A Loyal Character Dancer

smile. “What you are looking for is right there for you. The first couplet suggests a sudden change at a time when things seem to be beyond help.”
     
    “What else does the poem tell?”
     
    “It may pertain to a romantic relationship. The second couplet makes it clear.”
     
    “I’m confused,” she said, turning to Chen. “You’re the one right here for me.”
     
    “It is intentionally ambiguous.” Chen was amused. “I’m right here, so who do you have to look for? Or it could be about Wen, for all we know.”
     
    They started to walk around in the temple, examining the clay idols on cushion-shaped stones—the deities of the Taoist religion. When they were out of the Taoist’s hearing, she resumed her questioning. “You are a poet, Chen. Please explain these lines to me.”
     
    “What a poem means and what a fortunetelling piece means can be totally different. You’ve paid for the fortunetelling, so you have to be content with his interpretation.”
     
    “What is wild-goose-flushing beauty?”
     
    “In ancient China, there were four legendary beauties, so beautiful that everything else reacted in shame: the bird flushed, the fish dived, the moon hid, and the flower closed up. Later, people used this metaphor to describe a beauty.”
     
    They then moved on, strolling into the temple courtyard. She started taking pictures, like an American tourist, he thought. She seemed to be enjoying every minute of it, shooting from many different angles.
     
    She stopped a middle-aged woman. “Could you take a picture for us?” she asked. She stood close to him. Her hair gleaming against his shoulder, she gazed into the camera with the ancient temple in the background.
     
    The bazaar in front of the temple was swarming with people. She spent several minutes looking for exotic but inexpensive souvenirs. Besides several baskets of herbs, which filled the air with a pleasant aroma, she bargained with an old peasant woman displaying tiny bird’s eggs, plastic bags of Suzhou tea leaves, and packages of dried mushrooms. At a folk toy booth, he rattled a slithery paper snake on a bamboo stick, a reminder of his childhood.
     
    They chose a table shaded by a large umbrella. He ordered Suzhou-style dumplings, peeled shrimp with tender tea leaves, and chicken and duck blood soup. Between bites, she resumed her questions about the fortunetelling poem.
     
    “The first and the second couplet are both by Lu You, a Song dynasty poet, but from two different poems,” he said. “The first is often quoted to describe a sudden change. As for the second, there’s a tragic story behind it. In his seventies, when Lu revisited the place where he had first seen Shen, a woman he loved all his life, he wrote the lines, gazing into the green water under the bridge.”
     
    “A romantic story,” she said, swallowing a spoonful of the chicken and duck blood soup.

Chapter 27
     
     
    T
    hey reached the hotel in the growing dusk.
     
    From her room, Chief Inspector Chen made a phone call to Detective Yu. Aware of Inspector Rohn’s presence, Yu did not say much on the phone, except that there would be a new interview tape delivered to Chen.
     
    Then she said she wanted to phone her supervisor.
     
    He excused himself to smoke a cigarette in the corridor.
     
    It was a short conversation. She came out before he finished the cigarette. Looking out at the ancient city in the dusk, she said that her boss suggested she return home. She did not seem eager to comply.
     
    “We may make some progress tomorrow,” she said.
     
    “Let’s hope so. Maybe the fortunetelling poem will do the trick. I’ll take a rest in my room. Tomorrow will be a long day.”
     
    “If anything happens, call me.” She remembered there was no phone in his room. “Or knock at my door.”
     
    “I will.” He added, “Maybe we can take a walk this evening.”
     
    He went to his room. When he turned on the light, to his surprise, he saw a man sitting there—to be more exact, taking a nap with his back resting against the headboard.
     
    Little Zhou looked up with a start. “I’ve been waiting for you. Sorry I fell asleep in your room, Chief Inspector Chen.”
     
    “You must have waited for a long time. What has brought you here, Little Zhou?”
     
    “Something from Detective Yu. Marked to be delivered to you, ASAP.”
     
    Since Qiao’s abduction, Chen had made a point of contacting Yu by cell phone, and in an emergency, through Little