Death of a Red Heroine

on the recommendation list last month. A long shot, I thought, but today they informed us of their decision. I’ll make a copy of the official admission letter for you. You have come a long way, Comrade Chief Inspector Chen.”
    “You have done so much for me, Party Secretary Li. How can I ever thank you enough?” He added after a pause, “Maybe that’s another reason for us to take the case. I cannot be a chief inspector without solving some cases on my own.”
    “Well, it’s up to you,” Li said. “But you have to be prepared for the seminar. How much the seminar can mean for your future career, you don’t need me to tell you. More important work is waiting for you, Comrade Chief Inspector Chen.”
    The talk with Party Secretary Li actually prompted Chen to do some investigation before making any decision about the case. He went down to the bureau’s vehicle service group, took out a motorcycle, and borrowed a county map from the bureau library.
    It was hot outside. The cicadas, napping in the languid trees, turned silent. Even the mailbox by the curb appeared drowsy. Chen took off his uniform and rode out in his short-sleeved T-shirt.
    The trip to Baili Canal turned out to be rather difficult. Once past the Hongqiao Industrial Area, there were few road signs. He had to ask for directions at a ramshackle gas station, but the only worker there was taking a midday nap, his saliva dribbling onto the counter. Then the scenery became more rustic, with lines of hills visible here and there in the distance, and a solitary curl of white smoke rising like a string of notes from an invisible roof somewhere. According to the map, the canal should not be too far away. At a turn of the road, there appeared a winding path, like an entrance into a village, and he saw a girl selling big bowls of tea on a wooden bench. No more than thirteen or fourteen, she sat quietly on a low stool, wearing her ponytail tied with a girlish bow, reading a book. There were no customers. He wondered if there would be any all day. Only a few coins glittered in a cracked tin cup beside a bulging satchel at her feet. Apparently not a peddler, not one out there for profit, just a kid from the village, still small and innocent, reading against the idyllic background— perhaps a poetry collection in her hand, providing a convenience to thirsty travelers who might pass by.
    Little things, but all of them seemed to be adding up into something like an image he had once come across in Tang and Song dynasty writings:
Slender, supple, she’s just thirteen or so,
The tip of a cardamom bud, in early March.
    “Excuse me,” he said, pulling up his motorcycle by the roadside. “Do you know where Baili Canal is?”
    “Baili Canal, oh yes, straight ahead, about five or six miles.”
    “Thank you.”
    He also asked for a big bowl of tea.
    “Three cents,” the girl said, without looking up from her book.
    “What are you reading?”
    “ Visual Basics .”
    The answer did not fit the picture in his mind. But it should not be surprising, he thought. He, too, had been taking an evening class on Windows applications. It was the age of the information highway.
    “Oh, computer programming,” he said. “Very interesting.”
    “Do you also study it?”
    “Just a little.”
    “Need some CDs?”
    “What?”
    “Dirt cheap. A lot of advanced software on it. Chinese Star, TwinBridge, Dragon Dictionary, and all kinds of fonts, traditional and simplified . . .”
    “No, thank you,” he said, taking out a one-Yuan bill.
    The CDs she offered might be incredibly cheap. He had heard people talking about pirated products, but he did not want to have anything to do with them, not as a chief inspector.
    “I’m afraid I don’t have enough change for you.”
    “Just give me all you have.”
    The little girl scooped out the coins to give him, and put the one Yuan bill in her purse, instead of into the tin cup at her feet. A cautious teenage profit-maker in her way. She then resumed her readings in cyberspace, the bow on her ponytail fluttering like a butterfly in a breath of air.
    But his earlier mood was gone.
    What irony. The wistful thoughts about the innocent tip of a cardamom bud, a solitary curl of white smoke, an unlost innocence in a rural background, a poetry collection . . . And a lapse in his professional perspective. Not until he had ridden another two or three miles did he realize that he should have done something about the CD business—as a