When Red is Black

by Qiu Xiaolong

  “That may be true,” Chen said.

  “This concerns the image of our city, especially from perspective of the city traffic control office. I believe it’s important to take preventive measures.” Gu added, “You were the director of that office, I remember.”

  “Acting director. I was only the acting director for a short while.”

  “Oh, what’s the name of that secretary of yours? Meiling or something. She simply adores you. ‘The temple is too small for a god like Chief Inspector Chen,’” was what she said, the night she was with you at the Dynasty Club. The traffic control office will surely do whatever you say.”

  So Gu was asking him to put in a word on his behalf to the city traffic control office.

  “You cannot rely on Meiling’s words, Mr. Gu,” Chen said. “Why didn’t you put this request in your earlier proposal to the city government?”

  “It’s such a big project that some details may have been overlooked.”

  But Gu had not overlooked this necessity, Chen was sure. Gu must have had in mind Chen’s former position when he’d offered him the well-paid translation project, and sent him White Cloud as a little secretary, as well as the air-conditioner that now stood against the bookshelf, the heater in the bathroom, the presents on his mother’s nightstand in the hospital-and the tip about Bao’s address, too.

  There’s no free lunch. He should have known better.

  After having translated the New World business proposal, however, he believed that the request was a reasonable one. In fact, he found himself attracted to the vision of the New World, and not only because he had been paid so generously for the translation of the proposal; he had come to believe that the project would enhance the cultural image of the city. For a fast-developing city like Shanghai, cultural preservation could be of great significance, even though the New World was designed to meet only the demand for an exterior retro look.

  And for a grand project like this, a multi-story garage would be necessary. It would be a disaster for Huaihai Road, as well as the neighboring areas, to be jammed with cars of New World shoppers parked everywhere at random. So the traffic control office might make a suggestion to the city government.

  For Gu, the grant of land in the heart of the city, in the name of cultural preservation, would save him a huge amount of money, and perhaps even the project itself. Businessmen applied to the city government for the use of land and the government charged them in accordance to the specified land usage. For a high-end commercial use like the New World, Gu would have had to pay a very large sum. But, as he had confided to Chen, Gu had applied instead for a cultural preservation project. Of course he had not included a multi-level garage in that proposal, for it would have aroused suspicion. But as an add-on, backed up by the traffic control office, he might get quick approval. What Gu had paid for the translation was nothing, like a feather plucked from a Beijing duck, compared with what he hoped to gain.

  From another perspective, however, the grant of Gu’s request would mean a loss of revenue to the traffic control office. A large modern garage would put a lot of cars out of sight, but it would also put a lot of patrol officers out of work and eliminate the fines they might otherwise collect. So it might not be that easy for him to back Gu’s request, he understood, and Gu understood this too.

  “Well, when it is convenient, put in a word for the New World,” Gu said very smoothly.

  Chen could always claim that he was still waiting for that convenient moment, but he would probably not do so. The bottom line was that he was obliged to help Gu with respect to the garage request. “I’ll make a couple of phone calls,” he said vaguely at the end of the phone conversation. “And I will call you back, Gu.”

  Chen decided that first he had better go to the hospital. He had to pay the medical bill there. His mother would be released that evening. She had been worried about the expense. There was no point letting her know how much it cost; in any case, the money from the translation would surely cover it. This gave him an extra sense of self-justification, he reflected, as he arrived at the hospital accounting office. In the age of the market economy, the hospital made no exceptions, so neither need he, as long as he made money in a way that was acceptable to the system.

  To his surprise, he learned that his mother’s factory had already paid the hospital bill. “It’s been taken care of, Comrade Chief Inspector Chen,” the hospital cashier said with a broad grin. “Comrade Zhou Dexing, the factory director, wants you to give him a call when you have time. This is his number.”

  Chen dialed the number from a pay phone in the lobby.

  It was no great surprise to him to hear a warm speech from Comrade Zhou Dexing: “Our factory is having a difficult time, Comrade Chief Inspector Chen. The national economy is in a transitional period, and a state-run factory meets with one problem after another. For an old worker like your mother, however, we will take responsibility for her medical expense. She has worked all her life with utter dedication to the factory. We know what a good comrade she is.”

  “Thank you so much, Comrade Zhou.”

  What a good comrade her son is; somebody must have tipped him off about that, thought Chen. Whatever his motivation, what Comrade Zhou had said and done was politically correct, even an appropriate subject for an editorial in the People’s Daily.

  “For our work in the future, we will continue to enjoy her support, I hope, and yours too, Comrade Chief inspector. I have heard so much about your important work for the city.”

  These official courtesies were a polite veneer. But Chen was not worried. There are things a man can do, and things a man cannot do. This Confucian dictum could also mean that no matter what others might ask him to do, he would make his decision in accordance with his principles.

  A new sort of social relationship, cobweb-like, seemed to have developed, connecting people closely together along the threads of their interests. The existence of each thread depended on the others. Like it or not, Chief Inspector Chen was bound up in this network of connections.

  “You really flatter me, Comrade Zhou,” Chen said. “We all work for socialist China. Of course we will help each other.”

  That was not the Confucian ideal of a society, not the one envisioned by his father, a Neo-Confucian intellectual of the old generation. Ironically, Chen reflected, it was not totally irrelevant to Confucianism either. Yiqi, or the oughtness of the situation, a Confucian principle that emphasized moral obligation, had somehow evolved into oughtness of one’s own interest.

  But Chen reminded himself that he had no time for such philosophical speculation.

  He walked into his mother’s room. She was still asleep. Although the test results had excluded the particular possibility that had worried him, she had been growing visibly weaker in the last few years. He decided to stay with her for a while. Since the onset of the translation project, almost simultaneously with the murder of Yin Lige, this was the first day that he could spend some peaceful time with his mother without worrying about this clue or that lead, or about definitions and phrasing.

  She stirred in her sleep, but she did not wake. It might be as well. Once awake, she would probably lead their talk to her number one question: Now that you are established in life, what about your family?

  In traditional Chinese culture, both “establishment” and “family” were at the top of a man’s list of priorities, though the latter appeared more urgent to his mother. Whatever he might offer about his career and Party standing, his personal life was still a blank page to her.

  Again, he thought of the line under the painting of the goose in Beijing, although in a different context: What will come, eventually comes. Perhaps it was not time yet.

  He started peeling an apple for his mother. That was something White Cloud had done in his place, he remembered. Afterward, he put the peeled apple in a plastic bag on the nightstand. He looked into the drawer of the nightstand. He might as well start putting things together for her. Perhaps he w
ould have to leave before she woke up.

  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, m
ad 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.