Chapter Twenty-One — Names
Wednesday the eleventh of August.
It had been hot in the lane at noon.
The cicadas had begun the second week of July and had been by the second week of August at the level they had been since 1929. The dry hum at the second elm at the corner of the lane was the hum that had not, by my counting since I had been twelve, been a hum the city had been able to be the city without.
Auntie Lin had been at the chaise. She had drunk the broth at half past noon, a sip every count of seven. Mrs. Tsung had brought the ginger broth at quarter past noon, set it on the table, stood at the door for a count of nine, and gone back to the second house. She had come back at half past one — I am at the chair, Mrs. Lin — and gone again at quarter to two.
At quarter past two the L'Echo de Chine's afternoon edition had been brought to the lane by the newsboy from the corner of Sichuan Road N. The newsboy was twelve, was from Shaoxing, had been at the corner since 1935, had a face the lane had taken to. The newsboy had left the paper rolled at the green-painted brick where the newspapers had been left since 1932.
I had brought the paper in.
I had not opened it.
I had set it on the table by the chair at the harmonium.
At three Auntie Lin said read.
I had read.
The afternoon edition had, on the front page, in the bold-face type the L'Echo de Chine used for the items it had decided to lead with: INCIDENT AT HONGQIAO: JAPANESE NAVAL OFFICER KILLED, SETTLEMENT MEDIATING. SECURITY MEASURES INCREASED AT NORTH SETTLEMENT BOUNDARY. CONSULATE-GENERAL ISSUES STATEMENT.
I had read the statement.
The statement said the Imperial Japanese Consulate-General is in close consultation with the Settlement Municipal Council and with the relevant Chinese authorities concerning the incident at Hongqiao on Monday afternoon. The Consulate-General is confident that the matter will be resolved through diplomatic channels, in keeping with the long tradition of cooperation between Japan and China in the safeguarding of the Settlement. Reports of troop movements in the vicinity of the Settlement are without foundation.
The statement had been signed by Major Itō Kensuke, Assistant Naval Attaché, on behalf of Consul-General Okamoto Suemasa.
I had set the paper down.
I had looked at the harmonium.
I said Auntie.
Auntie Lin said Yes.
I said The Major signed the statement.
She said He had to. He is the staff officer who reads. He is the man who signs the statement the country has, on the second Wednesday of August, decided to put in front of the L'Echo de Chine. He is signing for the country.
I said He is signing because the country has, by the second week of August or the third, decided to be in the lane.
She said Yes.
I said The statement is not true.
She said The statement is the bow the country gives at the door before the country comes in.
I said Yes, Auntie.
She said Aliang.
I said Yes.
She said You will, tonight at midnight, go down.
I said Yes.
She said You will tell him about the statement.
I said Yes.
She said He has already read the statement; he will have the L'Echo de Chine on the table by the cot at half past eleven. You will not tell him to inform him. You will tell him because the telling is the telling. The country is at the door. The two of you tell each other.
I said Yes, Auntie.
She said Aliang.
I said Yes.
She said You will tell him also the names.
I said Yes.
She said The names of the first verse.
I said The names of the first verse.
She said He has been writing the names since June, in the third verse of Night Shanghai. He has decided that the singing of the names is the singing of a song the city has not yet sung. He has decided to write it. He has decided for you to sing it. He has not, by the eleventh of August at quarter past three, told you why.
I said Yes.
She said You will, tonight, ask him.
I said Yes.
She said He will tell you.
I said Yes.
She said Aliang.
I said Yes.
She said The first name of the first verse is, by the man under the floor's good music since June, your brother's name.
I had been at the chair at the harmonium.
I had not done anything.
I had sat.
I had looked at the wireless on the harmonium ledge.
The wireless on the harmonium ledge was at the Manila frequency. The Manila frequency at quarter past three on the Wednesday afternoon was, by Mr. Acuña's careful English at the Manila announcer's desk, broadcasting a string quartet from a hall in Manila playing Mozart.
I said yes.
She said He has known your brother's name. He has known it because he was at the morgue at Longhua at half past eight on the morning of the thirteenth of April in 1927 collecting the body of Lu Jiwen, who was his older half-brother, and because the clerk at the morgue — who was Mrs. Tsung's husband — had written two intake lines on the same sheet of cheap paper, two intake lines apart, of Shen Ahuai and Lu Jiwen. The man under the floor has been knowing that the cousin of Shen Ahuai whose name the cousin had given at the morgue had been Shen Aliang. The man under the floor has been knowing that the singer he was listening to on the third song of the second set at the bandstand was Shen Aliang.
I said Auntie.
She said Yes.
I said He has known me since 1932.
She said He has known of you. He has known you since the second week of October of 1936, when at the third Tuesday he played the bridge of Spring Wind Autumn Rain through the mirror and you took, on the third syllable of the third bar, the quarter inch without his having taught you. The knowing of has been the knowing of. The knowing has been the knowing.
I said Auntie.
She said Aliang.
I said Yes.
She said You will, tonight at midnight, ask him.
I said Yes.
She said He will tell you.
I said Yes.
She said Aliang.
I said Yes.
She said Now sleep.
I said Yes, Auntie.
I had gone to my room.
I had lain down on the narrow bed.
I had not, for the count of nine, closed my eyes.
I had closed them.
I had slept.
I had slept the thin hour of sleep between four and quarter past five.
At quarter past five Mrs. Tsung had knocked at the door.
I had got up.
I had washed.
I had eaten the dish of rice and the dish of pickled cabbage Mrs. Tsung had brought at six.
I had gone to the harmonium.
I had lifted the lid.
The lacquer box had been at the harmonium. The chrysanthemum pin and the white cotton wrapper and the Major's card from the ninth of April and the folded square of paper Auntie Lin had written the name Su Wanyin on in 1900 had been in the inner partition.
I had sat for the count of nine.
I had gone to the lane.
I had taken the rickshaw to the Paramount.
I had sung the third song of the second set at the eight o'clock — Spring Wind Autumn Rain, with the half-breath at the seventh measure, the quarter inch at the third syllable of the third bar, the lower register on the second word of the fourth line.
Jimmy King at the bandstand had not looked at the gallery.
Pearl at the table by the side window had drunk a swallow of her gin.
The Major was not at the Paramount on the Wednesday in August. The Major was at the consulate at Wuhan Road. The Major was, at the eight o'clock, at the desk at the third floor of the consulate, writing the careful telegrams in the careful Japanese in the careful hand of a Tokyo banker who had been at the Tokyo Imperial University in 1922. The Major's table at table eleven was, this Wednesday, occupied by a Belgian banker.
Mr. Du was at the parlor at Rue Wagner.
Yao Sanye was not at the Paramount. Yao Sanye, since the second whisky at the gala, had not been at the third row of the gallery. Yao Sanye had been at the office at the Avenue Joffre warehouse, drinking, alone, on the Wednesday afternoon.
The room was half empty.
The half who had come had come because the city was, on the Wednesday in August, the city before.
The applause was the applause.
I had gone to the dressing room.
I had gone down.
The cook was on the stool. The pipe was at the third lift. The bowl of barley tea was on the crate. The cook did not nod. The cook lifted his eyes by half an inch. The cook said: Miss Su, the leather suitcase is at the third storeroom. Mr. Hu has been packing it since the second week of June: the grey wool coat, the leather wallet, the four-paper folder of the four songs, and the Chinese-style wrapper of the jade cricket-cage from Mr. Hu's wife in Wuxian. The key will, on the morning of the leaving, be at a folded note on the music desk at the basement.
I said: I have not known your name.
The cook said: I am the cook. The cook is the name. Before the second week of November of 1934 the cook was at the cloakroom and was Mr. Wei Liangzhi. By Mr. Hu's good arrangement, the cook is the cook. Mr. Wei Liangzhi is a name on a list at the consulate at Wuhan Road.
I said: I am grateful.
He said: I have been at the stool for two years and nine months. Mr. Hu the carpenter found me at the cloakroom in the second week of November 1934, where I had been since the Saturday in February. My sister at Yangshupu had been at the clinic that Saturday, and I had been with her. I had not been at the press at half past three when the consulate's men came. I was the one the list of names had not finished.
I said: You were at the press.
He said: I was. A clerk. Mr. Liu Jin had brought me from the cloakroom in 1932. Mr. Liu Jin was at the press at the Saturday. He was one of the seven the consulate's men shot at half past three. He was one of the seven names on the list. He is one of the seven names the man under the floor has been keeping.
I said: I will, tonight, go down. I am going to ask him.
He said: You are.
I said: He will tell me.
He said: He will. He has been waiting. He has been waiting at the piano for the Tuesday at midnight. The Tuesday at midnight was last night. The last night was, by his good ear, not the night. He said, at the folded note he had given me at the third lift at the eight o'clock on the Wednesday morning, that the night was tonight. The night is tonight.
I said: I will not, in the morning, leave the lane. I will, in some morning, leave the lane. The leather suitcase is yours and Mr. Hu's.
He said: It is, Miss. On the morning, it will be yours. Good night, Miss Su.
I had gone through.
The forty-two steps had been the forty-two steps. The candle in the saucer on the wall ledge above the second-to-last step had been lit at quarter past eleven by Mr. Wei. The candle was, at quarter to midnight, at the level of a candle lit at quarter past eleven.
I had come to the bottom.
I had gone through the arch.
He was not at the piano.
He was at the cot.
He was at the cot in the grey wool coat that had been at the third hook by the cot. He was at the cot with the porcelain mask in place and the gloves on and the diary on his knees and the candle in the saucer on the crate by the cot at its level.
He stood.
He did not turn the unburned side.
He stood facing the arch.
He had been waiting at the cot since quarter past eleven.
He had set the diary on the crate by the cot.
He had walked from the cot to the piano stool.
He had turned the piano stool to face the chair at the new distance.
He had sat.
I had sat.
I had sat in the chair at the new distance.
The chair at the new distance had been, since the second Tuesday of March, set at four feet from the side of the piano stool and at six feet from the candle in the saucer on the music desk. The chair had been at the new distance because the distance had been the distance Feng Sheng had re-set the chair at, in the manner of a man at the piano who had decided that the distance of the chair at the third Tuesday of March was a distance the chair would now be at.
I had been at the chair at the new distance since the third Tuesday of March.
I had not, since the third Tuesday of March, moved the chair.
I moved the chair.
I moved the chair to two feet from the side of the piano stool.
I sat.
He did not move.
He said: Tell me.
I said: I went home on the Tuesday morning. I sat at the chaise with Auntie Lin. She told me. She told me about the column at the Longhua morgue on the morning of the thirteenth of April. She told me that you were at the morgue. She told me about Mr. Wei. She told me about the third verse.
He had not moved.
I said: You have known me since 1932.
He said: I have known of you since 1932. I have known you since the third Tuesday of October of 1936. I have known you in the manner of a man who has known a singer he has not yet taught. The teaching at the third Tuesday of October was the knowing.
I said: You collected your brother's body on the morning of the thirteenth of April.
He said: I did.
I said: You were at the morgue at half past eight.
He said: I was.
I said: I was there at half past nine. We did not see each other.
He said: We did not.
I said: We were two intake lines apart on a sheet of cheap paper at the Longhua morgue at half past eight in the morning of the thirteenth of April in 1927 and we did not see each other and the man at the desk was the man at the second house in the lane I have been living in for eight years. Eleven years.
He said: Eleven years.
He had looked at the candle.
He had not moved.
He said: I am going to take off the glove on the left hand. I am not going to take off the mask.
I said: No.
He said: I am not, by this Wednesday night, ready for the mask.
I said: No.
He said: I am ready for the glove.
He had lifted his right hand from the keyboard cover.
He had, with the right hand, taken hold of the leather button at the wrist of the left glove.
He had undone it.
He had drawn the glove off.
He had set the glove on the keyboard cover.
He held the left hand at the distance of two feet from the distance of the chair at the new distance.
The left hand had four full fingers and a thumb.
The fourth finger had no second joint.
The fourth finger ended at the first joint, in the smooth scar of a third-degree burn that had been the scar of a third-degree burn at the second knuckle of the fourth finger of the left hand of a man of twenty-seven who had put his left hand through the grille of a burning press at six minutes past three.
The fourth finger of the left hand was the finger.
The hand was the hand.
I did not, at the seeing of the hand, do anything for the count of nine.
I did not weep.
I did not move from the chair at the new distance.
I did not say his name.
I looked at the hand.
He held the hand.
At the third tick of the count of nine, I lifted my right hand.
I put my right hand on his left hand.
The hand was warm. The hand had the dry texture of a third-degree burn three years and six months old that had been the burn the doctor's careful folded square of the saline-and-almond paste had kept from worsening.
He did not move his hand from under mine.
I said: I am sorry for the year.
He said: I am sorry for the year.
I said: 1927.
He said: 1927.
I said: 1934.
He said: 1934.
I said: Tell me the names of the first verse.
He said: *Liu Jin. The press master. Shanghainese. Twenty-nine. Married, one son. Born at Yangshupu. Died at the third printing press at Zhabei on Saturday afternoon, the third of February, 1934.
An Wenjing. The compositor. Hangzhou. Twenty-five. Newly married. Died there, that Saturday.
Lu Jiwen. Her husband, the editor. Born at Zhabei. Twenty-eight. Older half-brother of Lu Jiyuan by their father's first marriage — the half-brother who taught Lu Jiyuan the Beethoven Sonata No. 14 at the parlor piano at the Bund in 1916, and at the Conservatory in 1923 taught him the half-breath at the seventh measure in the bridge of Spring Wind Autumn Rain. Died there, that Saturday.
Lin Aifeng. The foreman. Ningbo. Forty-one. Widower, three children. Died there.
Wei Liangzhi. The clerk. Shaoxing. Thirty-two. Married, two children. Did not die — he was at the clinic at Yangshupu with his sister. He is at this hour on the stool at the cold-storage room of the Paramount.
Cao Tianlu. The apprentice. Sixteen. Wuxian. Died there, that Saturday.*
He said: The seventh name of the seventh line of the third verse — which I have not yet written — will, by my counting, be Constable Wu of the Settlement police. Constable Wu was the constable who gave the firing order at six minutes past six on the morning of the twelfth of April in 1927 for the seventeen at Longhua, my brother and yours among them. He is at his cot at Beihai Road. I have, in three years and six months, written the names of the first six. I have not yet written the name of Constable Wu. I will, by the second week of August or the third, have written it.
I said: Your brother's name and my brother's name.
He said: I have written your brother's name in the appendix of the diary. The appendix is the older list. The appendix is the 1927 list. The 1927 list is the list of seventeen at Longhua at six minutes past six on the morning of the twelfth of April. The seventeen at Longhua are the men whose names I have been carrying for ten years. Your brother's name is at the eighth line of the seventeen at Longhua. My brother's name is at the seventh.
I said: They were two intake lines apart.
He said: They were.
I said: They were two intake lines apart because the firing order at six minutes past six on the morning of the twelfth of April put them in the same order at the trench.
He said: It did.
I said: In 1927.
He said: In 1927. He has been a constable for fifteen years. He has been at Beihai Road for nine of those years. He has had a wife since 1932. He has had no children. He is, at this Wednesday at midnight, asleep at his cot.
I said: What did Mr. Lu Jiwen tell you the half-breath was, in 1923.
He had not moved.
He had been quiet for the count of nine.
He said: He told me the half-breath at the seventh measure was the breath the singer let the dead in. He told me the dead were not the dead one had had. The dead were the dead the city had had. The bridge was a folk song. The folk song was for the city. The half-breath at the seventh measure was the breath the song let the city's dead in. He told me, at the parlor piano at the Bund in the summer of 1923, that the half-breath was a dry thing the bridge did so that the bridge could be in a town that had lost a person. He told me the bridge had always been a bridge in such a town.
I said: I have been taking the half-breath at the seventh measure since the second Tuesday of October.
He said: Since the second Tuesday of October.
I said: On the second Tuesday of October I had not known the half-breath was the half-breath.
He said: No.
I said: On the second Tuesday of October I had taken the half-breath because the bridge had had a measure that wanted a half-breath. On the second Wednesday of August I am taking the half-breath because the half-breath is the half-breath I have been taking for ten years.
He said: On the second Wednesday of August you are singing for them. We are.
I said: We are.
He said: I have, for eleven years, kept the doubles of the diary for the dead. The appendix is the older list — the 1927 seventeen. The primary is the newer. The doubles I have been writing since the third Sunday of April of 1927 at the writing desk by the window of my boarding room at the Conservatory at the corner of Shangxian Fang, at twenty years old. The doubles were for the dead. They are, at the third Wednesday of August of 1937, also for you.
I said: You have given me the doubles.
He said: I have.
I said: I have known, since the second Sunday after the gala, that I would leave Shanghai. The leather suitcase at the third storeroom.
He said: Mr. Hu has been packing it for the second week of June. It has the grey wool coat that was a gift from a Russian dressmaker at Hongkou in the third week of June, and the leather wallet with the forged papers that have been at the third storeroom since the second Friday of July, and the four-paper folder of the four songs, and the Chinese-style wrapper of a jade cricket-cage from Mr. Hu's wife in Wuxian. The key to the third storeroom will, on the morning of the leaving, be at a folded note on the music desk. I have, since the third week of June, packed a leather case for myself at the cot. The case has the diary, the gloves, the spare mask, the bottle of the saline-and-almond paste, and the folded square of the manuscript of Night Shanghai in three movements. The case is at the cot. The case will, on the morning of the leaving, be at the cot.
I said: The morning of the leaving.
He said: I do not know the morning. The morning will not, by my deciding, be the morning. The morning will, by the country's deciding, be the morning. I am thirty in November.
I said: I am twenty-two on the second Sunday of October. Let me see the diary.
He had risen from the piano stool. He had gone to the cot. He had taken the diary from the crate by the cot. He had brought the diary back to the piano. He had set the diary on the keyboard cover. He had opened to the third page from the back.
The third page from the back had the seventeen names of the seventeen at Longhua at six minutes past six on the morning of the twelfth of April in 1927.
I had read them.
I had read them in the order he had written them.
I had read the seventh name. The seventh name was Lu Jiwen, age twenty-one, Shanghai, Conservatory, taken at the third printing press in Zhabei, firing order of Constable Wu of the Settlement police, body collected by the younger half-brother Lu Jiyuan, Shanghai Conservatory, on the same morning at the Longhua morgue.
I had read the eighth name. The eighth name was Shen Ahuai, age nineteen, Wuxian, taken at Longhua, firing order of Constable Wu of the Settlement police, body collected by the elder cousin Shen Aliang, Wuxian, on the same morning at the Longhua morgue.
I had read the names twice.
I had set the diary down.
I had put my left hand on the open page.
He had put his left hand — the bare one with the four full fingers and a thumb and the missing joint at the fourth finger — on top of my left hand on the open page.
His hand was warm. My hand was at the page.
We sat for the count of nine.
The candle in the saucer on the music desk burned at its level. The lamp at the table by the piano was at its low. The Telefunken at the wall was off.
He did not move his hand.
I did not move mine.
We sat at the basement at quarter past one on the Wednesday night of the second Wednesday of August, 1937, with our left hands on the third page from the back of the diary on the eighth and seventh names of the seventeen at Longhua at six minutes past six on the morning of the twelfth of April in 1927, on the page he had written at the chair at the writing desk by the window of the boarding room at the Conservatory at the corner of Shangxian Fang on the third Sunday of April of 1927 at twenty years old.
He said: There are perhaps three things I want. The first of them is for you to live. The second of them is for the third verse to go out into the air. The third of them is for you to live afterwards. I am not naming the third differently.
I said: No.
He said: I will, by the morning, have the case.
I said: I will, by the morning, have the suitcase.
He said: The morning is not this morning.
I said: No.
He said: On the morning of the leaving, we will leave together. I am not, by the morning, asking you to see my face.
I said: No.
He said: I am asking you not to ask to see it until I have asked you to. I will ask.
I said: I will wait.
He said: Aliang. Tonight you will sleep. On the morning you will go to the chaise. On the Friday I will, by Mr. Wei, send you the second movement at a folded note — it has had its full score since the third Sunday of July; the full score is at the cot in the leather case. On the second week of August or the third, by some morning, we will leave. I have wanted to say your name.
I said: I have known yours.
He said: Go up.
I rose.
I took my left hand from the diary.
He took his left hand from mine.
He set the left hand back on the keyboard cover.
He did not put the glove back on.
I went to the arch.
At the arch I stopped.
I turned.
He had not moved.
He had his left hand on the keyboard cover.
The glove was on the keyboard cover beside it.
The diary was on the music desk.
The candle in the saucer was at its level.
The lamp at the table by the piano was at its low.
I said: Good night.
He said: Good night.
I went up.
The forty-two steps had been the forty-two steps. The candle at the wall ledge above the second-to-last step had been at the level of a candle that had been lit at quarter past eleven. The cook on the stool — Mr. Wei Liangzhi of Shaoxing, who was thirty-two and had been at the press in 1932 and had been at the clinic at Yangshupu on the Saturday — was on the stool with the pipe at the third lift and the bowl of barley tea on the crate and the grey wool coat at the second nail on the wall.
I did not say anything.
Mr. Wei did not say anything.
Mr. Wei lifted the pipe.
Mr. Wei nodded.
I went up the back stair.
I went to the dressing room.
I sat at the vanity.
I did not, on the sitting, do anything for the count of nine.
I did not weep.
I had not wept.
I would, on the rickshaw home at quarter past two, weep.
I changed into the grey rehearsal qipao.
I went down the back stair.
I went to the corner.
The rickshaw came at quarter past two.
I sat at the rickshaw.
On Avenue Pichon, between the corner of Rue Lafayette and the corner of Avenue Joffre, I wept.
I wept for the count of seven blocks.
I wept the way a woman of twenty-two wept on a rickshaw on Avenue Pichon at quarter past two on a Thursday morning of the second week of August, 1937, when she had sat at a basement with her left hand on the diary of a man whose left fourth finger had no second joint, and had heard the name of her brother spoken back to her in his voice at the eleventh year, and had set her left hand on his left hand on the page on which both of their brothers' names had been written by his hand at twenty in April of 1927 at the chair at the writing desk by the window of his boarding room at the Conservatory at the corner of Shangxian Fang.
The rickshaw rounded the corner of Avenue Joffre and Yuyuan.
I stopped weeping.
I dried my face with the handkerchief in the inside pocket of the handbag.
I gave the rickshaw man two extra coppers.
I went to the lane.
Mrs. Tsung was at the chair by the door.
The chaise was at the wireless.
Auntie Lin was at the chaise.
The lacquer cup of weak tea was on the table by the chaise.
The lacquer cup of weak tea was not at the level of a cup at quarter past two on a Thursday morning that had not been touched since the ginger broth at six. The lacquer cup was at the level a lacquer cup was at when it had been refilled by Mrs. Tsung at midnight with a fresh spoon of the Suzhou green-tea leaves and a fresh cup of hot water from the kettle on the brazier.
The cup had been refilled.
The cup had not yet been the cup.
Auntie Lin lifted her hand by half an inch.
She said: You wept.
I sat.
She said: He told you.
I said: He told me.
She said: You told him.
I said: I told him.
She said: You moved the chair.
I said: I moved the chair.
She said: Good. You are going to leave on some morning. You will not know in advance. Mrs. Tsung will, on the morning of the leaving, be at the chair by the door.
I said: I am sorry.
She said: You are not to be sorry.
I went to my room.
I lay down.
I closed my eyes.
In the dream the basement was not the basement. It was the parlor at the Bund of Mr. Lu's house in 1916, with the upright piano on which Mr. Lu Jiwen at eighteen had taught Lu Jiyuan at nine the Beethoven Sonata No. 14. Two boys at the piano. At the door, in a Suzhou cotton tunic, a girl of seven, brought by her elder brother of nine on the same Sunday afternoon — not there in 1916, there in the dream, because the dream did not keep the years apart.
I sat at the door.
I listened to Lu Jiwen play the Sonata No. 14.
I listened to Shen Ahuai sit on the parlor's ottoman and listen.
Lu Jiyuan was nine. Shen Ahuai was nine.
I was seven.
The two of them were at the piano.
I was at the door.
In the dream Lu Jiwen lifted his eyes from the keyboard and looked at me at the door. He said come in, sweetheart. I went in and sat on the ottoman beside Shen Ahuai. Shen Ahuai did not look at me. He was looking at Lu Jiyuan. Lu Jiyuan was looking at the keyboard. Lu Jiwen was playing.
The four of us sat in the parlor at the Bund in 1916 in a dream that had not been a real Sunday afternoon and had been the real Sunday afternoon the country had taken from us.
I woke at six.
The lane was the lane.
Mrs. Tsung was at the kitchen lighting the brazier for the ginger broth.
Auntie Lin was at the chaise.
The lacquer cup of weak tea was on the table by the chaise.
The cup had not been drunk.
The cup was the cup.
The country was, at the corner of the lane, not yet at the door.
I went to the harmonium.
I lifted the lid.
In the lacquer box at the inner partition there was a fifth additional object.
The fifth additional object was a folded square of paper.
The folded square of paper had been brought, at quarter past five on the Thursday morning, by Mr. Wei Liangzhi from the cold-storage room of the Paramount to the lane door of the lane house in Hongkou by the running of Mr. Wei's nephew at the corner of Sichuan Road N. Mr. Wei's nephew had left it at the green-painted brick at the door, where the newspapers had been left since 1932.
I had not known the folded note was at the green-painted brick.
Mrs. Tsung at the kitchen at the lighting of the brazier said the brick has a note.
I had gone to the brick.
I had brought the note in.
I had set it on the harmonium ledge.
I opened it at quarter past six. The note had, in his hand, four lines:
*A.
The second movement is at the cot in the leather case.
The third verse has a seventh name.
The seventh name is written.
J.*
I put it in the inner partition with the chrysanthemum pin, the white cotton wrapper, the Major's card from the ninth of April, and the folded square of paper Auntie Lin had written Su Wanyin on in 1900. I closed the lacquer box and the harmonium.
I sat at the chair at the harmonium.
The lane was the lane.
I sat.
The country, at the chair at the harmonium at quarter to seven on the Thursday morning of the second week of August, 1937, was not at the door.
The country, by the second week of August or the third, would be.
The morning would, by the country, be the morning.
I closed my eyes for the count of nine.
I opened them.
I went to the chaise.
I knelt at the chaise.
I put my forehead at her hand.
Her hand was, on the table by the chaise, the hand of a Suzhou-born woman of sixty-two with the lacquer cup of weak tea beside it.
She lifted the hand by half an inch.
She put the hand on my hair.
She did not, at the hair, say anything.
She did not need to.