The Mao Case

today.”
    But what did Hua know about the Mao material? Chen had to find out. Judging by the renewed defiance of “Mao,” it would be
     impossible to make him talk before Internal Security arrived.
    “Today? Look at what the so-called reforms have done to China today. A total restoration of capitalism. New Three Mountains
     are
weighing down on the working class, who are suffering once again in the fire, in the water. Indeed, all this I foresaw long,
     long ago.
Contemplating over the immensity, / I ask the boundless earth: / Who is the master controlling the rise and fall of it.”
    “What the hell is he talking about?” Old Hunter grunted. “The rise and fall of the devil, I say.”
    “He’s quoting again,” Chen said, recognizing the lines from another poem written in Mao’s youth, which was perhaps less well
     known. But Hua’s speech was a passionate defense of Mao — and self-justification, as well.
    But it was a defense made in the most grotesque way, with him lying stark naked on his back, mouthing those heroic lines,
     waving his arm in a style, fashioned after Mao’s — as in the picture beneath him. It was a weird juxtaposition too, not just
     of Mao and Hua, but of so many things — past and present, personal and not personal. Chen had a hard time fighting off the impulse
     to kick the hell out of Hua and all that was behind him. It was then that an idea hit the chief inspector.
    He flipped out a cigarette for Old Hunter, lit it, and then another one for himself, flicking away the ashes, as if too contemptuous
     to cast another look at the prostrate figure on the floor.
    “The bastard’s utterly lost in the spring and autumn dream of being Mao. But he’s not worth a little finger, a little hair,
     a little fucking peanut of Mao. He should pee hard, and see his own ludicrous reflection in it.”
    “What do you mean?” Hua snarled.
    “You’re no match for ordinary cops.” Chen turned round, his finger still tapping the cigarette.
     “How can a pathetic bastard like you ever delude yourself into being Mao?”
    “You were just lucky, you devious son of a bitch, but the other cop had no such luck.”
    “But Song didn’t even suspect you,” Chen pressed on, taking a shot in the dark. “You barked up at the wrong tree.”
    “He came to me for information about her; he was nosing around.
How could I let him get away with that? Any leniency toward your enemy is a crime to your comrade.”
    Liu had said that Song was only conducting a routine interview, but Hua panicked. To a cold-blooded man like Hua, like Mao,
     it was logical to prevent scrutiny by killing Song. Chen surmised that Hua, in order to hang on to his illusion of being Mao,
     didn’t hesitate to confirm that, if nothing else, at least he could kill as ruthlessly as Mao.
    “Any leniency toward your enemy is a crime to your comrade,”
Old Hunter repeated, imitating Mao’s Hunan accent with his brows in a knot. “That’s the Mao quotation we used to sing like
     a morning Prayer at the bureau during the years of the proletarian dictatorship. But I can’t make him out, Chief. This bastard
     keeps talking and quoting as if he had a tape of the
Little Red Book
playing in his head.”
    “He has played Mao so much, he has become Mao incarnate. When Song’s investigation posed a potential threat to him, he simply
     had him killed. It was the same way that Mao got rid of his rivals using one ‘Party Line Struggle’ after another.”
    “I am Mao!” Hua screamed. “Now do you finally understand?”
    “You’re talking in your dreams,” Chen sneered. “How could you even come close to the shadow of Mao? For one thing, Mao had
     many women devoted to him, heart, body, and soul. ‘Chairman Mao is big — in everything!’ Think about it. Many years after his
     death, Madam Mao committed suicide for his ‘revolutionary cause.’ You may quote Mao, but do you have anyone loyal to you?
     Wang Anshi put it so well:
‘Lord of Xiang is a hero after all, / having a beauty die wholeheartedly for him.’
What about you? You couldn’t even win the heart of a
little concubine
.”
    “You bastard,” Hua hissed through his clenched teeth, groaning savagely, his eyes darting back and forth like a trapped animal.
     “Don’t fart.”
    “Don’t fart your Mao fart,” Old Hunter butted in.
    “Don’t fart” was a notorious line in a poem published by Mao in his last
     days, by which time he believed he could put whatever he