Enigma of China(83)

It occurred to her that maybe neither of them had taken it too seriously, from the day they first met at the Writers’ Association. If there was a moment when something came close to developing between the two of them, it would have to be that afternoon in Shaoxing, with memories of the romantic poems and stories echoing around them in Shen Garden. It was also that afternoon, however, that she realized that nothing would ever develop between them. It wasn’t that he was first and foremost a policeman or that he was too much of an enigma for her; it was that he had disappointed her in the same way Xiang had, and he had done so even more dramatically than Xiang.

She reached into her bag and touched the book of translated poetry he’d given her. Somehow she’d brought it here with her. Looking out the window, she recalled some lines from the volume.

She leans against the window / looking out alone to the river, / to thousands of sails passing along— / none is the one she waits for. / The sun setting slant, / the water running silent into the distance, / her heart breaks at the sight / of the islet enclosed in white duckweed.

Except for the absence of white duckweed, it was the same scene, more than a thousand years later.

She couldn’t shake off the feeling that Chen might have approached her with an ulterior motive, though in her high-strung state of mind, she could be imagining things.

A waiter approached her with a pot of tea and interrupted the train of her thought. The service here was excellent. She had researched the restaurant online. It was obscenely expensive, yet perhaps that fact appealed to upstarts eager for a taste of elite status. Sipping at the tea, she looked out the window at the park.

It wasn’t much of a park, and it looked even more crowded with the recent additions, such as the concrete monument that looked like the logo of Three-Lance underwear, the fashionable new cafés and bars, and the array of other architectural add-ons along the bank. She had never understood why the Shanghainese made such a big deal of the park, but she’d heard it was a place special to Chen.

Beyond the park, petrels glided over the waves, their wings flashing in the gray light, as if flying out of a fast-fading dream. The dividing line between Huangpu River and Suzhou River became less visible.

It was then that Chen stepped into the room, smiling. To her surprise, he was wearing a light gray Mao jacket. He had never dressed so formally in her presence.

“Sorry I’m late. The meeting with the city government took longer than expected. I had no time to change.”

“No wonder you’re wearing a Mao jacket. That’s very politically correct, but there’s no need to change, Chen. Mao jackets are also fashionable now: even Hollywood stars vie to wear one at the Oscars. It fits well with this upscale, high-priced restaurant.”

“The food is not bad here,” he said, “and it’s on the Bund. You’re paying for the view.”

“To be exact, you pay to have your elite status confirmed, and for the satisfaction of knowing you can afford it.”

“Well said, Lianping. For me, it’s really more for the view of the Bund in the background. My favorite place in the city.”

“It’s your feng shui corner,” she said, still hesitant about broaching the subject of her decision, though it wasn’t fair, she knew, to put it off any longer. “Tell me more about it.”

“In the early seventies, I used to practice tai chi with some friends in the park. Then I switched my major to English studies. Because of that, I was able to enter the college after the end of the Cultural Revolution with a high score in English. But as the proverb states, in eight or nine times out of ten, things in this world don’t work out as one plans. Upon graduation, I was assigned to the police bureau, as you know,” he said, taking a sip of tea. “But I still come back here from time to time, to recharge myself with the memories of those years. You may laugh at me for being sentimental, but here, on the very site where this restaurant now stands, for no less than three years I used to sit on a green bench almost every morning.”

“It’s the special feng shui of Bund Park for a rising star, where the water is constantly slapping against the memories of a forever youthful dream.”

“Now you’re being sarcastic, Lianping. It’s more like the fragments of the past that I’ve been using to shore up the present.”

“Now you’re being poetic,” she said in spite of herself.

“In those years, I never dreamed of being a cop, but now it’s too late for me to switch to another profession. It’s not the same for you—for you the world is still so young and various,” he said, changing the topic. “Well, let me tell you something about this restaurant. It doesn’t really reflect the history of Bund Park, but Mr. Gu, the owner of the restaurant, insists on doing it his way.”