She certainly knew how to get hold of him. There was no withholding information from her. As an HCC, she had her ways.
In spite of her joke, he felt tension building between them. It was illegal for man and woman to share a hotel room without a marriage license. Hotel security was authorized to break in. A loud knock at the door was to be expected at any time. “Routine checkup!” Some rooms were even equipped with secret video recorders.
“Where is your room?” he asked.
“In this same section for ‘distinguished guests,’ because I’m the escort to the American delegation. The security people won’t check up here.
“It’s so nice of you to come,” he said.
“It is difficult to meet, and also difficult to part. / The east wind listless, and flowers languid…” Ling quoted the couplet about star-crossed lovers to good effect. She understood his passion for Li Shangyin.
“I’ve missed you,” she said, her face soft under the light, though etched with travel fatigue.
“So have I.”
“After all the years we’ve wasted,” she said, dropping her eyes, “we’re together tonight.”
“I don’t know what to say, Ling.”
“You don’t have to say anything.”
“You’ve no idea how grateful I am,” he said, “for all you have done for me.”
“Don’t say that either.”
“You know, the letter I wrote, I did not mean to-”
“I knew,” she said, “but that was what I wanted.”
“Well-”
“Well,” She looked up at him, and her eyes lost the tentative look and grew hazy. “We’re here. So why not? I’m leaving tomorrow morning. No point repressing ourselves.”
An almost forgotten phrase from Sigmund Freud, another Western influence in his college days. In hers, too, perhaps. He saw her moisten her lips with her tongue; then his glance fell to her bare feet, which were elegantly arched with well-formed toes.
“You’re right.”
He moved to turn off the light, but she stopped him with a gesture. She stood up, undid the belt, and let the robe fall to the floor. Her body gave off a porcelain glow under the light. Her breasts were small, but the nipples were erect. In a minute they were on the bed, aching for the time they had spent apart, their long wasted years. The haste was his doing as much as hers, touched with a sort of desperation that affected them both. There was no salvaging the past, except by being themselves in the present.
She groaned, wrapping her arms around his neck and her legs around his back. Moving under him, she arched herself up, her fingers long, strong, sliding down his back. The intensity of her arousal sharpened his. After a while, she changed position and lay on top of him. With her long hair cascading over his face, she was provoking sensations he had never known. He lost himself in her hair. She shuddered when she came, panting in short, quick breaths against his face. Her body suddenly grew soft, wet-insubstantial as the clouds after the rain.
They lay quietly in each other’s arms, feeling themselves far above and beyond the city of Shanghai.
Perhaps due to the height of the hotel, he suddenly seemed to see the white clouds pressing through the window, pressing against her sweat-covered body in the soft moonlight.
“We’re turning into clouds and rain,” he said, invoking the ancient metaphor.
She whispered a throaty agreement, curling up with her head on his chest, gazing up at him, her black hair spilling.
Their feet brushed. Touching her arched sole lightly, he felt a grain of sand stuck between her toes. Sand from the city of Shanghai-not from the Central South Sea complex in the Forbidden City.
Their moment was interrupted by the footsteps moving along the corridor. He heard the sound of the hotel people producing a bunch of keys. A key turning-once, only once-at a door across the corridor. The suspense made their sensations even more intense. She nestled against him again. There was something in her features he had never seen before. So clear and serene. The autumn night sky of Beijing, across which the Cow Herd and Spinning Girl gaze at each other, a bridge woven of black magpies across the Milky Way.
They embraced again.
“It’s been worth the wait,” she said quietly afterward. Then she fell asleep beside him, the stars whispering quietly outside the window.
He sat up, took a pad from the nightstand and started writing, the lamplight falling like water on the paper. The stillness around them seemed to be breathing with life. Amidst the images rushing to his pen, he turned to see her peaceful face on the pillow. The innocence of her clear features, of the deep-blue night high above the lights of Shanghai, charged through him in waves of meaning.
He had a feeling that the lines were flowing to him from a superior power. He just happened to be there, with the pen in his hand…
He did not know when he fell asleep.
The ring of the telephone on the night stand startled him.
As he stirred from his dream, blinking, he realized Ling was no longer beside him. The white pillows were rumpled against the headboard, still soft, cloud-like in the first morning light.
The telephone kept on ringing. Shrill and sharp, so early in the morning, like an omen. He snatched it.
“Chief Inspector Chen, it’s all finished.” Yu sounded edgy, as if he too had hardly slept.
“What do you mean-all finished?”
“The whole thing. The trial is over. Wu Xiaoming was sentenced to death, guilty on all the charges against him, and executed last night. About six hours ago. Period.”
Chen glanced at his watch. It was just past six.
“Wu did not try to appeal?”
“It’s a special case. The Party authorities put it that way. No use making any appeal. Wu was well aware of that. His attorney, too. An open secret to everybody. Appeal or no appeal, it would have made no difference.”
“And he was executed last night?”
“Yes, just a few hours after the trial. But don’t start asking me why, Comrade Chief Inspector.”
“Well, what about Guo Qiang?”
“Also executed, at the same time and on the same execution ground.”
“What?” Chen was more than shocked. “Guo had committed no murder.”
“Do you know what the most serious charge against Wu and Guo was?”
“What?’’
“Crime and corruption under Western bourgeois influence.”
“Can you try to be a bit more specific, Yu?”
“I can, of course, but you will be able to read all the political humbug in the newspapers. Headlines in red print, I bet. It will be in the Wenhui Daily. Now it’s part of a national campaign against ‘CCB’-corruption and crime under Western bourgeois influence. A political campaign has been launched by the Party Central Committee.”
“So it is a political case after all!”
“Yes, Party Secretary Li is right. It’s a political case, as he said from the very beginning.” Yu made no effort to conceal the bitterness in his voice. “What a great job we have done.”
Chen went downstairs. He saw Ling again in the hotel lobby.
Several members of the American delegation had gathered around the front desk to admire a Suzhou embroidered silk scroll of the Great Wall. Ling was interpreting. She did not notice him at first. In the morning light, she appeared pale, with dark rings visible under her eyes. He did not know when she had left his room.
She was wearing a rose-colored Qi skirt, the slits revealing her slender legs. A small straw purse hung from her shoulder, and a bamboo briefcase was in her hand. An Oriental among the Occidentals. She was about to leave with the American delegation.
As he gazed at her in a flood of morning light, he was awash in gratitude.
She did not disengage herself immediately. As soon as she was free, he asked, “Will you call me when you get back to Beijing?”
“Of course I will.” She added after a pause, “If that’s all right with you.”
“How can you ask that? You have done such a lot for me-”
