When Red is Black

English.”
     
    “Is it the translation of her novel?” Chen went on, after a pause, “I don’t see the point of locking it up when the book has already been published.”
     
    “I don’t know what it is for sure. You know that my command of English is not good. It appears to me to be a poetry translation.”
     
    “That’s interesting. Had she done any translations from Chinese into English?”
     
    “I really don’t know. Do you want to take a look at it?” Yu said. “The only words I understand in it are some names, like Li Bai or Du Fu. I don’t think Li Bai and Du Fu are related to the case.”
     
    “There might be something in it,” Chen said. “You never know.” Poetry had once given him some insight into the complexities of a case involving a missing person.
     
    “The bank is not far from your place. Let me buy you lunch, Chief. You need to take a break. How about meeting me at the restaurant across the street? Small Family—that’s its name.”
     
    “Fine,” Chen said. “I know the restaurant.”
     
    As he had promised Party Secretary Li, he was going to take a look at the Yin investigation.
     
    Would White Cloud, who had offered to make lunch for him, be disappointed? She’s only here for business reasons, Chen reflected as he got ready to go out. He left a note for her.
     
    The restaurant opposite the bank seemed to enjoy good business. Yu was in his uniform, so they were able to get a table in the corner that offered some privacy. They each had a bowl of noodles covered with soy-sauce-braised tripe. At the suggestion of the amiable hostess, they also had two appetizers, one of river shrimp fried with red pepper and bread crumbs, and one of soya beans boiled in salt water, plus a bottle of Qingdao beer each, which the hostess offered them with the compliments of the house.
     
    There were a couple of young waitresses flitting around like butterflies. From their accents, Chen judged them to be non-Shanghainese. During the ongoing economic reform, provincial girls too had come pouring into the city. Private entrepreneurs hired them at low wages. Shanghai had been a city of immigrants as early as the turn of the twentieth century. History was repeating itself.
     
    The manuscript Yu brought to the restaurant consisted of two folders. In one the manuscript was handwritten; in the other, it was neatly typed. There were no signs of whiteout corrections or of mistakes in the typed manuscript. Apparently it had been done by a computer. The two were practically identical in their content.
     
    Detective Yu was right. The manuscript consisted of a selection of classical Chinese love poems, including poets like Li Bai, Du Fu, Li Shangyin, Liu Yong, Su Shi, and Li Yu, with focus on the Tang and Song dynasties. The translation appeared fluent as Chen glanced through the first few pages.
     
    Something else was noticeable: the original form—either a four- or eight-line stanza—disappeared in the English renditions, some of which were informed with a surprisingly modern sensibility:
     
    A spring silkworm may not stop spinning
    silk until death. A candle’s tears dry
    only when it is burned down to ashes.
     
    In the Chinese original, Chen remembered, this was a well-known couplet about a lover’s self-consuming passion. This was not the time, however, for him to study the manuscript at length. Nevertheless, he did not think this translation could have been Yin’s work.
     
    “Yes, it’s a poetry translation.”
     
    “I don’t know why she valued it so much.”
     
    “It must have been done by somebody else—by Yang, probably,” Chen said. “Hold on—yes, I have found an Afterword here, written by Yin. Yes, it is Yang’s work, it says. She only edited the collection.”
     
    “Please take it. Read it when you have time. Maybe you will spot something. Please, boss?”
     
    Chen agreed, then asked “Have any new leads turned up in your interviews?”
     
    “No, not really. I have been interviewing the residents of the building all morning. That hypothesis is not very convincing.”
     
    “You mean the theory that she was murdered by one of the shikumen residents?”
     
    “Yes. I’ve studied the list of suspects prepared by Old Liang. Yin was not popular there, either because of some trivial dispute in some cases, or because of her conduct long ago in the Cultural Revolution, but neither of these is a strong enough motive for murder.”
     
    “Alternatively, the