The Mao Case

were
     already lost in their different interpretations. It’s entitled ‘Li Shangyin’s English Version.’ ” She took off her apron and
     started reading aloud.
    The fragrance of jasmine in your hair / and then in my teacup, that evening,/ when you thought me drunk, an orange /pinwheel
     turning at the rice-paper window./ The present is, when you think/ of it, already the past. I am / trying to quote a line
     / from Li Shangyin to say what / cannot be said, but the English version /at hand fails to do justice / to him (the translator,
     divorced / from his American wife, drunk, found English / beating him like a blind horse), any / more than the micaceous mist
     / issuing from a Lantian blue jade / to your reflection. // Last night’s star, / last night’s wind — the memory / of trimming
     a candle, the minute / of a spring silkworm wrapping itself / in a cocoon, when the rain / becomes the mountain, and the mountain
     / becomes the rain… // It is like a painting /of Li Shangyin going to open / the door, and of the door / opening him to the
     painting, / that Tang scroll you showed me / in the rare book section / of the Beijing Library, while you / read my ecstasy
     as empathy / with the silverfish escaping / the sleepy eyes of the full stops, / and I felt a violent wonder / at your bare
     feet beating / a bolero on the filmy dust / of the ancient floor. Even then / and there, lost in each / other’s interpretations,
     we agreed.
    “I can make neither heads nor tails of it,” Yu said with a puzzled smile. “How can you be so sure it’s a poem written for
     her?”

    “She worked at the Beijing Library. But more importantly, why Li Shangyin? A Tang-dynasty poet, Li was seen as a social climber
     because he married the daughter of the then prime minister. Unfortunately, the prime minister soon lost his position, which
     cast a shadow on Li’s official career. He wrote his best lyrical poems in frustration.”
    “So that turned out to be good for his poetry, right?”
    “You could say so. Chen’s too proud to be seen as a climber.”
    “If he had really cared for her, why should it have mattered so much?”
    “No one lives in a vacuum, not to mention all of the politics at your bureau.”
    She was passionate in Chen’s defense, waving the magazine dramatically, her face flushing like a flower.
    “Oh, the chicken soup,” she said, dropping the magazine. “It’s time to turn the fire down low.”
    He watched her hurrying out with a touch of amusement. After all, the chicken soup proved to be just as important as Chen
     to her. But then he started worrying about Chen again. It was an investigation fraught with danger, involving knowledge which
     could kill, as Old Hunter had warned.
    Detective Yu had to do something, whether Chief Inspector Chen included him or not.

NINE
    CHEN WOKE UP, BLINKING in the glaring sunlight streaming in through the half-drawn curtain. Still lying in bed, he reviewed his unsuccessful “approach”
     to Jiao in the restaurant the previous night.
    In spite of the “romantic” dinner in the well-preserved attic room under the time-sobered beams allegedly from Madam Chiang’s
     days, with a couple of tiny red paper lanterns dangling overhead, he had learned little that was new. Sitting opposite, in
     a pink tank top and white pants, her shoulders dazzling against the candlelight, Jiao appeared preoccupied, “the autumn waves”
     in her eyes reflecting something far away. Tossing a wisp of hair back from her forehead, she brushed off his efforts to bring
     the talk around to her family background. “No, let’s not talk about it,” she said. A silver knife lay beside her plate, like
     a footnote, the waiters and waitress coming and going, all dressed in the fashion of the thirties.
    Perhaps she had met people like him — more interested in her grandmother than in her. He knew better than to pressure her further.
     Besides, their conversation was disturbed by a loud Manila band and
other louder diners, bantering tales about Madam Chiang, popping off the corks on expensive champagne like in the old days.
    At the end of the meal, Jiao let him pay the bill like the ex-businessman he claimed to be. He didn’t really worry about the
     expense since the staggering bill might function, for once, as proof of his conscientious work. She told the waiter to box
     the leftovers — “For Mr. Xie, who doesn’t know how to cook.”
    It was yet another confirmation of her