When Red is Black

those years were not totally wasted.”
     
    “Did you find out what kind of book he was writing?”
     
    “Later, when we put him into the isolation room, we searched his dorm room, but we did not find anything. It might have been a manuscript in English.”
     
    “Please tell me about the circumstances of Yang’s death.”
     
    “It was a sweltering hot summer. We all worked in the rice paddy, just like the local farmers. It was not Yang alone who had to work there. In fact, a lot of people were sick. As for any possible negligence, now by hindsight, if we had known he was so seriously ill. . . . But perhaps he was not aware of it either. The cadre school was located in Qingpu. Transportation then was not like it is today. There wasn’t a single taxi in the area in those years. How could the cadre school be possibly held responsible for his tragic death?”
     
    “It may be too much to say that he was persecuted to death, but we can understand Yin’s reaction. She suffered a lot those years.”
     
    “So did I!” Qiao snapped. “All those years, I stayed at the cadre school, working there. Have I gained anything? No, nothing. At the end of the Cultural Revolution, I was subjected to ‘political examination’ for two years. And my wife divorced me, discarded me like a dirty sock.”
     
    “Just one more question. Where were you on the morning of February seventh?”
     
    “I was in Anhui, collecting debts for my company. A number of people, including those at the hotel, can testify to that.”
     
    “Thanks, Comrade Qiao. I don’t think I have any more questions for you today. ‘Look to the future,’ as the People’s Daily always says.”
     
    The telephone interview had been unhelpful, although not a total waste. For one thing, Yu learned that in his last few years, Yang had kept on working, which could have resulted in the translation of classical Chinese love poems they had found in Yin’s safety deposit box. Also, it reconfirmed Old Hunter’s maxim, that the past is always present. Almost twenty years later, people still looked at the Cultural Revolution from their own perspective forged at the time.
     
    He removed the cassette on which he had taped the phone call. Chief Inspector Chen might be interested in it, Yu thought. He dialed the home number of his boss.
     
    “You may suspect everyone in the building,” Chen said after having listened to Yu’s short briefing, “but when everyone is a suspect, nobody is a suspect.”
     
    “Exactly,“ Yu said. “Old Liang sees only what he wants to see.”
     
    “Old Liang has been a residence cop for too many years. The job of a residence cop, however important in the years of class struggle, is hardly relevant nowadays. But he still cannot help seeing the world from his outdated angle,” Chen said. “Su Dongpu has put it so well: You cannot see the true face of the Lu mountains, / When you are still inside the mountains.”
     
    That was just like his boss, quoting some long-dead poet in the middle of an investigation. This penchant of Chen’s could occasionally be annoying.
     
    Then Detective Yu went over to the shikumen building.
     
    Cai was not at home. Lindi, a fine-featured woman in her late forties, was in the courtyard, cutting open a pile of river scallop spiral shells with a pair of rusted scissors. Wan was also there, seated on a bamboo stool, drinking from a purple stone teapot. At this time of the year, people normally did not sit outside doing nothing. At the sight of Detective Yu, Wan mumbled a few words and left.
     
    After Yu introduced himself to her, Lindi led him upstairs to a small room. It would be difficult for a medium-sized family to squeeze into such an all-purpose room, let alone three families. But she lived in it with her son and his “wife,” her daughter, a crying baby and, most of the time, her son-in-law, Cai. Fortunately, it was a room with a relatively high ceiling, which made possible the construction of two added make-shift lofts, with a common ladder leading to both of them. In comparison, Detective Yu reflected with deep sarcasm, his living conditions could be considered great.
     
    According to Lindi, Cai was not at home this morning. Nor had he been here on the morning of February 7. “No one can tell what he’s really up to,” Lindi said with a sigh. “I warned Xiuzhen about her choice, but she would not listen.”
     
    “I have heard about it. How about your son