Chapter Ten
The Re-Painted Storefront
She crossed the city on foot.
Vermilion-Bird Avenue at the third hour of the afternoon was the broadest street in the empire and the loudest. She walked along its eastern edge, where the shade of the elms ran in a thin grey ribbon over the paving. A camel-train was being argued past the Imperial Way's first arcade by two Sogdian drovers and a small spare Han clerk of the Ministry of Works who had, in the small specific tone of a clerk who did not wish to argue, given up arguing. The camels had not.
She let the avenue carry her north as far as the second cross-street and turned east.
She had not, at the corner of Vermilion-Bird, allowed herself the third inference. She allowed it now without speaking it, at the slow private pace at which a woman might allow a stone to settle through wine. The Honglu Si did not arrange a third-watch courier for a single household. The Honglu Si arranged a courier for a route.
The route, this afternoon, was the small private thing she had walked east to read.
Pei's deputy had sent her, by the dawn drum, a small grey-paper note — a courtesy and a request that she call on the silk-weaver Hua's widow in the Eastern Market on the matter of the half-drafted petition from the third month. The widow lived on the second lane, three doors south of a storefront whose vermilion lacquer Wanjun had, three weeks ago in passing, seen at one particular shade of red.
The storefront belonged to one Master Zhang Cong, a silk-merchant of the second-grade license whose customs filings she had read for two summers in her late husband's study.
She did not yet know what she was going to find. She allowed the not-knowing as she had allowed the rest.
\ \ \*
The Eastern Market gate was busier than the Western at this hour. The Eastern served the aristocracy of the eastern wards; the eastern wards were where the Six Ministries lived. The traffic at the gate was sedan chairs and small horses and the careful unhurried walk of men in court robes the colour of dark plums. A Gold Bird guardsman at the gate registered her grey, glanced at her Daoist tally, and let her pass without a word.
She walked east along the second arcade.
The storefront sat at the south end of the second lane, on the corner where the lane met the silk-mercers' run. It was a modest frontage by the second-grade standard — six bays, lacquered red, with the small painted character for silk set in gold above the lintel and a pair of black wood doors standing open onto the public counter. A clerk in unbleached cotton sat at the counter. A boy of perhaps twelve stood at the boy's place by the door.
She did not, at the corner, look at the storefront immediately.
She looked, instead, at the storefront of the apprentice tailor next door. The apprentice tailor's frontage was three bays of plain wood, weathered to the grey of long Chang'an winters, with a small dirty signboard advertising the small specific service of refitting Han collars onto Sogdian-cut robes for the foreign merchants. A young man of perhaps eighteen stood at the door eating a piece of cold flatbread.
She walked to him.
"Master."
He swallowed. He bowed. He did not, she registered, recognise her; she had not been in this lane before in Daoist grey.
"Lady."
"I am Cui Wanjun of Yongchong Ward. I am, this afternoon, on the Censor's note to the widow of the silk-weaver Hua, three doors south. I have, at the corner, recognised this storefront — " she did not look at Zhang's; she let the apprentice tailor see her eyes pass his frontage and rest on his master's signboard — " as the establishment of Master Cao, who refitted, in the autumn of the year before last, three Han collars onto Sogdian sleeves for my late husband's escort on his Hexi circuit. The fitting, master, was creditable. I have remembered it."
The apprentice tailor's face moved.
"Lady. My master is at his tea. I will, lady, fetch him at once — "
"You will not, master. I have not the time this afternoon. I have a small private question for you, on which my errand depends. The storefront on the corner. Master Zhang's."
"Lady."
"The lacquer."
He looked at the lacquer. He looked back at her. He was, by his face, perhaps a clever boy.
"Lady. The lacquer was redone eight days ago."
"Eight."
"Eight days, lady. The lacquer-master came at the dawn drum. He worked through the morning. By the half of the noon hour the doors were back on the hinges. He worked, lady — " the boy's hand moved, a small embarrassed gesture — " he worked the whole frontage in a single morning, which my master has, since, said is not how a lacquer-master works. A frontage of this size, my master says, should take two days. The lacquer-master, lady, painted over the old."
"Painted over."
"Painted over, lady. My master, who has been forty years at his trade, says one does not paint over Eastern Market vermilion. One strips it. One does not strip it, lady, because the lower lacquer holds the upper lacquer poorly in the second summer, and the frontage will, by the autumn, blister. My master, lady, would not have done it that way. The lacquer-master who did it — my master did not know him."
"From which workshop."
"Lady, he did not say. My master asked. The lacquer-master, lady, said only that he had been engaged by the household direct. He did not, lady, name a workshop."
"And before the lacquer."
The boy hesitated. He had, she registered, the small honest hesitation of a boy who had been told by his master not to say too much and who had, on the matter of the lacquer, already said it.
"Before the lacquer, lady, the frontage was the same red. The same red, lady — but the old red, my master says, had a small darker undertone, which my master, who has worked beside this storefront for eleven years, would know at a glance. The new red, lady, is the red of an Eastern-quarter workshop that does, by my master's reading, the imperial-warehouse contracts. It is a red of the eastern wards. The old red was a red of the southern wards. The change, lady, was small. My master noticed it because my master, lady, has a small private grievance with Master Zhang on the matter of the boundary tile, which is a grievance not for this afternoon."
She inclined her head.
"Master. I am obliged. I will, this winter, send my husband's nephew to your master for a collar. I will, this afternoon, not detain you."
"Lady."
He bowed. She bowed. She walked south past the storefront of Master Zhang as if she had not yet seen it.
She did not, in passing, turn her head.
She did, however, in the small narrow private register of a woman who had spent two summers reading a Hexi-circuit junior censor's customs ledgers in the lamp-light of his study, place against the inside of her chest the small flat second of a question. The question was: eleven days ago, the An compound. Eight days ago, the lacquer. Three days between.
Three days, in the Tang Code's idiom of premeditation, was the small specific interval between a thing done and a thing concealed.
She did not allow her face to do anything.
She walked to the Hua widow's door.
\ \ \*
The Hua widow was sixty-four. She had the small flat patient face of a woman who had been at her loom for fifty years and at her widowhood for nine. She received Wanjun in a small clean second room behind her workshop, served her a cup of millet tea, and waited.
The petition, when she had drafted it in the third month, had been a small narrow grievance: the silk-weavers' guild had, on the matter of a deceased husband's apprenticeship-fee refund, applied the wrong clause of the relevant subsection, and the widow Hua had been short by a sum that was not, by the prefecture's idiom, large enough to litigate. Wanjun had drafted the petition in the small specific form the prefecture would receive without referring it back to the guild. She had not, at the time, named the clerk. The clerk, the widow Hua had asked, was not to be named; the clerk was the widow's own nephew.
This afternoon, the widow named him.
"Lady. The nephew, by the small private speech of his wife to my own daughter at the half-month festival, has — in the past two months — been visited at the guild by a man of the Eastern Market who has, lady, asked the nephew to write a small private letter."
"A letter."
"A letter, lady. To my own household. Asking my own household to withdraw the petition. The nephew, lady, has written the letter. The letter, by my own daughter's reading, was set in a hand that was not the nephew's. The letter, lady, was set in the hand of the man of the Eastern Market who had visited the nephew."
"Who was the man."
"Lady. The wife of the nephew said only that the man was a Han silk-merchant of the second-grade license. The wife of the nephew, lady, said that the man, on the matter of the petition, paid the nephew in a small piece of stone."
Wanjun set her cup down.
"A piece of stone."
"A piece of stone, lady. The wife of the nephew brought the piece to my own daughter at the half-month festival. My own daughter, lady, has shown it to me. It is — " the widow Hua reached into the small wooden box on the table beside her, took from it a folded square of black silk, and unfolded it carefully — "it is, lady, this."
A small pale-green stone lay on the silk. It was the size of a child's thumb. It was uncut. Its edges were the slightly chalky white of a stone that had not yet been worked. There was no inscription. There was no setting.
Khotanese jade. Pre-cutting grade.
Wanjun, in the small clean second room of a Han silk-weaver's widow in the Eastern Market, did not allow her face to do anything.
She had, in the small back chamber of her own attention, the small uncut grain of green stone Brother Hui had brought up from the flour-jar in the An compound's storeroom on the morning of the second day. The grain had been the size of a grain of millet. This stone was the size of a child's thumb. The grain had been an accident — a piece that had broken off in the unpacking. This stone was an instruction.
She did not yet name the instruction.
She allowed the uncut stone to sit on the black silk for the count of three breaths.
"Mother Hua."
"Lady."
"You will, this afternoon, leave the stone with me. I will return it to you, at the dusk drum of the second-day audience, in a small wrapped parcel by Nanny Zhou's hand. I will, in the meantime, withdraw the petition. I will write a small private letter to the Censor's deputy in your own name, mother. The letter will say that, on reflection, the family has agreed to settle within the guild. The letter will be received."
The widow Hua did not look surprised. She had, Wanjun registered, expected something of the kind.
"Lady."
"You will not, mother, be at this address at the half of the second-day audience. You will be at your daughter's house in Liquan. You will, mother, return to this address only after I have sent word."
"Lady."
"You have done me a courtesy, mother."
"Lady. The stone, lady. The man who paid the nephew in the stone."
"Yes."
"The man, lady. By the wife of the nephew. The man's storefront is the storefront at the south end of the second lane, three doors north."
"Yes."
"You have not, lady, looked surprised."
"I have not, mother. I am, on the matter, surprised. I have not, mother, allowed the surprise to come to my face."
The widow Hua, after a small flat second, inclined her head.
\ \ \*
She walked back along the second arcade in the unhurried walk of a woman who had concluded a small private consultation and was returning to the avenue.
She did not, in passing, look at the storefront.
She had, in the small narrow pocket of her sleeve, the stone wrapped in the widow Hua's black silk. The stone weighed approximately the weight of three copper cash. It was the heaviest thing she had ever carried in her sleeve.
At the corner of the second lane and the silk-mercers' run, a thin threadbare man came up from the south at the small unhurried walk of a man who had been at a wine-shop since the noon drum. She did not, at the corner, raise her hand. He raised his.
"Lady Cui."
"Master Du."
"You are at this corner at the third hour. I have, this afternoon, taken your noodle in advance. I have, lady, been at the tea-shop of the Three Magpies, two streets west, since the half of the second hour. I have, this afternoon, two things for you."
"Two."
"That a Pingkang girl of the second-rate house at the back of the Lane of the Wagtail, who has — by the proprietress of the Magpies — been the small private favourite of a silk-merchant of the Eastern Market for the past year, told the proprietress at the dawn that the merchant has, in the past spring, been paying her in small private coin to learn Sogdian. The girl, lady, by the proprietress's reading, has been learning the Sogdian of the second dialect — the Bukharan, not the Samarkand. She has been learning, lady, the Bukharan idiom of the table-grammar of a behdin household."
She did not, at the corner, allow her face to do anything.
"The merchant's name."
"The merchant, lady, by the proprietress. Zhang. Master Zhang Cong, of the second lane, with the new lacquer."
"You have done me two courtesies, master. The second."
"The second, lady. A junior censor of Lu Zhongming's office, lady, who was at the Three Magpies at the half of the second hour, told the proprietress, in the small private idiom of a junior censor who has been at the cup since the noon drum, that the senior censor's promotion to the Censorate's third-grade — which his wife's clan has, this month, withdrawn its sponsorship of — will be re-sponsored, at the half of the second-day audience tomorrow, by a small private donation made to the Censorate's Buddhist almsfund. The donation, lady, by the junior censor at the third cup, was made eight days ago. The donor's name, lady, was not given. The donor's storefront, by the junior censor at the fourth cup, was the storefront with the new lacquer."
She allowed the small flat second.
She did not allow her face to do anything.
"Master."
"Lady. A noodle, this evening, has already been promised."
"Master. A noodle, this evening. And a small piece of dried fish, master, by Nanny Zhou's hand at the dusk drum, set against the small specific service of two things you have not yet, master, told me you have done."
"Lady. I will, this evening, tell you the two things."
He bowed. He stepped past the corner. He did not, in passing, look at the storefront.
She walked north.
\ \ \*
She did not, on the avenue, allow the third inference.
She allowed it in the small private inner room of her own attention, where it had been waiting since she had stopped at the corner of the second lane at the half of the third hour and had read, on the apprentice tailor's face, the small specific lacquer of an eastern-quarter workshop laid over the old southern.
The inner room was the room she had been keeping, since the autumn of 748, for the small specific list of names her husband had set in the last private slip of his hand before he had been ordered to the Hexi circuit. The list had been four names. Three of the names had, in the eighteen months since, been the names of the Sogdian dead in the An compound — the patriarch, the eldest brother, and an uncle who had died in the autumn of 749 in a small private way that had been reported, at the time, as a fever. The fourth name had been one she did not recognise.
She had, in the eighteen months, set the fourth name in the small inner chamber and not yet opened the chamber to the second-day light.
The fourth name was Zhang Cong.
She had registered it, in the autumn of 748, as the name of a Han silk-merchant of the second-grade license. She had registered it, in the spring of 749, as a name twice present in the Western Market customs office's record of petitions to import Khotanese stone for the small specific purpose of imperial-kiln pigment. She had registered it, in the autumn of 749, as the small private courtesy on a name-card delivered to her gate by a runner of a household she did not know, asking whether the widow of Cui Yanzhi would, on the matter of her late husband's outstanding apprenticeship-fees at the Hexi circuit office, accept a small private settlement. She had not, in the autumn of 749, accepted. She had not, in the autumn of 749, opened the name-card a second time.
The name-card had sat, since, in the small lacquered letter-box on her writing-desk that she had not opened in eighteen months.
She walked north along the avenue. The shade-ribbon of the elms ran beside her at her left foot.
She had, this afternoon, three things she had not, at the dawn drum, known.
She had a senior accountant who was an innocent decoy, planted by an instruction at the dawn drum from a Honglu Si courier whose route the Honglu Si did not arrange for a single household.
She had a senior censor on a list, made by his own injured pride, of women who had been speaking aloud in Pingkang — a list whose small private intermediary, by Little Pomegranate at the half of the noon hour, had been delivered to the senior censor at the half of the second-day audience by way of a Buddhist almsfund donation paid eight days ago by a silk-merchant of the second lane.
She had, from a Han silk-weaver's widow in the Eastern Market, a small pale-green stone the size of a child's thumb that had been used to pay a guild clerk to set aside a petition by Master Zhang Cong, of the storefront with the new lacquer, painted over the old red eight days ago by a lacquer-master from a workshop the Eastern Market did not know.
She did not, on the avenue, allow her face to do anything.
She allowed, in the small narrow corridor, the small flat second of the reading.
Eighteen months ago, in the autumn of 748, her husband had set four names in the last private slip of his hand. Three had since been dead Sogdians of the An compound. The fourth had been Zhang Cong.
Eighteen months ago, in the third month of the third year of Tianbao, her husband had taken a fever on the Hexi circuit and had not returned.
The Tang Code's idiom of fever was a small flat private idiom. It was the idiom one used on the death certificate of a junior censor who had been on circuit. It was the idiom one used because the alternative idioms required, in the second clause of the relevant provision, an inquest.
She did not, on the avenue, allow the fourth inference.
She allowed, instead, the small flat second of the reading of the third, which was that the man who had, eight days ago, painted over the southern red with an eastern red, was the man whose name had been written, eighteen months ago, in her husband's last slip, beside the three names of the Sogdian dead.
She closed the corridor.
She did not, on the avenue, allow her face to do anything. She did not allow her hand. She did not allow her step. The small slow afternoon of the third day continued.
She walked north until the avenue's elms ended at the third arcade. She walked east into Yongchong. She walked, at the small slow patient walk her father had once taught her, to her own gate.
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Brother Hui was at the second pillar of her own courtyard's outer hall.
He had been, by Nanny Zhou's small flat report at the inner door, at the pillar for perhaps a quarter of an hour. He had not, at the pillar, asked for tea. He had not asked for shade. He had stood at the pillar in the small upright Buddhist patience of a man whose abbey had, twenty years ago, taught him the small narrow practice of standing.
She walked into the courtyard. She inclined her head.
"Brother."
"Sister."
"You have come."
"Sister. Madam Khorshid is, at the dusk drum, walking the Pomegranate to her own back room. The proprietress of the Cool Vine has, on the second-day matter, accepted the small specific protection. She has, sister, by her own hand at the half of the third hour, sent word to her cousin in the Pingkang house at the back of the Lane of the Wagtail that the girl who has, in the spring, been learning the Sogdian of the second dialect, is to be — by the cousin's own private hand — moved at the dusk drum to the small back-room of the Magpies. The girl, sister, did not know she had been a piece in a small narrow private board."
"She does not yet."
"She does not. Madam Khorshid has, on the matter, declined to tell her. The girl, sister, will be told only that the merchant's wife has, this month, made a small private complaint."
"That is the small specific phrase Madam Khorshid would use."
"It is."
She inclined her head. She did not, at the second pillar, allow her hand to go to the stone in her sleeve. She allowed, instead, the small narrow patience of a woman who had been at her own gate at the third hour after noon and who had, at the gate, not yet decided whether to open the lacquered letter-box on her writing-desk for the second time in eighteen months.
She allowed the small flat second.
She lifted her eyes.
Brother Hui was looking at her.
He was looking, she registered, with the small specific Buddhist patience of a man who had — in the small narrow private practice of a former cell-master at the small dusk drum of an abbey in the western mountains — learned to read, in the careful corridor of a woman's face, the small flat second of a thing she had not yet decided whether to say.
He did not, at the pillar, ask.
He held the silence.
She held it with him.
She did not, in the small narrow courtyard of her own house, allow her face to do anything. She did not allow her shoulders. She did not allow the small private thing in her sleeve. She held, against the inside of her chest, the small flat private weight of an uncut Khotanese stone the size of a child's thumb, wrapped in the black silk of a Han silk-weaver's widow whose nephew had been paid in the same stone to set aside a petition by a man whose name her husband had written in the last slip of his hand in the autumn of 748.
She held, against the inside of her chest, the small private second in which Brother Hui — who had not asked — had, by the small specific Buddhist patience of his own silence, given her the small flat permission to say it or not to say it.
She did not, at the pillar, say it.
She inclined her head.
"Brother."
"Sister."
"At the dusk drum, in the writing-room. The petition of Little Pomegranate. I will, at the half of the third hour, write the last paragraph. I will, at the dusk drum, hand it to a runner of the prefecture by way of Vice-Censor Pei's assistant. You will, brother, at the dusk drum, be at the second pillar."
"Sister."
"And brother."
"Sister."
"In the morning of the fourth day. At the dawn drum. We will, brother, walk to the Eastern Market. By the second lane. Not the avenue."
"Sister."
She inclined her head. He inclined his. He stepped back to the small specific Buddhist patience of the second pillar. She walked, in the unhurried walk of a woman who had been at her own gate at the third hour after noon, to the inner door.
Nanny Zhou was at the inner door.
She did not, at the inner door, look at Nanny Zhou immediately. She allowed, in the small narrow corridor of her own attention, the small flat second in which the silk in her sleeve weighed against her wrist the weight of a piece of uncut stone the size of a child's thumb.
She walked to her writing-desk.
She set the silk on the desk.
She did not, this afternoon, open the lacquered letter-box.
She did not, this afternoon, allow the fourth inference.
She closed the small inner chamber where she had, for eighteen months, kept the fourth name.
She allowed the chamber, this afternoon, to remain closed.
She set, at the corner of her writing-desk, a single small brass weight.
She sat. She took up her brush.
She wrote the last paragraph of Little Pomegranate's petition in the small careful flat idiom of the second clause of the relevant provision. She did not, in the writing, allow her hand any flourish. She did not, in the writing, allow her hand any pleasure. She rolled the petition. She tied the petition. She set the petition under the small brass weight.
She set the black silk, with the uncut stone inside, beside the petition.
She did not, this afternoon, open the silk again.
She walked to the inner court and washed her hands.
The afternoon, at her own gate, continued.