Don't Cry Tai Lake (35 page)

His Wuxi vacation had started abruptly, and in the same manner, it ended.
Forgetting I'm away from home, / in a dream, I was carried away / in a moment of pleasure
.

He was attempting to put the vacation behind him, recalling some lines he'd read long ago, anxious to use the ancient fragments to shore himself up against the present waste and to let the curtain fall over his conflicting impulses of struggle and flight.

Nothing can avert the final curtain's fall
. A line from another poem came to him. It sounded like a far-off echo. He wondered if it could yield a clue, or a cue, to the acts being schemed around him.

Then he remembered. It was from a Russian poem about Hamlet standing alone on the stage, praying that he might be released from the cast:
To play the role to the end is not a childish task
.

The drama for the others would go on, of course.

Fu would be punished, and so would Mi, for what they had respectively done.

Mrs. Liu would continue playing mahjong, and Wenliang, studying Beijing opera with the money left to them by Liu.

But what about the lake—the polluted lake?

Whoever succeeded Liu and Fu would manage and manufacture as before—in order to keep the business competitive, profitable, and his position secure, all at the expense of the environment. The Wuxi Number One Chemical Company wouldn't be the only one doing this. Many other companies around the lake, and all over the country, would be doing the same.

The government officials at various levels, well aware of the disastrous consequences, must have acquiesced to all of this in the best interests of the Party.

As a member of the Party, and as an emerging cadre, Chief Inspector Chen could make a number of convenient points in his own defense, but for the moment, he had to quit this scene.

Chen took one step out from his cover, trying to gain another look at Shanshan, who was looking at Jiang in the police van, when he was reminded of the ending of a movie he had seen years earlier.

Toward the end, the lonely protagonist found himself, though successful in his efforts made for a just cause, letting go of his personal desire, watching his love leave with another man.

But Chief Inspector Chen wasn't the man in the movie. Not even close. He hadn't exactly succeeded at any of it, he concluded broodingly, before heading off in the direction of the train station.

He wondered whether he would be able to take a nap on the train, feeling the onslaught of a splitting headache.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

IN 1988, I FINISHED
a Chinese poem, “Don't Cry, Jade River,” as the title piece of a collection that was to come out the following year. In 1989, I reviewed the galley in the United States, but what happened in Beijing that tragic summer made the publication in China impossible, including an introduction written by my friend Xu Guoliang, to whom I want to express my thanks and apologies again. The galley, after twenty years, finally made its way into the English poem in
Don't Cry, Tai Lake,
except for the former being fictional, and the latter, real and far more disastrous.

As always, I want to thank my editor, Keith Kahla, for his extraordinary work, and I also want to thank my copy editor, Margit Longbrake, who gave birth to her daughter, Jane Ray Longbrake McKeown, just upon starting her copyediting work, which she completed beautifully in
yuezi
(the first month of motherhood).

ALSO BY QIU XIAOLONG

FICTION

Death of a Red Heroine

A Loyal Character Dancer

When Red is Black

A Case of Two Cities

Red Mandarin Dress

The Mao Case

Years of Red Dust

POETRY TRANSLATION

Evoking Tang: An Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry

100 Poems from Tang and Song Dynasties

Treasury of Chinese Love Poems

POETRY

Lines Around China

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

 

Qiu Xiaolong is a poet and author of several previous novels featuring Inspector Chen, as well as
Years of Red Dust
, one of
Publishers Weekly
's Best Books of 2010. Born and raised in Shanghai, he lives with his family in St. Louis, Missouri.

Visit the author's Web site at
QiuXiaolong.com
.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

DON'T CRY, TAI LAKE.
Copyright © 2012 by Qiu Xiaolong. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.minotaurbooks.com

Cover design and photo-illustration by David Baldeosingh Rotstein

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Qiu, Xiaolong, 1953–

Don't cry, Tai Lake: an Inspector Chen novel / Qiu Xiaolong.—1st ed.

        p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-312-55064-6 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-4299-7354-0 (e-book)

  1.  Chen, Inspector (Fictitious character)—Fiction.   2.  Police—China—Shanghai—Fiction.   3.  Shanghai (China)—Fiction.   I.  Title.

PS3553.H537D66 2012

813'.6—dc23

2012005486

eISBN 9781429973540

First Edition: May 2012