Now, what a shock when she learned the truth behind the poems! It wasn’t simply a brazen betrayal by Mao; it was practically cold-blooded murder. Mao must have seen Kaihui as an obstacle to his affair with Zizhen, so he had let Kaihui stay where she was, to fall prey to the nationalists’ retaliation. Did Kaihui know it in her last days? Peiqin’s eyes watered at the thought of Kaihui being dragged to the execution ground, her bare feet bleeding all the way – following the local superstition that the executed couldn’t find her way back home without her shoes.

And Peiqin had no doubt about Mao’s desertion of Shang. After rereading Cloud and Rain in Shanghai, Peiqin lay awake for the night. It was nothing, historically, for someone like Mao to have used and discarded a woman like a worn-out mop. But what about Shang, an equal human being?

Standing up, Peiqin went into the bedroom again. Gazing at Mao’s picture above the bed, she realized that it was a portrait not so commonly seen, not now, not since the days of the Cultural Revolution. Mao was sitting in a rattan chair, wearing a blue-and-white-striped terrycloth robe, smoking a cigarette, and smiling toward the distant horizon, the immediate background of the picture suggestive of a riverboat. Presumably it was a picture taken after a swim in the Yangtze River.

Was it possible that Jiao, after the fashion of recent years, had “re-discovered” Mao? Chinese people had always been interested in emperors – for thousands of years. There was a “royal revival” going on in movies and on TV, and the Qing emperors and empresses abounded in current bestsellers.

But how could Jiao, of all people, have entertained any fond fantasies of Mao – since Mao was responsible for the tragedies of her family?

And the Mao mystery aside, how could a young girl like Jiao afford to live like this without a job?

It was possible that Jiao was a kept woman, or “little concubine”- ernai, a new term that was gaining currency quickly in the contemporary Chinese vocabulary.

But Internal Security hadn’t found a “keeper” in the background, though somebody had been seen in her company, at least once, in the apartment here. For a young woman like Jiao, there was nothing surprising about an occasional visitor or two.

Peiqin pulled out of her thoughts. She hardly knew anything about Jiao, a girl from a different generation and of a different family background. There was no point in speculating too much.

Nor did she have any idea what Chen was really after. As a cop’s wife, she had no objection to snooping around for her husband’s sake, or that of his boss, but she would have liked more clues about what she was looking for.

Again, she glanced at her watch. Jiao wouldn’t come back this early. Peiqin decided to start her “search proper.”

She proceeded cautiously, pulling out the drawers, looking under the bed, examining the closet, rummaging through the boxes… From a mystery she had read, she learned that people could purposely hide things in the most obvious places, to which she also paid close attention. After spending nearly an hour going through every nook and cranny, she found little except things that further reinforced her earlier impression of Jiao’s being obsessed with Mao.

In a drawer, Peiqin found several tapes of documentaries showing Mao receiving foreign visitors in the Forbidden City. Some of them she might have seen in Yunnan in the early seventies; it was during a time when hardly any movies were shown except the eight modern revolutionary model plays and documentaries of Mao. Peiqin and Yu would joke that Mao was the biggest movie star.

How could Jiao have gotten hold of these? Peiqin was tempted to put a tape into the player, but she decided against it. Jiao might notice it had been played.

Instead, Peiqin started to make a list of what seemed unusual, puzzling, incomprehensible, at Jiao’s apartment. A list for Yu and Old Hunter. If she couldn’t make much out of it, they might. Or possibly Chief Inspector Chen.

First, the large bed, so old-fashioned, with a wooden-board mattress. For the majority of the Shanghainese, it was common to have a zongbeng mattress – something woven netlike with crisscrossed coir ropes. Peiqin insisted on having such an airy, resilient zongbeng at home. For younger people, a spring mattress was more popular and Qinqin had one. Only some really old and old-fashioned people would think of a wooden-board mattress as a possible choice; they would believe it to be good for their back.

And then there was the miniature bookshelf set into the head-board. Was Jiao such an avid reader? She hadn’t even finished middle school. Not to mention the custom-made mahogany bookshelves with those Mao and history books.

Peiqin wasn’t sure about the silk scroll of Mao’s poem in the living room and the portrait of Mao in the bedroom, but to her, they also seemed unusual.

As for the dinner with all the unusual dishes, Peiqin was inclined to suppose it was a meal for two. The guest could be an old-fashioned one, at least so in his taste, though Jiao hadn’t said a word about any visitor coming that night. Peiqin thought that she’d better tip Old Hunter to it, making sure that he would keep lookout this evening.

She was about to dial when a knock sounded on the door. She put the list into her bag and looked out through the peephole. It was a man in a dark blue uniform with something like a long-handled sprayer in his hand.

“What do you want?” she asked uncertainly.

“Insect spray service.”

“Insect spray service?” She sprayed at home, by herself, but it was not her business to question it. Rich people might have all kinds of things done by professionals.

“I scheduled it with Jiao,” he said, producing a slip of paper. “Look.”

Jiao must have forgotten to tell her about it, which wasn’t that important.

“So you’re the new maid here?”

“Yes, it’s my first day.”

“I came last month,” he said, “and there was another one.”

He must have come here before, so she opened the door. He moved in, nodding and putting on a gauze mask before she could get a close look at his face. He appeared quite professional, his glance instantly sweeping round to the kitchen table. “Better cover the dishes, though the spray is practically harmless.”

Extending the spray head, he started spraying around, poking and reaching into the corners behind the cabinet.

After four or five minutes, he headed for the bedroom. She followed, though not closely.

“So you’re not a provincial girl.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Then how did you end up here?”

“My factory went bankrupt,” she improvised. “Where else could I go?”

After he checked into the corners as well as hard-to-reach areas, he squatted down, reaching into the space under the bed. Perhaps that was the professional way.

When he finally started to pull in the spray head, she said, “How much does Jiao owe you?”

“Oh, she has already paid.”

It was almost four when he left the apartment. Peiqin moved back to the kitchen where she tore the steamed eggplant into slices and added salt, sesame oil, and a pinch of MSG. Simple yet good. She also sliced a piece of jellyfish for another cold dish and prepared a small saucer of special sauce.

She finally poked a chopstick into the pork. The chopstick pierced it easily. She turned the fire down to the lowest setting. The pork looked nicely done, rich in color.

That was about all she could do for the day. The clock on the kitchen wall said four forty-five. She surveyed the dishes prepared and half prepared on the kitchen table, nodding with approval.

Taking off her apron, she thought she should let Jiao know about all that she had done that afternoon. So she left a note, mentioning the visit of the insect spray man as well.