When Red is Black - [Chief Inspector Chen Cao 03]

by Qiu Xiaolong

  To his surprise, he found a small photograph of White Cloud in a book of Buddhist scripture his mother had brought with her. In her uniform as a college student, White Cloud looked spirited and young as she stood in the impressive gateway of Fudan University. He understood why his mother had kept the picture. For his mother, as Overseas Chinese Lu had once put it, Anything that came into her bamboo basket must be counted a vegetable now.

  White Cloud was a nice girl, to be sure. She had helped a lot: with the translation, with his mother in the hospital, and with the investigation. For all this, he could not but be grateful to her. He did not want to denigrate her because at their first meeting she had been a K girl with whom he had danced, his hand on her bare back, nor for being a “little secretary,” with all the possible connotations of that term. Chen considered himself above that sort of snobbishness.

  What his mother had obviously thought about her in connection with him, however, had never entered his mind. This was not so much because of the difference in their ages, or in their backgrounds, it was just that it seemed to him that they lived in two different worlds. But for the business of the New World, their paths would never have crossed. The translation was now finished, and he was pleased that she could go back to her life, whatever it might be like. There was nothing for him to be sentimental about. She was paid for her work as a little secretary. “Paid handsomely,” as she had put it; the way he was paid, although at a different rate and for a different reason.

  But then, was he really so sure about himself?

  Was the filial son sitting with his mother the same man as the Mr. Big Bucks drinking with his little secretary in the Golden Time Rolling Backward?

  “Are you Chief Inspector Chen?” A young nurse poked her head into the room. “Someone is waiting downstairs for you.”

  Chen took the steps in long strides. To his surprise, he found Party Secretary Li waiting in the lobby, carrying a large bouquet of flowers, in sharp contrast to the familiar image of the serious senior Party cadre in his high-buttoned Mao jacket. A bureau Mercedes was parked in the driveway.

  “They told me your mother is still sleeping,” Li said, “so I think I’ll just say a few words to you here. I have a city government meeting this morning.”

  “Thank you, Party Secretary Li. You are so busy; you shouldn’t have taken the trouble to come here.”

  “No, I should have come earlier. She is such a nice old lady. I have talked to her a couple of times, you know,” Li said. “I also want to thank you on behalf of the Shanghai Police Bureau for your excellent work.”

  “Detective Yu did the work. I only helped a little.”

  “You don’t have to be modest, Chief Inspector Chen. This was an excellent job. No political complications. Simply wonderful.

  “That’s what we are going to say at the press conference. The motive for the crime was some money dispute between Yin and a relative. Nothing to do with politics.”

  “Yes, nothing to do with politics,” Chen repeated mechanically.

  “In fact, we have already had some positive reaction. A Wenhui reporter said that Yin should not have been so mean to Yang’s grandnephew. And a Liberation reporter said that she was really a shrewd woman, too calculating for her own good—”

  “You have not held the press conference yet, have you?”

  “Well, these reporters must have heard about our conclusions one way or another. Their stories may not be so helpful to her posthumous reputation, but I don’t think we have to worry about that.”

  “Who can control stories, the stories after one’s life? / The whole village is jumping at the romantic tale of General Cai—except that this story is not so romantic.”

  “You are being poetic again, Comrade Chief Inspector Chen,” Li said. “By the way, we don’t have to mention Yang’s novel manuscript. We should not. Internal Security has made a point of this. It’s in the best interest of the Party not to say anything about it.”

  That was the real reason for Party Secretary Li’s visit, Chen realized. Li would be in charge of the press conference, and he had to make sure of what would—and would not—be said by the cops in charge of the case.

  After Li left, Chen noticed fallen petals from the bouquet on the ground. As with White Cloud, he did not want to judge Yin. In spite of Bao’s statement made in his self-defense, or the reporters’ comments made from their journalistic perspectives, Chen chose to see Yin as a woman who had had complexities forced upon her.

  It was true that Yin had a monetary interest in the publication of Yang’s poetry collection. To be fair to her, however, she had put in a lot of work as editor. A labor of love, done in memory of him. Yet she could have earned more by giving private lessons, like many English teachers in the nineties. In the last analysis, she, too, had had to survive in an increasingly materialistic society.

  It was also true that Yin had kept Yang’s novel manuscript a secret and that she had no intention of sharing it with Bao, whose position was that he should have inherited it according to law.

  But what was the legality of this situation?

  A piece of paper called a marriage certificate had been denied to the lovers in those years of the Cultural Revolution.

  What would have happened to the manuscript had she handed it over to Bao? He had no idea of its contents or value. He would have tried to make money by selling it to an interested publisher, but he could never have succeeded. He would have ended up by having the manuscript confiscated by Internal Security. So Yin was justified in keeping the manuscript a secret from Bao, and from everybody else. She must have waited for her opportunity, Chen reasoned; then, on her visit to Hong Kong, gotten in touch with a literary agency, reached an agreement, and prepared to take it with her when she went to the United States as a visiting scholar.

  That also explained her rental of a safety deposit box at this time. She must have thought of it as a sort of camouflage. She had had to be careful. Internal Security might have heard rumors arising from her trip to Hong Kong.

  As for her use of the American publisher’s advance—from Yang’s novel—as her means of financial support in the affidavit, Chen did not see anything improper in this either. In the event the novel was published in the United States, she would surely be overwhelmed by political troubles here. So she had had no choice but to go to the United States for the publication of the novel. For her, that must have been more important than anything else.

  And Chen was also more than willing to overlook her “plagiarism.” If she had been unable to publish Yang’s book, she would have made at least part of his writing available to readers. And she must have regarded herself as one with Yang, as in that celebrated poem, “You and I,” quoted in Death of a Chinese Professor. There was no point distinguishing between the two of them when they had already turned into one.

  Of course, a lot more could have been involved, a lot more than Chen might ever come to know, or than he might ever want to know. What he chose to think was, perhaps, just one version of the story, seen from one perspective. Perhaps, as in the proverb, When the water is too clear, there will be no fish; as long as things were not too muddy, it was not up to him to investigate.

  For the moment, he would choose to believe that it was a tragic love story, one that lightened up the darkest moments in the lives of Yin and Yang. After Yang’s death, Yin had tried hard to continue living in the story, through her writing and through his writing too, but in the end she did not succeed.

  Chen produced a photocopy out of his pocket. It was a poem which, for some reason, was not included in Yang’s poetry collection. The poem was titled “Hamlet in China’:

  A rustle of the synapses rushes me

  to the stage, to a sea of faces

  drowning in the dark, and clutching

  for a straw of meaning, in my stepping

  into the light. A role, like

  all others, is to be played in

  [in] difference, mad or not

 
; mad. A camel, a weasel, and a whale,

  to construct and to deconstruct,

  when reality is the ever-changing

  signifier. What is the meaning? A dictionary

  entry that defines me with a sword

  killing a rat or a rat-like noise.

  O father, whatever it is, tell me.

  In his novel, Yang had tried to emulate Pasternak’s narrative structure with twelve poems grouped together at the end of the novel, lines supposedly written by the protagonist, in sequential reflections on his life, crushed in the those years of socialist revolution under Chairman Mao. Chen wondered when Yang had written “Hamlet in China.” Judging from its order in the sequence, it might have been composed during the Cultural Revolution. If so, the stage in question could have referred to the “stage of revolutionary mass criticism,” upon which Yang had stood as a black target, with his “crimes” written on a blackboard hung around his neck. Yang had rendered it in such a universal way, however, that a reader unfamiliar with Yang’s real experience might have come up with a totally different interpretation. It needed such an impersonal distance—which reminded Chen of another great poet—to represent Hamlet in the waste land.

  Even today, Chen felt connected to that poem. After all, a role is to be played, whatever meanings or interpretations may be imposed on it, like the role of Chief Inspector Chen.

  Surprisingly, the novel manuscript did not have a title. Chen thought he might as well call it Doctor Zhivago in China. Eventually, he would find a way to have the manuscript published. He made a pledge to himself. He did not really consider it a conflict with his political allegiance as a Party cadre. Like Boris Pasternak, Yang had passionately loved his country. The novel was not an attack on China. Rather, it represented an honest, patriotic intellectual’s unwavering pursuit of his ideals in an age when everything in his country had been turned upside-down. It was a novel written with unrivaled passion and masterful technique. China should be proud of such an excellent literary work produced in the darkest moment of its history, Chen concluded.

  But there was no need to act in a reckless hurry, nor to take any unnecessary risk. The manuscript had been finished years earlier, and it still retained its power. First-class literature does not suffer with the lapse of time. It should not matter too much if the manuscript were to lie unpublished for a few years more.

  Internal Security was still on the alert. They had inquired about how the chief inspector and his partner had come to find the manuscript, and he had simply said that it had taken Detective Yu’s hard work to trace Bao and obtain his confession, and that they had at once marched Bao over to the police bureau with the manuscript. The press conference was scheduled for the next day. They could not afford to delay any longer.

  He had not mentioned that he had had the manuscript in his hands for about two hours, and been busy copying every page of it at a street-corner copy shop, before he returned with it to Bao’s room. His story was plausible, but Internal Security had never really gotten along with him, and he had to be very careful.

  Besides, the way things were changing in China, in five or ten years, publication of Yang’s novel might not be totally unimaginable—

  “Chief Inspector Chen.” The young nurse approached him again in the lobby.

  “Oh yes, how is she?”

  “She is doing all right, still asleep.” she said. “But when she is out of the hospital, you have to pay more attention to her choice of food.”

  “I will,” he said.

  “Her cholesterol level is still too high. The expensive delicacies on the nightstand may not be good for her.”

  “I understand,” he said. “Some of my friends are incorrigible.”

  “She must be proud of a successful son like you with all those important buddies.”

  “Well, you’d really need to ask her that.”

  As he walked toward his mother’s room, he was surprised at the sight of White Cloud making a call at the pay phone. Her back was toward him, but she was wearing the same white, large-collared wool sweater as on the first day she had reported to his apartment. She must have come to visit his mother again.

  She had a cell phone, he remembered, but it was not surprising that she should use a pay phone, considering what her cell phone bill at the end of the month might amount to. He, too, had used the pay phone in the lobby.

  Was it possible that Gu had given her a cell phone only for her assignment? And now that the job was finished, he had taken it back? In any case, it was none of his business.

  She seemed to be engrossed in a long conversation. He was about to step away when he heard his title mentioned. He snapped to attention, and took a few steps to the side until he was out of sight behind a white pillar.

  “Oh, that chief inspector. . . . What a prig . . . impossible ... so self-important.”

  There was no justifying his decision to go on eavesdropping. But he remained fixed by the pillar, hardly able to convince himself that he was lurking there for the purpose of finding out more about Gu.

  “Those Big Bucks at least know what to do with a woman. . . .Not so goddamned bookish, so busy keeping his official neck untouched. He will never take a risk for something he wants.”

  From the position in which he stood, he could not quite make out every word she spoke. He could tell himself that she was probably talking about somebody else, but he knew it was not so.

  “He loves only himself. ...”

  Was she so aggravated by his “political correctness” or “Confucian morals?”

  Perhaps he was too bookish to figure this out. Perhaps she was so modern or postmodern that in her company, he was hopelessly old-fashioned. Hence the inevitable conflict. Perhaps he did not understand her at all.

  In a Zen episode he had read long ago, a good lesson came with a blow. When you are knocked out of your usual self, things may be seen from a totally different perspective.

  Or perhaps it was nothing but business. In business, every gesture was possible, for a possible reason. Hers would have been made for his approval, and more importantly, for Gu’s approval. It was not every day that she could have landed such a job. Now that their business was finished, she was making her objective comments.

  Yet these objective comments hurt.

  I am a cloud in the sky, casting a reflection, / by chance, in the heart of your wave. Don’t be too amazed, / or too thrilled, / in an instant I’ll be gone without a trace.

  Those were lines from another poem by Xu Zhimo, also with a central image of a cloud. The poem would read far more naturally in her voice. She was not meant for him. Still, he should be grateful to her, whether their relationship had been all-business or not. In those hectic days, her help really had made a difference. He wished the best for her now that everything was over.

  He decided not to go back to his mother’s room. White Cloud would be there too. It was time for him to return to the routine bureau work which he had become accustomed to, the way a snail becomes used to its shell.

  No more little secretary, nothing. He was truly like the blank page he had thought of in his mother’s company a short while earlier.

  * * * *

  Afterward, on the way to the Shanghai Police Bureau, he dropped in at a travel agency, where he booked his mother a trip to Suzhou and Hangzhou with a tour group. She had not had a vacation for years—not since the early sixties, when she had taken him to Suzhou on a one-day trip. He had been a Young Pioneer, in his pre-school days, and his mother, wearing a red silk cheongsam, had been very young as they stood together in the Xuanmiao Temple. A trip might help her to recover, he thought. A pity that he would not be able to accompany her. There was no possibility of his taking another vacation, not after he received a phone call from the Central Party Discipline Committee in Beijing urging him to be prepared for larger responsibilities. He decided not to discuss that with his mother.

  “What a good son you are,” the travel agent said.

  Perhaps
it was not too bad being Chief Inspector Chen.

  And he also decided that instead of waiting for a distant future opportunity, he would start trying to do something now about the manuscript Yang had left. Chief Inspector Chen was prepared to take a risk for something he really wanted.

  * * * *

  Chapter 24

  Y

  u was pleased with the conclusion of Yin Lige’s case. He was sitting in the courtyard while Peiqin was preparing a special dinner in the common kitchen area “in celebration of the successful conclusion of the case,” she told him.

  Qinqin was overwhelmed by the need to study for an important test next week. “Extremely important,” Peiqin had declared. So the only table in the room was reserved for Qinqin until dinner time.

  Incoming phone calls would not help Qinqin to concentrate. Nor did Yu want to smoke like a chimney with Qinqin studying hard in the same room. As a result, Yu had to remain in the courtyard, although it was chilly for this time of the year. Seated on a bamboo stool, with a pot of hot tea, a cordless phone, and a notepad resting on a slightly shaky chair in front of him, he looked almost like a lane peddler. He was going to write the report concluding the Yin case. It was his case, after all.