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.