When Red is Black

Chapter 17

Chen finished the first draft of his translation of the New World proposal into English. He was amazed at his own speed, though the job was still far from complete: he would have to spend more time polishing and revising before it would be presentable.

It proved to be a good day for the murder investigation, too. Though it came as a surprise that Wan had turned himself in, it looked like a plausible solution as well as an acceptable one.

Yu was still so full of misgivings that Chen did not even try to share with him some half-formed ideas of his own. After all, a lot of things in the process of writing, or leading to publication, seemingly inexplicable to others, could turn out to be significant, if only to the writer himself.

In the late eighties, when Chen, a published poet with some renown in literary circles, had suddenly started translating mysteries, no one knew why. But it was because of a Beijing roast duck-at least partially because of it, he recalled. That duck turned out to cost more than he had in his pocket at the end of a wonderful dinner, in the company of a friend who liked his poetry so much that she snatched the bill with her slender fingers. It was a humiliating lesson about money-which, as he happened to discover through that friend, came much quicker from mystery translations than from poetry. But a few years later, when another friend of his published an interview about him in Wenhui Daily, she claimed that he did the translations to “enlarge the horizon of his professional expertise.”

So those mysterious abbreviations in the margins of Yang’s manuscript could have referred to anything; “ch” might stand for a chicken, for all Chen knew. The uneven quality of Yin’s writing noticed by Peiqin could be just another of the mysteries of a creative mind. Chen had not written novels, but he guessed that a novelist might not be able to keep up the same intensity of creativity in a long work as in a short poem. He could never explain how he was capable of producing a horribly poor poem after penning a fairly decent one.

So all these hypotheses, including his own theory regarding the murderer’s hiding for fear of recognition, were nothing but hypotheses, which did not weigh much, and were eventually irrelevant, if Wan had committed the murder as he had confessed. His motive might not make sense to someone else; it was enough if it had made sense to him.

The bottom line was, as Chen had realized from the beginning, there are things a man can do, and things a man cannot do. That was also applicable to being a cop, in the present case.

He considered giving himself a break that evening, in the company of White Cloud. It might be an opportunity to find out more about Gu, and about the New World project.

He suggested a dinner at a karaoke club, a different one than the Dynasty as a gesture of his sincerity-he had told her that he liked her singing. White Cloud would not decline such an invitation, he hoped.

She did not, but she suggested that they go to a high-class bar, the Golden Time Rolling Backward.

“It’s on Henshan Road. An up-and-coming place.”

“That will be great,” he said.

Perhaps she did not like to be reminded of her K-girl status. He liked the name of the bar, which suggested a nostalgic atmosphere in common with the New World.

They took a taxi to the Golden Time Rolling Backward, which turned out to be an elegant bar that had opened in a grand Victorian mansion; he supposed it had still been a private residence in the thirties. A number of celebrities had lived in European-style mansions in the area then.

They chose a table next to the tall french window looking out to a well-kept garden just visible in the gathering dusk. The bar, according to White Cloud, was known for its classic elegance. She failed to recall the name of the original owner of the house. “She was a celebrated courtesan who became the concubine of a triad tycoon. He bought this mansion for her,” was all White Cloud could remember.

Inside, it was fairly dark; the candlelight barely illuminated the somber background. After a minute or two, he managed to make out a black, old-fashioned telephone, a gramophone with a trumpet-shaped speaker on a corner table, an Underwood typewriter in a corner, and an antique grand piano with ivory keys, all of which contributed to the period effect, as well as the dark-colored oak paneling, the antique pictures and posters on the walls, and the carnations in a cut-glass vase on the mantelpiece.

“Perhaps we should come in the early afternoon, in warmer weather, when the light is better,” he commented. “Then you would be able to take in all the period details. The illusion would be even more vivid and convincing.”

Still, the whole scene was ingeniously designed. It was as if the life of the city had continued, uninterrupted, from the thirties. The years under Mao’s communist rule seemed to have been wiped out by the pink napkin in the hand of a young waitress, who wore a scarlet qi dress with high slits through which one could see flashes of her white thighs.

The only difference from an old movie scene was that the customers here this evening were Chinese. Then a middle-aged foreign couple arrived, looked around, and moved to a table in the corner. The woman had on a Chinese-style cotton padded jacket with embroidered buttons. They were the only Western couple there. No one seemed to pay them any special attention.

Studying the bilingual menu in the candlelight, Chen ordered coffee, and White Cloud, black tea. In addition, she had a bowl of popcorn. It was still too early for dinner. There were several excellent Chinese restaurants in the area. He was not in a hurry to decide whether to dine here. He was not experienced at dining in a Western-style restaurant. White Cloud was so fashion-conscious, he was not confident of making the right choice.

To his surprise, the black tea came in a tall glass with a Lipton tea bag. The popcorn tasted too sweet and was as tough as rubber. The coffee was fine, but not hot enough. He had no objection to the tea bag, except that it did not appear as authentic as tea served in the Chinese way. Then he tried to mock himself out of such an antiquated idiosyncrasy. This was a modern Western bar, not a traditional Chinese teahouse. Still, he missed the feeling of the tender tea leaf on his tongue. He took another sip of the lukewarm coffee.

“Americans eat popcorn when they are enjoying themselves,” she said, filling her mouth with a handful.

“They eat it while at the movies, I’ve heard,” he said.

What surprised him was not the poor quality of the food they were served, but that people were content in spite of it. It seemed as if the atmosphere more than compensated for anything else. For the first time, he had a feeling that the New World project would work in Shanghai. Whether or not the customers here were exactly the middle-class ones in Gu’s mind, Chinese people wanted to find new ways of enjoying life-”value-adding ways,” the phrase he had read in the introduction to marketing.

As for the added value, he wondered who was going to define it. It would have to depend on one’s taste. For instance, the passion for “three-inch golden lotus feet,” which had endured for hundreds of years in China, was a matter of fashion. In some men’s imaginations, the deformed, white-cloth-bound feet were transformed into lotus blossoms blooming in the black night. If people chose to look for value, they would find it in one way or another. Chen scribbled a few lines on the paper napkin, lines probably for a poem.

“What are you thinking about?”

“I’m just making some notes. If I don’t write my ideas down, I may totally forget them by tomorrow.”

“Tell me about your work in the police bureau, Chief Inspector Chen.” She lifted the tea bag by its paper tag, then let it sink to the bottom of the glass.

“Detective Yu has been handling a special case that was recently assigned to my squad. I’m on vacation, but we have a daily discussion about developments.”

“I do not mean just this week,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“How could somebody like you have turned out to be a cop? A fine scholar, a good translator, and a first-class poet, and you seem to be doing a great job in the police bureau too.”

“You are flattering me, White Cloud. I’m just a cop. You cannot always choose to do what you would like, can you?”

He had not meant this as an allusion to her work in the K club. He regretted having spoken so. He had been asked this question too many times, and his answer came out almost automatically.

She fell momentarily silent.

He tried to maneuver the talk in the direction he had intended it to take. “It’s the same with Mr. Gu, perhaps. He probably didn’t expect as a child to grow up to be a millionaire businessman.”

To his disappointment, she did not know much about Gu. It was all business between Gu and her. As an employer, Gu was not too bad, according to her. He did not take advantage of the girls working for him. Nor was he tight-fisted, at least not with her. As for his connections with the triad world, that was nothing uncommon, she declared. A businessman needed protection.

“Gu has to burn incense, that is, to burn his money to the triad gods, and he is good at what he does. Now he has established connections almost everywhere, in both the white way and the black way.” She added, with her sly smile, “Connections with powerful people like you-”

It was not unpleasant to hear her referring to him as “powerful,” but he cut her short. “Don’t count me in. But have you met any of those really powerful people with him?”

“On a couple of occasions, including several important figures in the city government. One from Beijing as well. I recognized them from their pictures in the newspapers. Do you want to know their names? I can find out.”

“Don’t bother, White Cloud.”

A lambent melody began to waft through the bar. Looking round, he failed to find a karaoke TV set. Then it hit him: karaoke had not existed in the thirties.

“Sorry, there is no karaoke today.”

“Well, I do not enjoy singing that much, Chief Inspector Chen.”

This was not what he had expected. Perhaps she felt the same way he did, preferring not to talk about his job outside the bureau.

The waitress came by again. He ordered a glass of white wine, and she chose a double scotch on the rocks.

Another melody followed. It was an old one, but it belied the period effect-the singer was an American pop star giving a contemporary rendition. For White Cloud, however, it seemed to be even more enjoyable. She was rapt, her face cradled in her hands.

Something soft touched his foot under the table. She had kicked off her shoes, her bare feet were beating out the rhythm, and they were brushing his in her trance. Perhaps.

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.

He thought of several lines by Yan Jidao, an eleventh-century poet.

The narrator of the poem was a young girl like White Cloud, and then he thought of another line by an American poet, already paraphrased in his mind: I do not think she will sing to me.

He had the waitress bring the dinner menu as White Cloud returned to their table. He did not have much experience choosing non-Chinese cuisine, but a medium-done steak was something he could not order in a Chinese restaurant. She had Red House baked clams as an appetizer, and French roast duck for her entree. He tried to encourage her to choose the more expensive items, caviar and champagne. People at other tables appeared to be doing so. He felt he was obliged.

To his surprise, she chose a bottle of Dynasty, a fairly inexpensive domestic wine from Tianjin. “Dynasty is good enough. No point choosing the imported XO whiskey or champagne,” she said, pushing aside the wine list.

The steak was tender. The waitress insisted that it was genuine American beef. He did not know whether this made any difference, except in price. The clams appeared exquisitely done, golden in the candlelight, with the clam meat picked out, mixed with cheese and spices, and put back onto the shells. It was easy for her to pick up the mixture on her fork.

“So delicious,” she exclaimed, putting a second helping on her fork, and offering it across the table to him to taste.

For Chen, it was still not going to be an evening of Golden Time Rolling Backward. His cell phone started ringing again. This time it was Yu, reporting the latest development in the investigation. Chen smiled apologetically to White Cloud.

“I have just received a new report from Dr. Xia. None of the fingerprints in the room matches Wan’s. That throws his statement further into question. At the very least, we may assume that the drawer-searching part is a fabrication.”

“Yes, that’s an important point.”

“I tried to discuss it with Party Secretary Li again, but he said that Wan might not have remembered everything while he was committing the murder in a moment of rage; afterward, since everybody talked about the emptied drawers, Wan spoke of them too.”

“No, Party Secretary Li cannot brush it aside like that.”

“Absolutely not,” Detective Yu said in a voice of mounting frustration. “But when I pressed the point, Li lost his temper, shouting ‘It’s a case of high political significance. Someone has already confessed, but you still want to go on investigating forever. For what, Comrade Detective Yu?’”

“Li understands nothing but politics.” Normally, it was Chen who had to deal with Party Secretary Li about “politically significant cases,” and he understood how frustrating it must have been for Yu.

“If political considerations override everything else, what is the point of being a cop?” Yu asked. “Where are you, chief? I think I hear music in the background.”

“I’m with a business associate on the translation project.” That was true, Chen thought, to some extent. He felt upset, not with the question, but because of it. “Don’t worry. Go on speaking, Detective Yu.”

White Cloud poured more wine into his glass, in silence.

“And then, after the talk with Party Secretary Li, guess who I met just in front of the bureau? Li Dong.”

“Ah, Li Dong.” Li, a former member of the special case squad, had quit the police force to run a private fruit store. “How is he?”

“Li Dong has developed that single store into a business chain that supplies fruit for the Shanghai airport and the Shanghai railway station. He’s used the connections he made in the police force. And he talks like another man. ‘Nowadays, one month’s profit from the airport alone is more than the bureau pays in a year. You are still working here, Comrade Detective Yu, but for what?’”

“That little rascal. Now that he has gotten a little money, he speaks like a rich man. How could he have changed like that? It’s only a year since he quit the police force.”

But that was not the answer Yu sought, Chen knew. What had Detective Yu been working so hard for? The official answer was that people worked for the sacred cause of communism. Party newspapers might still occasionally say this, but everybody knew it was a joke.

Chief Inspector Chen worked hard too, yet at least he could say that he worked for his position, for the benefits of his position: the apartment, the bureau car, the various bonuses-including this well-paid project from Mr. Gu. That, too, came from his position; there was no question about it.

In terms of social Darwinism, what was happening was not too surprising. In any social system, the strong stay in power, whether they be the CEOs of capitalism, or the Party cadres of communism. Actually, he had first read this argument in Martin Eden, an American novel translated by Yang.

“The steak is getting cold,” White Cloud whispered as she cut off a small piece with his knife to feed to him.

He stopped her with a wave of his hand.

He could also say that he worked for a night like this, with a little secretary at his service.

“Where are you, Yu?”

“At home.”

“Let me call you back in five minutes.”

The cell phone bill for this month was going to be staggering. The police bureau would pay it, but Chen did not want the accountant to raise her eyebrows at him again. Nor did he want to say more in front of White Cloud.

The antique phone in the corner still worked, he had noticed. It was a pay phone for the bar. Most of the status-conscious customers here, with their cell phones, would never consider using the pay phone.

Chen picked it up and dialed Yu’s number.

“I have been doing some thinking about the case,” Chen resumed. The sound quality of the phone was affected by the wear and tear of time, but it was reasonably clear. “In a shikumen house like that, with so much broken stuff and furniture stored here and there, it would not have been impossible for someone to hide until he had a chance to sneak out, especially if the shrimp woman was temporarily absent. But a question occurred to me: why should the murderer have wanted to hide if he was an outsider?”

“That’s a good question,” Yu said.

“One possibility is that he was not so much afraid of being seen as of being recognized. With that in mind, I called the Shanghai Archives Bureau. I asked them to check all Yin’s relatives, with special focus on information about a possible nephew of hers. But the information they provided is the same you had obtained.”

“She could have referred to someone who was a boy as a ‘nephew.’ He did not have to be her real nephew.”

“Yes, that’s possible. But would she have let someone totally unrelated stay with her, and for a week?” Chen asked. “And then there is Peiqin’s point. Now that I have read a few chapters of the novel, I agree with Peiqin: Yin may well have plagiarized somebody else’s work.”

“Peiqin reads too much. I believe she applies Yang’s high standard to the work of others,” Yu said. “But I just do not see how this can possibly be related to our investigation.”

“I have a feeling that there may be something in it. Coincidentally, I had a phone call earlier this evening, from a former colleague of Yang’s. According to him, Yang had been writing a novel before his death. There may be a connection,” Chen said slowly, feeling something eluding him in the hidden recesses of his mind as he spoke.

White Cloud had finished yet another dance and returned to their table, Chen noticed. The music had stopped.

”Had Yang written a novel?”

”We don’t know for sure. He might not have finished it,” Chen said, “but he could have left part of one behind. So far, we have not found a novel manuscript of his, not even a few pages. We have only that manuscript of poems translated into English.”

”That’s true.”

”And finally, I cannot figure out why Internal Security should have withheld the information about her passport application. Was their reason related to her writing or to her trip to United States? If so, which? And why keep us in the dark?”

“We may continue to work on all these possible leads but do we have time, Chief Inspector Chen? Party Secretary Li will hold a press conference early next week. How can we be sure that we will make find the right answers in just a few days?”

“Let me stall him. It’s your case, but it’s also our special squad’s case,” Chen said. “It will be difficult, however, to hold him off for long, if we come up with nothing but some inconsistencies in Wan’s statement. For Li, Wan is ideal, but the culprit does not have to be Wan. Anybody will serve as a murderer, so long as we give him a quick solution.”

“Yes, we have to make progress. Once the real criminal is apprehended, we won’t have to worry about Wan or about Party Secretary Li.”

Finally, Chen put down the antique receiver and went back to the table.

“Sorry, White Cloud,” he said, “we simply cannot have a nice quiet evening.”

“An important man like you cannot expect a quiet evening, but it is nice. I appreciate your taking me out tonight.”

“The pleasure is all mine. Those interruptions aside, I’ve enjoyed the evening-and your company.” He said, turning toward the approaching waitress, “Another double scotch for the lady.”

He did not know whether scotch was a proper choice after dinner, but it was what she had ordered earlier, and on the wine list it appeared to be expensive.

It was late. Some people began to leave, but others were arriving. A couple of new waitresses appeared, perhaps a later shift. Here, the night was still young.

In those myths of the thirties, Shanghai was called a nightless city-a place of red neon and white wine, of intoxicating money and glittering gold.

When he suggested to White Cloud that he take her back home in a taxi, she looked at him before responding in a low, husky voice. Perhaps she had drunk too much wine. “It’s too far from here. The taxi fare will be very expensive. Can’t we go back to your apartment? I’ll have to come over tomorrow morning anyway. I can sleep on the sofa.”

“Don’t worry about the taxi money, White Cloud,” he said hastily. “The police bureau will reimburse me.”

It was out of the question for her to stay overnight at his place. In these new apartment complexes, the arms of the neighborhood committee might not reach as far, but people still watched. Stories traveled up and down in the elevators, if not on the staircases. Chief Inspector Chen could not afford to have such stories circulating about himself.

Nor did he consider himself a Liu Xiahui, a legendary Confucian figure who kept himself under restraint with a naked girl sitting on his lap. Chen doubted he was capable of imitating Liu Xiahui with a pretty young girl, a little secretary, asleep on the sofa in his room.

It was a long drive. She did not speak much. He wondered whether she was slightly disappointed or even displeased with his rejection of her offer. At one point, she leaned against him in the back seat, as if she was slightly drunk, then she straightened up again.

She had the taxi pull up at the street corner. “The road ahead is under repair. I can walk from here to my home. It’s only two or three minutes away.”

“Let me walk you home. It’s late,” he said before turning to the taxi driver. “Wait here for me.”

Even at this late hour, there were still several young men loitering around the corner with lit cigarettes shimmering between their fingers like fireflies. One whistled shrilly as they passed by in the chilly night. They walked into a long, dark alley. Originally it must have been a passageway between two blocks of houses, but people had built illegal makeshift one-story huts or shelters along both sides. The city government did nothing, because those people had to live somewhere. So the passage was squeezed into a much narrower lane, not even wide enough for two people to walk abreast. He followed her in silence, stepping carefully between the coal stoves and piles of winter cabbages stored outside. This was too sharp a contrast to the Golden Time Rolling Backward.

It was no wonder that White Cloud studied at Fudan University while working hard at the Dynasty Club. She had to get a life that was different from her parents’, by whatever means possible.

It was easy to say that poverty was no excuse for what people chose to do with their lives. It was not easy, however, for a young girl to follow the Party’s principles of a simple life and hard work. In fact, few Party members, as far as he knew, still adhered to those principles.

He parted with her before a ramshackle one-story shelter and started back toward the taxi. A minute later, he turned to see her still standing by the door. The hut appeared stunted, its roof looming merely inches above her hair. In the dark night, he was surprised to make out a small pot of flowers blossoming on top of the roof tiles, placed there as a decoration.

As the taxi started winding out of the slum area, he had a weird feeling, as if the city had suddenly turned into two disparate halves. The first city was made up of old shikumen houses, narrow lanes, and slum alleys like the one he was leaving, in which people still had a hard time making ends meet. The second city was composed of trendy places like the bars on Henshan Road, the new high-end apartment complex in Hongqiao, and the would-be New World.

When Gu had first approached him about his ambitious business project, Chen had almost considered the New World and its like as myths, but he was wrong. A myth would not survive if it was not rooted in present realities.

There was also an untold part of that myth, of course: the suffering of the people shut out of it; that was the part familiar to Chief Inspector Chen from his elementary-school textbooks. At that time, all the glitter and glory were represented as decadent, evil, sustained at the cost of the working class. The emphasis was then on what was in back of the glamour, an emphasis that had justified the Communist Revolution.

It had been true to some extent. What had changed was the emphasis. Now it was on the facade, the glitter and glory, an emphasis that justified the reversal of the Communist Revolution, although the Party authorities would have never acknowledged this.

Chen was momentarily confused. History in textbooks was like colored balls in a juggler’s hands.

If truth could not be found in textbooks, then where else could one look?

But what could he do? He was just a cop. He had once beleaguered himself with those questions. He had long since given that up.

Even as a cop, Chief Inspector Chen wondered, when he started thinking about his conversation with Zhuang earlier in the evening, whether he had done a decent job.