The Mao Case (18 page)

The roast Beijing duck arrived with the waitress as well as a white-clad and -capped duck chef, who peeled the crisp duck skin in front of their table with a flourish.

“The slices of crispy duck skin, wrapped in the paper-thin pancake with the special sauce and green onion was the Empress Dowager’s favorite,” the waitress said. “As for this one special dish of fried duck tongues mantled with red peppers like maple-covered hills, can you guess how many ducks?”

“Can I ask you a favor?” Chen said to her. “All of these are fantastic, but can you serve the rest of them together? We are just beginning an important talk.”

“I’ll let our chef know,” she said, bowing low like a Manchurian girl before she headed to the door. “You go ahead.”

TWENTY

“NOW, BACK TO THE
story,” Chen said. “You were just talking about the end of Shang’s life, about the fishmonger.”

“Oh yes, he was indeed a talkative monger, giving a vivid description of her death scene, though I wonder how he could remember those details after so many years.”

“Did Shang die instantly?”

“No, she didn’t. She said a few words before she lost consciousness.”

“What did she say?”

“She said she lived on the fifth floor.”

“What could that mean?”

“He had no clue,” Diao said reflectively, picking a tiny fishbone out from between his teeth. “Did she want to draw attention to her room on the fifth floor? She could have been tortured or pushed out of the window. Did she want people to call for an ambulance, using the phone in the room? In those days, there was only one public phone station in the neighborhood. What went through her mind in her last moments, no one can say.”

“What then?”

“Well, she was so ‘black,’ people avoided her like the plague while she lay there. No one did anything except for watching and finger-pointing. A couple of red-armbanded men then rushed out of the building, speaking in a Beijing accent —”

“Hold on, Mr. Diao. In your book, you mention a special team from Beijing. So those men were from that team?”

“The fishmonger had no idea who they were, but they stood around her, keeping others away from the scene. When an ambulance finally arrived, she was long dead.”

“Did the police come?”

“It took hours for a police car to arrive. What did they do? They tried to wash away the bloodstains on the curb. For that matter, they didn’t do it thoroughly. Flies swirled around the dark red spots for days.”

“What a tragic fate!”

“A fate full of twists and turns,” Diao said, finishing a duck-stuffed pancake and wiping the sauce stain on his fingers with the napkin, as though wiping away memories. “As you know, she first became well-known in the forties. She must have attracted a lot of men — rich and powerful ones — and that shadowed her after 1949. Things were different in the early fifties. Young lovers kissing in Bund Park then could have been detained for pursuing a ‘bourgeois lifestyle.’ But Shang continued to lead a ‘notorious bourgeois life.’ What’s worse, her husband got into political trouble, which spelled the end of her career.

“It was then that a
guiren
appeared in her life.
Guiren
— you know, an important man who brings about a change of luck into one’s life. One day, she got a handwritten note from the mayor of Shanghai, ‘Please come, Comrade Shang.’ So she hurried to the China-Russia Friendship Hall, where she was received by Mao. There was a grand dance party that evening. Swirling in Mao’s arms, she told him about her troubles. Shortly afterward, she was assigned new movie roles, one after another. In the fifties, the movie industry was state controlled and planned. Only a few movies were made each year. A lot of talented actors and actresses couldn’t get parts — whether or not they had political problems. Against all odds, in one movie she played a militia woman, for which she even won a major award. She visited several foreign countries as a member of a Chinese artists delegation. And at a convention, the Party leaders would receive the delegation members before or after those visits abroad. So she appeared in newspaper pictures together with Mao.”

“You have done a thorough study, Mr. Diao.”

“Let me say one thing about my research. Even in the official publications, Mao’s passion for dancing has been acknowledged. After 1949, social dancing was condemned and banned as part and parcel of the bourgeois lifestyle, but within the high walls of the Forbidden City, Mao still danced to his heart’s content. According to the interpretation given in the
People’s Daily
, Mao worked so hard for China that these parties were necessary to provide relaxation for our great leader. But that’s nonsense. As for what happened after he danced with Shang, I don’t think I have to go into graphic details.”

“No, you don’t,” Chen said. “But I have a question. During those years, perhaps there weren’t too many gifted partners in the Forbidden City. As a celebrated actress before 1949, Shang must have danced well. Could it be that Mao came to her for that reason?”

“It takes a couple of hours for a young girl to learn how to dance like a pro. Mao was no dancing master. There was no need for him to go to the trouble to look for a partner in another city. Mao wasn’t without rivals at the top, in those days. Even his special train was bugged. What would people say about his relationship with such a notorious actress?” Diao went on, putting a crispy duck tongue into his mouth. “But he couldn’t help it. When he first met her, she was in her mid-thirties, in the full bloom of a woman’s beauty, elegant, highly educated, and from a good family too. Her dancing was like waves rippling in the breeze, like clouds wafting in the sky. And he could have watched her movies as early as in Yan’an. Madam Mao was also an actress, we shouldn’t forget that.”

“Mao had an actress fetish, you mean?”

“whatever you want to call it, Shang’s fate changed dramatically.”

“But could it be some local officials contributed to the change in her life? Seeing her as Mao’s favorite partner, they tried to curry favor. Mao might not have been aware of it.”

“They wouldn’t have gone out of their way for one of his partners,” Diao said. “He had so many. They knew that. And the poems Mao wrote for her were unmistakable.”

“Poems — ‘The Militia Woman,’ right?”

“So you’ve also heard about that poem? Actually, there’s another one, ‘Ode to the Plum Blossom.’ ”

“Really!” Chen said, remembering what he had discussed with Long about the poems. “Are you sure? Did you see a scroll of that poem that Mao wrote for her?”

“No, I didn’t, but the meaning of the poem is obvious.
‘Pretty, she does not claim the spring for herself, / content to be a herald of spring. / When hills are ablaze with wildflowers, / in their midst she smiles.’
It’s really in the tradition of the Book of Poems. In the first poem of that collection, an emperor’s virtuous wife rejoices at his finding a new love. Shang would have known better than to exhibit such a scroll at home, I would think,” Diao said thoughtfully. “I interviewed some of her neighbors, and according to one, there was a scroll on the wall of the bedroom. But it was a poem by Wang Cangling, a Tang-dynasty poet, entitled ‘Deserted Imperial Concubine at Changxing Chamber.’ ”

“Yes, I know it.
‘At dawn, having swept the courtyard / with the broom, she has nothing else / to do, except to twirl, / and twirl the round silk fan / in her fingers. Exquisite as jade, / she cannot compete with the autumn crow flying / overhead, which still carries the warmth / from the Imperial Sun Palace.’
”

“The meaning of the poem is unmistakable,” Daio said, nodding in approval. “Her complaining about the emperor’s neglect, feeling worse than an autumn crow that still carries the warmth, as it were, from the Imperial Sun Palace.”

“But Shang was no imperial concubine.”

“He might have made some promise to her. Then the choice of the poem in her bedroom would make perfect sense.”

“You have a point,” Chen said. “Was there anything else unusual about her that you found out but didn’t mention in your writing?”

“Let me think. There were some details, but I didn’t pay much attention to them,” Diao said, picking up a piece of pickled garlic. “Oh, she had a passion for photography, among other things.”

“You mean she liked taking pictures?”

“Yes. I tried to find some of those pictures for the book. According to her neighbors, she took a lot of pictures of Qian, but the special group from Beijing must have taken them all away. That’s another thing she and Madam Mao have in common. They both loved photography. A weird coincidence. Not many Chinese in the sixties could afford cameras. Shang even did her own developing, having converted a storage room into an occasional darkroom.”

“That’s unusual,” Chen said.

The waitress reappeared with a golden cart, on which she brought to their table an impressive array of special dishes.

“Shark fin stewed in the shape of Buddha’s fingers, camel paw braised with scallion, Mandarin-duck-like prawns, abalone in white sauce —”

“Why like Buddha’s fingers?” Diao asked again. “The Empress Dowager had long, long fingernails, like Buddha’s,” the waitress explained glibly. “In her day, people at the palace called her Old Buddha —”

“Thank you. We’ll enjoy them at our leisure,” Chen cut her short before she could start an elaborate introduction. “If we need anything else, we’ll let you know.”

“A different question, Mr. Diao,” Chen said as the cart wheeled out of the room. “In her last days, did Shang say anything concerning Mao to the Red Guards or to the special team from Beijing?”

“I talked to the Red Guards from her movie studio. According to them, she said something to the effect that Chairman Mao knew how much she loved him. No one took it seriously. At least not in the sense that she might have been suggesting. Every one could have said those words at the time. But I know nothing about what she might have said to the special team.”

“Now, why a special team from Beijing?”

“A common interpretation is that it was because of Madam Mao. Her persecution of her ex-fellow artists was brought up in the charges against her after the Cultural Revolution. For her, those who knew of her notorious past, especially those with old newspapers and letters in their possession, had to be silenced. Another guess was that it was because of Madam Mao’s jealousy. Once she became the head of the CPC Cultural Revolution Group, she ran amuck for her revenge. Several people who were supposedly ‘intimate and close’ to Mao were persecuted to death. Weishi, a young and beautiful Russian interpreter for Mao, was thrown into jail at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution and found dead in a stinking cell there, stark naked, her body bruised all over.”

“Madam Mao worshipped Empress Lu of the Han dynasty, lauding her to the skies during the Cultural Revolution. I’m no scholar, but I remember one story about Empress Lu,” Chen commented, chopsticking up a piece of shark fin shaped like a Buddha’s finger. “After the emperor died, Empress Lu threw his favorite concubine into jail. Cutting off her ex-rival’s arms and legs, severing her tongue, and gouging out her eyes. The empress kept the mutilated woman moaning and writhing in a sordid cell that was a stinking sty, her body naked and soiled. Empress Lu chose to show the woman to her own son like that, saying that it was a human pig.”

“Yes, her son never recovered from the shock, fell sick and died. That’s another story, of course.”

“So I have a question, Mr. Diao. Empress Lu did that after the death of the emperor. Madam Mao attacked her rivals when Mao was still alive. Wasn’t she afraid of him?”

“That was a question for me too. She described herself as a dog loyal to Mao, biting and attacking whomever he wanted her to. He might have needed her badly during the Cultural Revolution. Besides, Mao cared little for women no longer in his favor,” Diao said, taking a careful bite at the abalone. “This is the first abalone I’ve ever had.”

It was not the first for Chen, but it was the first time he was paying for it. He waited for Diao to continue.

“He dumped his wife Kaihui, without so much as divorcing her or notifying her, when he married Zizhen in the Jinggang Mountains,” Diao went on. “In fact, Kaihui’s death resulted from his siege of Changsha, a consequence he should have anticipated. After the Long March, he dumped Zizhen like another worn-out mop, letting her suffer alone in a Moscow mental institution, while he wallowed in the clouding and raining on the
Kang
bed with Madam Mao. So he dumped Shang, just one of the women he had slept with. It’s no surprise he didn’t do anything to help her.”

“That’s unbelievable,” Chen said, the slice of the stewed camel paw slipping from his chopsticks, splashing gravy out of the platter. He had no idea how the emperors could have enjoyed the fatty greasy taste.

“Think about what happened to Liu Shaoqi. Once the chairman of the People’s Republic of China, he, too, died naked in prison without any medical treatment, and his body was instantly cremated under a false name. Mao was so cold-blooded.”

“Leaving Mao aside, you mentioned in the book that the special team put a lot of pressure on Shang, to try and make her cooperate, but what could they have been trying to obtain from her?”

“From what I learned, it was something like ‘her evil plan to harm Mao.’ No one believed it.”

“Then what do you think it could be?”

“For one thing, an unpublished poem to her in his calligraphy.”

“That’s intriguing. A poem knocked off during a moment of amorous passion?” Chen said. But would that have triggered a special team from Beijing? After all, a poem could be open to many interpretations, unless it was downright erotic or obscene. He doubted it. “whatever it might be, did they find it?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t think so.”

“So could Shang have left it to her daughter Qian?”

“Not likely. Like other kids of black family background, Qian denounced Shang, and she didn’t come back home until after Shang’s death. No, Shang had no time to do so before jumping out of the window.”

“So Qian went through a dramatic change — from one radically cut off from her black family to one hopelessly lost in bourgeois carnival passion?”

“She was a girl traumatized at a young age, plagued by those stories about Shang’s ‘shameless sex saga,’ ” Diao said. “I don’t want to be too hard on her.”

“I couldn’t agree more. Qian, too, suffered a lot. But her death too was quite suspicious, I’ve heard.”

“Her death was an accident — almost at the end of the Cultural Revolution. I don’t see anything suspicious about it.”

“I see,” Chen said, picking up a pork-stuffed sesame cake, a surprisingly ordinary snack that tasted more agreeable than the exotic delicacies. “You must have talked to Jiao too.”

“She knew little about her mother, let alone her grandmother. An ill-fated girl.”