When Red is Black

would have had to pay a very large sum. But, as he had confided to Chen, Gu had applied instead for a cultural preservation project. Of course he had not included a multi-level garage in that proposal, for it would have aroused suspicion. But as an add-on, backed up by the traffic control office, he might get quick approval. What Gu had paid for the translation was nothing, like a feather plucked from a Beijing duck, compared with what he hoped to gain.
     
    From another perspective, however, the grant of Gu’s request would mean a loss of revenue to the traffic control office. A large modern garage would put a lot of cars out of sight, but it would also put a lot of patrol officers out of work and eliminate the fines they might otherwise collect. So it might not be that easy for him to back Gu’s request, he understood, and Gu understood this too.
     
    “Well, when it is convenient, put in a word for the New World,” Gu said very smoothly.
     
    Chen could always claim that he was still waiting for that convenient moment, but he would probably not do so. The bottom line was that he was obliged to help Gu with respect to the garage request. “I’ll make a couple of phone calls,” he said vaguely at the end of the phone conversation. “And I will call you back, Gu.”
     
    Chen decided that first he had better go to the hospital. He had to pay the medical bill there. His mother would be released that evening. She had been worried about the expense. There was no point letting her know how much it cost; in any case, the money from the translation would surely cover it. This gave him an extra sense of self-justification, he reflected, as he arrived at the hospital accounting office. In the age of the market economy, the hospital made no exceptions, so neither need he, as long as he made money in a way that was acceptable to the system.
     
    To his surprise, he learned that his mother’s factory had already paid the hospital bill. “It’s been taken care of, Comrade Chief Inspector Chen,” the hospital cashier said with a broad grin. “Comrade Zhou Dexing, the factory director, wants you to give him a call when you have time. This is his number.”
     
    Chen dialed the number from a pay phone in the lobby.
     
    It was no great surprise to him to hear a warm speech from Comrade Zhou Dexing: “Our factory is having a difficult time, Comrade Chief Inspector Chen. The national economy is in a transitional period, and a state-run factory meets with one problem after another. For an old worker like your mother, however, we will take responsibility for her medical expense. She has worked all her life with utter dedication to the factory. We know what a good comrade she is.”
     
    “Thank you so much, Comrade Zhou.”
     
    What a good comrade her son is; somebody must have tipped him off about that, thought Chen. Whatever his motivation, what Comrade Zhou had said and done was politically correct, even an appropriate subject for an editorial in the People’s Daily.
     
    “For our work in the future, we will continue to enjoy her support, I hope, and yours too, Comrade Chief inspector. I have heard so much about your important work for the city.”
     
    These official courtesies were a polite veneer. But Chen was not worried. There are things a man can do, and things a man cannot do. This Confucian dictum could also mean that no matter what others might ask him to do, he would make his decision in accordance with his principles.
     
    A new sort of social relationship, cobweb-like, seemed to have developed, connecting people closely together along the threads of their interests. The existence of each thread depended on the others. Like it or not, Chief Inspector Chen was bound up in this network of connections.
     
    “You really flatter me, Comrade Zhou,” Chen said. “We all work for socialist China. Of course we will help each other.”
     
    That was not the Confucian ideal of a society, not the one envisioned by his father, a Neo-Confucian intellectual of the old generation. Ironically, Chen reflected, it was not totally irrelevant to Confucianism either. Yiqi, or the oughtness of the situation, a Confucian principle that emphasized moral obligation, had somehow evolved into oughtness of one’s own interest.
     
    But Chen reminded himself that he had no time for such philosophical speculation.
     
    He walked into his mother’s room. She was still asleep. Although the test results had excluded the particular