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 Inspector Chen once before when they were investigating the death of a National Model Worker, but she had never thought that she would come to be so engaged in an investigation. The combined temptation of doing something for a writer she had admired, of doing something for Yu, and of doing something for herself, too, was irresistible.

Could she discover a clue Yu might have overlooked? There was no way she could investigate as he did. She still had to come to her office during the week, and the weekend was reserved for Qinqin’s homework. There was only one thing she could do, Peiqin realized. Read. Yu had joked about her having lost herself God-knows-how-many times in The Dream of the Red Chamber. She thought she would now do a close re-reading of Death of a Chinese Professor.

“Peiqin, the soup will turn cold if you do not come down,” someone shouted from the kitchen.

She put away the books and went downstairs.

The restaurant was full of customers. One of its new specials was rice cake with soy-sauce-braised pork steak, a popular choice. While a lot of state-run restaurants had suffered from tough competition with privately run restaurants, Four Seas had done fairly well. This was probably because of its convenient location.

Taking her seat on a bench near the kitchen entrance, she had a portion of the rice cake with pork steak in addition to a bowl of the fish-head soup. The rice cake was pleasantly soft and sticky, the steak tender, and the soup delicious, shining with the red pepper strewn over the surface. It was a pity that she could not take it back home. Once cold, the fish soup would start smelling.

Xiangxiang, a dish washer, also an ex-educated youth, came over to Peiqin. Xiangxiang had to wear rubber boots that creaked as she moved, for the sink area was always wet. As she sat beside Peiqin, she pulled one water-soaked foot out of her boot. Xiangxiang had a slight stoop from bending over the dirty dishes all year round, and her fingers were red, chapped, swollen like carrots. She worked seven days a week under a special arrangement. Her husband had been laid off. She had to support the whole family.

“We have worked our butts off, for what?” Xiangxiang complained, wiping her hands on her gray apron. “All the meat goes to the government. Nothing but the soup is left for us.”

In order to compete, the restaurant had started a dinner business, instead of opening only in the mornings and afternoons as before. Business had improved, but little of the profit went to the employees, except as inexpensive perks like the fish-head soup.

“We are not doing that badly, with our location, and with our name too.”

“Geng is damned smart. Now he is his own boss.”

“The soup is delicious,” Peiqin said, finishing her rice cake. It was true. In Yunnan, such a meal would have seemed like a banquet. She then wondered whether she was like A Que, a well-known character created by Lu Xun, a character who always succeeds in seeing the bright side, whatever the circumstances. Was it “A Que” of her to have thought that? “I have to go back to my work, Xiangxiang.”

“With all the new accounting work you have, now that we work two shifts instead of one, you still have to manage all by yourself,” Xiangxiang said. “It’s not fair.”

“Nothing is fair. Life is not fair.”

Back in her own office, Peiqin took out the book and magazines again.

This time, Peiqin did not read Death of a Chinese Professor from the beginning. Instead, she tried to focus on some pages she had already marked. This re-reading underscored something she had already vaguely noticed: the quality of the writing was not even. Parts of the book seemed to be written by a naive beginner, while other parts struck her as sophisticated. The book seemed to have been written by two different people. Especially the part about the causes of the Cultural Revolution, which was so full of analytical power. It would be hard to imagine a young, hot-blooded Red Guard possessing such historical insight. But then the next few chapters became bogged down in details about local Red Guard organizations, their conflicts of interests, their struggles for power, as well as personal grievances within them. Some of those details were both trivial and irrelevant.

The quality of a book could vary in different parts, she understood, but surely this extreme variance in Death of a Chinese Professor was abnormal.

She was unable to shake off a feeling that someone other than Yin must have written this book. Peiqin then laughed at herself, shaking her head at her own reflection in a small, slightly cracked mirror on the desk.

When she looked up from the book again, it was almost two o’clock. She rose and paced about in the room. It was all right for her to do so, but the manager had to walk carefully, with his head bent, in this low-ceilinged office. She called to make sure that Hua would not return that day. Then she locked the door before picking up the telephone again to call Chief Inspector Chen.

After polite routine greetings, she asked a question. “What do you think of Yin as a writer, Chief Inspector Chen?”

“I have not read her book yet. In the last few days, I’ve made phone calls to some people who have read it. They seem not to have a very high opinion of it. Of course, they may be biased because of her Red Guard activity.”

“That I can understand. I have read the book several times. One thing keeps puzzling me. Some parts are written so amateurishly, at least so it seems to me, almost like the diary of a high school student. But other parts are really good, like the beginning of the book, which shows historical depth.”

“You have made an insightful observation,” Chen said. “As to the uneven quality of her writing, one critic made a similar point, saying that Yin might have used a ghostwriter. After all, she had never written anything before.”

“But that does not account for the inconsistency.”

“The ghostwriter might have helped to write only part of the book.”