“Yes, I’ll think about it, Professor Bian. And I’ve got some new ideas about ‘thirsty illness.’ ”
So his literature project might still be something to think about in the future, he told himself. For now, he had to shelve it.
For him, there might be something more immediate, more relevant. As in the murder case: people might not feel satisfied by a partial conclusion, but at least the killing of innocent people had come to an end. As a cop, he didn’t have to worry too much about making his point, unlike a paper. What the point of the case was, he didn’t even know—
“You aren’t going on with your Chinese literature program, are you?” Yu queried, breaking into his thoughts.
“No, I don’t think so. You don’t have to worry about that,” Chen said. “But I still have to finish this paper. You may not believe it, but this paper has really helped.”
Yu seemed relieved and handed back the envelope. “Oh, there’s a piece of paper in the envelope.”
“A poem.”
“For you to publish?”
Chen took out that piece of paper and started reading.
Mother, I have tried to make the far-off echo
yield a clue to what is happening to me;
in the old mansion people come and go,
seeing only what they want to see.
The recall of the red mandarin dress
wears me out, flashing in the flowers,
your bare feet, your soft hand: the stress
of memory strips me of waking hours.
But we are flattened, framed in the zoom
of one moment, click, and cloud and rain
approaching fast, a doomful gloom
scurries across the horizon again,
Oh that is all I know, all I see.
Mother, you drink the cup for me.
“There’s no cup in the picture,” Yu said in bewilderment.
Chen wasn’t sure if the last image about the cup came from Hamlet, in which the queen drinks the poison for her son. In his college years, he had read a Freudian interpretation of it. He vaguely remembered.
“It’s about Hamlet and his mother,” Chen said, deciding not to explain any more. “There are more things in heaven and earth than in a case report.”
“I’m damned,” Yu said, shaking his head like a rattle drum.
Table of Contents
Red Mandarin Dress
Also by the Author
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One