Chapter 17
Chen finished the first draft of his translation of the New World proposal into English. He was amazed at his own speed, though the job was still far from complete: he would have to spend more time polishing and revising before it would be presentable.
It proved to be a good day for the murder investigation, too. Though it came as a surprise that Wan had turned himself in, it looked like a plausible solution as well as an acceptable one.
Yu was still so full of misgivings that Chen did not even try to share with him some half-formed ideas of his own. After all, a lot of things in the process of writing, or leading to publication, seemingly inexplicable to others, could turn out to be significant, if only to the writer himself.
In the late eighties, when Chen, a published poet with some renown in literary circles, had suddenly started translating mysteries, no one knew why. But it was because of a Beijing roast duck-at least partially because of it, he recalled. That duck turned out to cost more than he had in his pocket at the end of a wonderful dinner, in the company of a friend who liked his poetry so much that she snatched the bill with her slender fingers. It was a humiliating lesson about money-which, as he happened to discover through that friend, came much quicker from mystery translations than from poetry. But a few years later, when another friend of his published an interview about him in Wenhui Daily, she claimed that he did the translations to “enlarge the horizon of his professional expertise.”
So those mysterious abbreviations in the margins of Yang’s manuscript could have referred to anything; “ch” might stand for a chicken, for all Chen knew. The uneven quality of Yin’s writing noticed by Peiqin could be just another of the mysteries of a creative mind. Chen had not written novels, but he guessed that a novelist might not be able to keep up the same intensity of creativity in a long work as in a short poem. He could never explain how he was capable of producing a horribly poor poem after penning a fairly decent one.
So all these hypotheses, including his own theory regarding the murderer’s hiding for fear of recognition, were nothing but hypotheses, which did not weigh much, and were eventually irrelevant, if Wan had committed the murder as he had confessed. His motive might not make sense to someone else; it was enough if it had made sense to him.
The bottom line was, as Chen had realized from the beginning, there are things a man can do, and things a man cannot do. That was also applicable to being a cop, in the present case.
He considered giving himself a break that evening, in the company of White Cloud. It might be an opportunity to find out more about Gu, and about the New World project.
He suggested a dinner at a karaoke club, a different one than the Dynasty as a gesture of his sincerity-he had told her that he liked her singing. White Cloud would not decline such an invitation, he hoped.
She did not, but she suggested that they go to a high-class bar, the Golden Time Rolling Backward.
“It’s on Henshan Road. An up-and-coming place.”
“That will be great,” he said.
Perhaps she did not like to be reminded of her K-girl status. He liked the name of the bar, which suggested a nostalgic atmosphere in common with the New World.
They took a taxi to the Golden Time Rolling Backward, which turned out to be an elegant bar that had opened in a grand Victorian mansion; he supposed it had still been a private residence in the thirties. A number of celebrities had lived in European-style mansions in the area then.
They chose a table next to the tall french window looking out to a well-kept garden just visible in the gathering dusk. The bar, according to White Cloud, was known for its classic elegance. She failed to recall the name of the original owner of the house. “She was a celebrated courtesan who became the concubine of a triad tycoon. He bought this mansion for her,” was all White Cloud could remember.
Inside, it was fairly dark; the candlelight barely illuminated the somber background. After a minute or two, he managed to make out a black, old-fashioned telephone, a gramophone with a trumpet-shaped speaker on a corner table, an Underwood typewriter in a corner, and an antique grand piano with ivory keys, all of which contributed to the period effect, as well as the dark-colored oak paneling, the antique pictures and posters on the walls, and the carnations in a cut-glass vase on the mantelpiece.
“Perhaps we should come in the early afternoon, in warmer weather, when the light is better,” he commented. “Then you would be able to take in all the period details. The illusion would be even more vivid and convincing.”
Still, the whole scene was ingeniously designed. It was as if the life of the city had continued, uninterrupted, from the thirties. The years under Mao’s communist rule seemed to have been wiped out by the pink napkin in the hand of a young waitress, who wore a scarlet qi dress with high slits through which one could see flashes of her white thighs.
The only difference from an old movie scene was that the customers here this evening were Chinese. Then a middle-aged foreign couple arrived, looked around, and moved to a table in the corner. The woman had on a Chinese-style cotton padded jacket with embroidered buttons. They were the only Western couple there. No one seemed to pay them any special attention.
Studying the bilingual menu in the candlelight, Chen ordered coffee, and White Cloud, black tea. In addition, she had a bowl of popcorn. It was still too early for dinner. There were several excellent Chinese restaurants in the area. He was not in a hurry to decide whether to dine here. He was not experienced at dining in a Western-style restaurant. White Cloud was so fashion-conscious, he was not confident of making the right choice.
To his surprise, the black tea came in a tall glass with a Lipton tea bag. The popcorn tasted too sweet and was as tough as rubber. The coffee was fine, but not hot enough. He had no objection to the tea bag, except that it did not appear as authentic as tea served in the Chinese way. Then he tried to mock himself out of such an antiquated idiosyncrasy. This was a modern Western bar, not a traditional Chinese teahouse. Still, he missed the feeling of the tender tea leaf on his tongue. He took another sip of the lukewarm coffee.
“Americans eat popcorn when they are enjoying themselves,” she said, filling her mouth with a handful.
“They eat it while at the movies, I’ve heard,” he said.
What surprised him was not the poor quality of the food they were served, but that people were content in spite of it. It seemed as if the atmosphere more than compensated for anything else. For the first time, he had a feeling that the New World project would work in Shanghai. Whether or not the customers here were exactly the middle-class ones in Gu’s mind, Chinese people wanted to find new ways of enjoying life-”value-adding ways,” the phrase he had read in the introduction to marketing.
As for the added value, he wondered who was going to define it. It would have to depend on one’s taste. For instance, the passion for “three-inch golden lotus feet,” which had endured for hundreds of years in China, was a matter of fashion. In some men’s imaginations, the deformed, white-cloth-bound feet were transformed into lotus blossoms blooming in the black night. If people chose to look for value, they would find it in one way or another. Chen scribbled a few lines on the paper napkin, lines probably for a poem.
“What are you thinking about?”
“I’m just making some notes. If I don’t write my ideas down, I may totally forget them by tomorrow.”
“Tell me about your work in the police bureau, Chief Inspector Chen.” She lifted the tea bag by its paper tag, then let it sink to the bottom of the glass.
“Detective Yu has been handling a special case that was recently assigned to my squad. I’m on vacation, but we have a daily discussion about developments.”