When Red is Black

seventh, Bao? We know what you did, so there’s no point denying it.”
     
    Perhaps Bao was too young. He did not know that the police had to have a search warrant before they could go through his room. Still he evaded Yu’s questions, mechanically proclaiming his innocence of any wrongdoing.
     
    Chen, searching under the bed, pulled out a couple of cardboard boxes. Inside a shoebox he found a bunch of paper, rubber-banded together.
     
    “This is the manuscript you took from Yin’s place on the morning of February seventh,” Chen said in a composed voice, as if this discovery was a foregone conclusion. “This is the manuscript of the novel that Yang wrote in English.”
     
    Yu manage to conceal his surprise as he said, “The game is over. Better come clean right now.”
     
    Bao looked like a green bean sprout that had been boiled and shrunken.
     
    “I have the evidence now; you took this from Yin’s room,” Chen said. “There is no use denying it. This is your last chance to cooperate.”
     
    “Use your brains, Bao,” said Yu.
     
    “I did not mean it—” Bao started, all in a fluster. “I really did not mean to do it.”
     
    “Hold on,” Chen said, taking out a mini tape recorder from his pocket.
     
    “Yes, we can tape him here,” Yu said.
     
    “It’s your case, Detective Yu. You question him. I’ll take a look at the manuscript over a bowl of noodles in the small restaurant downstairs.”
     
    “Come on, Chief. You should question him too. Surely you can read here.”
     
    “I have not had breakfast yet. I’ll be back as soon as I’ve had a bite.”
     
    So Bao began to confess. His head buried between his hands, squatting in a posture Detective Yu had seen in a movie about the farmers in the northwest region, with the tape recorder on the floor in front of him and Yu, seated on the hardboard bed gazing down on him, Bao spoke.
     
    It had all started with Bao’s first trip to Shanghai three and a half years earlier, on the occasion of his grandmother’s death. The dying Jie had asked to see her grandson for the first and also the last time. Theirs was one of the numerous tragic stories from the Cultural Revolution. Hong, who had been a teenager then, had tried to join the Red Guard, but had been rejected because of her family background. Hong felt she had no choice but to prove her revolutionary fervor by cutting all her family ties. She denounced her parents as well as Yang, the Rightist uncle she had never seen. Hong was among the first group that went to Jiangxi Province in the movement of educated youths going to the countryside. She went one step further by marrying a local farmer, a decisive break with her former self.
     
    At the end of the Cultural Revolution, Hong must have come to regret those “revolutionary decisions” of hers, but there was little she could do. Her father had passed away, and her mother would never forgive her. After the first two years of her marriage, she had practically nothing to talk about to her husband. All her hopes rested with her son Bao. She made him read books, and she told him stories. Most of the stories were about the wonderful city in which she had grown up. And there were a few about Yang too. With the passage of time, Yang no longer appeared so black or counterrevolutionary to her; now he was a glamorous intellectual.
     
    When her mother’s dying request reached her, it took Hong several days to borrow enough money for a train ticket for Bao. The old woman still had not forgiven her. Bao alone boarded the train. By the time he reached Shanghai, Jie had passed away. Her room had already been reclaimed by the government. What she had left behind had been divided among her neighbors. One claimed that Jie had given her all her furniture, and another took Jie’s old clothes. They were not worth much, but to Bao this was a huge disappointment. Hong had sent him forth with the expectation that he would receive an inheritance.
     
    When Jie had lain dying, she had been alone. Now that she was dead, her grandson arrived out of nowhere to claim his due. No one wanted to put themselves out on his behalf. Bao did not even have a place to stay in the city. From the neighborhood committee, however, Bao learned one thing: among those who had attended the funeral service for Jie was Yin Lige. She had taken away with her an old photo album, as well as several old letters that no one else wanted.
     
    One of the committee members suggested