“Yes, I, too, was surprised that most of them seemed to be so biased against her, even some who hardly had any personal contact with her.”
“Well, there is a Chinese proverb, When three people start talking about seeing a tiger on the street, everybody else in the city believes it.” He added abruptly, “One of your interviewees, Mr. Zhuang, mentioned Doctor Zhivago. Do you have his phone number?”
“Yes. Is it important?”
“I don’t know, but I think I’ll look into it.”
“Here it is,” she said, handing him a small piece of paper.
“Now I have something else for you to do, White Cloud, but you looked a bit tired today.”
“I slept late. That’s nothing. The hot shower has helped.”
He explained to her the problem he was having with the marketing section of the business proposal.
“Oh, I happen to have read an introductory book on marketing. A very good introduction, concise yet comprehensive. I may have given it to a friend, but I can find it in the library.”
“Your major is Chinese, right?”
“The government still assigns jobs to college students, but there are no good jobs for Chinese majors,” she said. “No joint venture company will hire someone capable only of reading classical poems.”
“The water flows, flowers fall, and the spring fades. / It’s a changed world.”
“Why did you recite those lines from Li Yu?” she asked.
“I am thinking of my college days, when the government assigned me to my job in the police bureau. I was interested in nothing but poetry then.”
“But you have a marvelous job, Chief Inspector Chen,” she said, tugging at the robe belt tentatively. “I’m going to change. I’ll bring the book over today if I can get it. Don’t worry.”
Her departure made it possible for him to refocus on the homicide investigation. He decided to take a short cut, using his connections. Internal Security had not been helpful in providing essential information, so he would have to try to find out what they needed to know in his own way. He had a friend, Huang Shan, who was the director of the foreign liaison office of the Shanghai Writers’ Association. Chen had once been considered as a candidate for the position, but had recommended his friend Huang instead. Since Yin Lige had made the trip to Hong Kong as a member of the Shanghai Writers’ Association, the foreign liaison office must have kept a file on her. Her dossier should be available to Huang. Chen dialed Huang’s phone number; he readily promised to help.
As Chen expected, the information he had requested arrived by special courier that afternoon.
Chen saw that Yin had recently made an application for renewal of her passport. The formalities required that an applicant first be approved by his or her work unit. Yin had chosen to go through the Writers’ Association because of her membership in that group, rather than through her college. The application was based on an invitation from a small American university for a trip at the end of the coming summer.
In the past, an application of a dissident writer like Yin would have been denied at the outset. But the Party authorities must have come to the realization that the more they tried to keep dissidents at home, the more attention they attracted abroad. Once out of China, they were no longer the focus of attention, no longer even a nine days’ wonder. In fact, the Party authorities had believed that Yin would not return from her earlier trip to Hong Kong. Good riddance once and for all, they must have hoped. However, she had come back to Shanghai. So there was no reason to reject her current application for a passport renewal.
Nor did there seem to be anything suspicious about her application, according to Huang. Yin had been invited as a visiting scholar for the next school year and granted a fellowship, although it was only symbolic in terms of money. So a literary agency in New York had provided a financial support affidavit. With or without the affidavit, as a well-known dissident writer, Yin would not have had a problem getting a visa from the American consul in Shanghai.
But the information surprised Chen, for Yu should have been informed of her application, whatever political considerations Internal Security or the higher authorities might have had. For the first time, Chen seriously considered the possibility that the murder might have been politically motivated. Why else would they be so cagey even after her death? But, on the other hand, if the government had intended to prevent her leaving China, wouldn’t she have been denied a passport when she had applied to make the earlier trip to Hong Kong? “Murdered Before Her Trip to the United States ”: such a headline would be internationally sensational, would have the potential to damage the new image the government was trying hard to present to the world.
Then something else in the file caught his attention. Yin had recently had her birth certificate and diploma translated and notarized through the Writers’ Association. This made no sense unless as a step toward emigration. Like so many others, she might have intended to remain in the United States. And there was something odd about the sponsorship affidavit too, although it was not exactly suspicious. For a lot of Chinese would-be emigrants, that financial affidavit served only for the visa application. The sponsoring individual had agreed beforehand with the applicant that he would not, in fact, be liable, despite signing and swearing to the document. But if an American company furnished such a financial affidavit, it might be different. Why should a literary agency have offered her financial support for a year? That was a lot of money. As far as Chen knew, Death of a Chinese Professor had not sold that well in the United States. The relatively small sum it had earned was out of proportion to what the literary agency had promised in the affidavit.
He made himself a pot of coffee. Whistling, he tapped lightly on the Brazilian coffee can. He hoped the cup of coffee would give him fresh ideas.
Was it possible that she had another book contract obtained by that agency? If so, they might have used her advance as the sum promised in the affidavit. There was no information, however, about Yin having written a new book.
Could it be money for Yang’s poetry translation? That might also account for the presence of the manuscript in the bank safety deposit box.
But there was no information about this either. Also, he doubted that a translation of Chinese poems into English would sell so well.
Chapter 13
Yu left for home early in the afternoon. He could not do any solid thinking in the neighborhood committee office, where people were constantly coming and going. Nor did he want to return to the police bureau. He was in no mood for another political lecture from Party Secretary Li.
When he arrived home and opened the front door to the house before stepping into the courtyard, he was surprised to see Peiqin busily making coal briquettes there.
“You’ve come back early today.”
“You, too.”
There was not much coal dust left. Behind Peiqin, against the wall, stood a small mound of coal briquettes.
She had rented a briquette mold from the neighborhood coal store, an upper and lower half connected by a steel spring. The lower part was filled with coal dust, and water sprinkled over it; the upper part, which had hollow cylinders throughout, had to be pushed down hard to form each briquette. It was not yet spring, and rather windy for the time of the year. Her hands were covered with wet dust, and her wrists, chilled by the damp and the cold, were red.
In the first year of their marriage, he had occasionally made briquettes from coal dust to save money since the local coal store sold coal dust far more cheaply than ready-made briquettes. As he began to roll up his sleeves, he wondered why she had chosen that afternoon for the arduous chore.