When Red is Black

by Qiu Xiaolong

  “That’s true with police work,” he said. “An investigation can take weeks or months. It does not conclude when a Party boss sets a deadline.”

  “Isn’t there anything new at all?”

  “Well, I had a free meal with Lei. He insisted on it-because of Yin. Really, this is something new for me, being treated by a businessman, just like Chief Inspector Chen,” he said. “Yin did not get along with most of her neighbors, but she could be helpful to some.”

  “It’s hard to judge people. She might have lived too much in the past-together with Yang-to get along with her neighbors,” she said, “or to move out of the shadow of the Cultural Revolution.”

  “What a life! I, too, have read a few pages of her novel. She said her life started with Yang in the cadre school, but how long were they really together? As lovers, less than a year. Now she may have died because of him.”

  “Still, she got fame and money because of him,” Peiqin said. “And the book, too, of course.”

  Perhaps this was meant to comfort him, but Yu did not see how. “You may be a bit too hard on her,” he said. “After all, it was her book; she earned her royalties.”

  “I have nothing against her. But it’s a fact that the novel sold so well because of him, because of her relationship with him.” She added, “What about his poetry collection, the one she edited, then?”

  “Poetry earns no money, as Chief Inspector Chen always says.”

  “But Yang’s collection sold out.” She added, “It was a large printing. In those years, a lot of people read poetry. I bought a copy too.”

  ***

  Afterward, at the neighborhood committee office, Yu mentioned Peiqin’s point in a phone conversation with Chief Inspector Chen.

  “Things have changed a lot,” Chen said. “Several years ago, the publisher would have paid just a one-time fee of about fifteen Yuan per thousand characters, or ten lines of poetry. So all in all, she would not have received much money.”

  “That’s what I guessed.”

  “But if her contract provided that she would earn royalties based on sales, it might be another story. Have you talked to the editor about it?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Well, he may tell you the amount she received,” Chen said thoughtfully. “I don’t know. Maybe you should give him a call.”

  A large sum could have been a motive for murder, but it seemed to Yu that since Chen was a passionate writer and Peiqin a passionate reader, they might be overemphasizing the literary aspects of the investigation. Still, Yu made a phone call to Wei, the editor of Death of a Chinese Professor at Shanghai Literature Publishing House.

  “About Yin again?” Wei was not very patient on the phone.

  “Sorry, we have to ask you some more questions,” Yu said.

  He could understand Wei’s impatience. Wei had gotten into trouble because of Death of a Chinese Professor. If anything politically incorrect was published, not only the author, but the editor too, was held responsible. Should the author be well-known, he would sometimes get away with little punishment, while the editor became the one to shoulder the “black pot.” Wei had been criticized for having not foreseen the political repercussions of Death of a Chinese Professor.

  “I have told you everything I know about Yin, Comrade Detective Yu. What a trouble-maker-even after her death.”

  “Well, last time, we talked about Yin’s novel, Death of a Chinese Professor. But Yang also had a book published by your house. A poetry collection.”

  “That’s right, but I am not the poetry editor. Jia Zijian edited the poetry collection. It came out sometime before the novel.”

  “Has Jia talked to you about it?”

  “We did not discuss it. A poetry book, you know, does not find too many readers, or make much money. Yin was involved with the book, of course. She was some character: she would not have let a single drop of fertilizer fall into anyone else’s field.”

  “Can I talk to Jia?”

  “He’s not in the office this morning. Call back in the afternoon.”

  This did not appear to lead anywhere. Wei, too, was sure that the poetry collection had not earned much money. For a while after their conversation, however, Yu could not shake off an uneasy feeling, as if he had missed something.

  Old Liang did not appear in the office in the morning. It was a silent protest, perhaps. For him, the case was finished when Wan confessed and any further investigational effort was an attack on Liang’s judgment.

  Because Yu had been turning the conversation with Wei over in his mind, he called Peiqin.

  “Wei only guesses,” Peiqin said, not ready to acknowledge that the sum involved would be so small. “You need to talk to the poetry editor.”

  “I don’t know why Wei reacted so negatively against a dead woman,” he said.

  “It beats me too. Why would he have a grudge against her?” Peiqin added abruptly, “He said she would not spare even a drop of fertilizer for anyone else. Who could he have meant?”

  “Somebody else who wanted to edit the collection?”

  “But no one could have competed with her. She alone had possession of many of Yang’s original poems.”

  The proverb Wei had quoted was commonly used to describe a greedy person, or a person in a given business transaction who was overreaching. “I’ll call you later.” It was Detective Yu’s turn to be abrupt. He put down the phone and then immediately picked it up again to dial the editor.

  “Comrade Wei, excuse me for one more question,” he said. “In our earlier talk, you used a proverb-not letting a single drop of fertilizer fall on another’s field. What did you mean?”

  “That’s something Jia said-in connection with a relative of Yang’s, I remember.” Wei hardly tried to conceal the impatience in his voice. “So what?”

  “Thank you so much, Comrade Wei. This may be very important for our work. I really appreciate your help.”

  “Well, I don’t know much about it. You’d better talk to Jia. He will be back soon.” Wei added, “Oh, one more thing. About a year ago, somebody called to inquire about the publication date of the poetry collection’s second edition. The call was transferred to me, and I did not have any information for him. He might have been a reader interested in the poetry, but I somehow got the feeling that he called for some other reason.”

  Yu decided to visit the publishing house.

  The Shanghai Literature Publishing House was located on Shaoxing Road. It had been a large private residence in the thirties. There was a new bookstore cafe on the first floor. Detective Yu called Jia and waited for him there.

  Jia, a man in his late forties, walked into the cafe in big strides. As Yu broached his topic, Jia eyed him in surprise.

  “The second edition has not come out, has it?”

  “What do you mean?” Yu said, reminded of the conversation with Wei.

  “Then why do you ask, Comrade Detective Yu?”

  Yu’s puzzlement was mirrored on Jia’s face. He apparently knew nothing about the murder investigation.

  “I don’t know anything about the first edition or the second edition, Comrade Jia. Can you tell me what you know, from the beginning?”

  “Well, it was several years ago,” Jia said slowly. “Yin asked me to arrange a meeting here at the publishing house to explain her contract for Yang’s poetry collection to Yang’s grandnephew.”

  “Yang’s grandnephew?”

  “Yes, a boy named Bao, from Jiangxi Province.”

  “Hold on here-a boy, from Jiangxi Province -” Yu interrupted Jia. It fit the description given by the shrimp woman. The time was right, too. It made sense for Yin to have referred to him as her nephew. In view of the difference in their ages, it would have been too much to call him her grandnephew. “Yes, please go on, Comrade Jia.”

  “His mother is an ex-educated youth, who married a local farmer and settled in Jiangxi. Bao must have come here to claim the money as the legitimate heir to Yang. After all, Yin ha
d not been married to Yang.”

  “That’s true. How did the meeting go?”

  “It was not a pleasant one. He did not understand why she got such a large share of the money-too large a portion, to his way of thinking.”

  “I do not really understand. Can you tell me a little more?”

  “When we publish the work of a dead author, we sometimes engage a special editor. Such an editor would collect the author’s various publications, compare different versions, annotate some of the text, and write an introduction if necessary. As special editor for Yang’s poetry, Yin did a lot of work, searching out poems from old magazines, and retrieving quite a few from his notebooks or scrap paper. It was no exaggeration to say that the collection would not have been published without her hard work. For such a job, we normally pay about fifty percent of the going rate.”

  “Fifty percent of what you normally pay an author?”

  “Yes. That is, of course, when the author is no longer around and no one else makes claim to the royalties. At that time, it was fifteen Yuan for ten lines, I remember, regardless of the print run. If there’s anything not conventional in our agreement with Yin, it was the additional twenty percent she claimed as a copying fee. We agreed, since it was still less than what we would have paid Yang. The sudden appearance of the grandnephew rattled us. There’s no precedent for a relative like him claiming anything, especially so long after publication. Yin maintained that what she earned was rightfully hers. In a way, she was right. So she refused to pay Bao.

  “I talked to my boss. Not that much money was involved. We did not want to cause a scandal. So we paid Bao an amount equivalent to the remaining thirty percent.”

  “In other words, you ended up paying the normal rate- 100%-for the book.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Did Bao accept the arrangement?”

  “He did, but in a grudging way.”

  “So he protested?”

  “He did not know anything about the publishing business, but he didn’t trust her. Obviously, he didn’t think it was fair. That’s why she wanted us to explain, I think. She was a very shrewd woman. There was nothing he could do. In those years, people did not sue each other over things like that.”

  “Do you think he hated her?”

  “That’s difficult for me to say. Nobody was happy. She even asked us to draft an agreement that he had to sign, specifying that he would never bother her again, before he received the money.”

  “So she ended up not paying a single penny to him?”

  “Not a single penny came from her pocket.”

  “Did he come back to you?”

  “No. He’s not in Shanghai. There will be no more money, he understands, until the book runs into a second edition. If it ever does.”

  “Will it?”

  “Well, we did a large printing for the first edition, which sold out. We thought about doing a second. Then her novel was published. Her name appeared on the government inside control list. We decided not to print a second edition.”

  “I’m confused, Comrade Jia. The poetry volume is not her book, is it?”

  “But her name’s also on the cover-as a special editor. Whether we remove her name or not, when people read the poems, they may think of the novel. My boss said it was not worth it.”

  “Do you have any other information about him-I mean the youth, Bao?”

  “No, nothing,” Jia said as he stood up. “Oh, he stayed with her for a few days, I remember. He had no relatives left in the city. She told me about it. But after the meeting, he must have gone back to Jiangxi immediately.”

  “I see. Thank you so much, Comrade Jia. Your information may be extremely important to our work.”

  It was like a missing piece of a puzzle that unexpectedly popped up at the last minute, Detective Yu thought, as he stepped out of the publishing house.

  Outside, it was a sunny, yet cold, day. A middle-aged, scantily clad idiot was searching in a trashcan not too far away, singing a doggerel verse:

  When red is black,

  Old time comes back.

  Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh,

  You’ve got to pack

  A Big Mac, a Big Mac!

  Behind Detective Yu, from the cafe, came a line from a Revolutionary Modern Model Beijing Opera, “Chairman Mao’s teaching thaws the ice in the dead of winter.” A contrast in cacophony.

  Yu had to find Bao, now perhaps a young man, he decided. From a pay phone at the end of Shaoxing Road, he called Chief Inspector Chen about the new lead.

  “I have contacted the Shanghai Archives Bureau again,” Chen said. “They have faxed me a list that contains some basic information about Hong and her son, Bao, and several pictures. I’ll fax it to you. It may help.”

  It would be difficult for Yu to find these people in just a few days. He started by contacting Hong’s middle school. According to the dean, there had been a class reunion the previous year. Hong had not attended, but one of her former classmates still had her address. With the address he obtained from her, Yu dialed the number of the Jiangxi Police Bureau.

  Their reply came in the late afternoon. Hong was there, still in the village where she had already spent more than twenty years. A poor lower-middle-class peasant’s wife, she had become just such a peasant herself. Chairman Mao’s theory of the transformation of educated youths still applied. Hong did not want to come back to Shanghai, not because of her continuous belief in Mao, but because of her successful transformation. A poor lower-middle-class peasant would be a laughingstock in Shanghai today.

  Bao was not there. He had left the village again for Shanghai about a year ago. In the nineties, millions of farmers found it impossible to stay on in their backward villages as they watched TV and saw how the fashionable, free-spending middle class lived in the coastal cities. In spite of the government’s efforts to balance the development of the city and the countryside, an alarming divide between rich and poor, urban and rural, coastal and inland had appeared-these were the differences that the economic reforms Deng had launched a decade ago had helped create.

  Like so many others, Bao had left home to seek his fortune. The first few months, he occasionally wrote home, and once even mailed fifty Yuan to his mother but the correspondence became less frequent, and then stopped. According to someone from the same village, Bao had not been doing too well in the city. The latest information Hong had was that about six months ago, Bao had shared a room with some other people from Jiangxi. Then he had moved out without leaving a new address.

  So the problem was how to find Bao in a city where millions of people kept pouring in from every province. With new construction going up everywhere, provincials provided an ever-growing mobile labor force. Naturally, they did not bother to register their residences; they stayed wherever they found cheap housing.

  Yu went over to the old address, where Bao had lived until six months ago; only one of Bao’s former roommates remained. He did not know where Bao was. They did not keep in touch.

  A notice was sent out to the neighborhood committees, particularly to those areas where provincials were known to gather together.

  In normal circumstances, three to five days would be considered a reasonable period before any feedback started coming in, but Yu did not think he could wait that long.

  Chapter 21

  Chen had several days left of his vacation, but he went to the office because he had turned in the translation of the New World business proposal. It had not taken as long as he had expected. Of course, he anticipated that he would have to make minor changes when Gu’s American partner faxed back corrections and suggestions. But according to Gu, the initial response from across the Pacific Ocean was positive. Chen himself was now quite satisfied with the English proposal, which presented a comprehensive, convincing argument for the potential success of the project.

  It would be nice to have a secretary working for him here in the office too, he thought, but he knew he’d better wait patiently, unti
l he moved up one more notch in the bureau hierarchy before making this request.

  There was a noise outside the window. He looked out. Not too far away, another matchbox-like apartment complex, supposedly postmodern, seemed to look back at him with a dull stare. Each building in the area seemed to be identical, each lost in the other’s reflection.

  After all, the New World might be a good addition to the city, a fresh alternative to the commercially designed metropolitan landscape, even though the New World itself had been conceived out of commercial considerations.

  What convinced him of its plausibility was not the study of the city’s architectural history, as elaborately presented in the business proposal, but his realization that there was now a rising middle class eager to claim a culture of its own. China was no longer a society of Utopian egalitarianism as it once had been under Chairman Mao.

  From the various documents littering the desk, he managed to dig out the latest bulletin of the city housing committee. Turning to the last section of the bulletin, he started checking through a list of rooms that had been turned back in to the city authorities.

  Housing assignment was a very complicated issue. Because of the severe housing shortage, some of the new apartment assignees had to hand over their former rooms in exchange. Most of them were single, all-purpose rooms rather than apartments. Invariably, they were smaller, or shabbier, than the newly assigned housing. But they would in turn be reassigned by the city housing committee. Those on the top of their respective working unit waiting list, like Detective Yu, might not be interested in such secondhand rooms with neither bathrooms nor separate kitchens.

  Chen wanted to see if there was a room listed in the area designated for the construction of the New World. To his pleasant surprise, he found one-actually, one and half rooms, converted out of an original shikumen front wing, facing the courtyard. The former resident had even partitioned the wing into two areas, though the small back room thus created could contain only a single bed. And there was an extra bonus. Rooms in shikumen houses built in the thirties never had an indoor flush toilet; the chamber pot was a necessary nuisance. Here the previous resident had installed a kind of electric chamber pot. It was not as good as a toilet, but it would spare its owner the trouble of getting up early every morning to perform the routine of chamber pot emptying and washing.