Death of a Red Heroine

veteran Party cadres were worried about the inevitable clashing of the two systems, but the people in the market were not, Chen observed, as he came to a stop at the colorful display of green onions and ginger under a Hangzhou umbrella. He picked up a handful of fresh green onions. The peddler added a small piece of ginger without charging for it.
    Chen spent some time choosing what else he thought necessary for the dinner. Thanks to the advance from the Lijiang publishing house, he could well afford to buy two pounds of lamb, a pile of oysters, and a small bag of spinach. Then, on an impulse, he left the market for the new jewelry store at Longmen Road.
    The shop assistant came up to him with a surprised expression. He was an unlikely customer, Chen realized, a cop in his uniform, with a plastic bag of food in his hand. But he turned out to be a good customer. He did not spend much time choosing among the dazzling items on display. He was immediately attracted by a choker of pearls placed on silver satin in a purple velvet box. The jewelry cost him more than eight hundred Yuan, but it would suit Wang well, he thought. Ruth Rendell would probably be pleased, too, with the way he spent the money earned by his translation of her work. Besides, he had to give himself some additional motivation to complete his next translation, Speaker of Mandarin.
    Back in his apartment, he realized for the first time—to his astonishment—how unpresentable a bachelor’s room could be. Bowls and dishes in the sink, a pair of jeans on the floor beside the sofa, books everywhere, gray streaks on the windowsills. Even the brick-and-board bookcase flanking the desk struck him as unsightly. He threw himself into the task of cleaning up.
    It was the first time she had accepted his invitation to dine with him—alone, at his place. Since the night of the house- warming party, there had been some real progress in their relationship. In the course of the investigation, he seemed to have been finding more and more things about her, too. She was not only attractive and vivacious, but intelligent—intuitively perceptive, even more so than Chen himself.
    But it was more than that. In the course of this investigation, he had raised more questions about his own life. It was time for him to make up his mind—as Guan should have made up her mind, years earlier.
    Wang arrived a few minutes before six o’clock. She was wearing a white silk blazer over a simple black dress with two narrow shoulder straps that looked more like a slip. He helped her take off the blazer; her shoulders were dazzlingly white under the fluorescent light.
    She brought a bottle of white wine with her. A perfect gift for the occasion. He had a set of glasses in the cabinet.
    “What a spick-and-span room for a busy chief inspector!”
    “I had the right motive. It’s rewarding to keep the place neat,” he said, “when a friend is coming over.”
    The table was set with a white tablecloth, folded pink napkins, mahogany chopsticks, and long-handled silver spoons. The dinner was simple. A small pot of water boiling over a portable gas burner. Around it, paper thin sliced lamb, a bowl of green spinach, and a dozen oysters were laid out on a platter decked with lemon wedges. There were also vinegar-marinated cucumber and pickled garlic in little side dishes. Each of them had a small dish of sauce.
    They dipped the slices of lamb into the boiling water, took them out after just a second or two, and dipped them into the sauce, a special recipe he had learned from Overseas Chinese Lu, a mixture of soy sauce, sesame butter, fermented bean curd, and ground pepper strewn with a pinch of parsley. The lamb, still pinkish, was tender and delicious.
    He opened her bottle of wine. They touched glasses before sipping the sparkling white wine under the soft light.
    “To you,” he said.
    “To us.”
    “For what?” he asked, turning the lamb over in the sauce.
    “For tonight.”
    She was peeling an oyster with a small knife. Her fingers, small, delicate, maneuvered the knife and cut loose the hinge muscle. She lifted the oyster to her mouth. A wisp of green seaweed still clung to its shell. He saw the glistening inside of the shell, its matchless whiteness against her lips.
    “That’s good,” she sighed with satisfaction, putting down the shell.
    He gazed at her over the rim of his cup, thinking of the way her lips touched the oyster, and then the cup. She sipped at her wine, dabbed