Death of a Red Heroine

looking breathless.
    Chief Inspector Chen blinked, trying to break the momentary spell of Guan’s image.
    Who had taken these pictures, he wondered. Where had she had them developed? Especially the close-ups. State-run studios would have refused to take the order, for some of the pictures could be labeled as “bourgeois decadent.” And at unscrupulous private studios, she might have run a serious risk, for those entrepreneurs could have sold such pictures for money. It could have been politically disastrous if she had been recognized as the national model worker.
    An album page was large enough for four standard-sized pictures, but for several pages, each held only one or two. The last few pages were blank.
    It was about noon when he returned the albums to the drawer. He did not feel hungry. Through the window he thought he could hear the distant roar of a bulldozer working at a construction site.
    Chief Inspector Chen decided to talk to Guan’s neighbors. He first went to the next door along the corridor, a door still decorated with a faded red paper couplet celebrating the Chinese Spring Festival. There was also a plastic yin-yang symbol dangling as a sort of decoration.
    The woman who opened the door was small and fair, wearing slacks and a cotton-knit top, a white apron around her waist. She must have been busy cooking, for she wiped one hand on the apron as she held the door open with the other. He guessed she was in her mid-thirties. She had tiny lines around her mouth.
    Chen introduced himself, showing his business card to her.
    “Come in,” she said, “my name is Yuan Peiyu.”
    Another efficiency room. Identical in size and shape to Guan’s, it appeared smaller, with clothes and other diverse objects scattered round. In the middle of the room was a round table bearing row upon row of fresh-made dumplings, together with a pile of dumpling skins and a bowl of pork stuffing. A boy in an imitation army uniform came out from under the table. He was chewing a half-eaten bun, staring up at Chen. The little soldier stretched up a sticky fist and made a gesture of throwing the bun toward Chen like a grenade.
    “Bang!”
    “Stop! Don’t you see he is a police officer?” said his mother.
    “That’s okay,” Chen said. “I’m sorry to bother you, Comrade Yuan. You must have heard of your neighbor’s death. I just want to ask you a few questions.”
    “Sorry,” she said. “I cannot help you. I don’t know anything about her.”
    “You’ve been neighbors for several years?”
    “Yes, about five years.”
    “Then you must have had some contact with each other, cooking together on the corridor, or washing clothes in the common sink.”
    “Well, I’ll tell you what. She left home at seven in the morning, and came back at seven—sometimes much later. The moment she got back, she shut the door tight. She never invited us in, nor visited us. She did her laundry in the store, with all the washing machines on display there. Free, and perhaps free detergent too. She ate at the store canteen. Once or twice a month, she would cook at home, a packet of instant noodles or something like that, though she kept her stove in the corridor all the time. Her sacred right to the public space.”
    “So you’ve never talked to her at all?”
    “When we saw each other, she nodded to me. That’s about all.” Yuan added. “A celebrity. She would not mix with us. So what’s the point of pressing our hot faces up to her cold ass?”
    “Maybe she was just too busy.”
    “She was somebody, and we’re nobody. She made great contributions to the Party! We can hardly make ends meet.”
    Surprised at the resentment shown by Guan’s neighbor, Chen said, “No matter in what position we work, we’re all working for our socialist China.”
    “Working for socialist China?” her voice rose querulously. “Last month I was laid off from the state-run factory. I need to feed my son; his father died several years ago. So making dumplings all day is what I do now, from seven to seven, if you want to call that working for socialist China. And I have to sell them at the food market at six in the morning.”
    “I’m sorry to hear that, Comrade Yuan,” he said. “Right now China is in a transitional period, but things will get better.”
    “It’s not your fault. Why should you feel sorry? Just spare me a political lecture about it. Comrade Guan Hongying did not want to make friends with us. Period.”
    “Well, she must