A Loyal Character Dancer

handful of rice streaming out / through his fingers. A chewed betel nut / stuck on the counter. He quit / holding himself like a balloon / forsaken against a horizon blazing / with cigarette butts.
     
    “One midnight he awoke with the leaves / shivering, inexplicably, at the window. / She grasped at the mosquito net / in her sleep. A gold fish jumped out, / dancing furiously on the ground. / Wordless, a young woman’s capacity / for feeling jealousy and / the incorrigibly plural correspondence / 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.”
     
    “Is that all?” She gazed at him over the rim of her glass.
     
    “No, there’s one more stanza, but I cannot remember all the lines. It tells that years later, critics came like pilgrims to that native woman who, in her sixties, could bring nothing back, except the memory of Daifu making love to her.”
     
    “It’s so sad,” she said, twisting in her slender fingers the stem of the glass. “And so unfair to her.”
     
    “Unfair to feminist critics?”
     
    “No, not just that. It’s way too cynical. Not that I do not like your poem, I do.” She continued after taking another small sip. “Let me ask you a different question. When you wrote the poem, what kind of a mood were you in?”
     
    “I cannot remember. It was such a long time ago.”
     
    “A lousy mood, I bet. Things were going wrong. Messages did not get through. Disillusionment hit home. And you became cynical—” She added, “Sorry if I’m intruding.”
     
    “No, it’s okay,” he said, taken aback. “You’re right in a general sense. According to our Tang dynasty poet Du Fu, people do not write well when they are happy. If you are content with life, you simply want to enjoy it.”
     
    “Antiromantic cynicism can be a disguise for the poet’s personal disappointment. The poem reveals another side of you.”
     
    “Well—” He was at a loss. “You’re entitled to your reading. Inspector Rohn. In deconstruction, every reading can be a misreading.”
     
    Their talk was interrupted by a phone call from his deputy, Qian.
     
    “Where are you, Chief Inspector Chen?”
     
    “Moscow Suburb,” Chen said. “Party Secretary Li wants me to entertain our American guest. What do you have to report?”
     
    “Nothing particular. I’m in the bureau today. Detective Yu may call in at any time, and I’m still making phone calls to hotels. If anything comes up, you can reach me here.”
     
    “So you’re working on Sunday, too. Good for you, Qian. Goodbye.”
     
    Chen felt slightly disturbed, however. It was possible that Qian had intended to show how hard working he was, especially after the Qingpu incident. But why did he want to know where Chen was? Perhaps he should not have disclosed his whereabouts.
     
    Anna came to offer desserts from a cart.
     
    “Thank you.” Chen said. “Leave it here. We’ll choose for ourselves.”
     
    “Another linguistic question,” Catherine said, selecting chocolate mousse.
     
    “Yes?”
     
    “Lu calls Anna and other waitresses his little sisters. Why?”
     
    “They’re younger, but there is another reason. We used to call Russians our ‘elder brothers,’ believing they were more advanced and we were only in the early stage of Communism. Now Russia is viewed as poorer than China. Young Russian girls come here, seeking jobs in our restaurants and nightclubs, just as Chinese go to the United States. Lu is so proud of this.”
     
    She dug her spoon into her mousse. “I need to ask you a favor—as your American girlfriend—as your buddy imagines.”
     
    “Whatever I can do, Inspector Rohn.” He was conscious of a subtle change in her. Her tone lacked the edge of the previous day.
     
    “I have heard of a ‘knockoff’ street in Shanghai. I would like to ask you to accompany me there.”
     
    “A knockoff street?”
     
    “Huating Road, that’s the name of it. People sell all kinds of fake brands there. Like Louis Vuitton, Gucci, or Rolex.”
     
    “Huating Road—I have never been there myself.”
     
    “I can go myself, with a Shanghai map in hand. Only the peddlers will charge me a much higher price. I don’t think my Chinese is good enough for bargaining.”
     
    “Your Chinese is more than adequate.” Chen put down his wineglass. This was not an activity the authorities would recommend. Such a