Qiu Xiaolong - Death of a Red Heroine

He went out of his way to buy a pound of roast suckling pork in Heavenly Taste, a new privately run delicatessen. The suckling pork skin looked golden and crisp. She would like it. Though in her seventies, she still had good teeth. She had been out of his thoughts for days. He had even forgotten to buy anything for her in Guangzhou. He felt bad; he was her only son.

As the old house came in view, it struck him as strange, nearly unrecognizable, despite the fact that he had lived there with his mother for years, and in his own apartment for only a few months. The common cement sink by the front door was so damp he spotted green moss sprouting abundantly near the tap. The cracked walls would need extensive repairs and redecoration. The stairway was musty and dark, and the landings were piled with cardboard boxes and wicker baskets. Some might have been there for years.

His mother was silhouetted against the light falling through the curtain pulled halfway across the attic window.

“You haven’t called for a few days, son.”

“Sorry, Mother. I’ve been so busy recently,” he said, “but you’re always in my thoughts. And this room, too.”

The familiar yet unfamiliar room. The framed photograph of his father in the forties in cap and gown stood on the cracked chest of drawers, an earnest-looking young scholar with a bright future. The photograph shone in the light. She was standing by it.

She had never really gotten over her husband’s death, he reflected, though she seemed to manage, going to the food market every day, chatting with her neighbors, and doing Taiji practice in the morning. On several occasions he had tried to give her some money, but she declined. She insisted that he should save for himself.

“Don’t you worry about me,” she said, with the emphasis on the last word. “I’ve got a lot to do. I talk to your uncle on the phone almost every day, and I watch TV in the evening. There are more channels this month.”

She had accepted only two things from him: the phone and the color TV.

The phone was not really his. The bureau had bought and installed it for him. When he was about to move out, he had another one set up in the new apartment. Theoretically, Chief Inspector Chen ought to have given up the old one, but he had made a point of having to talk to his mother everyday. She was in her seventies, living all by herself. Party Secretary Li had agreed with a nod; it was like being given a check for three thousand Yuan. The phone set itself was not that expensive, but with so many Shanghai people on the waiting list, installation would have cost a small fortune, not to mention all the official documents required to prove its necessity.

To her, it would be an invaluable safeguard against loneliness.

And the TV, too. He had bought it at the “state price” on sale-affordable at his salary level. He was a chief inspector, not just anybody, and the store manager knew him well, too. And why not? During the Cultural Revolution, his father’s home had been ransacked by the Red Guards. In the early eighties, when his father’s losses were estimated, the figure was also calculated at the state price, that of fifteen years earlier. His mother’s five-karat diamond wedding ring, appraised according to the state price, had been valued at less than one-third of the cost of a color TV.

“Have some tea?” his mother asked.

“Fine.”

“A dish of Suzhou sugar-frosted haw to go with the tea?”

“Fantastic.”

He took the cup and saucer from his mother. In amazement, he watched her taking the jasmine blossom from her hair and putting it in her own cup. He had never seen anybody drinking jasmine tea made this way. The petals floated on the dark green water in her cup.

“At my age, I can indulge myself a little, I think. Only twenty cents for the flower.”

“Fresh jasmine flower tea,” he said. “What a wonderful idea!”

He was glad she had not put the flower in his teacup.

He suspected she had never stopped worrying about money. Her husband, though a well-known scholar, had left practically nothing, except the books she could not bring herself to sell. A celebrity’s widow, she considered herself above peddling. But her pension would hardly cover her most basic needs. The jasmine flower, perhaps two or three days old, was about to be discarded anyway. She had made a virtue out of necessity. Next time he would bring her half a pound of genuine jasmine tea, he promised himself. The famous Cloud and Mist tea, from the Yellow Mountains.

She put down her cup and leaned back on the rocking rattan chair. “Well,” she said. “Tell me how things are with you.”

“Everything’s fine,” he said.

“What about the most important thing in your life?”

It was a question he knew too well. She referred to his dating a girl, marrying her, and having a child. He always claimed to be too busy, which happened to be true.

“There are so many things happening at the bureau, Mother.”

“So you have no time even to think about it. Is that right?” she said, familiar with his answer.

He nodded, like a filial son, despite the Confucian saying, “There are three things that make a man unfilial, and to have no offspring is the most serious.”

“What about Wang Feng?”

“She is going to join her husband in Japan.” He added, “And I’m helping her get the visa.”

“Well-”she said, with no disappointment in her voice, “it might not be a bad thing for you, son. In fact, I’m glad. She is married-at least in name, I know. Not to break up someone’s marriage is a worthy deed. Buddha will bless you for it. But since you parted with that girl in Beijing, Wang seemed to be the only one you really cared for.”

“Let’s not talk about it, okay?”

“Remember Yan Hong, the anchorwoman? She’s really famous on the Oriental channel now. Everybody says how wonderful she is. A golden voice, and a golden heart, too. I ran across her in the First Department Store last week. She used to call you in the evening-I recognized her voice-but you did not return her calls. Now she’s a happy mother with a chubby son, but she still called me ‘aunt.’”

“Our relationship was totally professional.”

“Come on,” she said, sniffing at the jasmine blossom in her tea, “you’ve withdrawn into a shell.”

“I wish I had a shell. It might protect me. For the last two weeks, I have had so many matters to deal with. Today is the first time I could steal a couple of hours,” he said, trying to change the subject. “So I’ve come here.”

“Don’t worry about me, “she said, “and don’t change the subject either. With your current pay and position, you should not have too much difficulty finding someone.”

“I give you my word, Mother,” he said, “I will find a wonderful daughter-in-law for you in the near future.”

“Not for me, but for yourself.”

“Yes, you’re right.”

“You have time to have supper with me, I hope?”

“As long as you don’t make anything special for me.”

“No, I won’t.” She stood up. “I’ll just need to warm up a few leftover dishes.”

Not too many dishes, he suspected, looking into the small bamboo food cabinet on the wall. She could not afford a refrigerator.

The small cabinet held only one tiny dish of cabbage pickles, a bottle of fermented bean curd, and half a dish of green bean sprouts. But a bowl of watery rice porridge and pickle tasted quite palatable after a week of exotic delicacies in Ouyang’s company.

“Don’t worry, mother,” he said, adding a tiny bit of the bean curd to his porridge. “I’m going to attend a Central Party Institute seminar in October, and after that I’ll have more time for myself.”