When Red is Black

possibility that had worried him, she had been growing visibly weaker in the last few years. He decided to stay with her for a while. Since the onset of the translation project, almost simultaneously with the murder of Yin Lige, this was the first day that he could spend some peaceful time with his mother without worrying about this clue or that lead, or about definitions and phrasing.
     
    She stirred in her sleep, but she did not wake. It might be as well. Once awake, she would probably lead their talk to her number one question: Now that you are established in life, what about your family?
     
    In traditional Chinese culture, both “establishment” and “family” were at the top of a man’s list of priorities, though the latter appeared more urgent to his mother. Whatever he might offer about his career and Party standing, his personal life was still a blank page to her.
     
    Again, he thought of the line under the painting of the goose in Beijing, although in a different context: What will come, eventually comes. Perhaps it was not time yet.
     
    He started peeling an apple for his mother. That was something White Cloud had done in his place, he remembered. Afterward, he put the peeled apple in a plastic bag on the nightstand. He looked into the drawer of the nightstand. He might as well start putting things together for her. Perhaps he would have to leave before she woke up.
     
    To his surprise, he found a small photograph of White Cloud in a book of Buddhist scripture his mother had brought with her. In her uniform as a college student, White Cloud looked spirited and young as she stood in the impressive gateway of Fudan University. He understood why his mother had kept the picture. For his mother, as Overseas Chinese Lu had once put it, Anything that came into her bamboo basket must be counted a vegetable now.
     
    White Cloud was a nice girl, to be sure. She had helped a lot: with the translation, with his mother in the hospital, and with the investigation. For all this, he could not but be grateful to her. He did not want to denigrate her because at their first meeting she had been a K girl with whom he had danced, his hand on her bare back, nor for being a “little secretary,” with all the possible connotations of that term. Chen considered himself above that sort of snobbishness.
     
    What his mother had obviously thought about her in connection with him, however, had never entered his mind. This was not so much because of the difference in their ages, or in their backgrounds, it was just that it seemed to him that they lived in two different worlds. But for the business of the New World, their paths would never have crossed. The translation was now finished, and he was pleased that she could go back to her life, whatever it might be like. There was nothing for him to be sentimental about. She was paid for her work as a little secretary. “Paid handsomely,” as she had put it; the way he was paid, although at a different rate and for a different reason.
     
    But then, was he really so sure about himself?
     
    Was the filial son sitting with his mother the same man as the Mr. Big Bucks drinking with his little secretary in the Golden Time Rolling Backward?
     
    “Are you Chief Inspector Chen?” A young nurse poked her head into the room. “Someone is waiting downstairs for you.”
     
    Chen took the steps in long strides. To his surprise, he found Party Secretary Li waiting in the lobby, carrying a large bouquet of flowers, in sharp contrast to the familiar image of the serious senior Party cadre in his high-buttoned Mao jacket. A bureau Mercedes was parked in the driveway.
     
    “They told me your mother is still sleeping,” Li said, “so I think I’ll just say a few words to you here. I have a city government meeting this morning.”
     
    “Thank you, Party Secretary Li. You are so busy; you shouldn’t have taken the trouble to come here.”
     
    “No, I should have come earlier. She is such a nice old lady. I have talked to her a couple of times, you know,” Li said. “I also want to thank you on behalf of the Shanghai Police Bureau for your excellent work.”
     
    “Detective Yu did the work. I only helped a little.”
     
    “You don’t have to be modest, Chief Inspector Chen. This was an excellent job. No political complications. Simply wonderful.
     
    “That’s what we are going to say at the press conference. The motive for the crime was some money dispute between Yin and