Death of a Red Heroine

Cao:
I’m glad you have written to me.
On receiving your letter, I went to Comrade Wen Jiezi, the head of the Public Security Ministry. He was aware of your investigation. He said he trusted you wholeheartedly, but there were some people in high positions—not only those you have crossed in Shanghai—very much concerned about the case. Wen promised that he would do whatever possible to keep you from harm. These are his words: “don’t push on with the investigation until further signal. be assured that something will be happening shortly.”
I think he is right. Time can make the difference.
And time flies.
How long since we last met in the North Sea Park? Remember that afternoon, the white pagoda shimmering against the clear sky in the green water, and your poetry book getting splashed? It seems like ages.
I have remained the same. Busy, always busy, with the routine business of the library. Nowadays I work at the foreign liaison department; I think I’ve told you about it. In June, there will be a chance of accompanying an American library delegation to the southern provinces. Then we may see each other again.
There is a new phone installed at home—a direct line for my father. In an emergency, you can use this number: 987-5324.
    Yours
    Ling
P.S. I told Minister Wen I was your girlfriend because he asked about our relationship. You know why I had to tell him this.
    Chen put the letter back into the envelope, and then into his briefcase. He stood up, gazing out at the traffic along Fuzhou Road. In the distance, he saw the neon Volkswagen signs shining with a halo of violet color in the night: the “violet hour.” He must have read the phrase somewhere. It was the time when people hurry back home, throbbing taxis wait in the street, and the city becomes unreal.
    He took out Guan’s file and started writing a more detailed report, compiling all the information. He was trying to confirm the next step he was going to take. He would not turn in the report; he was making a commitment to himself.
    It was not until several hours later that he left the bureau. Comrade Liang had gone, and the iron gate looked strangely deserted. It was too late for Chen to catch the last bus. There was still a light in the bureau garage, but he did not like the idea of requisitioning a bureau car to take him home while he was unofficially suspended.
    A cool breath of summer night touched his face. A long leaf, heart-shaped, fell at his feet. Its shape reminded him of a bamboo divination slip which had fallen out of a bamboo container— years earlier, at Xuanmiao Temple in Suzhou. The message on the slip was mysterious. He had been curious, but he refused to pay ten Yuan for the Taoist fortuneteller to interpret it. There was no predicting the future in that way.
    He did not know what would happen to the case.
    Nor what would happen to him.
    He knew, however, he would never be able to repay Ling.
    He had written to her for help. But he had not expected that she would give him her help in this way.
    He found himself walking toward the Bund again. Even at this late hour, the Bund was dotted with young lovers whispering to each other. It was there that he had thought of writing the letter to her, as the big clock atop the Customs Tower chimed. A new melody.
    The present, even as you think about it, is already becoming the past.
    That afternoon in the North Sea Park. Remember that afternoon, the white pagoda shimmering against the clear sky in the green water, and your poetry book getting splashed? He remembered, of course, but since that afternoon he had tried not to. The North Sea Park. There he had first met Ling near the Beijing Library, and there, too, he had parted from her.
    He had not known anything about her family when they first met in the Beijing Library. In the early summer of 1981, he had been in his third year at the Beijing Foreign Language Institute. That summer he chose to stay in Beijing since he could hardly concentrate in his Shanghai attic room. He was writing his thesis on T. S. Eliot. So he went to the library every day.
    The library building had originally been one of the numerous imperial halls in the Forbidden City. After 1949, it had been converted into the Beijing Library. It was declared in the People’s Daily that the Forbidden City no longer existed; now ordinary people could spend their days reading in the imperial hall. As a library, its location was excellent, adjacent to North Sea Park with the White