“I phoned your office. They told me you are on vacation. Now you surely have time to dine at our restaurant.”

“Not this week, Lu. I have to finish a rush translation project for Mr. Gu, of the Dynasty Club, now also the founder of the New World Group. You know him, I think.”

“Oh, Mr. Gu. He asked you to do a translation for him?”

“Yes, for a business project of his,” Chen said. “How is your business?”

“Great. We have unearthed a number of old pictures and posters of Russian girls in old Shanghai. Now they are all over the walls. Impressive pictures. Crowded nightclubs with half-naked Russian girls performing on the stage. It’s like walking back in time into old Shanghai.”

“That’s exciting.”

“I’m thinking of putting a stage in our restaurant, too. Peace Hotel has a band. Old men playing jazz, you know. We’ll do much better. A young men’s band, and Russian girls on stage,” Lu added proudly. “Girls both in old pictures, and in real life.”

“So Moscow Suburb is no longer merely a restaurant, just for gourmets like you.”

“It still is. But people have money now. They want something more than food. Atmosphere. Culture. History. Added value, whatever it may mean. And only in the middle of all this do they think they are really enjoying their money’s worth.”

“It must be quite expensive, then.”

“Well, people are willing to pay the price. There’s a new term- conspicuous consumption. And there’s a new group of people- the middle class. Moscow Suburb has become a status-conscious restaurant. Some come here for that very reason.”

“Good for you, Overseas Chinese Lu.”

“So come, my Chief Inspector. I’ve just got some caviar, genuine Russian caviar. An acquired taste, I’m beginning to like it. You remember, I read about it for the first time in a Russian novel. My mouth literally watered. Black pearls indeed. Oh, vodka too. We’ll eat and drink to our hearts’ content.”

“I have to get back to my work, Overseas Chinese Lu.” Chen had to cut him short. Lu could gush on for hours whenever he spoke on the topic of food. “I will try to make it to your restaurant next week.”

These phone calls had some things in common, Chen thought afterward. Culinary delight was one. Not just that, either. Lu had also spoken about a nostalgic cultural ambiance for his restaurant. As a result of this conversation, Chen felt hungry but he decided to work on, doggedly, for two or three hours more. It seemed as if he had to prove the truth of what he had told Lu on the phone.

After a while, he looked once more at the pictures White Cloud had taken for him. He failed to see the glitter and glamour of the thirties. Perhaps that was due to the dirt and dust accumulated through the years of the construction of socialism. It might be too cynical of him, as a Party cadre, to think so, but that’s what he thought.

Finally, he took the remaining food, put it into the microwave, and finished it without really tasting it.

Perhaps he ought to consult some books about old Shanghai. Not books written in the sixties, which he had read as a child, but those from an earlier time. He took out a piece of paper and wrote something down before he brewed himself a pot of coffee. Not a good idea at this hour, he knew. Inhaling the fragrance, he realized that he had been becoming more dependent on caffeine. For the moment, however, he did not want to worry about it. He had to pull himself together.

He worked late that night.

He felt tired, yet all of a sudden, more than anything else, lonely.

Several lines a friend had once quoted to him came to mind. Trying each of the chilly boughs, / the wild goose chooses not to perch, / with the maple leaves falling, freezing, / over the Wu River. These were lines from a poem by Su Dongpo. It was said to be a political commentary, but it was often read as a metaphor about the difficulty of choosing a bough to perch upon, whatever the reason might be. In fact, the friend had quoted it in defense of her personal life.

And then his thought jumped to a familiar sound, like the wild goose amidst falling maple leaves. A cricket was screeching outside the window.

There was no accounting for a cricket scraping its wings so energetically, unless, as he had learned as a boy, the cricket was singing in triumph over a beaten opponent.

But what was the good of being a cricket, victorious or not, if you were always goaded by a golden rush in a boy’s hand, circling round and round the world of a small earthen pot?

Chapter 6

After consulting Old Liang’s list of the suspects who lived in the shikumen building, Yu started his investigation early the next morning at the neighborhood committee office. On the desk was a new folder that contained information about each suspect, probably derived from the records maintained by the veteran residence cop.

The first person on the list was Lanlan, the discoverer of the murder. Technically, she had had the opportunity and means to commit the crime and it appeared to Old Liang that she had a motive too.

Lanlan was a woman who liked nothing better than to mix with her neighbors; she was capable of becoming intimate with people she had known for only three minutes. She had suffered a terrible loss of face with Yin, who rejected her repeated attempts at friendship. Lanlan finally gave up with a bitter statement to the neighbors: “It was like pressing your hot face to her cold ass. What’s the point?”

But this would not have been sufficient to cause an explosion unless a fuse had been lit, which, in a shikumen house, more often than not came from the constant squabbles about the common space. Because of overcrowded living conditions, each of the families tried hard to occupy as much space as possible-”in a fair way.” Old Liang provided an example. Yin had a coal briquette stove as well as a small table in the common kitchen area. It was her space, inherited from the previous tingzijian occupant; she took it even though she hardly cooked. Like her predecessor, she also kept a smaller gasoline stove outside her door on the staircase landing. Like all the others, she would not give up an inch she could claim as hers. This must have vexed some of her neighbors.

One night, Lanlan came home in a hurry and stumbled over the gasoline stove. There was a kettle of hot water on the stove; the hot water spilled and scalded her ankle. It was not exactly Yin’s fault. The stove had been there for years. Lanlan should have turned on the light, or moved less rapidly. Anyway, accidents happen, but she cursed like a fury outside Yin’s door.

“What a white tiger star you are! You bring misfortune to everyone close to you. Heaven has eyes, and you will bring bad luck down upon yourself, too.”

Yin must have been aware of the reference-white tiger star- but she knew better than to emerge from her room to shout back.

Lanlan, however, was even more enraged to be ignored like that. She voiced her complaints in neighborhood resident meetings. A lot of people heard them, and some were astonished by the animosity she had displayed toward Yin. But that was still far from being a murder motive, in Yu’s estimation. Besides, the incident had happened a couple of years earlier.

He decided to move on to the second name on the list. Wan Qianshen was a retired worker who lived alone in the attic. Wan had not been in the shikumen house that morning. It was his habit, too, to perform tai chi exercises on the Bund at that hour.

Old Liang’s file provided a brief biography of Wan. He had been a steel factory worker “dedicated to the construction of the socialist revolution.” During the Cultural Revolution, Wan had become a member of the prestigious Mao Zedong Thought Propaganda Worker Team. At the end of the sixties, when the Red Guard students clamored for more power, Chairman Mao managed to contain these young rebels by sending Worker Teams into the colleges with a new revolutionary theory. According to Mao, the students, having been exposed to western bourgeois ideas, needed reeducation. They were urged to learn from the workers-the most revolutionary proletariat. It was a high political honor to be a Thought Propaganda Worker Team Member in those days. All the students and teachers were required to listen to whatever Wan said. He was a Comrade-Always-Politically-Correct, a model for them.