Qiu Xiaolong - Death of a Red Heroine

“No, thank you, I can’t stay. “But Dr. Xia remained in the doorway, fidgeting, then half turning to the main office.“But I have to ask a favor of you.”

“Sure, whatever I can do,” Chen said, wondering why Dr. Xia chose such a moment to approach him for a favor.

“I want you to introduce me into the Party. I’m no activist, I know. There’s a long way for me to go before I can prove myself to be a worthy Party member. Still, I’m a honest Chinese intellectual with minimum conscience.”

“What?” he was astonished. “But-haven’t you heard the news here?”

“No, I haven’t,” Dr. Xia raised his voice, waving his hand, adjusting his gold-rimmed glasses. “Nor do I care. Not at all. Listen, you are a loyal Party member, that’s all I know. If you are not qualified, no one else in the whole bureau is.”

“I don’t know what to say, Dr. Xia.”

“Remember the two lines from General Yue Fei? ‘I will kowtow to Heaven / when the land is set in order.’ To set our land in order, that is what you want, and what I want.”

With this dramatic statement, Dr. Xia raised his head higher, as if defying an invisible audience, and walked off, not bothering to take a look at the surprised faces in the large office.

“Bye, Dr. Xia,” someone said belatedly.

Chen closed the door after himself with one hand, the duck in the other.

He knew why Dr. Xia had paid him this unexpected visit. It was to show his support. The good old doctor, who had suffered such a lot during the Cultural Revolution, was far from ready to join the Party. The visit-together with the rehearsed statement and the roast duck-was a stance Dr. Xia felt impelled to take as an honest Chinese intellectual-with “minimum conscience.”

And it was not just for him, Chief Inspector Chen realized.

It might be a losing battle, but Chen saw he was not alone in it. Detective Yu, Peiqin, Old Hunter, Overseas Chinese Lu, Ruru, Wang Feng, Little Zhou… and Dr. Xia, too.

Because of them, he was not going to quit.

He resumed reading Guan’s file, making notes until it was long after office hours. Then he ate a small portion of the roast duck. The sight of its golden, crispy skin had revived his appetite. Dr. Xia had even included a couple of pancakes. The duck, rolled in the pancake with the special sauce and green onion, tasted so delicious. He stuffed the remaining duck into the refrigerator.

At about nine o’clock he left the bureau. It did not take him long to arrive at Nanjing Road. It appeared less crowded at that late hour, but the ceaseless transformation of the neon signs infused the scene with fresh vitality.

Presently the First Department Store came in view. A middle-aged man who was gazing into one of the store’s windows moved away at Chen’s footsteps. Chen, too, came to a stop, catching himself in front of a display of summer fashions, his own reflection faint against the glass. The lights illuminated a line of mannequins in a dazzling variety of bathing suits-skinny strap, tulip-cup neckline, brief-and-halter combination, bikini bottom, and black-and-white trim. The plastic models looked alive in the artificial light.

“A stick of ice sugar haw!”

“What?” Chen was startled.

“Sweet and sour ice sugar haw. Have one!”

An old peddler had approached with a red wheelbarrow sporting sticks of haw, sugar-glazed scarlet, shining, almost sensual. An uncommon sight on Nanjing Road. Perhaps because it was late, the peddler had been able to sneak into the area. Chen bought one. It tasted rather sour, different from those his mother had bought for him. He would have been no more than five or six, sucking at the stick, and his mother, then so youthful, was wearing her orange Qi skirt, holding a floral umbrella in one hand, and his hand in the other…

Things had changed so fast.

Would these models in the window age too?

A silly question. More silly than a chief inspector in his impressive uniform sucking a stick of haw, wandering along Nanjing Road.

It was nonetheless a fact that plastics could wear out. A cracked plastic flower, dust-covered, on the windowsill of an out-of-way hotel room. An image that had so touched him, inexplicably, during a trip in his college years. Probably left there by another traveler. No longer lustrous, no longer beautiful-

No longer politically attractive-in others’ eyes.

Models, plastic or otherwise, would be replaced.

A model worker in the early nineties, Guan might have had more realistic worries. While on display, young, vivacious, she could admire her reflection in the ever-changing window of politics, but she must have been aware that her charm was fading. The myth of the model worker, though still honored in the Party newspapers, now appealed to few. Intellectuals got media attention. Entrepreneurs got money. TOEFL test takers got passports. HCC got positions. A model worker got less and less.

No reversing time and tide, Guan knew. The way things were going, in a few years, to be a model worker would literally be a joke.

For her, however, it had never been a joke. It had been the meaning of her life, and her life had not been an easy one. She’d had an obligation to be a model at all times: to say the right words, to do the right things, and to make the right decisions. A model-it was, and was not, a metaphor. That’s where she had found her life’s worth-at the moment of being admired, and emulated by others…

Once more his thoughts were interrupted by footsteps coming from behind him. He seemed to hear a young girl’s giggle. Chief Inspector Chen must have presented a sight -a police officer gazing at the window full of glamorous mannequins in scanty swimming attire. He did not know how long he had been standing there. He took one more look as he started to move on.

Across the street, a small fruit store was still open. He was familiar with it because his mother had used it as a shortcut to a lane where one of her close friends had lived. The lane had several entrances. One, facing Nanjing Road, had at first been partially blocked by a fruit stall, which had then been converted into the fruit store, totally blocking the access. Behind those tall shelves of fruit, however, there still was a back door opening from the inside, and the store employees used it for their own convenience. He had no idea how his mother had discovered it.

Chief Inspector Chen had not used the shortcut before, though the owner greeted him warmly like an old customer. He stepped behind the first row of shelves, examining an apple like a fastidious customer. The back door was still there. He pushed at it and it opened into a half-deserted lane. He cut through the lane with quick steps. The other end led out to Guizhou Road, where he stopped a passing taxi, and gave the driver directions. “Qinghe Lane, on Hubei Road.”

He made sure he was not being followed.

T he stick of sugar haw was as yet unfinished when the taxi pulled up at Qinghe Lane.

Chief Inspector Chen threw the stick into a trash bin. A few feet away, an idiot stood tittering all by himself, holding a plastic bag above his head like a hood. He did not see anybody else near Guan’s dorm building. The Internal Security people were probably stationed under his own window.

On his way up to Guan’s room he met nobody. It was a Friday night. People were watching a popular, sentimental Japanese soap opera that showed a young girl losing a battle to cancer. His mother had told him about it; everybody was enthralled.

Not Guan.

At her door, the lock remained unchanged. He still had the key. Once inside, he locked the door behind him. He did not turn on the light; instead, he took out a flashlight. He stood in the middle of the room. There was something he wanted to find. Something crucial to the conclusion of the case. If it had ever been there, it might have vanished by now. Wu might have been to the room, found it, and made away with it-hadn’t one of the neighbors mentioned a man who might have come from Guan’s room? Perhaps he should have searched more thougroughly, should have borrowed a forensics expert. But they were so understaffed, and it had not seemed worthwhile. The small room could not conceal much.