Half an hour later, the door opened and his boss, Chang Bofan, stepped in. With him were three policemen; one of them was fat with a beer belly, another skinny and bald, and the other so young that he looked like a teenager. They sat down and began interrogating Manjin. Bofan said, “Comrade Shen Manjin, you know this is a very serious charge. I have always believed you to be a good man. You must tell us the truth. If you committed the crime, admit it before it’s too late.”
Manjin burst into tears and for a minute couldn’t say anything. Meanwhile, the bald policeman took a leather flyswatter out of a drawer and, one by one, brought down the droning flies.
The fat man snapped at Manjin, “Stop it! You just pawed the girl, where’s your spunk now?”
“No. I didn’t do it on purpose.”
“All right,” Bofan said. “Shen Manjin, explain it to us. You will go to jail if you can’t prove your innocence.”
Manjin stopped sobbing. Gradually he began to tell them what happened. The boyish man was writing down his words in a large folder. From time to time Manjin was interrupted by the policemen’s chuckles. He tried to remain coolheaded so as to convince them of his honesty. To make the unknown woman resemble the girl more, he insisted that she had worn white clothes too, and that he had seen her hurry away to the front gate. But when he finally said, “From behind I thought the girl was the woman in white,” all three policemen shook their heads.
“What did the woman look like?” asked the bald man.
“I couldn’t see her face in the dark.”
“If you can’t identify her, how can we believe you?”
“That’s true,” the fat man chimed in. “The sentence for attempted sexual assault is three years, minimum. We don’t believe any woman would do such a thing in a public place. This sounds like a joke.”
“Please, I really mistook the girl for the woman.” Manjin realized that at any cost he must cling to the story of the mysterious woman, whether he could prove her existence or not. This was his only way out.
“Wait,” Bofan broke in, raising a red folder. “Here’s what the girl said.” He read it out: “He grabbed me and said, ‘Honey, let’s do that again.’ ”
“So?” The fat man shrugged.
“It seems something had happened in the theater before he approached the girl. Or else why did he use the word ‘again’?”
The fat man took the folder from Bofan and looked over the paragraph in question while exhaling a puff of smoke, a jade cigarette-holder clamped between his teeth. Then he said, “He has to tell us who the nymphomaniac is. If not, how do we explain this to the girl’s family? She’s Vice Mayor Nan’s daughter.”
The last sentence almost paralyzed Manjin. Things turned foggy before him, and he closed his eyes, too giddy to think or answer their questions.
“Let him rest for a while, all right?” Bofan suggested.
The policemen got up and went into another room for tea. Bofan moved closer and patted Manjin on the shoulder. “Little Shen, you must take this incident seriously. Even if you don’t go to jail, your political life will be over if you can’t clear your name now. You are lucky they called me. Otherwise, who knows what would happen.”
“Director Chang, I really don’t know who the woman is.”
“Try to remember who you met in the theater.”
“I saw nobody but Wang Tingting.”
Bofan’s eyes lit up. “Did she sit beside you?”
“I don’t know where she sat.”
“What kind of clothes did she wear?”
“A white shirt and a pink skirt.”
“Good. You must tell them this. It’s an important clue.” Bofan stood up and went into the adjacent office.
Ten minutes later the three policemen returned and resumed the interrogation. “You saw Wang Tingting at the theater?” asked the fat man.
“Yes, but I’m not sure if she was the woman.”
Bofan said to the police, “He saw her in a white shirt.”
“Yes. It was before she entered the theater,” Manjin said.
“Did the woman in white ever speak to you?” asked the fat man.
“Yes.”
“She did? What did she say?”
“She said, ‘Sorry. Thank you.’ That was all.”
“Could you tell it was Wang Tingting’s voice?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Why did she say that?”
“I don’t know. She wiped my hand and said that before she left.”
“She wiped your hand?”
“Yes.”
“With what did she do that?”
“A handkerchief or something.”
“Wait,” the bald man cut in. “What kind of handkerchief, do you remember?”
“I couldn’t see.”
“Was it silk?”
“No.”
“Dacron?”
“No. It must be cotton, rather crumpled and soft.”
That night the police went to Tingting’s dormitory and searched her pockets. They found a lavender handkerchief and brought it, along with her, to the police station. She denied having done anything with Manjin in the theater. She wept and claimed he was framing her. To the interrogators she described in detail the second half of the movie; then she challenged, “If I left in the middle of the film, how could I know the entire story.”
“Well, you could have seen it before,” said Bofan. “And you didn’t have to leave the theater afterward.”
Manjin was surprised to see that her eyes were so sunken that they appeared larger than they used to be. Blubbering as she was, she couldn’t establish an alibi. Nobody would believe what she said. The police let Manjin feel the crumpled handkerchief, which indeed did feel familiar to him. So this was it. Obviously Tingting hadn’t reformed and had started seducing men again. What an incorrigible slut!
At about two o’clock in the morning, both Manjin and Tingting, after being ordered to turn in their confessions in two days, were released. Bofan told Manjin that he must show his remorse sincerely, writing out a self-criticism as well. Now it was up to him to decide whether he could remain in the Communist Youth League Section. Bofan’s words frightened Manjin, and he couldn’t help imagining the terrible life he’d have to live if he was sent back to the Wheel Factory, where he had once worked as an apprentice in its smithy.
The next day, whenever he had a free moment, he would think about how to write the confession. At noon, when others had left the office for lunch, he unlocked the file cabinet, intending to sniff Tingting’s panties so as to make sure they had the same smell as the mysterious woman’s. But, to his surprise, the envelope was unsealed and the panties had already lost their original scent.
Word came in the evening that Tingting had killed herself with a bottle of DDT. The police went to search through her belongings, looking for her last words, but she hadn’t left any.
Her death shook Manjin. He was still unsure whether it was Tingting who had sat beside him in the theater or someone else, or a ghost. When alone, he’d weep and curse himself and his bad luck. To his surprise, the leaders didn’t press him for an elaborate self-criticism. The one he had turned in was poorly written, and he had anticipated that they would demand revisions.
He was ready to return to the Wheel Factory, but no such orders ever came. He felt a little relieved when he was informed that the Political Department had issued only a disciplinary warning to him, for such an action wouldn’t affect his official career and would be removed from his file at the end of the year if he worked well. It seemed all the leaders were eager to forget this case.
In the Workers Dining Hall girls didn’t glance at him anymore; those tall nurses would overlook him as if he were a stranger. Soon he began to eat dinner at the guesthouse with other officials and often got drunk there. He stopped going out in the evenings. If his roommates were not in, he would go to bed early, sometimes with the butterfly panties under his pillow.