To his surprise, he found a small photograph of White Cloud in a book of Buddhist scripture his mother had brought with her. In her uniform as a college student, White Cloud looked spirited and young as she stood in the impressive gateway of Fudan University. He understood why his mother had kept the picture. For his mother, as Overseas Chinese Lu had once put it, Anything that came into her bamboo basket must be counted a vegetable now.
White Cloud was a nice girl, to be sure. She had helped a lot: with the translation, with his mother in the hospital, and with the investigation. For all this, he could not but be grateful to her. He did not want to denigrate her because at their first meeting she had been a K girl with whom he had danced, his hand on her bare back, nor for being a “little secretary,” with all the possible connotations of that term. Chen considered himself above that sort of snobbishness.
What his mother had obviously thought about her in connection with him, however, had never entered his mind. This was not so much because of the difference in their ages, or in their backgrounds, it was just that it seemed to him that they lived in two different worlds. But for the business of the New World, their paths would never have crossed. The translation was now finished, and he was pleased that she could go back to her life, whatever it might be like. There was nothing for him to be sentimental about. She was paid for her work as a little secretary. “Paid handsomely,” as she had put it; the way he was paid, although at a different rate and for a different reason.
But then, was he really so sure about himself?
Was the filial son sitting with his mother the same man as the Mr. Big Bucks drinking with his little secretary in the Golden Time Rolling Backward?
“Are you Chief Inspector Chen?” A young nurse poked her head into the room. “Someone is waiting downstairs for you.”
Chen took the steps in long strides. To his surprise, he found Party Secretary Li waiting in the lobby, carrying a large bouquet of flowers, in sharp contrast to the familiar image of the serious senior Party cadre in his high-buttoned Mao jacket. A bureau Mercedes was parked in the driveway.
“They told me your mother is still sleeping,” Li said, “so I think I’ll just say a few words to you here. I have a city government meeting this morning.”
“Thank you, Party Secretary Li. You are so busy; you shouldn’t have taken the trouble to come here.”
“No, I should have come earlier. She is such a nice old lady. I have talked to her a couple of times, you know,” Li said. “I also want to thank you on behalf of the Shanghai Police Bureau for your excellent work.”
“Detective Yu did the work. I only helped a little.”
“You don’t have to be modest, Chief Inspector Chen. This was an excellent job. No political complications. Simply wonderful.
“That’s what we are going to say at the press conference. The motive for the crime was some money dispute between Yin and a relative. Nothing to do with politics.”
“Yes, nothing to do with politics,” Chen repeated mechanically.
“In fact, we have already had some positive reaction. A Wenhui reporter said that Yin should not have been so mean to Yang’s grandnephew. And a Liberation reporter said that she was really a shrewd woman, too calculating for her own good-”
“You have not held the press conference yet, have you?”
“Well, these reporters must have heard about our conclusions one way or another. Their stories may not be so helpful to her posthumous reputation, but I don’t think we have to worry about that.”
“Who can control stories, the stories after one’s life? / The whole village is jumping at the romantic tale of General Cai-except that this story is not so romantic.”
“You are being poetic again, Comrade Chief Inspector Chen,” Li said. “By the way, we don’t have to mention Yang’s novel manuscript. We should not. Internal Security has made a point of this. It’s in the best interest of the Party not to say anything about it.”
That was the real reason for Party Secretary Li’s visit, Chen realized. Li would be in charge of the press conference, and he had to make sure of what would-and would not-be said by the cops in charge of the case.
After Li left, Chen noticed fallen petals from the bouquet on the ground. As with White Cloud, he did not want to judge Yin. In spite of Bao’s statement made in his self-defense, or the reporters’ comments made from their journalistic perspectives, Chen chose to see Yin as a woman who had had complexities forced upon her.
It was true that Yin had a monetary interest in the publication of Yang’s poetry collection. To be fair to her, however, she had put in a lot of work as editor. A labor of love, done in memory of him. Yet she could have earned more by giving private lessons, like many English teachers in the nineties. In the last analysis, she, too, had had to survive in an increasingly materialistic society.
It was also true that Yin had kept Yang’s novel manuscript a secret and that she had no intention of sharing it with Bao, whose position was that he should have inherited it according to law.
But what was the legality of this situation?
A piece of paper called a marriage certificate had been denied to the lovers in those years of the Cultural Revolution.
What would have happened to the manuscript had she handed it over to Bao? He had no idea of its contents or value. He would have tried to make money by selling it to an interested publisher, but he could never have succeeded. He would have ended up by having the manuscript confiscated by Internal Security. So Yin was justified in keeping the manuscript a secret from Bao, and from everybody else. She must have waited for her opportunity, Chen reasoned; then, on her visit to Hong Kong, gotten in touch with a literary agency, reached an agreement, and prepared to take it with her when she went to the United States as a visiting scholar.
That also explained her rental of a safety deposit box at this time. She must have thought of it as a sort of camouflage. She had had to be careful. Internal Security might have heard rumors arising from her trip to Hong Kong.
As for her use of the American publisher’s advance-from Yang’s novel-as her means of financial support in the affidavit, Chen did not see anything improper in this either. In the event the novel was published in the United States, she would surely be overwhelmed by political troubles here. So she had had no choice but to go to the United States for the publication of the novel. For her, that must have been more important than anything else.
And Chen was also more than willing to overlook her “plagiarism.” If she had been unable to publish Yang’s book, she would have made at least part of his writing available to readers. And she must have regarded herself as one with Yang, as in that celebrated poem, “You and I,” quoted in Death of a Chinese Professor. There was no point distinguishing between the two of them when they had already turned into one.
Of course, a lot more could have been involved, a lot more than Chen might ever come to know, or than he might ever want to know. What he chose to think was, perhaps, just one version of the story, seen from one perspective. Perhaps, as in the proverb, When the water is too clear, there will be no fish; as long as things were not too muddy, it was not up to him to investigate.
For the moment, he would choose to believe that it was a tragic love story, one that lightened up the darkest moments in the lives of Yin and Yang. After Yang’s death, Yin had tried hard to continue living in the story, through her writing and through his writing too, but in the end she did not succeed.
Chen produced a photocopy out of his pocket. It was a poem which, for some reason, was not included in Yang’s poetry collection. The poem was titled “Hamlet in China ’: