When Red is Black

socialism. It might be too cynical of him, as a Party cadre, to think so, but that’s what he thought.
     
    Finally, he took the remaining food, put it into the microwave, and finished it without really tasting it.
     
    Perhaps he ought to consult some books about old Shanghai. Not books written in the sixties, which he had read as a child, but those from an earlier time. He took out a piece of paper and wrote something down before he brewed himself a pot of coffee. Not a good idea at this hour, he knew. Inhaling the fragrance, he realized that he had been becoming more dependent on caffeine. For the moment, however, he did not want to worry about it. He had to pull himself together.
     
    He worked late that night.
     
    He felt tired, yet all of a sudden, more than anything else, lonely.
     
    Several lines a friend had once quoted to him came to mind. Trying each of the chilly boughs, / the wild goose chooses not to perch, / with the maple leaves falling, freezing, / over the Wu River. These were lines from a poem by Su Dongpo. It was said to be a political commentary, but it was often read as a metaphor about the difficulty of choosing a bough to perch upon, whatever the reason might be. In fact, the friend had quoted it in defense of her personal life.
     
    And then his thought jumped to a familiar sound, like the wild goose amidst falling maple leaves. A cricket was screeching outside the window.
     
    There was no accounting for a cricket scraping its wings so energetically, unless, as he had learned as a boy, the cricket was singing in triumph over a beaten opponent.
     
    But what was the good of being a cricket, victorious or not, if you were always goaded by a golden rush in a boy’s hand, circling round and round the world of a small earthen pot?
     
    * * * *
     

Chapter 6
     
     
    A
    fter consulting Old Liang’s list of the suspects who lived in the shikumen building, Yu started his investigation early the next morning at the neighborhood committee office. On the desk was a new folder that contained information about each suspect, probably derived from the records maintained by the veteran residence cop.
     
    The first person on the list was Lanlan, the discoverer of the murder. Technically, she had had the opportunity and means to commit the crime and it appeared to Old Liang that she had a motive too.
     
    Lanlan was a woman who liked nothing better than to mix with her neighbors; she was capable of becoming intimate with people she had known for only three minutes. She had suffered a terrible loss of face with Yin, who rejected her repeated attempts at friendship. Lanlan finally gave up with a bitter statement to the neighbors: “It was like pressing your hot face to her cold ass. What’s the point?”
     
    But this would not have been sufficient to cause an explosion unless a fuse had been lit, which, in a shikumen house, more often than not came from the constant squabbles about the common space. Because of overcrowded living conditions, each of the families tried hard to occupy as much space as possible—”in a fair way.” Old Liang provided an example. Yin had a coal briquette stove as well as a small table in the common kitchen area. It was her space, inherited from the previous tingzijian occupant; she took it even though she hardly cooked. Like her predecessor, she also kept a smaller gasoline stove outside her door on the staircase landing. Like all the others, she would not give up an inch she could claim as hers. This must have vexed some of her neighbors.
     
    One night, Lanlan came home in a hurry and stumbled over the gasoline stove. There was a kettle of hot water on the stove; the hot water spilled and scalded her ankle. It was not exactly Yin’s fault. The stove had been there for years. Lanlan should have turned on the light, or moved less rapidly. Anyway, accidents happen, but she cursed like a fury outside Yin’s door.
     
    “What a white tiger star you are! You bring misfortune to everyone close to you. Heaven has eyes, and you will bring bad luck down upon yourself, too.”
     
    Yin must have been aware of the reference—white tiger star— but she knew better than to emerge from her room to shout back.
     
    Lanlan, however, was even more enraged to be ignored like that. She voiced her complaints in neighborhood resident meetings. A lot of people heard them, and some were astonished by the animosity she had displayed toward Yin. But that was still far from being a murder