You like to say you are a grain of sand, / occasionally fallen into my eyes, in mischief. / You would rather have me weep by myself / than have me love you, / and then you disappear again in the wind / like a grain of sand…
It was a sentimental piece titled “Sobbing Sand,” but he remembered the melody. People invariably get sentimental when it’s too late.
Chen started peeling an apple for his mother. Putting it on a saucer on the small table, he nearly tipped over the teacup.
Visiting her was perhaps just an attempt to delay the crucial decision, which he nonetheless had to make.
“You have something on your mind, son,” she said, picking up a piece of apple and pushing it over to him.
“No, I’m fine—just too busy. Things can be so complicated in today’s society.”
“This world is too new, too capriciously changing for an old woman. I’ve been reading the Buddhist scripture, you know. It says that things may be difficult for people to see through. It’s simply because everything is only appearance, like a dream, like a bubble, like a dewdrop, like lightning. So are you yourself.”
“You’re so right, Mother.”
“Perhaps it’s also like a painting. When you are deeply involved in it, you never really have perspective on it. You never really see yourself in the painting. Once you gain some distance, you might become aware of something you never saw before. Enlightenment comes when you’re no longer part of anything.”
It reminded him of several lines by the Song dynasty poet Su Shi, but for her, it came from Buddhist scripture. He was grateful that she retained her perspective and remained clear-headed, in spite of her frail health. But there was also something disturbing in her remark.
“I remember a favorite quote of your father’s: ‘There are things a man will do, and things he will not do,’” she said. “It’s that simple, and that’s all there is to it.”
That was a quote from Confucius. Chen’s late father was a renowned neo-Confucian scholar, who drew such lines for himself, and consequently suffered a great deal during the Cultural Revolution.
Where would Chief Inspector Chen himself draw the line today?
It didn’t take long for his mother to appear tired. She started yawning repeatedly, without even finishing the apple he’d peeled for her. It might not bode well for her recovery, and he didn’t want to add to her discomfort by staying any longer. So he took his leave of her, gently pulling the door closed as he left.
He walked through the neighborhood, becoming aware of people’s occasional curious glances. Some of them might have recognized him, so he kept walking, his head ducked down. Soon he reached Yun’nan Road, where he stopped and waited for the traffic light to change before crossing the street.
In existentialism, one makes a choice and accepts the consequences. That’s where freedom comes from. But what if the choice brought about consequences to others?
His mother, for instance.
The traffic light turned green.
Looking up, he saw a relatively tall building with its gold-painted name, Ruikang, shining on the façade. It wasn’t exactly a new, upscale building, but because of its excellent location, one square meter here cost no less than thirty thousand yuan in the present market.
Then he remembered that Lianping lived in this building. It was close to his mother’s, as she’d told him, and was just one block behind Great World, an entertainment center built almost a century ago that was now closed for restoration. For a non-Shanghainese girl, she was doing quite well. She had an apartment at the center of the city, her own luxury car, both symbols of the Shanghai dream.
He glanced around the subdivision but didn’t see her car. Perhaps it was parked in back. He wasn’t in any mood to drop in on her, but he was surprised that his thoughts kept returning to her even though he was in the midst of a developing crisis.
That was probably because she’d been so helpful with the investigation. He was impressed by her cynical criticism of the unbridled corruption in the nation’s socialism with Chinese characteristics, though he’d known her for only a couple of weeks and known her real name, Lili, for only a couple of days. He was aware of the gaps that separated them—between their backgrounds and their ways of looking at society, not to mention their age difference. Still, it wasn’t too much to say that she already left a mark on his police work. Not only had she provided him a general grounding in the world of the Internet, she had also given him a sense of the ways people used it to resist and expose corruption. It was also her suggestion that he go to Shaoxing, and prior to that she had helped him set up the meeting with Melong, both of which affected the course of his investigation.