Don’t Cry, Tai Lake

helped to establish a sort of bond between the investigator and the victim. He had examined it several times back in the center.
    “Didn’t he win another one,” Chen asked, “at the end of last year?”
    “Of course he did, but why do you ask?”
    Instead of responding, Chen took out some of the other pictures taken by the police, along with those he had shot. In the background of all of them, he counted the statuettes. Nine of them.
    “He insisted on us posing in front of the statuettes,” Wenliang said, gazing at the picture of the father and son. “He lined them all up on the shelf.”
    But one was missing, Chen thought. In the crime scene photos, there should have been ten statuettes, including the one that was awarded last year. But there were only nine of them.
    “He had each of them gold-plated—using a special company fund set aside just for the purpose. He called me at the end of last year to tell me about it. ‘Now we’ve won ten statuettes in succession under my leadership, but the eleventh or the twelfth should be won under you.’”
    So the tenth one was missing from Liu’s home office. What could that possibly mean? It wasn’t the time for him to get too engrossed in speculation, especially when it might turn out to be irrelevant to the investigation.
    “So are you still going to have a position at the company, Wenliang?”
    “I don’t think so. A new emperor must have the ministers of his own choosing.”
    “What’s your plan then?”
    “Believe it or not, my real passion is for Beijing opera. So I’m thinking about studying for an MA in the field.”
    “That’s interesting,” Chen said, immediately aware that it was the exact same response people offered him when they learned about his passion for poetry.
    “It may not sound like a reasonable choice in today’s society, but with what my father left us, I think I can manage.”
    “I understand. But as with poetry, there would be little money in a career in Beijing opera.”
    “My father toiled and moiled for money his whole life, but could he take any of it with him?”
    “Yes, I understand. You can’t live without money, but you can’t live for it.”
    “Besides, no one else really wants me to work at the chemical company anymore.”
    “Fu, the new boss, was going to offer your mother a job, I heard.”
    “What sort of a job will he offer her? Something at the entry level. It’s nothing but a gesture.”
    “But Fu didn’t seem too bad to the people who worked under your father. For instance, Mi was promoted.”
    “Don’t talk to me about her,” Wenliang said with an undisguised look of disgust on his face. “It’s just like in the Beijing opera ‘Break Open the Coffin.’ Oh what a horror!”
    “‘Break Open the Coffin’?”
    “Don’t you know the story of Zhuangzi’s sudden enlightenment about the vanity of the human world?”
    “I know of Zhuangzi, of course. I remember some story about his enlightenment. He dreamed of being a butterfly, but when he woke up, he couldn’t help wondering whether it was the butterfly that dreamed of being him. But he was a great philosopher, and we don’t have to take that story too seriously.”
    “There’s a popular Beijing opera version you might not know. Indeed, this version is totally different. According to it, Zhuangzi had a young loving wife, who was the one thing that, for all his profound philosophy, he still couldn’t let go of in this world of red dust. One day, he suddenly took ill, and she swore at his bedside that there was only room enough for him in her heart. The moment he breathed his last, however, she started searching around for a new lover. That same day, she had the luck to find one, but he, too, got sick overnight. According to a quack doctor, the sick lover could be saved only by a medicine that consisted of someone’s heart, so she broke open the coffin, which was not yet buried, to cut out Zhuangzi’s heart. It turned out to be a test Zhuangzi set up with his supernatural powers. Shame-stricken, she committed suicide, and he was enlightened about the vanity of human passion.”
    Chen remembered having heard a folk tale version of the story, but it was far less gruesome than the one he had just learned from Wenliang.
    “So you mean—”
    “You know what it means. Mi is nothing but a little secretary kept by her Big Buck boss,” Wenliang said with a sneer. “So she needs a new one to keep her in the same