FROM THE CAR, Mei made a call to her office. Gupin told her that Ms. Fang had called from the Motor Vehicle Bureau. “She asked you to call her back,” he said.
Fang Shuming sounded cautious on the phone. “Could we meet up? It’s better to talk face-to-face.”
Mei sensed that Shuming had found something for her. They agreed to meet after work in the street-corner park on Ten Thousand Springs Road.
In the park, a bearded man was trying to fly a kite. He would wet his index finger and hold it in the wind. Then he would run with the kite, each time from a different angle. Mei watched the kite struggle from the pavilion.
On the street, traffic was roaring. People were on their way home for dinner. Jam-packed buses rocked past.
Mei thought of Zhang Hong. He must have traveled on one of these buses at one point. He might have passed street-corner parks like this one. Perhaps he had seen the Hotel Splendor from a bus, liked the look of it, and moved there after he got paid. But now he was a cold body lying in the morgue. Had he been killed by the thugs from the gambling house? Had there been a struggle? Had he been poisoned? For what?
In her mind’s eye, Mei saw again the man running down the stairs at the Hotel Splendor. She rubbed her eyes. She tried to rewind his movements frame by frame. He had a square, muscular back and solid arms. But when Mei tried to picture his face, nothing came up.
Mei thought about Lili, the girl with the mind of a fourteen-year-old and the body of a twenty-year-old. She seemed to have no idea how far she’d gone or where she belonged.
A young couple, unmistakably migrant workers, had sat down on one of the stone benches in the square. The girl laid her head in her boyfriend’s lap. She looked exhausted. The tight sweater she was wearing rode up over her naked belly. He looked as if he had just come off work, perhaps from the kitchen of a hotel or a restaurant. Sometimes they kissed, not passionately but painfully. Two local retirees were taking their daily walk around the square, glancing spitefully at the young couple.
A few yards away, a sparrow skipped mindlessly along a stone path, looking for food. The wind had died a little, and the air was growing colder. A distant fragrance of clove was infusing the dusk like a tiny drop of pigment in clear water.
Mei thought of her mother and was sad.
A cacophonous beat of drums and cymbals burst in from the distance. Mei listened as the noise grew closer. A procession of Yang Ge dancers appeared—men and women of fifty or sixty years of age in loud makeup. The dancers wore balloon-sleeved shirts and silk pants with wide legs. Their feet, in white socks and black canvas shoes, danced crazily. As they went forward, they tossed their heads and shook their red silk handkerchiefs about exuberantly. Their faces glowed with bliss.
Yang Ge was originally a popular peasants’ dance, performed around bonfires in villages and fields. It was a dance of celebration that mimicked the blossoming flowers and the flapping of birds’ wings. The People’s Liberation Army had brought Yang Ge into the grand cities. Later on, somewhere along that winding road of revolution, Yang Ge was transformed into an art form, but after Chairman Mao died, it was kicked a thousand li back to the fields. The fashion in the cities was ballroom dancing, elegant and Western. Ling Bai and her neighbors took lessons at the Comrade Activity Center. Mei did fox-trots at student canteens turned dance halls on Sunday evenings. Lu was one half of the University League ballroom-dance champion pair. Last year, out of the blue, Yang Ge had been revived. No one knew how or by whom. All of a sudden Beijing had thousands of Yang Ge parades at dusk, organized by citizens, causing traffic chaos.
Plenty of people stopped to watch the Yang Ge dancers. Some pointed and laughed. A group of teenagers in tracksuits, on their way home after a game of football, watched in silence, looking disgusted and horrified.
A plump woman pushing a spotless Flying Pigeon bicycle made her way to the pavilion. She was dressed with great care: Her silk scarf had been chosen to match the color of her jacket, and she wore leather pumps that should have belonged to a woman ten years younger. She parked her bicycle next to the pavilion and came up the stone steps. Her permed hair hardly moved.
“I pass here every day, but I’ve never stopped,” Shuming said, smoothing down her blue wool jacket. “My goodness, you can see every dancing foot from up here!”
“Good to see you, Shuming. You look great.” Mei stood up to greet her friend. She had helped Shuming in her divorce.
“Oh, hardly. How can I? Too busy at work.” Shuming sat down. “Do you know that every month, there are ten thousand new license-plate applications in Beijing? There has to be a waiting list. We can’t cope, and neither can Beijing’s roads.” She pulled out a tissue and wiped her nose, her cheeks flushed with warmth. “But I do feel good, much better than when I was married to that disgrace. And I have you to thank for it.” She looked at Mei and smiled. “At one point I worried about being single again, but now I love it, so much freedom. I think divorce has done me good. It has taught me self-respect.” She laughed, turning around to watch the Yang Ge dancers trotting their costumed selves in front of the pavilion. “Look at that one, the fat lady who looks like me. Look at how her feet move! People have this ridiculous belief that fat people are slow and clumsy. It’s not true. Some of us are very agile. You know why? Because we’ve got a lot of energy, naturally, from eating so much.” Shuming laughed a man’s laugh, low-pitched and loud.
“What was it that you couldn’t tell me on the phone?” Mei asked Shuming.
“I’ve got the registration for the license number you gave me. The Audi belongs to the Ministry of State Security.”
“The secret service?”
The Ministry for Public Security, where Mei used to work, was the headquarters of the police, the equivalent of Scotland Yard. The Ministry of State Security, however, was the true envy of all: the headquarters of the secret police and the intelligence service, the Chinese KGB.
Mei was at a loss. Big Papa Wu was meeting someone from the secret service? Mei wondered who this antiques dealer really was. “Could you find out to whom the car was allocated?” she asked.
“Not from our system. The allocation of official cars is an internal matter for the Ministry.”
Mei was disappointed.
Shuming moved closer and lowered her voice. “I don’t know what kind of case you’re on and what you are trying to do. But please be careful, Mei.” She stood up to go. “Goodbye. If there is anything else you need, just call.”
She went down the stairs, and soon her plump body and the Flying Pigeon had vanished from sight.
Mei made her way out of the street-corner park. The traffic had begun to ease on Ten Thousand Springs Road. A row of streetlamps glittered like a diamond necklace. Smoke was rising from the chimneys of newly built restaurants. The aroma of fat sizzling in spicy brown sauce and sugar lingered in the air.
A mean-faced woman jumped up from her wooden stool as soon as she saw Mei entering the parking lot, which was empty aside from Mei’s red Mitsubishi and a big blue tour bus. “You said you were only going to leave your car here for a little while!” the woman snapped. She strode over, a large canvas army bag swinging at her hip. Her hands were brown and clawlike and streaked with prominent veins. She thrust one of them in Mei’s face. “Five yuan extra,” she said sternly.
“It’s not like the lot is full!” Mei protested.
“Full or not, it’s none of your business. I did you a favor letting you park here.”
Mei pulled out a five-yuan note and slapped it into the woman’s hand. She was too tired to argue.