Don’t Cry, Tai Lake

the new information into the puzzle. As before, his efforts failed to lead anywhere. So, for the sake of change, he decided to write a report about the environmental issue to Comrade Secretary Zhao. Chief Inspector Chen was a cop, and a busy one, but nonetheless a responsible citizen like Shanshan. It was up to him to write this report, whether it would appeal to the top leaders or not.
    He had hardly completed the first paragraph when he found himself slowing down. It was turning out to be much harder than he had anticipated. So far, all he had was a hodgepodge of high-sounding yet empty sentences that didn’t prove anything. It wasn’t his territory, and he didn’t have anything concrete or solid to support his argument. He was quickly losing confidence in his ability to write such a report.
    He lit another cigarette and his mind began wandering back to the case. He realized, much to his dismay, that it was only when he was thinking like a cop that he was able to proceed with confidence.
    Since when had he become a cop who looked only at his own feet? True, in case after case, Chief Inspector Chen had been too busy with his job to do anything else, but there’s no denying that there were privileges for an emerging Party cadre. He wasn’t exactly a high-ranking cadre yet, but he felt a sense of obligation to the system that had treated him well.
    Thinking of Shanshan and her arduous uphill battle for the lake, he turned back to the table, opened the laptop and started to type.
    In a trance of blazing poppies
    or in the cooling shade, deeply covered
    with moss, you have forgotten
    the night we spent on the bridge,
    the light in the distance, and the lights
    beyond them converging
    into music on your retina, while
    you conducted with your cigarette
    a tone poem of the sleepless lake,
    when you no longer belonged
    to a place, nor a time, nor yourself.
    When another white water bird flies
    from the calendar, may you dream
    no longer of a pale oyster
    clinging to the grim limestone.
     
    (Where are you now, as dawn taps
    at my window with her rosy fingers,
    as the fragrance of coffee and bread
    penetrates the wakening mind,
    and as the door, like a smile,
    welcomes flowers and newspapers?)
    The lines came almost effortlessly, more or less to his own bewilderment. Was he the persona “you” in the first stanza? That’s not possible. He had been staying by the lake for only a few days. But a sense of guilt in it was unmistakable. In a symbolist way, perhaps. The second stanza in parentheses probably was the result of his recent experience at the center, but what did it really mean?
    Nevertheless, these lines could develop into a long poem and not one about himself, but more about her and the lake, about what’s happening in China, and about an unyielding spirit …
    Then he paused and compelled his thoughts back to the case again, thinking with confidence. There was something else at the crime scene; what, exactly, he couldn’t yet tell. So he picked up the list of things in Liu’s apartment, a list he had already gone over several times.
    This time he came to a stop at one particular item—a lacquer jewelry box with a black pearl necklace, gold earrings, and a green jade bracelet. None of it was of extraordinary value. But it was at his office, not his home. According to Mrs. Liu, she didn’t stay there. So why was a jewelry box there? If anything, it only served to confirm Shanshan’s account about Mi, the little secretary. But that didn’t prove helpful, however, in his effort to connect the dots of possible clues.
    Then he pulled out the pictures of the crime scene. He placed them on the floor of the living room, then seated himself in the midst of them. He looked over them one by one. Still, he failed to see anything; all he had was a vague feeling that there was something missing. Perhaps something common in everyday life, but it eluded him for the moment.
    He could no longer hide in the background, he concluded. At the very least, he should personally examine the crime scene and talk to some of the people involved. It wouldn’t be a big risk. Chief Inspector Chen couldn’t help being curious, one could argue, about a murder investigation in Wuxi, the town where he happened to be on vacation.
    And he might still keep his movements secret as long as he and Huang proceeded cautiously.
    After he took the herbal medicine, fielded a mysterious wrong number phone call, and drank a third cup of lukewarm