Red Mandarin Dress

the Mao Team member.
    “But there was no possibility of punishing all of Mao’s followers. The government didn’t encourage people to rake up their old grievances. Besides, even if he succeeded in bringing Tian to court, it wouldn’t be on a homicide charge, and it would probably come at the expense of dragging her memory through the mire again. So J decided to take justice into his own hands. From his perspective, he was justified, because there was no other way. He had Tian punished in what seemed to be a series of misfortunes. He extended the revenge to people related to Tian. To his former wife and to his daughter as well. And like a cat watching a mouse making pathetic efforts to escape, he prolonged the process of their suffering, as resourcefully as the Count of Monte Cristo.”
    “It reads like the story of Monte Cristo,” Jia cut in, “but who would take the story seriously?”
    “Well, I actually read it during the Cultural Revolution. The book enjoyed an extraordinary lucky reprint at a time when all other Western novels were banned. Do you know why? Madam Mao made a positive comment about it. In fact, she herself wreaked her revenge on the people who had looked down on her. She took it seriously.”
    “A white-bone devil,” Jia commented, like a responsive audience. “Before she married Mao, she was only a B-movie actress.”
    “She must have seen her actions as justified too, but let’s leave Mao and Madam Mao alone,” Chen said, moving his chopsticks to the ox eyes, which appeared to be staring back. “But there is one difference. For Monte Cristo still has his own life, but for J, his life was, and still is, devoid of any other meaning except revenge.”
    “I would like to make a comment here,” Jia said, tearing the fish lips with his chopsticks, though he didn’t pick them up. “In your story, he’s a successful attorney, and quite well-to-do too. How could there be no life for him?”
    “A couple of reasons. The first one came out of his disillusionment with his profession. Working as an attorney, he soon found himself not exactly in a position to fight for justice. As before, major cases were predetermined in the interests of the Party authorities, and then later, in the nineties, they were rigged in the interest of money as well, in a society lost in uncontrollable corruption. While his career as an attorney became a lucrative one, his idealistic passion had long ago proved impractical and irrelevant.”
    “How can you say that, Chief Inspector Chen? A successful cop, you must have been fighting for justice all these years. Don’t tell me you, too, are so disillusioned.”
    “To be honest, that’s the reason I am taking a literature course. The story is part of the effort.”
    “No wonder I haven’t seen your name in the newspapers for a while.”
    “Oh, you have been following me, Mr. Jia?”
    “Well, the newspapers have been full of the serial murder case, and full of cops too. You’re a star among them,” Jia said, raising his cup in mock admiration, “so I have sort of missed you of late.”
    “For J, the second reason may be the more important,” Chen went on without responding to Jia, who, having recovered from the initial shock, seemed capable of teasing his host. “He is incapable of having sex with women—an aggravated Oedipus complex. Which is the identification of his mother as his sexual object in his unconscious, as you know. In every other aspect, he appears a healthy man, but the memory of the naked, soiled body of his mother falls like a shadow, inevitably, between the present desire and the past disaster. Whatever professional success he achieves, he can’t live a normal life. Normal life was forever fixed at that moment of his grasping her hand in the picture. And it’s a picture that was broken to pieces at the moment she fell down the stairs. He’s worn out from all the endless effort of keeping all this secret and fighting the demon—”
    “You sound like a pro, Chief Inspector Chen,” Jia said sarcastically. “I didn’t know that you studied psychology too.”
    “I have read one or two books on the subject. You surely know much more, so that’s why I would really appreciate your opinion.”
    There was a light knock on the door again. White Cloud came in carrying a large tray that held a glass pot, a glass bowl of shrimps, and a miniature stove. The shrimps were immersed in a mixed sauce, but under the bowl lid, they still squirmed