Red Mandarin Dress

Rebels, I think. It was against his professional ethic but the pressure proved too much, and he finally gave up, thinking it was no crime for someone to pose for a picture. After all, there was nothing nude or obscene in it.”
    “Did he know anything about what happened to her?”
    “He didn’t, not at first. It was only a year or so later that he heard about her death. It had nothing to do with him. So many people died in those days. And perhaps it was not too surprising for someone with a family background like hers, and herself a ‘bourgeois artist.’ Still, the uncertainty weighed like a rock on his mind.”
    “He didn’t have to be so hard on himself. People could have learned her identity anyway,” Chen said, thinking that the old photographer could have cared for her. Seeing no point in bringing up the possibility, he changed the subject. “Now, he used five or six rolls for this picture, you have mentioned. Did he keep those other pictures?”
    “Yes, he kept them at a risk to himself, hiding them away even from me. Along with a notebook. ‘The portfolio of the red mandarin dress,’ he called it. After his death, I discovered them by chance. I didn’t have the heart to get rid of them—they must have been so special to him.”
    Out of the cabinet drawer, she produced a large envelope containing a notebook and a bunch of pictures in a smaller envelope.
    “Here they are, Chief Inspector Chen.”
    “Thank you so much, Auntie Kong,” he said, rising. “I’ll return them to you after looking through them.”
    “Don’t worry. I have no use for them.” She added, “But don’t forget your pledge in the temple.”
    “No, I won’t.”
    It was a random harvest. He started reading the notebook in a taxi outside Auntie Kong’s building. It contained plenty of working notes. Kong had discovered the model at a concert, spellbound by “her sublime beauty at the soul-stirring climax of the music.” Afterward, a Young Pioneer rushed onstage, holding a bouquet of flowers for her. The boy turned out to be her son, and she hugged him affectionately onstage. For a week after the concert, he spared no effort in persuading her to pose for him. It was a tough job, for she was interested neither in money nor in publicity. He finally succeeded in bringing her around by promising to photograph her together with her son. The picture was taken in the back garden of their mansion.
    Chen skipped through the technical notes about light and angles to a page that contained the work address of the model—the Shanghai Music Institute—with an office telephone number beneath it. For some reason, Kong mentioned her name only once in the notebook. Mei.
    Then he started examining the pictures. There were a considerable number of them, and like the old photographer, he was “spellbound.”
    “Sorry, I’ve just changed my mind,” he said to the taxi driver, looking up. “Please take me to the Shanghai Music Institute.”

TWENTY-THREE
    HIS VISIT TO THE institute didn’t begin on a promising note.
    Comrade Zhao Qiguang, the current Party Secretary of the institute, showed all respect to Chen but could be of little help. Zhao had to check a registry before he was able to tell Chen anything about Mei. According to him, Mei and her husband Ming had both worked at the institute. During the Cultural Revolution, Ming committed suicide, and she died in an accident. Zhao did not know anything about the existence of the picture.
    “I came to the institute five or six years ago,” Zhao said, by way of explanation. “People are not so eager to talk about the Cultural Revolution.”
    “Yes, the government wants people to look ahead, not backward.”
    “You should try to talk to some old people here. They may know something, or they may know somebody who knows,” Zhao said, scribbling several names on a piece of paper. “Good luck.”
    But the people who knew Mei had either retired or passed away. After bumping around for quite a while, he stumbled upon Professor Liu Zhengquan of the Instrument Department.
    “That’s Mei!” Liu said, studying the picture. “But I’ve never seen the picture before.”
    “Can you tell me something about her?”
    “The flower of the school, fallen too early to the dust.”
    “How did she die?”
    “I don’t really remember. She was in her midthirties then. Her son was about ten years old. What a tragedy!”
    “What happened to her son?”
    “I don’t know.” Liu added, “We