Qiu Xiaolong - Death of a Red Heroine

“If only I were a chief inspector, a rising political star.”

“Oh, sure,” he said, raising his cup, “many thanks to you.”

But it was true, or at least to a certain extent.

They had first met on a professional level. She had been assigned to write about the “people’s policemen,” and his name had been mentioned by Party Secretary Li of the Shanghai Police Bureau. As she talked with Chen in her office, she became more interested in how he spent his evenings than in how he did his day job. Chen had had several translations of Western mystery novels published. The reporter was not a fan of that particular genre, but she saw a fresh perspective for her article. And then the readers, too, responded favorably to the image of a young, well-educated police officer who “works late into night, translating books to enlarge the horizon of his professional expertise, when the city of Shanghai is peacefully asleep.” The article caught the attention of a senior vice minister in Beijing, Comrade Zheng Zuoren, who believed he had discovered a new role model. It was in part due to Zheng’s recommendation that Chen had been promoted to chief inspector.

It was only partially true, however, that Chen had chosen to translate mysteries to enrich his professional knowledge. It was more because he, an entry-level police officer at the time, needed extra cash. He had also translated a collection of American imagist poetry, but the publishing house offered him only two hundred copies in lieu of royalties for that work.

“You were so sure of the motive for my translations?” he said.

“Of course, as I declared in that article: a ‘people’s policeman’s sense of dedication’.” She laughed and tilted her glass in the sunlight.

At that moment, she was no longer the reporter who had talked to him seriously, sitting upright at the office desk, an open notebook in front of her. Nor was he a chief inspector. Just a man with a woman whose company he enjoyed, in his own room.

“It’s been over a year since the day we first met in the hallway of the Wenhui office building,” he said, refilling her wineglass.

“‘ Time is a bird. / It perches, and it flies, ’” she said.

These were the lines from his short poem entitled “Parting.” Nice of her to remember it.

“You must have been inspired by a parting you cannot forget,” she said. “A parting from somebody very dear to you.”

Her instinct was right, he thought. The poem was about his parting from a dear friend in Beijing years earlier, and it was still unforgotten. He had never talked to Wang about it. She was looking at him over the rim of her glass, taking a long slow sip, her eyes twinkling.

Did he catch a note of jealousy in her voice?

The poem had been written long ago, but its catalyst was not something he wanted to mention at the moment. “A poem does not have to be about something in the poet’s life. Poetry is impersonal. As T. S. Eliot has said, it is not letting loose an emotional crisis-”

“What, an emotional crisis?” Overseas Chinese Lu’s excited voice burst into their conversation. Lu barged through the doorway carrying an enormous beggar’s chicken, his plump face and plump body all the more expansive in a fashionable heavily-shoulder-padded white suit and a bright red tie. Lu’s wife Ruru, thin as a bamboo shoot, and angular in a tight yellow dress, brought in a big purple ceramic pot.

“What are you two talking about?” Ruru asked.

Putting the food on the table, Lu threw himself down on the new leather sofa, looking at them with an exaggerated inquiry on his face.

Chen did not answer the question. He had a ready excuse in busily unwrapping the beggar’s chicken. It smelled wonderful. The recipe had supposedly originated when a beggar baked a soil-and-lotus-leaf-wrapped chicken in a pile of ashes. The result was an astonishing success. It must have taken Lu a long time to cook.

Then he turned to the ceramic pot. “What’s that?”

“Squid stew with pork,” Ruru explained. “Your favorite in high school, Lu said.”

“Comrade Chief Inspector,” Lu went on, “emerging Party cadre, and romantic poet to boot, you do not need my help, not in this new apartment, not with a young girl as beautiful as a flower beside you.”

“What are you talking about?” Wang said.

“Oh, it is just about the dinner-how delicious it smells. I’m going to have a fit if we don’t start right away.”

“He’s just like that, he totally forgets himself with his old pal,” Ruru explained to Wang whom she had met before. “Nowadays, only Chief Inspector Chen calls him ‘Overseas Chinese’.”

“It’s seven,” Chen said. “If they’re not here yet, Professor Zhou and his wife won’t come. So let’s start.”

There was no dining room. With the Lus’ help, Chen set up the folding table and chairs. When he was alone, Chen ate at the desk. But he had bought the space-saving set for occasions like this.

The dinner turned out to be a great success. Chen had worried about his capability as a chef, but the guests finished all the food rapidly. The improvised soup was especially popular. Lu even asked him for the recipe.

Rising from the table, Ruru offered to wash the dishes in the kitchen. Chen protested, but Lu intervened. “My old woman should not be deprived of the opportunity, Comrade Chief Inspector, to display her female domestic virtue.”

“You chauvinistic men,” Wang said, joining Ruru in the kitchen.

Lu helped him clear the table, put the leftovers away, and brew a pot of Oolong tea.

“I need to ask a favor of you, old pal,” Lu said, holding a teacup in his hand.

“What is it?”

“I’ve always dreamed of starting a restaurant. For a restaurant, the heart of the matter is location. I have been looking around for a long time. Now here’s the opportunity of a lifetime. You know Seafood City on Shanxi Road, don’t you?”

“Yes, I’ve heard of it.”

“Xin Gen, the owner of Seafood City, is a compulsive gambler- he plays day and night. He pays no attention to his business, and all his chefs are idiots. It’s bankrupt.”

“Then you should try your hand at it.”

“For such an excellent location, the price Xin is asking is incredibly cheap. In fact, I don’t have to pay the whole amount, he’s so desperate. What he wants is a fifteen percent downpayment. So I just need a loan to start with. I’ve sold the few fur coats my old man left behind, but we’re still several thousand short.”

“You couldn’t have chosen a better time, Overseas Chinese. I just got two checks from the Lijiang Publishing House,” Chen said. “One’s for the reprint of The Riddle of the Chinese Coffin and the other’s an advance for The Silent Step.”

But it was not really a good time. Chen had been contemplating buying some more furniture for the new apartment. He had seen a mahogany desk in a thrift shop in Suzhou. Ming-style, perhaps of genuine Ming dynasty craftsmanship, for five thousand Yuan. It was expensive, but it could be the very desk on which he was going to write his future poems. Several critics had complained about his departure from the tradition of classical Chinese poetry, and the antique desk might convey a message from the past to him. So he had written a letter to Chief Editor Liu of the Lijiang Publishing House, asking for the advance.

Chen took out the two checks, signed the back of them, added a personal check, and gave all of them to Lu.

“Here they are,” he said. “Treat me when your restaurant is a booming success.”

“I’ll pay you back,” Lu said, “with interest.”

“Interest? One more word about interest, and I will take them back.”

“Then come and be my partner. I have to do something, old pal. Or I’ll have a crisis with Ruru tonight.”