The third floor entrance led into a marketlike place, where stood rows of large water tanks with swimming fishes and jumping shrimps. Large shelves displayed a variety of dishes and pots wrapped in plastic, vivid in color and shape. A sort of live menu. A waitress, also in red-and-white-striped pajamas, came over. At her recommendation, they ordered pork rib soup with tulips in a stainless-steel pot over a liquid gas stove, steamed live bass with ginger and green onion scattered over a blue and white platter, water-immersed beef covered with red pepper in a large bowl, tomato cups with peeled shrimp, and chunks of fried rice-paddy eel on bamboo sticks. They also requested two bottles of ice beer.
The waitress led them to a table, her wooden slippers clacking pleasant notes on the hardwood floor. The dining hall had a uniform atmosphere, probably the result of the identical red-and-white-striped pajamas worn by everyone there.
“We have realized communism here, or the appearance of it. Everybody looks the same-at least in clothing,” Lei said, raising his chopsticks. “But look at that large table, the so-called Complete Manchurian and Han Banquet. The name, if you were wondering, originated from the need for a united front during the Qing dynasty. To demonstrate his solidarity, the Manchurian emperor had delicacies from various ethnic cuisines served on one table in the Forbidden City. Camel dome, bear paw, swallow’s nest, monkey brains…”
“Every rare and expensive item imaginable under the sun,” Chen said, glancing toward the impressive table. “Those upstarts show off like anything.”
“Well, it’s no longer an age of showing off just for the sake of doing so. It’s a banquet for guanxi. Big bucks in the business for big bugs in the government,” Lei said, putting a chunk of beef onto Chen’s plate.
“As Old Master Du said,” Chen replied, “The meat and wine go bad behind the vermilion door; I by the roadside lie the bodies starved to death.”
“Life is short,” Lei said. “Let’s eat and drink.”
Across the aisle, a young girl was putting her bare foot on an old man’s thigh, her red toenails like rose petals blossoming out of his carrot-thick fingers.
After the meal, they moved down to the rest area on the second floor. It consisted of large halls and small private rooms. The halls were for common customers, where men and women kept coming and going in their striped pajamas. Private rooms came in different sizes, providing privacy and special service at varying prices.
“Look, it’s Tong Tian, the head of Zhabei District,” Lei whispered, casting a suggestive look toward a man stepping into the private room across the aisle.
“Yes, Secretary Tong. I recognize him too.”
“He has sent his wife and daughter abroad. Vancouver. His daughter studies in a private school. They have a mansion there.”
“Well-” Chen understood the implication. Tong’s government salary was perhaps about the same as Chen’s. It took no brains to figure out Tong’s means of supporting his family abroad.
“With the door closed, a couple of pretty young girls at your service, a few thousand yuan could go in a snap of fingers. The room fee alone costs five hundred yuan an hour.” Lei concluded with an unexpected twist: “If our Party cadres were all like you, China would have realized communism.”
The hall appeared cozy, comfortable. Each customer had a soft recliner and a side table for drinks and snacks, and two large projection TVs showed an American movie. In front of them, massage girls kept walking back and forth, like bats flitting in the dusk.
“We’ve talked enough corruption for an evening,” Chen said. “Not a pleasant topic after a rich meal.”
But it was not simply a matter of indigestion. The expense for the afternoon would be more than Lei’s socialist monthly salary. As a Party cadre, Lei had a comfortable business expense allowance-supposedly in the interests of the newspaper. According to a Chinese proverb, Chen recalled in a self-deprecating humor, those fleeing for fifty steps should not laugh at those fleeing for a hundred steps.
“Don’t worry, Chen,” Lei said, as if having read his thought. “When you are no longer shocked at the sight of a devil, the devil will go away.”
That was also a Chinese proverb. The devil of unbridled corruption, however, might be a different story. Presently, two massage girls came over to them, both dressed in the red-and-white-striped pajamas, except that they were in short sleeves and short pants, their bare arms and legs glistening in the dark.
Lei had already given the order. “Back massage to start with.”
The girl for Chen appeared to be only seventeen or eighteen. She helped him remove the pajama top and rubbed oil on his back. He looked back over his shoulder and glimpsed a slender and fragile-looking figure kneeling over him in the semidarkness, her arms moving in rhythm, and her fingers concentrating on the troubled spots. It was an exotic experience, which reminded him of a remark Lei had made: “In the late Roman empire.”
The Roman empire fell, Chen thought, with his face pressed against a soft pillow, because of corruption and decadence. Lei would probably not have meant it. For him, the newspaper empire had just started.
The girl was turning him over again. Perching herself on a low stool, she placed his feet on her lap, and his toes seemed to be touching her soft breasts through the thin pajama material. “Your feet make my heart jump,” she said in a husky voice, her face flushed with exertion, her brow beaded with sweat. Then unexpectedly, she leaned down and put his big toe into her mouth. He was too flustered to stop her, his toe lollipop-like on her soft warm tongue.
Then his cell phone rang. He took it out from under the pillow. Not too many knew his number, which he had just changed.
“Comrade Chief Inspector Chen Cao?”
“Speaking.”
“I’m Zhao Yan, of the Central Party Discipline Committee. I am speaking to you on behalf of the committee.”
“Oh, Comrade Secretary Zhao Yan.”
Chen immediately snapped to attention. Zhao was a legendary figure in Beijing. Having joined the Party in the forties and rising to a top government position early in his career, he spent a large part of the Cultural Revolution studying in jail, and he reemerged as one of the few self-made top Party intellectuals. It was said that Comrade Deng Xiaoping had adopted a number of suggestions made by Zhao in the beginning of the economic reform. Zhao was the Second Secretary of the Party Discipline Committee in the early eighties, founded as an inner-Party self-policing measure. Because of the cadre retirement policy, he then retired to an honorable position. But he remained a most influential man for the committee, which became increasingly powerful in the Party’s effort to fight corruption.
“I’m retired, only an advisor now. Call me Comrade Zhao. Is this a good moment to talk to you?”
“Please go ahead, Comrade Zhao.” There was no telling him that the chief inspector was luxuriating in a bathhouse, half-naked, with a half-naked girl sucking his toes. He waved his hand at her, jumped down, picked up a towel, and ran out to the corridor.
“You must be aware of our new anticorruption campaign?”
“I have been reading about it,” Chen said, wiping the sweat from his forehead with the towel.
“Have you read about the case of Xing Xing?”
“Yes, I have been following its development.”
Lei came out too, with concern on his face and a glass of wine in his hand. He might have overheard something in connection with the name of Zhao Yan, and he handed over the wine without speaking a word. Chen took it, and he raised the phone as a gesture of apology before Lei moved back in.
“Xing has caused a huge loss to our national economy, and great damage to our political image. Having fled to the United States, he continues making no end of trouble there.”