Death of a Red Heroine

an indigo blue homespun top and a miniskirt, barefoot, with silver bangles jingling around her ankles, exactly like a fishing girl in the southern provinces—except for the menu in her hand.
    He turned the menu over to Xie. She surprised him by choosing several inexpensive dishes, and shaking her head at one of the chef’s specials—fish-fragrance-sauced pigeon—recommended by the waitress.
    “No, it’s too expensive.”
    “Anything to drink?”
    “Just a cup of water for me.”
    “Well, we’ll have two iced beers then.”
    “You shouldn’t. They charge three or four times more than they should for drinks,” she added after the waitress had left, almost like a virtuous wife who wanted to save every penny. Good. Chief Inspector Chen was starting to worry about the expense.
    “I thought you’d take me to the police station,” she said.
    “Why should I?”
    “Maybe you will.” She reached into the leather handbag, took out a cigarette, but did not light it immediately. “Sooner or later.”
    “No, whatever you do, it’s not my business—not here. But I don’t think it a good idea for you to stay . . . in that profession.”
    “You are being genteel,” she said. “I do not like what you do either, but it is not so bad that I won’t have lunch with you.”
    Smiling, she raised her glass toward him, relaxing as more dishes arrived on the table. The restaurant was known among Guangdong people for its excellent cooking.
    At one point, their chopsticks crossed each other in an attempt to get hold of a large scallop on a bed of green snow beans.
    “Please, you have it,” she said.
    “It’s yours,” he said, “after all your work.”
    The scallop looked like her big toe. White, soft, round.
    She ate with relish, finishing four pancakes rolled up with roast duck and green onion, a bowl of shrimp dumplings, and almost the entire serving of beef tripe. He himself did not eat much but he put morsels in her saucer and sipped at his cup of Qingdao beer.
    “Do you always eat this little?” she asked.
    “I’m not hungry,” he said, afraid there would not be enough food for both of them.
    “You are so romantic,“ she said.
    “Really?” That was a strange compliment, he thought, to a police officer.
    There was something touching his knee under the table. As it slowly traveled up, he knew it was her bare foot. She had removed her shoes. He clasped her leg where it was thinnest, and his hand became an ankle bracelet, slipping down. The shape of her smallest toe, bending with the adjoining ones, was distracting him in a way beyond his comprehension. Gently, he put her foot down.
    Confucius said, “To eat and to mate is human nature.”
    “What about a special dessert?” he asked.
    “No, thank you.”
    They shared segments of a Mandarin orange and sipped at the jasmine tea—compliments of the restaurant.
    “Now I’m full,” she said. “You can start your questioning. But tell me first, how did you find me here?”
    “Well, I had met your mother. She has no idea what you’re doing in Guangzhou. She’s so worried.”
    “She’s always worried—all her life—about one thing or another.”
    “She’s disappointed, I believe, that you did not take her path.”
    “Her path, indeed?” she said. “Dear Comrade Chief Inspector, how can you go about investigating people without seeing the change in society? Who’s interested in literature anymore?”
    “I, for one. In fact, I’ve read a collection of her essays.”
    “I do not mean you. You’re so different, as Old Ouyang said.”
    “Another of your bogus compliments?”
    “No, I think so, too,” she said. “As for my mother, I love her. Her life’s not been easy. She got her Ph.D. in the United States. What happened to her when she came back in the early fifties? She was declared to be a rightist, and then a counterrevolutionary in the sixties. Not until after the Cultural Revolution was she allowed to teach again.”
    “But she is teaching at a prestigious university.”
    “Well, as a full professor at Fudan University, how much can she earn in a month? Less than what I made as a tourist guide for a week.”
    “Money is not everything. But for a joke of fate, I might have studied comparative literature.”
    “Thank heaven for that joke—whatever it was.”
    “Life can be unfair to people—especially so for your mother’s generation—but we have reasons to believe that things won’t be so bad in the future.”
    “For