Death of a Red Heroine icc-1

by Qiu Xiaolong

  They dipped the slices of lamb into the boiling water, took them out after just a second or two, and dipped them into the sauce, a special recipe he had learned from Overseas Chinese Lu, a mixture of soy sauce, sesame butter, fermented bean curd, and ground pepper strewn with a pinch of parsley. The lamb, still pinkish, was tender and delicious.

  He opened her bottle of wine. They touched glasses before sipping the sparkling white wine under the soft light.

  “To you,” he said.

  “To us.”

  “For what?” he asked, turning the lamb over in the sauce.

  “For tonight.”

  She was peeling an oyster with a small knife. Her fingers, small, delicate, maneuvered the knife and cut loose the hinge muscle. She lifted the oyster to her mouth. A wisp of green seaweed still clung to its shell. He saw the glistening inside of the shell, its matchless whiteness against her lips.

  “That’s good,” she sighed with satisfaction, putting down the shell.

  He gazed at her over the rim of his cup, thinking of the way her lips touched the oyster, and then the cup. She sipped at her wine, dabbed at her mouth with the paper napkin, and picked up another oyster. To his surprise, she dipped it in the sauce, leaned across and offered to him. The gesture was terribly intimate.. Almost that of a newly married wife. He let her insert the chopsticks into his mouth. The oyster immediately melted on his tongue. A strange, satisfying sensation.

  That was a new experience to him, being alone with a woman he liked, in a room he called his own. They spoke, but he didn’t feel that he had to make conversation. Nor did she. They could afford to gaze at each other without speaking.

  It had started drizzling, but the city at night also seemed more intimate, peaceful, its veil of lights glistening into the infinite.

  After dinner, she murmured that she wanted to help him clean up.

  “I really enjoy washing dishes after a good meal.”

  “No, you don’t have to do anything.”

  But she had already stood up, kicked off her sandals, and taken over his apron that hung on the doorknob. It was pleasant to see her breezing around effortlessly, as if she had been living here for years. She appeared intensely domestic with the white apron tied tight around her slender waist.

  “You are my guest today,” he insisted.

  “I can’t just watch you doing everything in the kitchen.”

  It was not really a kitchen, but a narrow strip of space with the gas burner and the sink squeezed together, barely large enough for the two to move around in. They stood close to each other, their shoulders touching. He pushed open the small window above the sink. His feeling of well-being-in addition to the effects of the good food and wine-came from a sense of being, not just in a scantily furnished apartment, but at home.

  “Oh, let’s just leave everything here,” he said, untying the apron. “That’s good enough.”

  “Soon you will have roaches crawling all about in your new apartment,” she warned him with a smile.

  “I already have.” He led her back into the living room. “Let’s have another drink-a nightcap.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  When he came back with glasses, she was rocking back and forth in the rattan chair near the couch. As she sank deep into the chair, her short dress revealed a glimpse of her thighs.

  He leaned against the cabinet, his hand touching the top drawer, which contained the choker of pearls.

  She seemed to be absorbed in the changing color of the wine in her hand.

  “Would you mind sitting by me for one minute?”

  “Easier to look at you this way,” he said, smelling the intoxicating scent from her hair.

  He remained standing with his glass of wine. A “nightcap.” To translate it into Chinese was difficult. He had learned its romantic connotation in an American movie, in which a couple sipped the last cup of wine before going to bed. He was intoxicated with the atmosphere of intimacy that had sprung up between them.

  “Oh, you’ve forgotten candlelight,” she said, sipping at the wine.

  “Yes, I could use it now,” he said, “and Bolero on a CD player, too, would be great.”

  That was also in the movie. The lovers, while making love, put on their favorite record: the rhythm of ever-approaching climax.

  She held a slender finger against her cheek, scrutinizing him intently, as if for the first time. She reached up, taking the elastic band from her ponytail, and shook the black hair loose. It tumbled freely down her back. She looked relaxed, comfortable, at home.

  Then he kneeled down on the floor at her feet.

  “What’s that?”

  “What?”

  His finger touched her bare foot. There was a sauce stain on her small toe. He rubbed it off with his fingers.

  Her hand slid down and grasped his. He glanced at her hand, at her ring finger. There was a lighter band of flesh below the joint where she’d once worn a wedding band.

  They remained like that, holding hands.

  Gazing at her flushed face, he felt he was looking into an open, inviting book. Or was he reading too much?

  “Everything’s so wonderful tonight,” she said. “Thank you.”

  “The best is yet to be,” he said, echoing a half-forgotten poem.

  He had been waiting for this moment a long time.

  The soft light silhouetted her curves against the sheer fabric of her dress. She looked like another woman, mature, feminine, and seductive.

  How many different women could there be inside her, he wondered.

  She rocked back, away from him, and touched his cheek with the palm of her hand. Her palm was light as cloud.

  “Is your mind on the case again?”

  “No. Not at this moment.”

  It was a true answer, but he wondered why he had been so occupied with the case. Was it because of the raw human emotions involved? Perhaps his own personal life was so prosaic that he needed to share the passion of others. Or perhaps he had been yearning for a dramatic change in his own life.

  “I have to ask you a favor,” she said.

  “Anything,” he said.

  “I don’t want you to misunderstand.” She took a deep breath, then paused for a moment. “There’s something between us, isn’t there?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I knew it when we first met.”

  “So did I.”

  “I had been engaged to Yang, you know, before I met you, but you have never asked me about it.”

  “Nor have you ever asked about me, have you?” he said, gripping her palm. “It’s not that important.”

  “But you have a promising career,” she said, with the emotion visibly washing over her fine features. “That is so important to you, and to me, too.”

  “Promising career-I don’t know-” Those words sounded like a prelude, he could tell. “But why start talking about my career now?”

  “I’ve had all the words ready to say, but it’s harder than I thought. With you here, being so nice to me, it’s more difficult… a lot more difficult.”

  “Just tell me, Wang.”

  “Well, I went to the Shanghai Foreign Language Institute this afternoon, and the school demands compensation for what they have done for him, for Yang, you know-compensation for his education, salary, and medical benefits during his college years. Or I won’t be able to get the document for my passport. It’s a large sum, twenty thousand Yuan. I wonder whether you could say something to the passport department of your bureau. So I could get one without the document from the Foreign Language Institute.”

  “You want to get a passport-to go to Japan?”

  That was not at all what he had expected.

  “Yes, I’ve been applying for it for several weeks.”

  To leave China, she needed a passport. So she had to present an authorized application with her work unit’s approval. And her marriage to Yang, even though only a nominal one, necessitated some document from Yang’s wo
rk unit, too.

  It might be difficult, but not impossible. Passports had been issued without work unit authorization before. Chief Inspector Chen was in a position to help.

  “So you are going to him.” He stood.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “He has obtained all the necessary documents for me to join him. Even a job for me at a Chinese TV station in Tokyo. A small station, nothing like here, but still something in my line. There’s not much between him and me, but it’s an opportunity I cannot afford to miss.”

  “But you also have a promising career here.”

  “A promising career here-” Wang said, a bitter smile upon her lips, “in which I have to pile lies upon lies.”

  It was true, depending on how one chose to perceive a reporter’s job in China. As a reporter for the Party’s newspaper, she would have to report in the Party’s interest. First and foremost, the Party’s interest. She was paid to do that. No question about it.

  “Still, things are improving here,” Chen said, feeling obliged to say something.

  “At this slow pace, in twenty years, I might be able to write what I want to, and I will be old and gray.”

  “No, I don’t think so.” He wanted to say that she would never be old and gray, not in his eyes, but he chose not to.

  “You’re different, Chen,” she said. “You really can do something here.”

  “Thank you for telling me this.”

  “A candidate for the seminar of the Central Party Institute, you can go a long way in China, and I don’t think I can be of any help to you here.” She added after a pause. “For your career, I mean. And even worse-”

  “The bottom line is-” he said slowly, “you’re going to Japan.”

  “Yes, I’m going there, but there will be some time-at least a couple of months-before I can get the passport and visa. And we’ll be together-just like tonight.” She raised her head, putting a hand up to her bare shoulder, lightly, as if to pull one strap down. “And some day, when you’re no longer interested in your political career here, you may want to join me there.”

  He turned to look out of the window.

  The street was now alive with a surf of colorful umbrellas. People hurrying along in different directions, to their destinations, and then, perhaps, to new ones. He had been telling himself that Wang’s marriage had failed. No one could break up a marriage unless it was already on the rocks. That a man had left this woman in the lurch was a proof of it. But she still wanted to go to that man. Not to him.

  Even though it might not be so for tonight and, perhaps, for a couple of months more.

  That was not what he had expected, not at all.

  Chen’s father, a prominent professor of Neo-Confucianism, had instilled into his son all the ethical doctrines; it had not been a useless effort.

  He had not been a Party member all these years for nothing.

  She was somebody’s wife-and still going to be.

  That clinched it. There was a line he could not step over.

  “Since you are going to join your husband,” he said, turning to look at her, “I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to see each other-this way, I mean, in the future. We will stay friends, of course. As for what you asked me to do, I’ll do my best.”

  She seemed stunned. Speechless, she clenched her fists, and then buried her head in her hands.

  He shook a cigarette from a crumpled flip-top pack and lit it.

  “It’s not easy for me,” she murmured “And it’s not just for me either.”

  “I understand.”

  “No, you don’t. I’ve thought about it. It is not right-for you.”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “But I will do my best to get your passport, I promise.”

  That was the only thing he could think of saying.

  “I know how much I owe you.”

  “What’s a friend for?” he said, as if an invisible record of cliches had dropped onto the turntable of his mind.

  “Then I’m leaving.”

  “Yes, it’s late. Let me call a taxi for you.”

  She lifted her face, showing glistening tears in her eyes. Her pallor made her features sharper.

  Was she even more beautiful at this moment?

  She bent to pull on her shoes. He helped her to her feet. They looked at each other without speaking. Presently a taxi arrived. They heard the driver honking his horn in the rain.

  He insisted that she wear his raincoat. An ungainly black police raincoat with a ghostly hood.

  At the doorway, she halted, turning back to him, her face almost lost under the hood. He could not see her eyes. Then she turned away. Nearly his height, she could have been taken for him in the black police raincoat. He watched the tall raincoat-wrapped figure disappearing in the mist of the rain.

  Zhang Ji, a Tang dynasty poet, had written a well-known couplet: Whistling to himself, Chen opened the top drawer of his file cabinet. He had not even had a chance to take out the pearls, which shone beautifully under the light. “Returning your lustrous pearls with tears in my eyes, / Lord, I should’ve met you before I married.”

  According to some critics, the poem was written at the moment when Zhang decided to decline an offer from Prime Minister Li Yuan, during the reign of Emperor Dezhong in the early eighth century. Hence there was a political analogy.

  There’s nothing but interpretation, Chen thought, rubbing his nose. He did not like what he had done. She had made herself clear. It could have been the first night that he had longed for, and there would have been more. And he would not have placed himself under any obligation.

  But he had said no.

  Maybe he would never be able to rationalize his reaction, not even to himself.

  A bicycle bell spilled into the silence of the night.

  He could be logical about other people’s lives, but not about his own.

  Was it possible that his decision was precipitated by the report he had read in the afternoon? There seemed to be a parallel working in his subconscious mind. He thought of Guan’s willingness to give herself to Lai before parting with him, now of Wang’s offer before leaving to join her husband in Japan.

  Chief Inspector Chen had made many mistakes. Tonight’s decision might be another he would come to rue.

  After all, a man is only what he has decided to do, or not to do.

  Some things a man will do; some things a man will not do. It was another Confucian truism his father had taught him. Maybe deep inside, he was conservative, traditional, even old-fashioned-or politically correct. The bottom line was no.

  Whatever he was going to do, whatever kind of man he was going to be, he made a pledge to himself: He was going to solve the case. That was the only way he, Chief Inspector Chen, could redeem himself.

  Chapter 19

  Finally Detective Yu arrived home for dinner.

  Peiqin had already finished cooking several main dishes in the public kitchen area.

  “Can I help?”

  “No, just go inside. Qinqin is much better today, so you may assist him with his homework.”

  “Yes, it’s been two days since I took him to the hospital. He must have missed a number of classes.”

  But Yu did not move immediately. He felt guilty at the sight of Peiqin busy working there, her white short-sleeved shirt molded to her sweating body. Squatting at the foot of a concrete sink, she was binding a live crab with a straw. Several Yangchen crabs were crawling noisily on the sesame-covered bottom of a wooden pail.

  “You have to bind them, or the crab will shed its legs in the steaming pot,” Peiqin explained, noticing his puzzled look.

  “Then why is all the sesame in the pail?”

  “To keep the crabs from losing weight. Nutritious food for them. We got the crabs early in the morning.”

  “So special nowadays.”

  “Yes, Chief Inspector Chen is your special guest.”

  The decision to invite Chen over for dinner had b
een Peiqin’s, but Yu had seconded it, of course. She had made it for his sake, since it was she who had to prepare everything in their single room of eleven square meters. Still, she had insisted.

  Last night, he had told Peiqin about the bureau Party Committee meeting the previous day. Commissar Zhang had grumbled about his lackluster attitude, which was not something new. At the meeting, however, Zhang went so far as to suggest to the Party Committee that Yu be replaced. Zhang’s suggestion was discussed in earnest. Yu was not a committee member, so not in the position to defend himself. With the investigation bogged down, switching horses might help, or at least shift responsibility. Party Secretary Li seemed ready to agree. Yu did not have his heart in the case, but his removal would have caused a domino effect. His fate would have been sealed- according to Lieutenant Lao, who had attended the meeting- but for Chief Inspector Chen’s intervention. Chen surprised the committee members by making a speech on Yu’s behalf, arguing that different opinions regarding a case were normal, reflecting the democracy of our Party, and that it did not detract at all from Detective Yu’s worth as a capable police officer. “If people are not happy with the way the investigation is going,” Chen had concluded, “I’m the one to take responsibility. Fire me.” So it had been due to Chen’s emotional plea that Yu remained in the special case group.

  Lao’s information came as a surprise to Yu, who had not expected such staunch support from his superior.

  “Your chief inspector knows how to speak the Party language,” Peiqin said quietly.

  “Yes, he does. Luckily, this time on my behalf,” he said.

  “What about inviting him to dinner? The restaurant is going to have two bushels of live crabs, Yangchen Lake crabs, at the state price. I can bring a dozen home, and I will just need to add several side dishes.”

  “That’s a good idea. But it will be too much work for you.”

  “No. It’s fun to have a guest once in a while. I’ll make a meal that your chief inspector won’t forget.”

  And more or less to his surprise, Chen had accepted his invitation readily, adding that he would like to discuss something with Yu afterward.

  It was really turning out to be too much work for Peiqin, Yu stood there thinking somberly, watching her moving busily around in the confined space. Their portion of the public kitchen area contained no more than a coal stove and a small table with a makeshift bamboo cabinet hung on the wall. There was hardly room for her to put down all the bowls and plates.