It was also intriguing to note that she had used the word “us” in the message. It was just like in a scroll of traditional Chinese landscape painting, Chen thought. The blank space in the painting could prove to represent much more—particularly in the viewer’s imagination.

  It never rains but it pours. A couple of minutes later, a call came from Old Hunter, who was currently at the ZZ Consulting and Investigating Agency’s office. The old man was speaking in a highly excited voice, like a real Suzhou Opera singer at the climax of a story:

  “The other half of Mei’s retaining fee has already been deposited into our agency account this morning. In addition, there is a payment of one million yuan for your expenses, with a short note from Mei by way of explanation: ‘Director Chen has literally moved mountains and crossed oceans for us. While he insisted to me that he would do the job pro bono, at least his expenses should be paid in full.’

  “And Zhang Zhang told me that he could never thank you enough. He insists on having a talk with you.”

  It was possibly a talk about Chen accepting some of the retaining fee. Chen was not at all worried about that, though. For the moment, an exuberant sensation rushed through him.

  Chen had the sudden impulse to ferret out his copy of Random Harvest from his disordered bookshelf, trying to visualize the scene of reunion.

  It was the first English novel Chen had read all the way through, and he’d read part of it in Bund Park.

  Unable to immediately locate the book on the shelf, Chen decided to indulge himself instead in luxurious remembrance of the novel’s ending.

  Paula was running down to Smith, shouting out, “Oh Smithy, it may not be too late …”

  But Chen already felt a bit confused.

  Had X also read the novel in the park?

  As in that English novel, X and Mei were no longer young. Time had been a tragedy for them both. The wasted time had wasted them too.

  As in the ancient Chinese saying, when the high wall crashes down, there will not be a single egg left unbroken in the crushed bird nest.

  Eventually, paradoxical as it might have appeared, time had led to a reunion between X and Mei after all these years.

  Once again, he recalled how Random Harvest had been translated in Chinese—Reunion of Mandarin Ducks—Mandarin ducks being symbolic of inseparable lovers in classical Chinese literature. It had proved to be an excellent translation.

  For some reason, his thoughts streamed toward Molong again. He could pay Molong back for all his help, using part of the generous expense fee Mei had insisted on paying him. He should not have taken Molong’s help for granted.

  But he could discuss it with Molong later. There was no hurry.

  Chen made himself a cup of black tea, adding a small spoonful of honey and stirring it lightly, as if in an absurd attempt to measure out all the events in life that were caused by misplaced Yin and Yang.

  A ray of sunlight was tumbling in, scintillating through the opaque blinds.

  “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, and I have kept the faith.”

  Chen had read the biblical line from time to time. Perhaps, for once, he was able to say the line about himself, at the conclusion of this complex investigation.

  No, not yet, though. Not exactly. The investigation concerning Zhang’s fall could begin soon, Chen thought. It was a new day, and there were so many new battles in store for him to fight.

  The new day also came with a personal trip Chen was going to make.

  He rose and pushed open the window. He found himself listening to the sound of a siren coming from the river.

  He was going to visit Bund Park with Jin.

  Pulling out his cell phone, Chen dialed the familiar number.

  “Now that the investigation regarding X and Mei is finally over, how about we go to Bund Park this afternoon, Jin?”

  “That would be fantastic!” she said in genuine excitement. “Where shall we meet? And when?”

  “In front of the park, at the main gate. At one o’clock.”

  And there was another thing he thought he might be able to do in the park, sitting on the same green bench with her.

  One way or another, he was going to talk Jin into accepting part of the expenses Mei had paid him.

  For Chen, it was a matter of principle. He had told Mei at the very beginning of the investigation that he would take the case pro bono, and he would keep his word.

  Jin more than deserved the money, however. She had done such a lot for him—for the investigation, which had been full of risks. Self-deprecatingly, he thought of the old saying—It’s difficult to pay back a favor from a beauty.

  That was the least the former chief inspector had to, and ought to, do for her.

  So it should also be for Molong, for that matter, he reflected again. Not to mention the fact that he might have to give Molong a new assignment regarding the potential investigation into Zhang’s accident.

  Besides, he had to pay Zhang’s hospital medical expenses. For a poor retiree like Zhang, a large part of his medical expenses would not be covered by his minimum insurance. Chen had no idea how long Zhang would need to stay in the hospital. It could be a huge sum. The expenses offered by Mei had come in the nick of time.

  Then Chen hastened to pull his thoughts back to something else he was going to do this afternoon.

  In Bund Park, by the Huangpu River, he would also be able to tell Jin the full details of X and Mei’s love story.

  For the last several days, he had not had the time, or the opportunity, to tell her everything about the investigation he had just completed. Now it was the right time for him to do so—preferably on a green bench in the park where X—or even Chen himself—had once sat, the river water lapping the shore gently underneath the weeping willow.

  Years earlier, still in the midst of the Cultural Revolution, X and Mei had studied English side by side in Bund Park, without greeting each other, or touching each other, or even knowing each other’s name.

  Paradoxically, Chen himself had also studied English in the park.

  So, as it turned out, X really was like a secret sharer to Chen—someone with unmistakable parallels to his life, with seemingly interchangeable fates.

  So were Jin, Old Hunter, Molong, Zhang, and many others in contemporary China.

  More importantly, it was time, he contemplated, to talk with Jin about possible new strategies for dealing with the “banal evil” carried out by people like Yan.

  He knew this would turn out to be a new, fierce battle, but he had to fight—and do it in her company—even though the road stretching out in front of them could be a hard and hazardous one.

  And, in the park this afternoon, the former Chief Inspector Chen was also going to take Jin’s youthful arm.

  So many years ago, X and Mei had studied English together in Bund Park—at least now they could take hold of each other’s arms.

  At the thought of it, he felt a pebble falling abruptly on the green bench. Looking up, he saw Jin running over.

  NOT AN EPILOGUE

  “On the Borders”

  Wang Changling (698–757)

  The bright moon from the Qing dynasty …

  The ancient pass from the Han dynasty …

  Soldier after soldier,

  not a single one of them ever returns

  from the long march—thousands

  and thousands of miles long.

  Oh, if the winged general

  of the Dragon City were stationed here,

  the Tartar horses would never

  have crossed the Yin Mountains.

  The winged general refers to Li Guang, a well-known, talented general from the Han dynasty (206 BC–24 AD). The Yin Mountains are in the present-day Inner Mongolia region.

  “About Yu Dafu”

  Chen Cao

  In 1943, two years before the end

  of the Anti-Japanese War, after the fall

  of Hong Kong, and his divorce,

  the tabloid editor Dafu left China

  incognito, to a Philippine isle, where he called

  himself “Zhao, the black-bearded,”

  started to run a small rice shop,

  and bought a native girl,

  thirty years younger, at the price

  of an “untouched,” unable

  to speak a word of his language.

  A gigantic ledger opened him

  in the morning, figures moved him up

  and down a mahogany abacus, until

  the curfew closed him in her arms,

  in a peaceful sack of darkness: time was

  a handful of rice—look,

  white-and-fancy—streaming out

  through his fingers. A chewed

  betel nut stuck on the counter.

  He quit holding himself like

  a balloon against a horizon ablaze

  with cigarette butts.

  One midnight, he awoke, the leaves

  shivering, inexplicably, at the window.

  She grasped tight the mosquito net

  in her sleep. A goldfish jumped out, dancing

  furiously on the ground. Wordless,

  a young woman’s capacity

  to feature jealousy and

  the incorrigibly plural correspondences

  of the world illuminated him.

  It must have been another man,

  dead long before, who had said:

  The limits of his poetry

  are the limits of his possibility.

  All night, he wrote on her

  with his tongue, nosetip, and beard.

  Yu’s biographers come to claim all this

  as camouflage, necessary

  for the resistance activities

  against Japan. And they come

  to her, like tired travelers

  to a deserted monastery.

  Her teeth are

  black from betel-nut-chewing—

  a habit which husband has left

  her, she forgets. She

  has married several times.

  Wriggling her toes like

  cracked plastic petals, she

  can bring back nothing

  to her mind, except his big beard

  between her thighs.

  Yu Dafu (1896–1945) was a modern Chinese poet.

  Chen found himself with Jin in Bund Park—sitting shoulder to shoulder, sitting under a weeping willow tree, sitting on the same green bench. But before he could start talking with her, a phone call came bursting into his ear.

  It was Doctor Wang from Renji Hospital, his words cracking like a loud clap of thunder out of the blue:

  “Your friend—or your neighbor—Zhang has just passed away in the hospital this noon, Director Chen. I’m so sorry to have to break the sad news to you. We did all we could.”

  “I understand, Doctor Wang. I believe that you did all you could.”

  Jin, still sitting next to him on the green bench, reached out in a hurry to grasp Chen’s hand with hers in great concern. She must have overheard some fragments of the phone call.

  “Oh, there’s another thing,” Doctor Wang added. “I almost forgot. I double-checked Zhang’s body for suspicious signs before his death, as you requested. Sure enough, there were signs that his skull had received heavy blows from behind. I am fairly certain about it. It could have been caused by Zhang’s fall from the steep staircase.”

  “Thank you for telling me all this, Doctor Wang. Now, please keep the body properly in the morgue for me—along with all the possible evidence. I’ll come to your hospital first thing tomorrow morning.” Then Chen added in a hurry, “By the way, please bring one of the hospital’s forensic experts with you tomorrow, for me to meet. I am treating this as a case of possible murder.”

  After finishing the unexpected phone call with Doctor Wang, the former chief inspector heaved a long sigh. He had no choice, he knew, but to start a new investigation in earnest.

  A number of possible theories for Zhang’s death were already racing through his mind when Jin turned toward him on the green bench, nearly leaning against him.

  “What has happened, Chen?”

  “Zhang has just passed away in Renji Hospital.”

  “What! I’m so sorry to hear that, Chen. He was a good man. Poor old Zhang! All these years, he has been living alone, squeezed into that tiny room, just like a chicken in a cage. His death is so sudden.”

  “Yes, I have known him for about more than thirty years. It feels too sudden for me too, even though Doctor Wang already told me that I should be prepared for it. And now I have to open an investigation into Zhang’s death—it’s a possible murder case. Do you remember that you brought some material from Molong the other day?”

  “Yes, but what about it?” Jin asked, looking shocked.

  “The files from Molong included an email Yan had written to her district Party boss. The email was her report of the so-called vicious attack X had launched against the current Party authorities in the last Red Dust Evening Talk. But Yan’s accusation was full of shameless fabrications. I listened to the recording of the talk more than once, which was on the phone you brought back from Zhang. Her report was nothing but a total lie.”

  “But how could Yan have done that to a harmless old man?”

  “Haven’t you told me that Yan is experiencing an existential crisis, Jin? It’s only too clear. She is truly desperate. Horror, horror, is the heart of darkness.”

  “Yes,” Jin replied. “With Red Dust Lane soon to be gone, so too would be her official position as the head of the Red Dust Neighborhood Committee. It’s a position with a lot of power to abuse, and a lot of money to put into her own pocket, even though it is but a position on the lowest rung of the Party ladder.”

  “It’s also more than that. Yan must have long noticed the secret collaboration between Zhang and me. So I, too, was brought up in her venomous report. Yan could have gained attention from her district Party boss for reporting such a sensational case and, as a reward, been given a new position in some other neighborhood committee. She could even be promoted to a larger neighborhood.”

  “So evil indeed. I think you have mentioned a philosophical term—banal evil. Is that right?”

  “Not that exactly, but you can also apply the term here, Jin. Yan is an evil person who does not want to do any independent thinking. She simply identifies herself with the Party system, and uses this to justify whatever she chooses to do.”

  “Well said, Chen. The problem is that people like Yan are numerous in today’s China, but people like you are so few and far between.”

  “It gets worse. Although Yan was not yet aware of the fact that I had somehow gained access to the report she submitted to the Party boss in secret, she must have known only too well that a former chief inspector like me is still an experienced and resourceful Party official. After all, I’m still in charge of an office in the city government, and still have far-reaching connections both in and outside the Party at the highest level.

  “So it’s not inconceivable that Yan could have been alarmed by the possibility that Zhang and I were meeting to plot a counter-attack against her. If I had somehow loomed in Yan’s mind as a more or less untouchable figure, it would make sense for her to take a preemptive move by getting rid of Zhang instead—once and for all.

  “As the powerful head of the neighborhood committee, it would not have been difficult for her to make an unannounced visit to any resident in Red Dust Lane. With most of her neighbors having moved away, it would not have been difficult for Yan to push Zhang down the black, steep staircase in the deserted shikumen house without a witness. Or, to have arranged someone else to push Zhang down the staircase on her behalf.

  “Or—another possible scenario—for her to have arranged for someone to hit Zhang hard from behind with a heavy hammer, making Zhang tumble down the staircase.

  “With the omnipresent and omnipotent surveillance system in Red Dust Lane, Yan could also have noticed your visit to Zhang to retrieve the recording for me, Jin. Perhaps she visited Zhang and killed him in panic, lest he might have told you more about what Yan had done, knowing that her Party boss would discover that her report had been a total lie.”

  “Once a chief inspector, always a chief inspector,” Jin murmured beside him on the green bench, her voice full of emotion.

  “I’ll explain all of it to you. All the details. It will be another investigation for me to conduct in your company, Jin.” Then he added as if as an afterthought, “I may as well tell you all the details about X and Mei too. X once said, in a fortune telling, ‘Events as insignificant as a bird pecking, or taking a sip of water, can be ordained and ordaining. All things are connected and connecting.’”

  “Needless to say, I’ll be anywhere you want me to be,” Jin said. “I’m glad you trust me.”

  “I’m very fond of the beginning of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. ‘It must be done, it must be done, it must be done …’ That leitmotif has always haunted me, as if it’s a familiar refrain.”

  “So that means—?”

  “It means my fate. There’s no escaping from it.”

  “It’s our common fate, then, Chen. There’s no escaping from it.” So saying, Jin rose from the bench with Chen and took his hand in hers.

  Author’s Note

  X’s experience in the Tian’anmen massacre, as depicted in this book, is based on what happened to my late friend and mentor, Yang Xianyi. Prior to the national tragedy, Yang was the editor-in-chief of the influential magazine Chinese Literature, and published my first English poem. That really gave me confidence to write in English.

  Yang too lost his position like X, for speaking out against the massacre, in exactly the same way as in the book.

  Years later, when I visited him in a third-class hospital without any state-of-the-art medical equipment, my eyes were wet. In his life, the old man had translated at least half of the Chinese classics into English!

  Mencius says so well, “A true gentleman is not confounded by money or rank, nor subdued by poverty or hardship, nor bent by power or might.”