Qiu Xiaolong - Death of a Red Heroine

“It’s much more than quotas, young man,” another man said. “They get those high positions like they were born to be way above us. With their connections, power, and money, what can’t they do? Several well-known actresses were involved in the case, I’ve heard. All of them stripped naked, as white as lambs, scratching and screeching all night long. Wu has not wasted his days.”

“Well, I heard that Wu Bing still is in a coma in Huadong Hospital,” an elderly man cut in, apparently not comfortable with the direction of the discussion.

“Who is Wu Bing?”

“Wu Xiaoming’s father.”

“Good for the old man,” the man in the white T-shirt said. “He will be spared the humiliation of his son’s downfall.”

“Who cares? The father should be responsible for his son’s crime. I’m glad, for once, our government has made the right decision.”

“Come on, you think they’re serious? It’s just like the old saying, ‘Kill a chicken to scare monkeys.’”

“Whatever you say, this time the chicken is an HCC, and I would like to make a stew of it, delicious, tender, plus a pinch of MSG.”

As he stood listening to the discussion, the various aspects of the case came together.

It was so politically complicated, this homicide case. In the inner-Party struggle, Wu’s execution was a symbolic blow to the hard-liners, so that they would not continue to stand in the way of reform, but it was also a message modified by Wu’s father being sick and away from the center, so that it would not upset those still in power to the point of shaking the “political stability.” In terms of ideological propaganda, the case was conveniently presented as the consequence of Western bourgeois influence, which protected the Party’s credit. And finally, to ordinary Chinese people, the case also served as a demonstration of the Party’s determination to fight corruption at all levels, especially among the HCC, a dramatic gesture demanded by China’s politics after the summer of 1989.

The combination of all these factors had made Wu Xiaoming the best candidate for an example. It was possible that failing Wu Xiaoming, another HCC with a similar background would have been chosen for such a purpose. It was proper and right that Wu should be punished. No question about it. But the question was: Had Wu been punished for the crime he had committed?

So Chief Inspector Chen had played right into the hands of politics.

The realization came to him as he left the hotel and walked slowly along Nanjing Road with heavy steps. The street was as crowded as ever. People were walking, shopping, talking, in high spirits. The sun cast its brilliance over the most prosperous thoroughfare of the city. He bought a copy of the People’s Daily.

In his high-school days, he had believed in everything published in the People’s Daily, including one particular term: proletarian dictatorship. It meant a sort of dictatorship logically necessary to reach the final stage of communism, thus justifying all means toward that ultimate end. The term proletarian dictatorship was no longer used. Instead, the term was: the Party’s interests.

He was no longer such an unquestioning believer.

For he could hardly believe in what he himself had done.

Wu Xiaoming had been executed at the moment when he had been sleeping with Ling. What had happened between Ling and him was, by the orthodox Communist code, another instance of “Western bourgeois decadence.” The same crime Wu had been accused of-”decadent lifestyle under the influence of Western bourgeois ideology.”

Chief Inspector Chen could tell himself, of course, a number of convenient things-that things are complicated, that justice must be upheld, that the Party’s interest is above everything else, and that the end justifies the means.

But it was more than that, he realized: the end could not but be transformed by the use of certain means.

“Whoever fights monsters,” Nietzsche said, “should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.”

His thoughts were interrupted by a request in an Anhui accent, “Could you take a picture for me, please?” A young girl held out a small camera.

“Sure.” He took the camera from her.

She began posing in front of the First Department Store. A provincial girl, new to Shanghai, she chose the glamorous models in the store window for a background. He pressed the button.

“Thank you so much!”

She could have been Guan, ten or fifteen years earlier, her eyes sparkling with hopes for the future, Chen reflected with a sinking heart.

A successful conclusion to an important case. The question for him was: How had he managed to bring the case to a triumphant close? Through his own HCC connection-and a carnal connection- with a politburo member’s daughter.

What irony!

Chief Inspector Chen had sworn that he would do everything in his power to bring Wu to justice, but he had not supposed that he would have been brought to connive in such a devious way.

Detective Yu had known nothing about it. Otherwise, Chen doubted that his assistant would have collaborated. Like other ordinary Chinese people, Yu was not unjustified in his deep-rooted prejudice against the HCC.

Even though Ling might prove to be an exception. Or just an exception with him. For him.

He saw a number of similarities between Guan, the national model worker and Chen, the chief inspector. The most significant was that each had a relationship with an HCC.

There was only one difference.

Guan had been less lucky in her love, for Wu had not reciprocated her affection. Perhaps Wu had cared for her a bit. But politics and ambition had happened to be in their way.

Had Guan really loved Wu? Was it possible that she, too, was driven by politics? There could not be a definite answer-now they were both dead.

How about his own feelings toward Ling?

It was not that Chief Inspector Chen had deliberately, coldly used her. To be fair to himself, he had never allowed such an idea to come to the surface of his mind, but what about subconsciously?

Nor was he sure that there had been nothing but passion on his part last night.

Gratitude for her magnanimity?

In Beijing, they had cared for each other, but they had parted, a decision he had not really regretted. All those years, he had often thought of her, but he had also thought of others, made other friends-girlfriends, too.

When the case first came to his attention, he was dancing with Wang at his house-warming party. In the following days, it was Wang who had accompanied him through the early stages of the investigation. In fact, he had hardly thought of Ling at all in those days. The letter written at the post office had been anything but romantic; it was inspired by a moment of desperation-by the instincts of a survivor.

He was a survivor, too ambitious to perish in ignoble silence.

It was the haunting image of Liu Yong, the deplorable Song dynasty poet, who had only a prostitute to take pity on him at his deathbed, that had spurred him into desperate action. He had resolved not to end up a loser like Liu Yong. You have to find a way out, he’d told himself.

That’s the way she came back into his life.

Maybe just for the one night.

Maybe more than that.

Now what was he supposed to do?

In spite of the difference in their family background, there ought to be some way for them to be together. They should be able to live in the world of their own discourse, not just in other people’s interpretations.

Still, he could not help shuddering at the prospect before him. For it was not going to be a world of their own, but in which he would, perhaps, begin to find his life much easier, even effortless. He would never be able to shake off the feeling that nothing was accomplished through his own efforts. She did not need to go to this or that minister, claiming him as hers. He would have become an HCC himself. And people would be eager to do a lot of things for him.