“Wants it known by whom?”
Fong didn’t answer but he did step farther out of the light. He didn’t want the older man to see his face. “I want statements from every house warden in the alley and from everyone living on the street out front.”
“That won’t do-”
“Just do it, Wang Jun.” Almost as an afterthought he barked, “Interview the street cleaners, they may be helpful.”
Fong turned and headed away, returning the wallet to the evidence bag.
“Since you’ve got my night planned, bring that to Forensics for me, will ya? It’ll save me a trip.”
Over his shoulder Fong shouted back, “Sure, but I want your completed report on my desk in the morning.”
Normally Wang Jun’s cursing response would have brought a smile to Fong’s face, but not tonight. Tonight Fong’s thoughts were very far away as he headed back through the throng to his car.
As Wang Jun watched the younger man’s retreating figure, he wondered, and not for the first time, just how Fong managed. Managed to keep sane, that is, after what had happened to his wife in the Pudong.
Before the building boom, which started in 1990, the Pudong across the Huangpo River from the Bund, had been an area of low, ancient homes and twining streets filled with sidewalk vendors and tiny shops. The area lacked sanitation and electricity. Although the police were aware of the comings and goings in the Pudong, they basically left things to the locals to work out. There was opium and even brown heroin but nothing that greatly concerned the authorities.
That was until Shanghai began to enforce the country’s single-child-per-family law in 1978.
Within weeks the quacks and mountebanks appeared in the Pudong.
In 1949, on the eve of the revolution, China had a population of under four hundred million. Large, but not large enough for Mao Tse-tung. Soon after stabilizing his victory, he set out to increase the population of his country. By guaranteeing that there would be food enough for all, and granting residency and job bonuses to families with more than five children, Mao opened the proverbial floodgates. In the fifties, sixties, and even into the seventies it wasn’t uncommon to see Chinese families with ten or even thirteen children. The great love for children inherent in the Chinese character was unleashed when the fear of having to feed more mouths was removed. The result was that by the late 1970s the Chinese population had more than tripled. Mainland China had more than 1.2 billion inhabitants and a problem that could not be ignored. Promises to feed everyone could be met in the seven years of plenty, but in the seven years of fallow starvation stalked the land. And Mao knew only too well that in the hunger of the stomach is the foment of revolt. So in the late 1970s the Chinese government reversed itself. The single-child-per-family policy was enacted and strictly enforced-and places like the Pudong had a new and thriving industry. It was not hard to find those in the area’s squalid back streets who would “diagnose” a female fetus and abort the unwanted fetus for a price.
The day that Fu Tsong, Fong’s wife, told him that she was pregnant he grabbed her by the waist and swung her high into the air, feeling that he was holding aloft not only her but also his son. And to his eternal damnation that is exactly what he said to her.
Fu Tsong was tiny even for a highborn Han Chinese, and the doctor warned her early on that she’d have to be careful. That she’d have to cut back both on her work at the school and her performing at the People’s Repertory Company.
She sighed and agreed, on one condition.
“And what may that be?” asked her doctor skeptically.
“Assure me that I am carrying a boy.”
The doctor put aside his chart and looked at her sternly. Before him was one of the most delicately beautiful women he had ever seen. A woman with a deep fire in her eyes and a strength of will that frightened him.
“Fu Tsong, you know that there is no way I can in all conscience assure you of that. It is beyond my power to know such things. All that is important is that the baby is healthy, and that is in your power.” He reached out to pat her head, and the silk of her hair astounded him.
At that time, Fong was on the rise in the police force. The heir apparent. He was putting in sixteen-hour days trying to prepare himself for the examination that would allow him to head Special Investigations. The hardest part was the English-language proficiency requirement. It was the greatest challenge of his life. He found the English sounds initially incomprehensible and he struggled nightly with basic verb tenses and noun lists. Fu Tsong was a great help throughout, and in the weeks leading up to the exams she drilled him nightly, late into the dawning hours.
One night after throwing aside his English book, she tore open his pants and, hiking up her skirt, straddled his legs while inserting him into her centre. As she rocked he grew within her and she smiled. That smile grew devilish as she threw herself forward and, pinning his arms above his head, hissed, “What if it’s a girl?”
She had said it in jest but the look of shock that crossed Fong’s face was clear for her to see-a gesture that, once expressed, could not be taken back. She released his arms and leaned back with her hands on his legs.
He saw her close her eyes and sensed her moving far away from him. Then he heard her say, “I know it’s a boy, I know it is.” She arched her back and threw back her head. Her hair fell to his feet.
In that moment Fong knew in his heart that he had lost her. She let out a low moan, a release. But this was her alone, without him.
As a policeman Fong knew that a moan is the sound a body makes when it has lost all hope of recovery. As a lover he knew that same moan comes from a woman in the throes of pleasure. What Fong could not understand was what kind of god would make a world where hopelessness and pleasure both made the same sound.
At dawn’s first light Fong walked along Julu Lu toward the alley. The city was already alive, the air beginning to get heavy with the fumes of buses and the promise of the year’s first real heat. At the mouth of the alley, the police tape had been trampled underfoot. There were still a few policemen finishing off their interviews.
The alley itself was not surprising. There were thousands of these densely populated, teeming side shoots in Shanghai. The five-spice egg seller was preparing her cooking pot as he entered off Julu Lu. He nodded to her. She ignored him and blew her nose onto the sidewalk. At least not into the eggs, thought Fong.
The alley travelled for about eighty crooked yards and was over sixteen feet wide. The buildings were all four and five stories high with basements-most with sub-basement as well. Fong estimated that upwards of three thousand people lived in the buildings that fronted the alley. Bedding was hung from most of the lower windows while in the upper windows shirts, satayed on bamboo poles, projected from the sills like strange nautical signal flags.
It was an alley, so it smelled. But what it smelled of was life, abundant, roiling life.
An angry voice to his left drew his attention. The warden of the first large building was yelling at him. “Who the fuck you, who?” She’d probably lived in Shanghai since the revolution but she’d never learned Shanghanese, typical. He flashed her his badge and continued on. She muttered loudly, “Too late, all the fun finished, flathead.” As he moved down the alley there were similar scenes with other wardens. Some workers were just rising, others were already getting on their bicycles and heading to work. Some were well dressed, others obviously worked as manual laborers. Many wore white gloves to ride their bikes. White woollen gloves had become popular bicycle attire during the winter months and although it was clearly going to be a warm day many bicyclists were still wearing them. Ah, ever fashionconscious Shanghai. The odd lucky soul had a motorcycle or a bike fixed with a pedal motor. Two of the large handdriven tricycles for the infirm were chained to a rusting water pipe. The air was thick with the smell of porridge and coal fumes from the outdoor braziers. Electrical wires formed a cross-hatch pattern in the sky over Fong’s head-random and as potentially deadly as the poison snakes that fall from trees in distant Yan’an province.