When Red is Black

world.
     
    And then the investigation of Yin Lige’s case, unexpectedly, began to take on meaning for her. Not exactly a new meaning, nor meaningful only to her, but it was traceable as far back as her high school years. Her reading was secret at the time—secret because Chairman Mao’s works alone were officially available-libraries were closed, novels and poems out of reach, and a young girl of her family background had to be careful, carrying novels in a most stealthy way, hidden under her armpit within her cotton-padded coat. Like others, Peiqin had to turn to books that had been published earlier, that were still in clandestine circulation. “Wealthy” with half a dozen books she had hidden from the Red Guards’ clutches, she and several others had formed an underground network to exchange books. There was something like an “exchange rate”: Balzac’s Old Goriot would be worth Dickens’s Hard Times plus a Chinese novel such as The Song of Youth or The Story of the Red Flag. In their network, if a member was able to get a new book through an outside contact, then the book would travel from one member to another, available to each for only one day.
     
    She had developed a preference for certain writers. Yang, the great contemporary translator, was one of her favorites. In her opinion, hardly any modern Chinese writer was comparable to Yang for stylistic innovation, perhaps because he had a unique sensitivity to language, introducing Western expressions, and sometimes syntax too, into Chinese. In the history of modern Chinese literature, she had observed, most intellectuals who had a higher education had become translators rather than writers, for political reasons which were not difficult to understand.
     
    When she had left high school for Yunnan, she carried some of those “poisonous” books with her. She did not talk to Yu about them. It was not that she had intended to keep something from him; rather, she was worried that her bookish passion might have made her less approachable. Besides, Yu had been too busy, doing not only his share of the labor in the field, but a lot of times hers as well.
     
    In Yunnan she learned that Yang had written poems as well as translated novels. She found a short poem in an old anthology, which she copied into a notebook and memorized. It was not until after she came back to Shanghai that Yang’s poetry collection edited by Yin appeared in bookstores. By then, Peiqin was no longer a young, sentimental girl; still, she admired those poems. It broke her heart to learn that his poetry career had been cut short even before the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution. In the collection, she also read a few poems written shortly before his death.
     
    Now she picked up the poetry collection that Yin had edited and turned to a poem entitled “Snowman”:
     
    You have to be a snowman
    To stand in the snow
    Listening to the same message
    Of the howling wind
    With imperturbable patience,
    Gazing at the scene
    Without losing yourself in it
    While a hungry, homeless crow
    Starts to peck at your red nose,
    Apparently, a carrot.
     
    She did not think she truly understood the poem, yet she felt a sudden, almost Zen-like enlightenment, overcome by empathy for the poet. He must have been so lonely, so desolate, so chilled, standing outside alone like the snowman. Peiqin did not have to guess what “the same message of the howling wind” might have been. Or the “hungry, homeless crow.” But the snowman did not lose itself in the scene: it kept its human shape, paradoxically, in snow.
     
    She looked at the date underneath the poem. It had probably been written before he met Yin. Peiqin could understand how Yin’s appearance might have made a great difference in Yang’s life.
     
    But Peiqin was drawn into the investigation of Yin Lige’s case not just because of Yang, nor even because it might help her husband in his work. It was also because of a vague yearning she thought she had long since put behind her, a yearning to find something, some meaning, in her own life—like the meaning one could find in the “snowman.”
     
    Geng had suggested she become his partner when he expanded his business. She had not discussed this with Yu. It might be too early for her to let go of the iron bowl. No one could predict the future of China’s economic reform. Nor was a restaurant business something in which she was genuinely interested. She had helped her husband and Chief