“That’s true. How did the meeting go?”
“It was not a pleasant one. He did not understand why she got such a large share of the money-too large a portion, to his way of thinking.”
“I do not really understand. Can you tell me a little more?”
“When we publish the work of a dead author, we sometimes engage a special editor. Such an editor would collect the author’s various publications, compare different versions, annotate some of the text, and write an introduction if necessary. As special editor for Yang’s poetry, Yin did a lot of work, searching out poems from old magazines, and retrieving quite a few from his notebooks or scrap paper. It was no exaggeration to say that the collection would not have been published without her hard work. For such a job, we normally pay about fifty percent of the going rate.”
“Fifty percent of what you normally pay an author?”
“Yes. That is, of course, when the author is no longer around and no one else makes claim to the royalties. At that time, it was fifteen Yuan for ten lines, I remember, regardless of the print run. If there’s anything not conventional in our agreement with Yin, it was the additional twenty percent she claimed as a copying fee. We agreed, since it was still less than what we would have paid Yang. The sudden appearance of the grandnephew rattled us. There’s no precedent for a relative like him claiming anything, especially so long after publication. Yin maintained that what she earned was rightfully hers. In a way, she was right. So she refused to pay Bao.
“I talked to my boss. Not that much money was involved. We did not want to cause a scandal. So we paid Bao an amount equivalent to the remaining thirty percent.”
“In other words, you ended up paying the normal rate- 100%-for the book.”
“That’s correct.”
“Did Bao accept the arrangement?”
“He did, but in a grudging way.”
“So he protested?”
“He did not know anything about the publishing business, but he didn’t trust her. Obviously, he didn’t think it was fair. That’s why she wanted us to explain, I think. She was a very shrewd woman. There was nothing he could do. In those years, people did not sue each other over things like that.”
“Do you think he hated her?”
“That’s difficult for me to say. Nobody was happy. She even asked us to draft an agreement that he had to sign, specifying that he would never bother her again, before he received the money.”
“So she ended up not paying a single penny to him?”
“Not a single penny came from her pocket.”
“Did he come back to you?”
“No. He’s not in Shanghai. There will be no more money, he understands, until the book runs into a second edition. If it ever does.”
“Will it?”
“Well, we did a large printing for the first edition, which sold out. We thought about doing a second. Then her novel was published. Her name appeared on the government inside control list. We decided not to print a second edition.”
“I’m confused, Comrade Jia. The poetry volume is not her book, is it?”
“But her name’s also on the cover-as a special editor. Whether we remove her name or not, when people read the poems, they may think of the novel. My boss said it was not worth it.”
“Do you have any other information about him-I mean the youth, Bao?”
“No, nothing,” Jia said as he stood up. “Oh, he stayed with her for a few days, I remember. He had no relatives left in the city. She told me about it. But after the meeting, he must have gone back to Jiangxi immediately.”
“I see. Thank you so much, Comrade Jia. Your information may be extremely important to our work.”
It was like a missing piece of a puzzle that unexpectedly popped up at the last minute, Detective Yu thought, as he stepped out of the publishing house.
Outside, it was a sunny, yet cold, day. A middle-aged, scantily clad idiot was searching in a trashcan not too far away, singing a doggerel verse:
When red is black,
Old time comes back.
Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh,
You’ve got to pack
A Big Mac, a Big Mac!
Behind Detective Yu, from the cafe, came a line from a Revolutionary Modern Model Beijing Opera, “Chairman Mao’s teaching thaws the ice in the dead of winter.” A contrast in cacophony.
Yu had to find Bao, now perhaps a young man, he decided. From a pay phone at the end of Shaoxing Road, he called Chief Inspector Chen about the new lead.
“I have contacted the Shanghai Archives Bureau again,” Chen said. “They have faxed me a list that contains some basic information about Hong and her son, Bao, and several pictures. I’ll fax it to you. It may help.”
It would be difficult for Yu to find these people in just a few days. He started by contacting Hong’s middle school. According to the dean, there had been a class reunion the previous year. Hong had not attended, but one of her former classmates still had her address. With the address he obtained from her, Yu dialed the number of the Jiangxi Police Bureau.
Their reply came in the late afternoon. Hong was there, still in the village where she had already spent more than twenty years. A poor lower-middle-class peasant’s wife, she had become just such a peasant herself. Chairman Mao’s theory of the transformation of educated youths still applied. Hong did not want to come back to Shanghai, not because of her continuous belief in Mao, but because of her successful transformation. A poor lower-middle-class peasant would be a laughingstock in Shanghai today.
Bao was not there. He had left the village again for Shanghai about a year ago. In the nineties, millions of farmers found it impossible to stay on in their backward villages as they watched TV and saw how the fashionable, free-spending middle class lived in the coastal cities. In spite of the government’s efforts to balance the development of the city and the countryside, an alarming divide between rich and poor, urban and rural, coastal and inland had appeared-these were the differences that the economic reforms Deng had launched a decade ago had helped create.
Like so many others, Bao had left home to seek his fortune. The first few months, he occasionally wrote home, and once even mailed fifty Yuan to his mother but the correspondence became less frequent, and then stopped. According to someone from the same village, Bao had not been doing too well in the city. The latest information Hong had was that about six months ago, Bao had shared a room with some other people from Jiangxi. Then he had moved out without leaving a new address.
So the problem was how to find Bao in a city where millions of people kept pouring in from every province. With new construction going up everywhere, provincials provided an ever-growing mobile labor force. Naturally, they did not bother to register their residences; they stayed wherever they found cheap housing.
Yu went over to the old address, where Bao had lived until six months ago; only one of Bao’s former roommates remained. He did not know where Bao was. They did not keep in touch.
A notice was sent out to the neighborhood committees, particularly to those areas where provincials were known to gather together.
In normal circumstances, three to five days would be considered a reasonable period before any feedback started coming in, but Yu did not think he could wait that long.
Chapter 21
Chen had several days left of his vacation, but he went to the office because he had turned in the translation of the New World business proposal. It had not taken as long as he had expected. Of course, he anticipated that he would have to make minor changes when Gu’s American partner faxed back corrections and suggestions. But according to Gu, the initial response from across the Pacific Ocean was positive. Chen himself was now quite satisfied with the English proposal, which presented a comprehensive, convincing argument for the potential success of the project.