“You’re just tired, Chen. Tomorrow morning, you’ll be the ambitious, energetic chief inspector again,” she said, suddenly standing up to open up the blinds behind her. “Look at the river. I remember the lines in one of your poems. ‘It’s not the river, but the moment, / the river comes flowing into your eyes.’”
He gazed into her eyes rippling in the lambent lamplight, and behind her, the skyscrapers lit with the neon lights and signs, and vessels moving across the water.
Unexpectedly, another poem came to his mind.
The aspiration of rolling clouds and roaring wind gone, / I am leaning against the dressing table, / waiting on the ripples in your eyes. / Lest “Master Liu” grow despondent, / combing your hair, you pull up / the curtain to the view of the grand Yellow River.
It was a poem written by Gong Zizhen, a celebrated Qing dynasty poet who dreamed of making a contribution to the country. For most of his life, Gong remained down and out, unable to achieve his aspirations. During a trip to the capital, he visited a young woman named Lingxiao in Huai’an near the Yellow River. Lingxiao served in the Qing dynasty equivalent of the Heavenly World. That night, despondent and disillusioned with all the setbacks he’d encountered, Gong was about to give up and spend his life in her company, composing decadent poems in a Baudelairean fashion. Aware of his frustrations, Lingxiao encouraged him to continue pursuing his ideals. The poem was a scene between the two lovers: the first half unfolded as a monologue of Gong’s, and the second half consisted of Lingxiao’s reaction. At the time, a girl wouldn’t raise her curtains before she was finished making herself up, so Lingxiao, while preparing herself, encouraged him by directing his attention to the grand Yellow River. In classical Chinese poetry, the river was commonly seen as symbolic of the magnificent and sublime.
Nevertheless, Gong ended up a despondent poet, never achieving the political reform of which he dreamed. His personal life was also a disastrous failure.
“What’re you thinking?” White Cloud said.
“Nothing, really. Just about the Heavenly World. It’s difficult for me to find out anything more about it. I’m not a cop anymore, and it’s possible that I’m being watched day and night. Still, I have to make my move before anything else happens.”
“I’ll try to find out more for you, but can you tell me specifically what you’re trying to learn?”
“You mentioned that you know Shen, the owner of the club?”
“Not exactly,” she said, sounding vague. “We’ve met a couple of times.”
Another short silence ensued.
“The law firm that represents the nightclub very likely employs a special advisor who is connected to the city government. That might be important.”
“Yes,” she said, waiting for him to go on.
“You’ve already been able to find out for me what the people who go to the club are talking about. But why are they talking about it? And are they talking about anything new?”
“I’ll get in touch with all my connections and see what they can tell me. I’ll leave no stone unturned.”
“I really appreciate it, White Cloud,” he said, glancing at his watch. “It’s late now, and I think I have to go.”
“Where are you going? Oh, that’s right, you mentioned you were headed to somewhere in Pudong.”
“I’m off to see my old friend Overseas Chinese Lu, who has a new apartment near Century Park.”
“But it’s-” she started, casting a look at the clock on the wall. She didn’t finish her sentence.
She’s right, Chen thought. It’s already past eight fifteen. It could be nine by the time he got to Lu’s.
“I have something important to do in the city early tomorrow morning. It’s too much trouble to go back to Suzhou tonight, and then return to Shanghai tomorrow…”
“Well, stay here, then. You can take the bed, or the couch.”
“It’s so kind of you to offer, but-”
“Before your arrival, I was thinking of going out. Naturally, I would love to play the host, but I think I’ll go out as planned. What time I’ll make it back, I honestly don’t know. So you can stay here, and don’t wait up for me.”
He wondered why she had suddenly decided to leave. Because of something he’d said? Because she wanted him to stay there and not feel awkward about it?
“But it’s late.”
“It’s not too late for me,” she said with a mysterious smile. “I might even go to the salon afterward.”
“If you leave, I’d better leave with you, White Cloud.”
“How can you be so obstinate? It’s too late for you to go to your friend’s, and clearly it’s not advisable for you to go back to your apartment or your mother’s.”
“I can make do with a public bathhouse for the night. They don’t bother to check ID regularly, and for one hundred yuan, I can enjoy a good foot massage and then sleep in a bath-towel-covered folding chair overnight.”
“Come on. That’s not only uncomfortable, it’s risky too. From time to time, the cops raid those places. You don’t need me to tell you that,” she said. “Don’t try to be such a gentleman. Besides, I might learn something about the nightclub tonight.”
He didn’t respond immediately.
“Oh, come to the study with me,” she said, taking his hand. “If you want to use the computer, both the laptop and desktop are yours. The desktop is hooked up to the printer. So make yourself at home.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Here, let me enter the computer’s password for you.”
She leaned over him, typing in the password, her long hair brushing against his cheek. He moved the chair closer to the desk, catching a glimpse of her breasts through the opening of her robe.
“In case you need to reenter it later, it’s CC123.”
Was that a coincidence? “CC” could refer to the initial letters of his name in Pinyin.
But she had already turned away and was padding back to the bathroom in her bare feet.
There, with the door half open, she slid off her robe, her snowy white back flashing under the light.
He stood up and walked out to the balcony. Out there, he took a deep breath of the night air.
Across the river was the Bund that was so familiar to him. It also seemed strange, as he looked at it from this different perspective. The Bund seemed to change and change again with the pulsing of the city.
Years slip away like water…
“How do I look, Chen?”
He turned to see her stepping out onto the balcony in a red mandarin dress with high slits. It reminded him of something from another case, several years ago, when she’d also helped him. For a moment, he was gripped by a sense of déjà vu. Was she wearing the same dress tonight?
“Ravishing, as always.”
“Make yourself at home,” she repeated.
She turned and walked out, looking back over her shoulder to flash another smile at him before closing the apartment door behind her.
She was gone before he had the time to ask where she was going. But was he really going to ask?
He stepped back inside the apartment and paced about the study before he finally sat down at the desk. Instead of working on the computer, he pulled out the cassette tape and listened to it again, focusing on the paragraphs he’d marked. He spent more than an hour listening to the tape, but he didn’t find anything really new.
Then he turned on the computer, typed in the password again, and started surfing the Internet. Immediately he read about a new twist in the dead pig case. A Shanghai meat company was trying to buy an American meat company, as a way of reassuring domestic consumers by implying that the company’s quality control standards were the same as those in the United States. All over the Internet, the move was being ridiculed as an attempt by Chinese socialism to buy superior quality from American capitalism.