When Red is Black

comparison to her. It was undeniable, and occasionally unbearable too, that Peiqin earned more as a restaurant accountant than Yu as a policeman. And this gap had increased in the last few years, as Peiqin had received many bonuses. Not to mention the free delicacies that she brought home from the restaurant. The initial announcement about the apartment had momentarily pulled him up a peg or two, so to speak, in both their estimations. She had been ecstatic, telling everybody about the apartment he had been given “because of his excellent work.”
     
    Since they got the bad news, though, she had hardly spoken. He contemplated this, the cigarette burning down between his fingers. Just another sign that as a low-level policeman in today’s society, he was going nowhere.
     
    In his father’s days, Old Hunter, a cop too, had at least enjoyed the dignity of being part of the “proletarian dictatorship” and the knowledge of being equal in material terms with everybody else in an egalitarian society. Now in the nineties, it was a changed world: one’s value was one’s money. Comrade Deng Xiaoping had said, “Some should be allowed to get rich first.” Some did, absolutely. And in this socialist country, becoming rich now meant becoming glorious. As for those who did not become rich no matter how hard they worked, the People’s Daily had no comment.
     
    A conscientious cop, Detective Yu did not have so much as a room of his own, although he was already in his early forties. The one single room in which he had lived with Peiqin and their son Qinqin since their return to the city in the early eighties, had originally been a dining room, in the wing of the house that had been assigned to Old Hunter in the early fifties.
     
    Peiqin had not really complained, but after this apartment fiasco, her silence spoke volumes. She had once questioned his dedication to police work, although not directly. In this time of “economic reform,” it was possible for people to make their own career choices, even if some paths involved risk. As a cop, Yu had his “iron rice bowl” which, for many years, had meant life-long job security in Chairman Mao’s communist Utopia. The iron—unbreakable—rice bowl was a synonym for a permanent job, with guaranteed income, medical benefits, and food ration coupons. But now having an iron rice bowl was no longer so desirable. Geng Xing, one of Peiqin’s former colleagues, had quit to run a private restaurant, and, according to Peiqin, made five or six times more than at the state-run restaurant. Peiqin had talked about Geng’s choice as if expecting some response from Yu, he remembered.
     
    This was a crisis, Detective Yu concluded somberly, grinding out his cigarette butt on the concrete sink in the courtyard, before he went back to their room.
     
    Peiqin was washing her feet in a green plastic basin. She remained seated, hunched over on the bamboo stool, without looking up. There were puddles of water on the floor. Inevitable. The basin was too small. She could hardly flex her toes in it.
     
    In their “educated youth” days in Yunnan, now almost like another life, Peiqin, sitting beside him, had dabbled her feet in a brook, a clear, peaceful brook that ran behind their bamboo hut. At that time, their one and only dream was of coming back to Shanghai, as if everything would then unfurl before them like the rainbow against the blue sky. A flash of light on a blue jay’s wings. Then a shrimp in the water had seized her toe, and she had fallen against him in panic. They had returned to the city in the early eighties, but only to this single twelve-square-meter room, to the realities of life. Few of their hopes had been fulfilled except for the birth of their son Qinqin, who had grown into a tall boy. For them, the rainbow over that distant brook had long since disappeared.
     
    In that new apartment in Tianling, there was a small bathroom, where he had planned to install a shower head. Shaking his head, Detective Yu caught himself crying over spilled milk once again.
     
    On the table behind Peiqin, he noticed a bag of steamed barbequed pork buns, from Geng’s restaurant, presumably. Business there was brisk. Peiqin had been helping Geng with his accounting work, and he paid her with food to take home.
     
    Was it possible for Yu, too, to do some work on the side in his spare time?
     
    Then the phone rang. It would be the police bureau, he guessed, and he was right.
     
    Party