The Mao Case Read online

  The last landscape or not, the situation for the person hosting the parties was not idyllic after all. Without a regular job, Xie had a hard time maintaining the house and paying for the parties. His wife had divorced him and emigrated to the United States several years ago, leaving Xie alone in the empty house. He consoled himself by collecting the odds and ends left over from the thirties, like an Underwood typewriter, silver-plated dinnerware, a pair of trumpet-shaped speakers, several antique phones, a brass foot warmer, and the like. After all, these were the things his grandparents and parents had told him about, things pictured in the time-yellowed family albums in which he now buried his solitude. And his collection contributed to the legend of the mansion.

  In recent years, Xie had started to teach painting at home. He was said to have an unwritten rule for his students: he would only accept young, pretty, talented girls. According to some people who had known him for years, the sixty-plus-year-old Xie might be fashioning himself after Jia Baoyu in the Dream of the Red Chamber.

  Jiao went to Xie’s painting classes despite the fact that Xie had hardly received any formal training as a painter, and she went to the parties despite the fact that most of the partygoers were old or old-fashioned or both.

  To explain all this, Internal Security had come up with a scenario. Xie must have functioned as a middleman, introducing Jiao to the people interested in the Mao materials in her possession. Foreign publishers would be willing to pay a huge advance for a book about Mao’s private life, just as they had for the memoir by Mao’s doctor. The parties would have provided opportunities for her to meet with those potential buyers.

  The course of action proposed by Internal Security was to raid the house on grounds such as obscene or indecent behaviors, or whatever excuse would get Xie into trouble. In their opinion, he would not be a hard nut to crack. Once he spilled, they could take care of Jiao.

  But the Beijing authorities didn’t like the proposed “tough measure,” nor were they convinced that such a measure would work. Which was why they had called Chen in.

  In the file, Chen didn’t find a copy of the book written by Mao’s personal doctor. It was banned. Nor was there a copy of the bestseller Cloud and Rain in Shanghai.

  He was intrigued by the title of that book. “Cloud and rain” was a stock simile for sexual love in classic Chinese literature, evocative of the lovers’ being carried away in a floating soft cloud and of the coming warm rain. It had originated in an ode describing the King of Chu’s rendezvous with the Goddess of Wu Mountain, who declared that she would come to him again in cloud and rain. But “cloud and rain” was also part of a Chinese proverb: With a turning of the hand, the cloud, and with another turning of the hand, the rain, which referred to the continuous, unpredictable changes in politics.

  Could the title have a double meaning?

  He looked at the clock on the nightstand. Ten fifteen. He decided to go out to buy a copy of Cloud and Rain in Shanghai at a neighborhood bookstore, which stayed open late, sometimes until midnight.

  THREE

  IT WAS A PRIVATELY run bookstore, no more than five minutes’ walk from his home. From across the street, enveloped in the dark, Chen could see that the light was still on.

  The bookstore owner, Big-Beard Fei, had started his business in the hopes of making money selling serious books while writing his own postmodernist novel. When his hopes were eventually smashed like eggs against a concrete wall, he turned into a practical bookseller, running a store full of sensational bestsellers and not-so-sensational junk. On one miniature shelf, however, customers might still be able to find some good books — his way of being nostalgic. And he kept the store open late, he declared, because of the insomnia caused by the postmodernist novel he had never finished.

  For Chen, the store’s late hours were a blessing. Besides, there was a nice dumpling restaurant just around the corner. Sometimes, after buying a couple of books, he would walk to the restaurant and read over a portion of dumplings, steamed or fried, and a cup of beer. The waitress wore a bodice like a dudou, moving briskly in high-heeled wooden slippers, as if emerging out of Wei Zhang’s lines: “Shining brighter than the moon, / she serves by the wine urn, / her wrists dazzlingly white, / like frost, like snow.” She was nice to him, and to her other customers as well.

  “Welcome,” Fei greeted him with his habitual smile from behind his beer-bottle-bottom-thick glasses, combing his thinning hair with a plastic comb.

  They had never talked at length, but that might be just as well. Fei wouldn’t have talked as freely had he known Chen was a chief inspector. Unlike in the shikumen houses in the old quarters, people in the new apartment complexes here did not really know each other.

  Instead of just asking for the book in question, Chen decided to browse around a little first, as he usually did. There was no point rousing any unnecessary speculation.

  To his surprise, he came upon several books on modern revolutionary Beijing operas — the only operas available during the Cultural Revolution.

  “Why the sudden interest in them?” he asked Fei. “Well, those who enjoyed them then are middle-aged now. They are nostalgic for the past — for their idealistic youth. Whatever the reality was, they don’t want to write off their own youthful years. So these ‘red antique books’ sell quite well. Can you guess which the most popular one is?” Fei paused for a dramatic effect. “Little Red Book of Mao.”

  “What?” Chen exclaimed. “Billions of copies were printed back then. How can it be a rare or antique book?”

  “Do you still have one at home?”

  “Oh no.”

  “So you see. People got rid of them soon after the Cultural Revolution, but now they are coming back with a vengeance.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, for those left out of the materialistic reforms, Mao is becoming a mythic figure again. The past is now seen as a sort of golden Mao period where there was no gap between the rich and poor, no rampant Party corruption, no organized crime and prostitution, but instead there were free medical insurance, stable pensions, and state-controlled housing.”

  “That’s true. Housing prices have rocketed. But there are also so many new buildings in Shanghai now.”

  “Can you afford them?” Fei said with a sardonic smile. “Perhaps you can, but I can’t. ‘While wine and meat go bad untouched in the red-painted mansion, / people die from cold and starvation in the street.’ Haven’t you heard the latest popular saying — ‘You’ve worked hard for socialism and communism for decades, but overnight, it’s back to capitalism’?”

  “That’s a witty one.” Chen then asked casually, “By the way, do you have a book called Cloud and Rain in Shanghai? It’s a book about those years under Mao, I think.”

  Fei eyed him up and down. “That’s not the kind of book you usually choose, sir.”

  “I’m on vacation this week. Someone recommended it to me.”

  “It sold out a while ago, but I have one copy I kept for myself. For an old customer like you, you may have it.”

  “Thank you so much, Mr. Fei. Was it such a bestseller?”

  “You’ve never heard of it?”

  “No,” Chen said. The minister had asked the same question. “Isn’t it about the tragic fate of a young girl?”

  “It is. But there’s something else about the book. You have to read between the lines.”

  “Something else?” he said, offering a cigarette to Fei. “You must have heard of Shang.”

  “The movie star?”

  “Yes. She was the mother of Qian, the nominal heroine of the book. There’s a famous maxim in Taodejin: ‘In misfortune comes the fortune, and in fortune comes the misfortune.’ It’s so dialectical.” Fei took a deliberate puff at the cigarette. “By the early fifties, Shang’s career had started going downhill, but then it took off again. Why? Because she danced with Chairman Mao, whispering in his ears and leaning against his broad shoulder … God alone knows how many times Mao came to Shanghai just
for that, later into the night, and then into the morning. Dancing, her body surging softly against his, like cloud, like rain —”

  “Does the book mention all that?”

  “No, or it wouldn’t have been published. The author wrote it very carefully. Still, her life story in itself was more than suggestive. Mao could have picked any dancing partner, anytime, anywhere. What imperial favor! Everyone envied her. Eventually, she paid the price when, at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, a special team came from Beijing, interrogating her in isolation, which then led to her suicide.”

  “Why — I mean, why the isolation interrogation?”

  “According to the book, the special team was trying to coerce her into confessing to ‘plotting against and slandering our great leader Mao.’ However, there was nothing out of line mentioned in the book except that after her first dance with Mao, she told a friend, ‘Chairman Mao is big — in everything.’

  “Come on, ‘big’ may simply mean ‘great.’ People always called Mao a great leader,” Chen said, stroking his chin again. “So then why the persecution?”

  “You still don’t see? Madam Mao was a fury. Shang was younger, prettier, and more in Mao’s favor — at least for a while. As soon as Madam Mao gained power on through the Cultural Revolution, she retaliated by dispatching that special investigation team to Shanghai. That’s the real story behind the story of Qian in the book.”

  That was a story that the average reader could easily imagine, but it didn’t account for the Beijing authorities’ sudden interest in Jiao. Chen decided to push his luck a little further.

  “Speaking of Mao, do you carry a book written by his personal doctor?”

  “If that book were ever found here, my store would be closed overnight. You’re not a cop, are you?”

  “Oh, I was just curious, since we were already on the subject.”

  “No, don’t carry it and haven’t read it, but a friend of mine has. It is filled with stories about Mao’s private life with sordid and vivid details you’d never find in any official publications.”

  “I see.”

  “Let me dig out Cloud and Rain in Shanghai for you,” Fei said, disappearing behind a shelf, into the back.

  Chen chose a book on the history of the Shanghai movie industry and another about intellectuals and artists during the Cultural Revolution. Along with Cloud and Rain in Shanghai, he might be able to patch together Shang’s life story. He also put into his basket a new volume of Tang-dynasty poetry. There was no point making Fei suspect he was researching Shang.

  Fei came back with a book in his hand. There was a picture of Qian on the cover, in a corner of which was another picture, that of Shang, faded, nearly lost in the background.

  As Chen was taking out his wallet at the counter, Fei seemed to think of something else. “Look at her,” he said, pointing at Shang’s image. “What a tragedy! I sometimes wonder if she was murdered.”

  “Murdered!”

  “Many celebrities committed suicide during those years, but many of them were practically beaten or persecuted to death. Suicide, however, was nobody’s fault but the dead — a convenient conclusion for the Party government.”

  “Ah,” Chen said, more or less relieved. Again, Fei’s comment was no more than common knowledge about what happened during those years.

  “As for the special team from Beijing, there’s another interpretation,” Fei went on. Chen was the only customer in the store, and Fei appeared unwilling to let him go. “Shang might have known some deadly secret. So they silenced her once and for all. Remember the trial of the Gang of Four? Madam Mao was accused of persecuting movie stars associated with her in the thirties.”

  That was true. The stars had suffered persecution because they knew Madam Mao as a notorious third-rate actress. But Shang would have been too young then.

  Chen thanked Fei and left with his books for the dumpling restaurant.

  When he arrived at the corner, he was disappointed to see a boutique mandarin dress store where the restaurant had been. The store was closed and there was only a mannequin posing coquettishly in an unbuttoned red dress in the window.

  There was another eatery open late at night and not too far away, but he had lost the mood. Instead, he plodded home, carrying the books.

  Back home, he started reading on an empty stomach. In the distance, a siren pierced the night air. Absurd, he thought, turning a page. There’s no guaranteeing a rational account of human existence. Soon, he lost himself in the story — and the story between the lines.

  About two hours later, he finished skimming through Cloud and Rain in Shanghai. Stretching his sore neck, he slumped on the sofa like the crushed fish in Shang’s death scene in the book.

  The story was pretty much as he had anticipated. It was a tale of a beautiful woman’s suffering, which echoed an archetypal motif about a beauty’s “thin fate.” The writer was clever, focusing the narrative mainly on Qian, keeping Shang in the background. Like a traditional Chinese landscape painting, the book invited readers to see more in its blank spaces.

  There was little about Jiao, though. When Qian passed away, Jiao was only two years old, and the structure of the book made her omission understandable.

  Chen rose to pace about in the room. Lighting a cigarette, he thought he had a rough idea about Shang’s relationship with Mao, but no idea what Mao could have given Shang.

  Another question presented itself. Could Mao have known about the special team from Beijing? After all, Shang wasn’t merely one of the “black artists.” Things could have been more complicated than Minister Huang had said.

  So what was Chief Inspector Chen going to do?

  It was an investigation he couldn’t refuse to do. Even so, he might try to conduct the investigation in a “rebellious” way, in his way — meaningful to himself, if not to others.

  Like most people of his generation, Chen had not taken the Mao issue too seriously. As a child, he had worshipped Mao, but the Cultural Revolution shook his belief in the Chairman, particularly after the early death of Chen’s father. After that, things changed dramatically for Chen. Now, as one of the “successful elite” in present-day society, he tried to convince himself that he anchored himself with his faith in the Party. So he was in no position to think too much about Mao and he used his heavy workload as a chief inspector as an excuse not to do so. While the Party newspapers still paid lip service to Mao, a lot of things were different today in practice. So why bother?

  Chen had heard stories about Mao’s private life. After the Cultural Revolution, Mao’s bodyguards and nurses had produced memoirs that turned Mao back into a human being somewhat by highlighting, for instance, his idiosyncratic passion for fatty pork or his unwholesome aversion to brushing his teeth. The books sold well, though possibly because of people’s interest in things behind those stories. But there were also other stories, not published but nonetheless circulated among the people. Since Mao’s archive was still locked up and considered top secret, Chen did not really believe or disbelieve those “other” stories.

  Besides, Chen considered Mao too complex a historical figure for him to judge. After all, he wasn’t a historian, he was a cop, having to investigate one case after another. In recent years, however, he’d found it more and more difficult, even as a cop, to steer clear of the nation’s history under Mao. In China, a lot of things and a lot of cases had to be seen in a historical perspective, and Mao’s shadow still lingered there.

  So it was the time for him to take on a case concerning Mao — the Mao case. If nothing else, the chief inspector might be able to gain a better historical perspective through the investigation.

  And it could also keep him busy — preferably too busy to think about his personal crisis.

  He sat back at the table, pulled up a piece of blank paper, jotted down the ideas that came to mind, and worked on combining them into a feasible plan. In the end, he decided to break his investigation into two parts. For the Jiao part, h
e would cooperate with Internal Security, but for the Mao part, he would go ahead on his own.

  He was going to find out, first of all, what material or information could be used against Mao, and he would do this by going to the root — the relationship between Mao and Shang. Like the story behind the story in Cloud and Rain in Shanghai, it would be an investigation behind the investigation.

  To begin with, he needed a comprehensive grasp of that period of history. An ideal scenario would be to contact the then special team from Beijing, but that was practically impossible. It had happened so long ago. And the people concerned would be put on alert as soon as he made the request.

  Alternatively, he would contact the author of Cloud and Rain in Shanghai, who might not have included in the book all the information available regarding Shang’s death. In the meantime, he would also try to obtain a copy of the memoir by Mao’s personal doctor. In addition, he would try to secretly interview the people who were close to Qian and Shang.

  Now, how could he possibly accomplish all this by himself? The clock ticked, almost imperceptibly. Chief Inspector Chen, unlike the character in a ridiculous fairy tale he had read, did not have three heads and six arms.

  A glance at the clock told him that it was almost two in the morning. He would not be able to fall asleep, not anytime soon. So he took a couple of sleeping pills and swallowed them with cold water.

  Lying in bed, he reopened Cloud and Rain in Shanghai, turning to the part about the first meeting between Mao and Shang at the China and Russia Palace of Friendship, where the melody rippled in the splendid ballroom, Shang’s steps soft as a cloud, light as the rain …