Red Mandarin Dress

lesser for the sake of the more important, and regard the affair as shameful, so that our solemn vow can be dispensed with, still my true love will not vanish, and in the breeze and dew it will follow the ground you walk on, even as my body decays, dissolves. . . .
    Yuan’s scholar-protagonist then showed the letter to his friends before he deserted Yingying with a surprising moralistic argument, which came at the end of the story:
    It is a general rule that those Heaven-endowed beauties invariably either ruin themselves or ruin others. If this Cui girl were to meet someone with great wealth and position, she would use the favor she gains to come in cloud and rain, or dragon and monster—I cannot imagine what she might turn into. Of old, King Yin of the Shang and King You of the Zhou were brought low by such women; in spite of the size of their kingdoms and the extent of their power, their armies were destroyed, their people butchered, and to the present day their names are objects of ridicule. I have no inner virtue to withstand this evil influence. That is why I have resolutely suppressed my love.
    At that point in the narrative, the author—posing as Zhang’s close friend in the text—stepped in to endorse Zhang’s behavior in his own words.
    Zhang’s contemporaries for the most part commended him as one who had done well to rectify his mistake. I have often mentioned this among friends so that, forewarned, they might avoid making such a mistake, or if they already did, that they might not get totally lost.
    Zhang’s decision, Chen observed, came as a volte-face, severing at one stroke the romantic theme. The character’s argument amounted to an assertion that a woman, if irresistibly charming, should be disposed of as an “evil influence,” for she will “ruin” the man close to her like a “monster.”
    Chen thought that a better self-defense could have been made. The self-justifying rhetoric about Yingying’s being a monster seemed to Chen nothing but brazen hypocrisy—a poor excuse for Zhang’s having seduced her and then deserted her, making the story fascinating and confounding. It invited speculation about its inconsistencies: romantic passion, for example, was commended in the first part of the story and condemned in the second.
    But for the purpose of his paper, the story’s similarities to the other tales he’d read was beginning to suggest a topic for his project. “The Story of Yingying,” like “The Story of Xiangru and Wenjun,” effected a deconstructive turn in the narration of the romance. The Han-dynasty story attributed the hero’s death of thirsty illness to the heroine, who, implicitly evil in her sexual insatiability, depleted and eventually destroyed him. In the Tang-dynasty story, the hero averted his destruction by accusing the heroine of being a monster who ruins people close to her. In both stories, the romantic theme was eventually denounced.
    Chen was reminded, unexpectedly, of something in the red mandarin dress case: the killer’s ambivalence or contradiction. The murderer stripped and killed the victims, but he put their bodies in expensive, elegant dresses.
    It was an elusive parallel, fading from his thoughts before he could fully articulate it. So he tried to refocus himself on the books, exploring the background of Yuan further. In literary criticism, the biographical approach sometimes contributed to one’s understanding of a difficult text.
    But what about the criminal investigation? With the perpetrator’s identity unknown, biographical analysis seemed out of the question, and the meaning of the contradictory clues seemed indecipherable.
    Again he found his mind stuck, torn between the two projects, which further confused and confounded him.
    Around one o’clock, Shen called him at the library.
    “Any discovery, Shen?”
    “It’s a long story, Chief Inspector Chen,” Shen said. “I’d better tell you in person, I think. I can show you some pictures.”
    “Great. Let me buy you lunch. How about Five Fragrance Resort? It’s a restaurant across the street from the library.”

EIGHT
    AS CHEN STEPPED INTO the restaurant, a waiter who had known him for years greeted him warmly.
    “You haven’t come here in a long time, Chen. What would you like to have today?”
    “Whatever you recommend, but not too much. Only for two people.”
    “How about the Chef’s Special Combination for two?”
    “Great. And a pot of strong green tea,