“You should have tried harder,” Yong said, in Ling’s defense. “You can’t expect a woman to wait forever.”

“I understand.”

“It may not be too late.” Yong delivered her Parthian shot. “She still cares so much for you. Come to Beijing, and I’ll tell you a lot of things. You’ve not been to Beijing for such a long time. I almost forget what you look like.”

So Yong wasn’t willing to give up even when Ling herself already had, having married somebody else. Yong, essentially, wanted him to make a trip to Beijing for a possible “salvage mission.”

How long the phone conversation in the corridor lasted, he didn’t know.

When he finally went back into the conference room, the political study was coming to a close. Commissar Zhang shook his head like a rattle drum. Li gave Chen a long inquiring look. Taking a seat next to the Party secretary, Chen refrained from saying anything until the session ended.

As people began to leave, Li drew Chen aside. “Is everything all right, Comrade Chief Inspector Chen?”

“Everything is fine,” Chen said, shifting back into his official role. “It’s an important issue that we discussed today.”

Afterward, instead of going back to his own apartment, Chen decided to pay a visit to his mother. It wasn’t a night that he would enjoy making dinner for himself.

As he turned onto Jiujiang Road, however, he slowed down. It was almost six. His mother lived alone in the old neighborhood, frail in her health, and frugal in her way. He’d better buy some cooked food for the unannounced visit. There was a small eatery around the corner, he recalled. In his elementary school years, he had passed by the place many times, peeping in curiously without ever stepping in.

A little boy was rolling a rusted iron hoop on a side street, a familiar scene yet one he hadn’t seen for a long time. It was as if the hoop was rolling back the memories from childhood in the gathering dusk. He was struck with a sense of déjà vu.

He had second thoughts about visiting his mother. He missed her, feeling bad for having not been able to take care of her as much as he would have liked. But an evening there could also mean another of her lectures about his continuing bachelorhood, where she quoted the Confucian statement, “There are things that make a man unfilial, and to have no offspring is the most serious.” It wasn’t the evening for that.

Casting a quick look at the front of the eatery, which appeared scruffy, sordid, and little changed from years ago, he walked into a shabby scene inside. There was a bare bulb dangling down from the water-and smoke-stained ceiling, shedding dim light on three or four smeared, dilapidated tables. Most of the customers looked as grungy as the place, having only cheap liquor and dishes of boiled peanuts.

A waitress, a plump and short woman in her mid-fifties, handed him a dirty menu in peevish silence. Ordering a Qingdao beer, two cold dishes – dried tofu in red sauce and a thousand-year egg in soy sauce – he asked her, “Any specials here?”

“The pork intestine, lung, heart, and whatnot, all steamed with distilled rice grain. Our chef still makes his own rice wine. It’s a specialty of the old Shanghai cuisine. I don’t think you’ll have it anywhere else.”

“Great. I’ll have that,” he said, closing the menu. “Oh, the smoked carp head too. A small one.”

She eyed him up and down in surprise – apparently, he was a big customer for this small place. He was no less surprised at himself, for still having such a good appetite this evening.

At a table near the back, one of the customers looked over his shoulder. Chen recognized him as Gang, from the old neighborhood. Gang had been a powerful leader of a Shanghai Red Guard organization in the early days of the Cultural Revolution, but he had since gone downhill, ending up as a jobless drunken loafer, muddling around the neighborhood. About the vicissitude of the legendary ex – Red Guard, Chen had heard from his mother.

Gang turned further around, clearing his throat and banging on the table dramatically. “Sages and scholars are solitary for thousands of years. Only a drunkard leaves his name behind.”

That sounded like a quote from Li Bai, a Tang-dynasty poet well-known for his passion for the cup.

“Do you know who I am?” Gang went on. “The commander in chief of the Third Red Guard Headquarters in Shanghai. A loyal soldier for Mao, leading millions of Red Guards to fight for him. In the end, he threw us to a pack of wolves.”

The waitress put the cold dishes and Qingdao beer on Chen’s table. “The noodles and the chef’s special will come shortly.”

The moment she walked away, Gang rose and shambled over, grinning from ear to ear and carrying a tiny bottle of liquor called a “small firecracker” among the drunkards.

“So you are a newcomer here, young man. I would like to give you a word or two of advice. Life is short, sixty or seventy years, no point worrying away your days till your hair turns white. Heartbroken for a woman? Come on. A woman is just like that smoked fish head. Not much meat but too many bones, staring at you with ghastly eyes on a white platter. If you’re not careful, you get a bone stuck in your throat. Think about Mao. Such a man, and yet he, too, was ruined by his woman – or women. He fucked his brains out in the end!”

Gang talked like a drunkard, hardly coherent with so many conversational leaps, but it was intriguing, even stunning, to Chen.

“So you had your day during the Cultural Revolution,” Chen said, gesturing for Gang to share the table with him.

“Revolution’s like a bitch. She seduces you, and she dumps you like a mop smeared with the shit and dirt from her ass.” Gang took his seat opposite Chen, picking up a piece of dried tofu with his fingers, sucking at his empty liquor bottle. “And a bitch is like revolution too, muddling your head and heart.”

“That’s how you ended up here – because of both women and revolution?”

“There’s nothing left – well, nothing but the cup for me. It never gives you up. When you are smashed, you dance with your own shadow, so loyal to you, so sweet, so patient, and never stepping on your toes. Life is short, like a drop of dew in the early morning. The black ravens are already circling, nearer and nearer, above your head. So cheers, I raise my cup.

“Since it’s your first time here, it’s for me to treat,” Gang said, taking a large gulp of the beer as Chen pushed his cup to him. “I have a mind to lead you down to the road of the world.”

Chen wondered at the prospect of Gang leading a cop down that road. Gang reached into his pants pocket. He came up with only a couple of pennies. He fumbled again. Still, the same pennies sat on the table. “I’m damned. This morning I changed my pants and left my wallet at home. Loan me ten yuan, young man. I’ll return it to you tomorrow.”

It was a trick, obviously, but Chen took a perverse delight in his company that evening and handed over two ten yuan bills.

“Auntie Yao, a bottle of Yang River Liquor, a dish of pork cheek meat, and a dozen chicken feet in hot sauce,” Gang shouted toward the kitchen, waving his hand like the Red Guard Commander he had once been.

Auntie Yao – the middle-aged waitress – emerged from the kitchen, taking Gang’s order and money as she examined him closely.

“You dirty rascal! Up to your old tricks again?”

There was a roar of laughter in the eatery, like in a sitcom, when she started dragging Gang forcibly back to his own table, grasping his collar, the way a hawk does with a chicken.

“Don’t listen to him.” She came back to Chen. “He plays the same dirty trick on every new customer here, telling the same story over and again, so that they take pity and give him money for booze. What’s worse, one of the young customers fell under his curse, turning into a damned drunkard just like him.”