“You may have heard stories of me,” Chen said. “According to one of them, I always repay a debt.”
“You don’t have to say that, Chief Inspector Chen. It’s difficult to deal with disputes among neighbors, but we should try our best. You are right about that. Let’s go there.”
Chen didn’t bother to guess what the director had said to Fei. They went back together to Auntie Kong’s building.
All the residents in the unit came out, standing in their doorways, and Fei and Chen stood in the narrow corridor. Fei announced that a decision had been made jointly by the neighborhood committee and the district police station. A small space was to be cleared for Auntie Kong in the common kitchen. Not large, but enough for a propane gas tank. Out of safety considerations, the committee would put up a partition between the gas tank and coal stoves. No one argued or protested.
After the decision was announced, Chen was about to leave when Auntie Kong sidled up and said, “Comrade Chief Inspector Chen.”
“Yes, Auntie Kong?”
“May I have a word with you?”
“Of course.” He turned to Fei and said, “You may go back first. Thanks for your great help.”
“So you are somebody,” she said, closing the door when they were back in her room. “For more than ten years, I’ve had to cook in this room, and you’ve solved the problem for me in half an hour.”
“That’s nothing. I admire Mr. Kong’s work,” he said. “The neighborhood committee office is just across the lane, so I stepped in and told them of your difficulties.”
“I guess you tried to oblige me,” she said, “and I am obliged. There is no free white bun falling from the blue sky, I know.”
The black cat was moving back. She scooped it up and placed it on her lap, but it jumped down, ran onto the windowsill, where it curled itself against the windowpane.
“No. Don’t worry about it. That’s what a cop should do.”
“I have just a question for you. You are not going to use the picture at the expense of other people, are you? That was my old man’s worst nightmare.”
“Let me tell you something, Auntie Kong,” he said, putting his hand on the wall, which felt sticky-perhaps from too much cooking in the room. “Earlier this afternoon, I was in the Jin’an Temple, where I made a pledge to Buddha: to be a good, conscientious cop. Believe it or not, shortly after making the pledge, I learned about the picture.”
“I believe you, but is the picture really that important to you?”
“It may throw light onto a homicide investigation, or I wouldn’t have come to you without notice.”
“A picture taken almost thirty years ago is related to a murder case today?” She was incredulous.
“At this moment, it is just a possibility, but we can’t afford not to check. Let me assure you: I don’t believe it has anything to do with you or your husband.”
“If I still remember anything about that picture at all,” she started hesitantly, “it’s because of his passion for it. He used up all his vacation days for the project, working like one possessed. I even suspected that he had fallen for a shameless model.’ ”
“A good artist has to throw himself totally into a project, I know. It takes a lot of energy to produce such a masterpiece.”
“Well, she turned out to be a decent woman of a good family. And he joked about my imagination: ‘Me fall for her? No, it would be like a mud-colored toad watering its mouth at an immaculate white swan. I’m so excited because no photographer has approached her yet. For a photographer, it’s like discovering a gold mine.’ ”
“Did he tell you how he discovered her?”
“At a concert, I think. A violinist onstage. At first she refused to pose for him. It took him a couple of weeks to bring her around. She finally agreed on the condition that the picture be taken with her son. That gave him new inspiration-a mother and son instead of just a beautiful woman.”
“She must have loved her son very much.”
“I thought so too. Looking at the picture, people couldn’t help but be touched.”
“Did he tell you her name?”
“He must have, but I don’t remember it now.”
“Do you know anything about the process of setting up the photo? For instance, the choice of the mandarin dress?”
“Well, he raved about an oriental beauty, and about the mandarin dress bringing out the best in her, but she must have had the dress at home. He couldn’t have afforded it. Sorry, I don’t know whose idea it was to choose the dress.”
“Where was the picture taken?”
“She lived in a mansion. So it was probably taken in its back garden. He spent a whole day there, using up five or six rolls of film, and then spent a week in the darkroom, almost like a mole. He was so carried away that he brought all the pictures back home one night, asking me to choose one for him. For the competition.”
“You chose the right one for him.”
“But after it won the award, he began to be worried. Initially, he didn’t want to tell me why. I learned from newspaper clippings hidden in a drawer that the picture had become controversial. Some people were talking about the ‘political message’ in it.”
“Yes, everything could be given political interpretations.”
“And during the Cultural Revolution, he was mass-criticized for the picture. Chairman Mao said that some attack the Party through novels, so the Red Guards claimed that Kong had attacked the Party through the picture. Like other ‘monsters,’ he had to stand with a blackboard hung around his neck, and his name was crossed out on the blackboard.”
“So many people suffered. My father, too, stood bent with such a blackboard.”
“What’s more, some others compelled him to reveal the identity of the woman in the picture, and that upset him enormously.”
“Who put the pressure on him?” he said. “Did he say anything?”
“An organization of Worker Rebels, I think. It was against his professional ethic but the pressure proved too much, and he finally gave up, thinking it was no crime for someone to pose for a picture. After all, there was nothing nude or obscene in it.”
“Did he know anything about what happened to her?”
“He didn’t, not at first. It was only a year or so later that he heard about her death. It had nothing to do with him. So many people died in those days. And perhaps it was not too surprising for someone with a family background like hers, and herself a ‘bourgeois artist.’ Still, the uncertainty weighed like a rock on his mind.”
“He didn’t have to be so hard on himself. People could have learned her identity anyway,” Chen said, thinking that the old photographer could have cared for her. Seeing no point in bringing up the possibility, he changed the subject. “Now, he used five or six rolls for this picture, you have mentioned. Did he keep those other pictures?”
“Yes, he kept them at a risk to himself, hiding them away even from me. Along with a notebook. ‘The portfolio of the red mandarin dress,’ he called it. After his death, I discovered them by chance. I didn’t have the heart to get rid of them-they must have been so special to him.”
Out of the cabinet drawer, she produced a large envelope containing a notebook and a bunch of pictures in a smaller envelope.
“Here they are, Chief Inspector Chen.”
“Thank you so much, Auntie Kong,” he said, rising. “I’ll return them to you after looking through them.”
“Don’t worry. I have no use for them.” She added, “But don’t forget your pledge in the temple.”
“No, I won’t.”
It was a random harvest. He started reading the notebook in a taxi outside Auntie Kong’s building. It contained plenty of working notes. Kong had discovered the model at a concert, spellbound by “her sublime beauty at the soul-stirring climax of the music.” Afterward, a Young Pioneer rushed onstage, holding a bouquet of flowers for her. The boy turned out to be her son, and she hugged him affectionately onstage. For a week after the concert, he spared no effort in persuading her to pose for him. It was a tough job, for she was interested neither in money nor in publicity. He finally succeeded in bringing her around by promising to photograph her together with her son. The picture was taken in the back garden of their mansion.