But no one dared to. The men and women on the dance floor watched in silence as the eight suspects, like a string of ribbonfish, walked quietly toward the door. Suddenly, one of the suspects, a mustached dancer, shouted in a shrill voice, “What crime is there in coming to the dance hall for fun?”
Bian Tou grabbed a chair and smashed it down on the mustached man’s head. The chair shattered to pieces like bones snapping, and the mustached man collapsed to the floor. No one else dared say another word as two agents quickly picked him up. He staggered as though drunk and was led outside.
On the way back from the MGM dance hall, Chen Shen sat in Bi Zhong Liang’s car. Their car followed a military truck with a tarpaulin cover. Chen Shen knew that all eight suspects were packed inside that truck. Bi Zhong Liang sat in the back seat, his face dark and silent—he had never been a man of many words. As the car’s headlights cut through the snow-covered night, Chen Shen gazed out the window at the endless snow. The slow crawl of the car through the snow made him feel as if they were driving toward another quiet, snow-covered world, or perhaps toward the past shared by him and Bi Zhong Liang.
Memories of their time together during the new recruit training in Hangzhou surfaced in Chen Shen’s mind—it was spring then, and all the flowers in the training camp’s fields bloomed wildly. He also remembered when they fought the Red Army in Jiangxi, and how Bi Zhong Liang had been struck by shrapnel, leaving a gash in his scalp that knocked him unconscious. Chen Shen, who used to be a barber, had carried him off the battlefield, and later, at the field hospital, personally shaved the bloodied hair from his head so the doctor could bandage the wound. When Bi Zhong Liang woke up, the first thing he saw was Chen Shen’s bloodshot eyes from the neighboring bed. Chen Shen was playing with his hairdressing scissors, his voice low as he said, “If you hadn’t made it, I’d have wasted all that effort carrying you off the battlefield.”
Chen Shen was from Zhuji, and he often talked about his fellow townsman, Jiang Dingwen. Jiang Dingwen was the commander of the Fourth Group Army, and Chen Shen claimed that Commander Jiang was his first cousin. Bi Zhong Liang always thought he was bragging but never called him out on it. Before every rainstorm, Bi Zhong Liang’s scalp would tingle faintly, and he would think, “This life was something Chen Shen saved on the battlefield, like picking up a sack or a stray dog from the side of the road.” Later, it was Bi Zhong Liang who persuaded Chen Shen, and the two of them defected from the Nationalist Army to join Wang's puppet regime. Bi Zhong Liang then introduced Chen Shen to the Special Services Headquarters of the Central Executive Committee.
When Chen Shen appeared before the two heads of the headquarters, Ding Mocun and Li Shiqun, both of them stared at him in silence for a long time. Finally, Li Shiqun asked, “What are your skills?”
Chen Shen took out his hairdressing scissors and spun them in a dazzling display in the palm of his hand, saying, “I can cut hair.”
Li Shiqun and Ding Mocun exchanged smiles. Chen Shen smiled too and said earnestly, “My father didn’t want me to learn hairdressing. He wanted me to become a Chinese literature teacher. But my Chinese was never good.”
As Chen Shen spoke, he leaned over to look out the window. On the balcony railing outside, a pot of four o’clock flowers bloomed wildly, their sharp, bright red petals like blood in full bloom. On the large field, a German shepherd, led by an agent, dragged its mop-like tail as it walked slowly with a menacing look in its eyes. There wasn’t a breath of wind, and the air felt heavy as if it were filled with lead. At that moment, a woman's scream, as if coming from the depths of the earth, reached his ears. Chen Shen suddenly wondered, “Does that woman being tortured have a husband and children?”
Chen Shen saw the car headlights pierce through the endless snowy world like two sticks. He liked this cold weather and thought to himself how he wished the snow would bury the entire car, because then, beneath the snow, the world would surely be quiet.
Suddenly, Bi Zhong Liang, who had been silent, spoke up. “Hand it over!”
Chen Shen took the warm platinum pocket watch from his inner pocket and handed it to Bi Zhong Liang. Bi Zhong Liang opened the watch, glanced at it, and handed it back to Chen Shen. Sighing, he said, “Your problem is you’re too greedy. That’s not good.”
Chen Shen laughed. “You know I have a lot of expenses.”
Bi Zhong Liang said, “You spend all your money on women. Don’t think I don’t know you’re at the MGM every other day! And that you’re always seeing that third-rate actress from the movie company who keeps saying she wants to marry you!”
Chen Shen replied, “I just think of her as a brother.”
Bi Zhong Liang scoffed. “Who would believe that? Women are trouble. Be careful, or you’ll get yourself into a heap of it.”
Staring out at the vast snowy landscape, Chen Shen suddenly said, full of melancholy, “We all have to die eventually. If you don’t stir up some trouble before you go, life’s pretty dull, isn’t it?”
That quiet night, Chen Shen sat in his room and turned on the desk lamp. Under its light, he opened the platinum pocket watch, its hands ticking steadily like a heartbeat. Carefully and intently, like a skilled watchmaker, he oiled the watch. Then he placed it in the small patch of light beneath the lamp. As he stepped away from the desk, he whispered softly, “Rest in peace, Comrade Prime Minister.”
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