The Mao Case

better karaoke machine than in the Money Cabinet.”
    “Money Cabinet” was the name of the top karaoke club in Shanghai. So it was probably a party at an upstart’s place, more luxuriously
     equipped than the club.
    “But I’m not that keen on the fashionable parties,” Jiao said.
    “There’s no party here tomorrow night. If you really don’t
     like it there, you can leave anytime you like. So why not?”
    “I’ll think about it, Yang.”
    “What about you, Mr. Chen?” Yang said, pouting her lips provocatively.
    “I’m no dancer. Last time, Jiao had to teach me step by step.”
    “Then you’re not only responsible for yourself, Jiao. You have to bring Mr. Chen along with you,” Yang said, turning to scamper
     away. “Bye, Jiao, bye Mr. Chen.”

    It was an interesting interruption, as it raised a question he himself had about Jiao. For the Old Dicks, the mansion was
     symbolic of their youthful dreams, so their frequent visits made sense. They didn’t have anywhere else to go. That wasn’t
     so with Jiao, surely.
    “Yang always talks like that,” Jiao said, her knees drawn up on the chair, her arms wrapped around her legs. “She’s a butterfly,
     flitting from one party to another. Those parties can be exhausting, you know.”
    Perhaps those parties were full of fashionable people and were wilder, longer, like in the TV movies. He didn’t know.
    There was another question he refrained from asking. What was Yang’s background? Moving from one party to another, always
     in stylish clothes, she was surely an “expensive girl.” A couple of times, he had seen a limousine waiting for her outside.
    But it wasn’t his business to be concerned about any other girl here.
    “Moving from one party to the next,” he repeated. “What’s the point?”
    “Well, it depends on your perspective. What is it from the perspective of a butterfly?” she said, a pensive smile playing
     on her lips. For instance, “you may have noticed the brass foot warmer by the fireplace in the living room. Granny Zhong used
     it as a trash bin in the old neighborhood. But here, it became a valuable antique, symbolic of old Shanghai when well-to-do
     ladies put their feet above the warmer in the winter.”
    Granny Zhong was someone Jiao had not mentioned before. And where was the old neighborhood? Jiao grew up in an orphanage.
     Possibly some relatives. Someone of Shang’s generation. He failed to recall anyone with that name from
Cloud and Rain in Shanghai
. He might have to check it again.
    “You have a good point, Jiao. So is painting going to be your career?”
    “I don’t know if I have the talent. I’d like to find out, so I’ve been studying with Mr. Xie.”
    “Now, I’m just curious: Xie may be well-known in this circle, but he hasn’t had any formal training in painting. So how did
     you come to study with him?”

    “You went to college, but not everyone is as lucky, Mr. Chen. I started working quite young. For me, it was a stroke of unbelievable
     luck to find a teacher like Xie.”
    “That’s an unusual decision for a girl like you.”
    “I am learning more than painting here. Mr. Xie is no upstart, and his work captures the spirit of the time.”
    He was not clear about what she meant by “the spirit of the time,” but he waited, instead of pressing her for a definition.
    “He really captures it all,” she went on wistfully, “in that distinctive frame of his. A frame that puts the picture in perspective.”
    It reminded Chen, surprisingly, of a remark made by his late father, who saw Confucianism as a frame that provided an acceptable
     shape for the working ethical system. Perhaps the same could be said of Maoism, except that it wasn’t really a working frame.
     Not even for Mao himself, whose own double life might have resulted from its failure.
    “You are insightful,” he said, pulling himself back from his wandering thoughts.
    “It’s just my way of looking at his paintings — so informed by his aspirations and afflictions through these years.”
    He was amazed by her response. Perhaps Jiao was nice to Xie not because of his help as a middleman for the “Mao material,”
     as Internal Security suspected, but because of her sincere appreciation of Xie’s work.
    “According to T. S. Eliot, you have to separate the artist from the art. A poem doesn’t necessarily say anything about a poet,
     nor does a painting —”
    His phone rang, interrupting him before he could bring