Qiu Xiaolong - When Red is Black

Sitting so close together at the table, Chen was not unaware of the age difference between them. And of all the other differences, too. They practically belonged to different generations.

To someone like him, whose elementary school years had been in the sixties, a bar or a cafe carried with it associations with bourgeois decadence, decried in all the official textbooks. He might be something of an exception because of his English studies. Still, if he visited a cafe, it was first of all for a cup of good coffee, and occasionally, if time allowed, to spend a couple of hours reading a book over the coffee.

White Cloud, however, had studied no such textbooks. Perhaps a place like Golden Time Rolling Backward symbolized a cultivated taste a notch above that of the common folk who drank tea with leaves in their cups, a sense of being part of the social elite. Whether she genuinely enjoyed the taste of the Lipton teabag tea or not did not matter that much.

An elderly couple rose from their table. The music was good for dancing. They started doing slow steps in a space in front of the grand piano, a hardwood area large enough for ten or fifteen people. Chen caught White Cloud looking at him expectantly. He was going to reach out to her when she touched his hand, tentatively. Dance could be an excuse, he had read, to hold someone it was otherwise impossible or impropriate to hold.

But why not? It was fun being a Mr. Big Bucks for the evening, with a young pretty girl-a little secretary-stroking his hand across the table. He did not have to be Chief Inspector Chen, a “politically correct” Party cadre every minute of the day. He, too, was doing well. He had a powerful position, and a generous advance payment from a business project.

However, it was not destined to be an evening of Golden Time Rolling Backward for Chief Inspector Chen.

His cell phone rang. It was Zhuang, the senior lecturer White Cloud had interviewed. Chen had left several messages for him, and now Zhuang was finally calling back.

“I’m glad you called me,” Chen said. “I have just one question for you. In your conversation with White Cloud about Yang, you mentioned Doctor Zhivago. Now, was Yang reading the novel, or writing a novel like it, or writing poetry like Doctor Zhivago?”

“Did I say that?”

“Yes, you did. The exact words were, ‘still reading, and writing, something like Doctor Zhivago.’ You don’t have to worry, Comrade Zhuang. The case has nothing whatsoever to do with you, but your information may help our work.”

There was a short silence from the other end of the telephone.

A young man approached their table, holding out his hand to White Cloud in a gesture of invitation. She flashed Chen an apologetic smile. Chen nodded in encouragement as he heard Zhuang continuing in a more subdued voice. “Now that both Yang and Yin are dead, I don’t think that anybody can get into trouble.”

“No. Nobody. So please go ahead and tell me.”

Another short silence ensued.

He took a sip of wine. Not too far away, White Cloud started moving gracefully with the young man in front of the piano. A perfectly matched couple, both of them young, energetic, dancing with a rhythm perhaps slightly too wild for this upscale bar.

Zhuang spoke. “I met Yang in the early sixties, during the so-called Socialism Education Movement, you know, shortly before the Cultural Revolution. The school authorities assigned Yang and me to the same study group. We were both single then, and both listed as special targets for brainwashing, so we were put into a temporary isolation dorm room for ‘intensive education’ at night. Yang said that he did not sleep well, but one night I discovered that he was writing-in a notebook, under the quilt. In English. I asked him what it was about. He said that it was a story of an intellectual, something like Doctor Zhivago.”

“Did you take a look at what he was writing?”

“I did not understand English. Nor did I really want to read a single word of it.”

“Why, Comrade Zhuang?”

“Yang said it was a story of an intellectual, and he was an intellectual himself. That’s it. If the school authorities ever looked into the matter, I could claim that it was his diary-at least so I thought. It was no crime to keep a diary. But if I read it, and it was a book, I would have turned into a counterrevolutionary by withholding the information from the authorities.”

“Yes, I see: you did not want to get him-and yourself too-into trouble. Did Yang tell you anything else about it?”

“It was really naive of him to tell me that he was writing a story. Fortunately, I had no idea then who or what Doctor Zhivago was- perhaps a doctor Yang knew personally. Zhivago surely sounded like a Chinese name. The Chinese translation did not appear-let me think-until the mid-eighties. It had been banned, as you know, as an attack on the great Soviet Revolution. In those years, a Nobel-Prize-winning book had to be counterrevolutionary.”

“I know. I happen to know someone who went to jail because of a copy of Doctor Zhivago. You were lucky that you remained in the dark,” Chen said. “Did you ever talk to Yang about it again?”

“No. Pretty soon the Cultural Revolution broke out. All of us were like broken clay Buddhist idols drifting down the river- already too disintegrated to care about anybody else. I was thrown into jail for the so-called crime of listening to the Voice of America. When I got out, he was already away at that cadre school. And there he died.”

“Do you have any knowledge about his continuing writing during the Cultural Revolution?”

“No, but I doubt it. It’s hard to imagine somebody like him writing in English in those years.”

“Well, Yang was actually allowed to keep English books because of one particular word-fart, I think it was-in Chairman Mao’s poetry translation.”

“Oh, yes, I have heard that.”

“Do you think anybody else may have known about this manuscript?”

“No, I don’t think so. It would have been suicidal for him to tell anybody,” Zhuang said. “Except Yin, of course.”

When he finished with Zhuang, Chen scribbled something else on another napkin. He had also come to a different decision about dinner. There was no point moving to another restaurant. He could use some time to himself, just thinking. White Cloud dancing, away from the table most of the time, was all to the good.

The abbreviations on the poetry translation manuscript started to make sense. If it were a novel Yang had been writing, as Zhuang had supposed, “ch” could refer to chapters. Yang might have tried to use poems in his novel, to insert them at various places in the text, in a way similar to Doctor Zhivago. And Peiqin’s suggestion of plagiarism would fit in, too. The portions of Yin’s novel that seemed to be too well-written-

But where was this novel manuscript? Chen could not be sure that such a manuscript had ever really existed.

Often, Chen put down some thoughts in his notebook, on a piece of paper, or even on a napkin like this evening, but afterward, for one reason or another, he failed to develop these ideas, and what he put down remained in fragments.

So, too, could Yang have written down some ideas on a sleepless night, in the days of the Socialism Education Movement when he was with Zhuang in that dorm room. But those notes might never have been developed into a novel. Still, Chen added a few more words to the napkin and put it into his pocket before he looked up.

White Cloud seemed to be thoroughly enjoying herself in Golden Time Rolling Backward, like a fish in water. Although the new culture of nostalgia did not appeal that much to him, he found it quite pleasant to spend an evening in such a trendy place, in the company of a pretty girl. She was popular here; her face became flushed as she danced with one young man after another. They kept coming over to the table, like flies drawn to spilled syrup. Chen refrained from dancing with her. With a touch of quizzical self-scrutiny, he diagnosed something akin to jealousy. Naturally a young girl preferred companions of her own age; a temporary boss meant nothing but business to her.