Death of a Red Heroine
sampling to that of the silverfish lost in the pages of the ancient volumes. Such a hand-bound collection could be very expensive, but it was worth it. The feel of the white rice paper was exquisite. It almost conveyed a message from antiquity. Like his, Ling’s note did not say much. The choice of such a book spoke for itself. Ling had not changed. She was still fond of poetry—or of his poetry.
He should have told Ling about the seminar in October, but he did not want her to think that he had thrown himself into politics. For the moment, however, he did not have to think too much about it. There was nothing like spending a late May morning wandering about in the green ivy-covered world of the celebrated Song dynasty poet.
He flipped through the pages.
Helpless the flowers fall,
The swallows return, seemingly no strangers.
A brilliant couplet. Often people see something for the first time, but with the feeling of having seen it before, of déjà vu. Such a phenomenon had been attributed to the effects of half-remembered dreams or else to misfiring neurons in the brain. Whatever the interpretation, Chen, too, had a feeling—both strange and familiar—like the swallows in Yan’s lines, of having visited Guan’s world. As he held the book in his hand, the feeling was mixed with the elusive memories of his college years in Beijing. . . .
It was disturbing. Guan no longer represented an esoteric character. The case had somehow become a personal challenge. People had seen Guan as a national model worker, ever politically correct, an embodiment of the Party’s much propagandized myth. But he did not. There must have been something else, something different in her. Just what it was, he could not say yet, but until he was able to explain it to himself, he would continue to be oppressed by an indefinable uneasiness.
It was not just because of the caviar.
He had talked to a lot of people who seemed to have thought well of her. Politically, of course. Personally, they knew practically nothing. It seemed that she had so committed herself to her political role that she could play no other part, personal or otherwise. A point Detective Yu had made.
She had no time, perhaps. Eight hours a day, six days a week, she had to be busy living up to what was expected of her. She had to attend numerous meetings and to make all the presentations at Party conferences, in addition to the long working hours she put in at the store. Everything was possible, of course, according to Communist Party propaganda. Comrade Lei Feng had represented just such a selfless miracle. There was no mention at all of his personal life in The Diary of Comrade Lei Feng , which had sold millions of copies. It was revealed in the late eighties, however, that the diary was a pure fabrication by a professional writing team commissioned by the Central Party Committee.
Political correctness was a shell. It should not, could not, spell an absence of personal life. And that could have been said of himself as well, Chief Inspector Chen thought.
He suspected he needed a respite from the case, at least for a short while. And at once it came to him that what he wanted most—one of his first thoughts on awakening—was to be with Wang Feng. He put his hand on the phone, but he hesitated. It might not be the right time. Then he remembered her call earlier in the week. A ready excuse. A breakfast invitation would commit him to no more than a pleasant morning. A hard-working chief inspector was entitled to the company of a reporter who had written about him.
“How are you this morning, Wang?”
“I’m fine. But it’s early, not even seven o’clock.”
“Well, I woke up thinking of you.”
“Thank you for telling me this. So you could have called earlier— three o’clock if you happened to roll out of your bed then.”
“I’ve just come up with an idea. The Peach Blossom Restaurant is serving morning tea again. It’s quite close to your home. What about having a cup of tea with me?”
“Only a cup of tea?”
“You know it’s more than that— dimson or Guangdong-style morning tea, along with a wide variety of delicacies.”
“There’s a deadline I’ve got to meet today. I’ll feel drowsy after a full meal, even at ten o’clock in the morning. But you can meet me on the Bund, close to Number Seven dock, opposite the Peace Hotel. I’ll be practicing Taiji.”
“The Bund, Number Seven dock. I know where it is,” he said. “Can you
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