to find jobs in the new restaurants and hotels.
“I thought about that, too,” Yu said. “But have you noticed her fingernails? So professionally manicured, polished. And her toenails, too.”
“But she might have worked in one of those fancy hotels.”
“Let me tell you something, Comrade Chief Inspector. Last month, I saw a painting by Cheng Shifa,” Yu said, shaking his head. “It shows a Dai girl walking along the rough Yuannan mountain path, her bare feet flashing white under her long green skirt. Well, one of my colleagues in Yuannan married a Dai girl. Afterward, he told me he was shocked to see how calloused and cracked her feet were in real life.”
“You may have a point, Comrade Detective Yu,” Chen said, not too pleased with the way Yu delivered his lecture, “but if she had stayed long enough in one of those foreign hotels, been totally transformed, so to speak, that would still be possible, right?”
“If so, we should have had a report already. Those foreign general managers have a way of running their business, and their people, too. And they keep in close contact with the police.”
“True,” he said, nodding, “but we have to do something.”
“Yes, but what?”
The conversation left him disturbed. Was it true that they could not do anything but wait? Once more he took out the picture of the dead girl. The enlarged one. Though the image was not clear, he could see that she must have been an attractive woman. How could such a woman not be missed after almost a week? She should have had some people who cared for her. Friends, colleagues, parents, sisters and brothers, maybe lovers, who were anxious about her. No human being, particularly a young attractive woman, could be so alone that no one missed her when she disappeared for a week. He could not understand it.
But maybe she had said that she was going away on vacation or business. If so, it could take a long time before someone started wondering where she was.
He had a vague feeling that there was something about the case, something complicated, waiting for him. Something like a parallel to his writing experience . . .
A glimpse of a veiled face at the entrance of Beijing subway, a waft of the jasmine blossom fragrance from a blue teacup, or a particular rhythm in an attic with a train rumbling into the distant night, and he would have the feeling that he was on the verge of producing a wonderful poem. All this could turn out, however, to be a false lead, and he would end up crossing out fragments of unsatisfactory lines.
With this case, he did not even have such an evasive lead, nothing but an ineffable feeling. He pushed open the window. The early chorus of the cicadas assaulted him in hot waves.
“ Zhiliao, Zhiliao, Zhiliao . . . .”
It was a homophone for “understanding” in Chinese.
Before he left for a meeting, he made a call to Dr. Xia, who had examined the victim’s body.
“Dr. Xia, I have to ask a favor of you,” Chen said.
“Anything I can do, Comrade Chief Inspector Chen.”
“Remember the young woman found in the canal in a plastic bag—case number 736? The body has not yet been disposed of, I believe. Maybe the plastic bag is still there, too. Check it for me, and more importantly, write a description of the victim for me. Not a report but a detailed description. Not of a corpse but of a human being. Vivid. Concrete. Specific. What would she have looked like alive. I know you’re busy, Dr. Xia. Please do it as a personal favor for me.”
Doctor Xia, who loved classical Chinese poetry and was aware that Chen wrote poems in the so-called modernist style, said, “I know what you want, but I cannot promise my description will be as vivid as a modernist work, including every possible detail, ugly or not.”
“Don’t be too hard on me, Dr. Xia. I’ve been incorporating a streak of Li Shangyin’s lyricism into my lines. I’ll show some to you over our next lunch together. It will be my treat, of
“I thought about that, too,” Yu said. “But have you noticed her fingernails? So professionally manicured, polished. And her toenails, too.”
“But she might have worked in one of those fancy hotels.”
“Let me tell you something, Comrade Chief Inspector. Last month, I saw a painting by Cheng Shifa,” Yu said, shaking his head. “It shows a Dai girl walking along the rough Yuannan mountain path, her bare feet flashing white under her long green skirt. Well, one of my colleagues in Yuannan married a Dai girl. Afterward, he told me he was shocked to see how calloused and cracked her feet were in real life.”
“You may have a point, Comrade Detective Yu,” Chen said, not too pleased with the way Yu delivered his lecture, “but if she had stayed long enough in one of those foreign hotels, been totally transformed, so to speak, that would still be possible, right?”
“If so, we should have had a report already. Those foreign general managers have a way of running their business, and their people, too. And they keep in close contact with the police.”
“True,” he said, nodding, “but we have to do something.”
“Yes, but what?”
The conversation left him disturbed. Was it true that they could not do anything but wait? Once more he took out the picture of the dead girl. The enlarged one. Though the image was not clear, he could see that she must have been an attractive woman. How could such a woman not be missed after almost a week? She should have had some people who cared for her. Friends, colleagues, parents, sisters and brothers, maybe lovers, who were anxious about her. No human being, particularly a young attractive woman, could be so alone that no one missed her when she disappeared for a week. He could not understand it.
But maybe she had said that she was going away on vacation or business. If so, it could take a long time before someone started wondering where she was.
He had a vague feeling that there was something about the case, something complicated, waiting for him. Something like a parallel to his writing experience . . .
A glimpse of a veiled face at the entrance of Beijing subway, a waft of the jasmine blossom fragrance from a blue teacup, or a particular rhythm in an attic with a train rumbling into the distant night, and he would have the feeling that he was on the verge of producing a wonderful poem. All this could turn out, however, to be a false lead, and he would end up crossing out fragments of unsatisfactory lines.
With this case, he did not even have such an evasive lead, nothing but an ineffable feeling. He pushed open the window. The early chorus of the cicadas assaulted him in hot waves.
“ Zhiliao, Zhiliao, Zhiliao . . . .”
It was a homophone for “understanding” in Chinese.
Before he left for a meeting, he made a call to Dr. Xia, who had examined the victim’s body.
“Dr. Xia, I have to ask a favor of you,” Chen said.
“Anything I can do, Comrade Chief Inspector Chen.”
“Remember the young woman found in the canal in a plastic bag—case number 736? The body has not yet been disposed of, I believe. Maybe the plastic bag is still there, too. Check it for me, and more importantly, write a description of the victim for me. Not a report but a detailed description. Not of a corpse but of a human being. Vivid. Concrete. Specific. What would she have looked like alive. I know you’re busy, Dr. Xia. Please do it as a personal favor for me.”
Doctor Xia, who loved classical Chinese poetry and was aware that Chen wrote poems in the so-called modernist style, said, “I know what you want, but I cannot promise my description will be as vivid as a modernist work, including every possible detail, ugly or not.”
“Don’t be too hard on me, Dr. Xia. I’ve been incorporating a streak of Li Shangyin’s lyricism into my lines. I’ll show some to you over our next lunch together. It will be my treat, of
Similar Books
