Red Mandarin Dress

the sake of convenience, I call my protagonist J.”
    “Interesting! Like my name in Chinese Pinyin phonetics, it starts with a J too.”
    Jia was keeping his composure well, even beginning to display a suggestion of defiant humor. It was not the time to push through the window paper, Chen calculated. As in tai chi, an experienced player does not have to push all the way. He took the magazine out and set it on the table.
    “Well, the story began with the picture,” Chen said, opening the magazine with a leisurely movement, “at the moment when the picture was taken.”
    “Really!” Jia said, raising his voice in spite of himself.
    “A story can be told from different perspectives, but it is easier to proceed from a third person, and for us, also in a mixed sense, since part of the story is still going on. What do you think?”
    “Whatever you like, you are the narrator. And you majored in literature, I’ve heard. I wonder how you became a cop.”
    “Merely circumstance. In the early eighties, college graduates were assigned to their jobs by the state, which you know. Indeed, there was little we could choose for ourselves. In childhood, we all used to dream of a totally different future, didn’t we?” Chen said, pointing at the picture. “It was taken in the early sixties. I was probably a couple of years younger than J, the boy in the picture. Look at him, so happy and proud. And he had every reason to be so, in the company of a beautiful mother who cares so much for him, with the Red Scarf streaming in the sunlight, full of hope for his future in the socialist China.”
    “You’re lyrical for a chief inspector. Please go on with your story.”
    “It happened in a mansion much like this one, with a garden practically the same, except it’s spring in the picture. Incidentally, this restaurant used to be a residential house too.
    “Now, in the early sixties, the political climate was already changing. Mao started talking about the class struggle and the proletarian dictatorship in preparation for the Cultural Revolution. Still, J had a sheltered childhood. His grandfather, a successful banker before 1949, continued to receive dividends that more than ensured an affluent life for the family. The boy’s parents worked at the Shanghai Music Institute, and he was their only child. He was attached to his mother, who was young, beautiful, talented, and equally devoted to him.
    “Indeed, she was extraordinary. It was said that a lot of people went to a concert just for a glimpse of her. She kept a sensibly low profile. Still, a photographer discovered her. Not keen on publicity, she agreed to have the picture taken together with her son in the garden. That morning proved to be blissful for J, with her holding his hand affectionately, posing together, and with the photographer raving about the two of them making such a perfect picture. That was the happiest moment in his life. Woven with her radiant smile shining in the sunlight, the moment seemed framed in a golden frame.
    “Shortly after the photo session, the Cultural Revolution broke out. J’s family suffered disastrous blows—”
    His narration was interrupted by the appearance of White Cloud carrying four cold dishes of the house specials on a silver tray.
    “Fried sparrow tongues, wine-immersed goose feet, stewed ox eyes, ginger-steamed fish lips,” she said. “They are made in accordance to a special menu left in the original mansion.”
    Lu must have gone out of his way to prepare these “cruel dishes,” and he spared no cost. A small dish of sparrow tongues could have cost the lives of hundreds of birds. The fish lips remained slightly red, transparent, as if still alive, gasping for air.
    “Incidentally, these dishes remind me of something about the story, something so cruel,” Chen said. “Confucius says, ‘A gentleman should stay away from killing and cooking in the kitchen.’ No wonder.”
    Jia appeared disturbed, which was the effect expected.
    “So the picture represents the happiest moment in J’s life, now forever lost,” Chen resumed, a crisp sparrow tongue rolling on his tongue. “His grandfather died, his father committed suicide, his mother suffered mortifying mass-criticisms, and he himself turned in a ‘black puppy.’ They were driven out of the mansion, into an attic room above the garage. Then something happened.”
    “What?” Jia said, his chopsticks trembling slightly above the ox eye.
    “Now I’m coming to