“So it has become your lifelong career?”

“Perhaps it’s too late for me to try anything new,” he said, not wanting to continue like this, but not knowing how to shift the topic.

“I tried to write you,” she said, taking the initiative, her head slightly tilted in the faltering lamplight, “but there’s not much to be said. After all, the tide does not wait.”

He wondered at her choice of the words – “the tide does not wait.” Did it mean she couldn’t wait any longer? He wondered whether it was about her marriage choice or career choice. To start a business was nowadays described as “to jump into the sea” – tides of money-making opportunities. She was a successful businesswoman, and her husband, for that matter, was another tide-riding businessman.

Or were they a reference to the Spring Tide? That was the title of a Russian novel that they had read together in North Sea Park.

But he was supposed to say something more relevant to the occasion. It was an opportunity not to be missed, as Yong would have urged, a chance for the “salvation mission.” Ling was staying with her parents at the moment.

He took a sip of his tea. Jasmine flower tea. Another surprising strike of déjà vu. That evening, so many years ago, she brewed a pot of hot tea for him, putting the jasmine petal from her hair into his teacup – “The transparently white unfolding in the black.”

“So are you here in Beijing on another case?” she said.

“No, not exactly. It’s more of a vacation. I haven’t been to Beijing for a long time.”

“Our chief inspector is enjoying a vacation!”

He was upset by the sarcasm in her voice. It was she who had married somebody else, not the other way round.

“Any sight of specific interest on your vacation?” she went on without looking up at him.

Actually, there was one, he suddenly realized. Mao’s former residence in the Central South Sea, the Forbidden City. He had just read about it on the train. The residence was closed, and it didn’t have a direct bearing on the investigation, but he had taken to visiting the people involved in an investigation or, failing that, their residence, as a way of closing the distance between cop and criminal. For this case, Chen didn’t set out to judge Mao. Still, a visit to his residence might help the chief inspector, if only psychologically, gain insight into the personal side of Mao.

Ling should be able to get him into the Central South Sea through her connections in Beijing. “Mao’s old home in the Central South Sea,” he blurted out, “but it is closed.”

“Mao’s old home!” she echoed in surprise. “Since when have you become a Maoist?”

“No, I’m not that fashionable.”

“Then why?” She gave him an alert look.

He didn’t respond at once, trying to recall whether he had ever talked to her about Mao.

“You remember that evening in Jingshan Park? With the evening spread out against the tilted eaves of the ancient, splendid palace, we sat together, and you murmured a poem to me.”

And it came back, the memories of her sitting on a gray slab of rock, holding his hand, and of his catching sight of a tree hung with a white board saying, “The tree on which Emperor Chongzhen of the Ming dynasty hung himself,” and of his shivering with the memory of the blackboard hung around his father’s neck during the Cultural Revolution…

“I still have that poem,” she said, producing from her purse something like a cell phone but larger, palmlike, which he had never seen before. She pressed several keys on the gadget.

“Here it is,” she said, beginning to read aloud from the LCD screen.

It was on a hillside, Jingshan Park, Forbidden City / where the Qing Emperor had succeeded / the Ming Emperor, we sat / on a slab of rock there, watching / the evening spreading out against the tilted eaves / of the ancient, splendid palace. / Below us, waves of buses flowed / along Huangchen Road – a moat, hundreds of years ago. We murmured / words in Chinese, then in English / we were learning. The bronze stork / which had once escorted the Qing Dowager / stared at us. You dream of us becoming / two gargoyles, you told me / at Yangxing imperial hall, gurgling/ all night long, in a language comprehensible / only to ourselves. A mist / enveloped the hill. We saw a tree / hung with a white board saying / “It’s on this tree that Emperor Chongzhen / committed suicide.” The board reminded me / of the blackboard hung my father’s neck / during the Cultural Revolution. The evening / struck me as suddenly cold. / We left the park.

“Yes, the poem. I really appreciate it that you kept it for me -”

“I did it on the airplane. Nothing to do during those business flights.”

But he was vexed, almost irrationally, imagining her traveling with her businessman husband, sitting side by side, and reading his poems to him. Chen had given her a number of his poems. He started wondering whether she had kept them, and where.

“Oh, about the poems I wrote – I meant the poems for you, Ling. I haven’t kept the manuscripts properly, only some pieces here, some pieces there. If you still have them, can you give them back to me?”

“You want them back?”

He regretted the way he had made the request. So impulsive and abrupt. How was she going to interpret it?

But she changed the subject. “I have a friend working in the Central South Sea. A visit to his old home can be arranged, I guess.”

Since they were back to talking about Mao, he decided to push his luck further. “Oh, there’s a book written by Mao’s personal doctor, do you know anything about it?”

“This is about an investigation concerning Mao, isn’t it?” she said, looking him in the eye. “You have to tell me more about your work.”

So he told her what information he was looking for, though without going into detail. He knew that honesty would be the best way to enlist her help.

“You’re somebody in your field, Chief Inspector Chen -”

But her cell phone rang. She snatched it up in frustration. In spite of her initial reluctance, she began speaking in earnest. Possibly an important business call.

“Quota is no problem…”

He stood up, pulled out a packet of cigarettes, and made a gesture with it. Pushing open the door, he headed into the courtyard.

The courtyard was even more deserted than he had first thought. The quadrangle house was holding out in desperation against the development. He watched her profile silhouetted against the window paper, the phone pressed to her cheek. Almost like an ancient shadow play. At that instant, she seemed to have moved far away.

She was capable. No question about it. There was no forgetting, however, that she had succeeded in the business world not because of her capability, but because of her family connections. It was part of the system – the way of the system. The quota she was talking about, presumably for export business, was an example: she could get the quota easily with a phone call to her “uncle” or “aunt,” yet it was way beyond ordinary people.

He wasn’t able to identify with the system, not yet, not totally, in spite of his “success” in the system. In his heart of hearts, he still yearned for something different, something with a sort of independence, albeit a limited one, from the system.

He saw she was finishing the call, putting the phone down on the table. Grinding out the cigarette, he hastened back into the room.

“You’re a busy CEO,” he said in spite of himself.

“You don’t have to say that. As a chief inspector, you’re busier.”

“It’s a job you have to put more and more of yourself into. Then it becomes part of you, whether you like it or not,” he said wistfully. “I’m talking about myself, of course. So I may redeem myself, ironically, only by being a conscientious cop.”

“Will the visit to Mao’s residence make such a difference to your police work?”

She was right to ask the question. The visit alone would make no difference. In fact, the very trip to Beijing could be a pathetic attempt to treat a dead horse as if it were still alive. “A special team was sent to Shang’s home,” he said, taking her question as a subtle hint. “After so many years, no one could know anything about what they did. The archive may still be listed as confidential -”