“Oh, what’s the name of that secretary of yours? Meiling or something. She simply adores you. ‘The temple is too small for a god like Chief Inspector Chen,’” was what she said, the night she was with you at the Dynasty Club. The traffic control office will surely do whatever you say.”
So Gu was asking him to put in a word on his behalf to the city traffic control office.
“You cannot rely on Meiling’s words, Mr. Gu,” Chen said. “Why didn’t you put this request in your earlier proposal to the city government?”
“It’s such a big project that some details may have been overlooked.”
But Gu had not overlooked this necessity, Chen was sure. Gu must have had in mind Chen’s former position when he’d offered him the well-paid translation project, and sent him White Cloud as a little secretary, as well as the air-conditioner that now stood against the bookshelf, the heater in the bathroom, the presents on his mother’s nightstand in the hospital-and the tip about Bao’s address, too.
There’s no free lunch. He should have known better.
After having translated the New World business proposal, however, he believed that the request was a reasonable one. In fact, he found himself attracted to the vision of the New World, and not only because he had been paid so generously for the translation of the proposal; he had come to believe that the project would enhance the cultural image of the city. For a fast-developing city like Shanghai, cultural preservation could be of great significance, even though the New World was designed to meet only the demand for an exterior retro look.
And for a grand project like this, a multi-story garage would be necessary. It would be a disaster for Huaihai Road, as well as the neighboring areas, to be jammed with cars of New World shoppers parked everywhere at random. So the traffic control office might make a suggestion to the city government.
For Gu, the grant of land in the heart of the city, in the name of cultural preservation, would save him a huge amount of money, and perhaps even the project itself. Businessmen applied to the city government for the use of land and the government charged them in accordance to the specified land usage. For a high-end commercial use like the New World, Gu would have had to pay a very large sum. But, as he had confided to Chen, Gu had applied instead for a cultural preservation project. Of course he had not included a multi-level garage in that proposal, for it would have aroused suspicion. But as an add-on, backed up by the traffic control office, he might get quick approval. What Gu had paid for the translation was nothing, like a feather plucked from a Beijing duck, compared with what he hoped to gain.
From another perspective, however, the grant of Gu’s request would mean a loss of revenue to the traffic control office. A large modern garage would put a lot of cars out of sight, but it would also put a lot of patrol officers out of work and eliminate the fines they might otherwise collect. So it might not be that easy for him to back Gu’s request, he understood, and Gu understood this too.
“Well, when it is convenient, put in a word for the New World,” Gu said very smoothly.
Chen could always claim that he was still waiting for that convenient moment, but he would probably not do so. The bottom line was that he was obliged to help Gu with respect to the garage request. “I’ll make a couple of phone calls,” he said vaguely at the end of the phone conversation. “And I will call you back, Gu.”
Chen decided that first he had better go to the hospital. He had to pay the medical bill there. His mother would be released that evening. She had been worried about the expense. There was no point letting her know how much it cost; in any case, the money from the translation would surely cover it. This gave him an extra sense of self-justification, he reflected, as he arrived at the hospital accounting office. In the age of the market economy, the hospital made no exceptions, so neither need he, as long as he made money in a way that was acceptable to the system.
To his surprise, he learned that his mother’s factory had already paid the hospital bill. “It’s been taken care of, Comrade Chief Inspector Chen,” the hospital cashier said with a broad grin. “Comrade Zhou Dexing, the factory director, wants you to give him a call when you have time. This is his number.”
Chen dialed the number from a pay phone in the lobby.
It was no great surprise to him to hear a warm speech from Comrade Zhou Dexing: “Our factory is having a difficult time, Comrade Chief Inspector Chen. The national economy is in a transitional period, and a state-run factory meets with one problem after another. For an old worker like your mother, however, we will take responsibility for her medical expense. She has worked all her life with utter dedication to the factory. We know what a good comrade she is.”
“Thank you so much, Comrade Zhou.”
What a good comrade her son is; somebody must have tipped him off about that, thought Chen. Whatever his motivation, what Comrade Zhou had said and done was politically correct, even an appropriate subject for an editorial in the People’s Daily.
“For our work in the future, we will continue to enjoy her support, I hope, and yours too, Comrade Chief inspector. I have heard so much about your important work for the city.”
These official courtesies were a polite veneer. But Chen was not worried. There are things a man can do, and things a man cannot do. This Confucian dictum could also mean that no matter what others might ask him to do, he would make his decision in accordance with his principles.
A new sort of social relationship, cobweb-like, seemed to have developed, connecting people closely together along the threads of their interests. The existence of each thread depended on the others. Like it or not, Chief Inspector Chen was bound up in this network of connections.
“You really flatter me, Comrade Zhou,” Chen said. “We all work for socialist China. Of course we will help each other.”
That was not the Confucian ideal of a society, not the one envisioned by his father, a Neo-Confucian intellectual of the old generation. Ironically, Chen reflected, it was not totally irrelevant to Confucianism either. Yiqi, or the oughtness of the situation, a Confucian principle that emphasized moral obligation, had somehow evolved into oughtness of one’s own interest.
But Chen reminded himself that he had no time for such philosophical speculation.
He walked into his mother’s room. She was still asleep. Although the test results had excluded the particular possibility that had worried him, she had been growing visibly weaker in the last few years. He decided to stay with her for a while. Since the onset of the translation project, almost simultaneously with the murder of Yin Lige, this was the first day that he could spend some peaceful time with his mother without worrying about this clue or that lead, or about definitions and phrasing.
She stirred in her sleep, but she did not wake. It might be as well. Once awake, she would probably lead their talk to her number one question: Now that you are established in life, what about your family?
In traditional Chinese culture, both “establishment” and “family” were at the top of a man’s list of priorities, though the latter appeared more urgent to his mother. Whatever he might offer about his career and Party standing, his personal life was still a blank page to her.
Again, he thought of the line under the painting of the goose in Beijing, although in a different context: What will come, eventually comes. Perhaps it was not time yet.
He started peeling an apple for his mother. That was something White Cloud had done in his place, he remembered. Afterward, he put the peeled apple in a plastic bag on the nightstand. He looked into the drawer of the nightstand. He might as well start putting things together for her. Perhaps he would have to leave before she woke up.