Death of a Red Heroine

poet.
    Looking over her shoulder, he gazed at the red walls of the Forbidden City resplendent in the late afternoon light. Across the White Stone Bridge loomed the huge Central South Sea complex, where a group of the Party politburo members lived. Her father was going to move there soon, she had just told him.
    Her family was much more powerful than Vivien’s.
    Such a family background could make a world of difference in China.
    What could he possibly offer her? A couple of poems. Romantic enough for a Saturday afternoon. But not enough for the life of a politburo member’s daughter.
    Whatever she might see in him at the moment, on the North Sea Lake, he was not going to be the man for her, he concluded.
    “Before I leave,” she said, “shall we talk about our future plans?”
    “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe—since you will be back in half a year, maybe we’ll see each other then—if I’m still in Beijing.”
    She did not say anything in response.
    “I’m sorry,” he added, “I did not know anything about your family background.”
    No future plans. He did not say it in so many words, but she understood. He promised he would keep in touch, but that, too, was no more than a varnish over their breakup. She accepted his decision without protest, as if she had anticipated it. The White Pagoda shimmered in the afternoon sunlight, in her eyes.
    She, too, was proud.
    Afterward, he had had his moments of doubt, but he was quick to dispel them. It was not anybody’s fault. Politics in China. A decision he had to make.
    After he had gotten his job in Shanghai, he became once more convinced that he had made the right decision. Her stay in Australia was extended to one year. One afternoon, on the lowest level of the bureau mail shelf, he found a letter containing a clipping from an Australian newspaper that carried a picture of her, along with a rejection of his poetry by a local magazine. He was just one of the nameless, an entry-level cop. Nor had he much hope of success with his so-called modernist writing in China.
    Then, the second year, a New Year’s card from Beijing told him that she had come back from Australia. They had not seen each other since that afternoon at North Sea Park.
    But had they really parted? Was that why they had not said anything? She had never left him. Nor had he gotten over her. Could that be the cause of his writing to her on the night when he felt he was totally crushed?
    It was the last thing he had wanted to do—to beg for her help. In the post office, he had kept telling himself that he was writing the letter in the name of justice.
    She must have realized how desperate the situation was. She had gone out of her way, had thrown the weight of her family behind him. She had introduced herself to Minister Wen as his girlfriend, and now her family’s influence had been put into the balance of power.
    One HC’s son vs. one HC’s daughter.
    So it would have appeared to the minister. And to the world. But what would this mean for her? A commitment. The news that she had a cop as her lover would spread fast in her circle.
    She had given him so much—and at what cost to herself!
    Still, she had told the minister that she was his girlfriend. And she had remained single. There must have been a lot of young men dancing around—because of her family or just for her, no one could know for sure.
    An image came to him—a lady in ancient attire on a Lantern Festival card that she had sent him, and he had kept for years— first juxtaposed with Ling, then merged with her. It was the image of a lonely woman standing under a weeping willow, with a poem by Zhu Shuzheng, a brilliant female Song dynasty poet:
At the Lantern Festival this year,
The lanterns and the moon are the same as before,
But where is the man I met last year?
My spring sleeves are soaked with tears.
    Ling had chosen a rice paper Lantern Festival card, the painting exquisitely reprinted, the poem in elegant calligraphy. Without writing anything on the card herself, she simply addressed it to him and signed her own name below.
    He decided not to pursue that line of thought any further. Whatever might have happened, or might happen yet, he was determined to pursue the case to the end.
    When he finally got back to his apartment building, it was quite dark—like a black stamp on night’s starry envelope.
    He had hardly talked to any of his neighbors, but he knew that every apartment in the building was occupied. So he