the dismal horizon.
To Chen, Pudong was almost like another city. The map he brought with him didn’t help much. Some of the streets and street names hadn’t existed when the map was printed about two years ago. The surrounding high-rises jostled together into an overwhelming oppression. At least, it felt that way to him. He looked up at the gray clouds sailing precariously among the concrete and steel skyscrapers.
He thought he might as well wander about a little, just like Granny Liu lost in the Grand View Garden in the Dream of the Red Chamber. But he soon got weary of bumping around aimlessly. He glanced at his watch again. There was still more than an hour before the concert.
He saw a small Internet café tucked in behind a construction site. Originally, it might have been a temporary place for the workers to take a short break. It would probably be pulled down once the high-rise was finished. It might not be a bad idea for him to check his e-mail here, he thought, before going on to the concert hall.
When he stepped up to the front desk, a young man asked him to show his ID.
“I just want to check my e-mail,” Chen said.
“It’s a new regulation just put into effect this month. It was under the strict orders of the city government, and there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“Really!”
He produced his ID, and the young man recorded the ID number on a worn-out register before giving Chen another number.
“Fifty-one.”
That must refer to the computer assigned to him. He walked over to number 51, toward the end of a row of desks.
Chen recalled what he’d heard from others during the investigation. Apparently this new effort on the part of the government was another step in the ever-tightening control of the Internet. It was no surprise that such a regulation had gone into effect without his knowledge. Internet control, too, was beyond the domain of the police bureau.
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.