Chapter Twenty
Aroka's Mother
Madam Khorshid's slip came at the third hour of the next afternoon.
It came by Du Fu.
He had been at the gate in the second hour in the under-robe of a poet who had been at a tea-shop since the dawn drum and had not, on his way, set himself in a fresh tunic. He had bowed at the gate. He had carried, at the inside of his cuff, a small folded square of the unbleached paper of the wineshops of the second southern arcade. He had not, at the gate, asked to come in.
Nanny had taken the slip and had given him a bowl of millet rice. He had sat at the kitchen yard and eaten in silence. Then he had bowed a second time and walked back to the lane.
Nanny brought the slip to the writing-room.
Wanjun took it. She unfolded it under the light of the second lamp.
The slip was in Madam Khorshid's careful Persian-grade Han:
Lady. The laundress is at the second house behind the gate of the southern Buddhist hospital of the third southern arcade. She has been there for sixteen years. She is in the second room. She has been told, by my second cousin's wife at the dawn drum, that a Daoist nun of the half-mourning will, the seventh at its half-mark this evening, walk in by the front door for a small private blessing of a daughter who has gone. The second cousin's wife will be at the gate of the lane. The lady will not, in the asking, name the lady.
She folded the slip a second time.
She walked to the second cabinet behind the cistern and took out the half-mourning cotton.
She set it on the bench.
She did not call Nanny.
She put on the half-mourning herself mid-sixth hour. She set the small bronze pin her father had given her at twelve into the inside of the right cuff, where Pei's three-line slip had been set into the inside of her left two evenings ago. She drew, from the cabinet, the plain unbleached shoulder-shawl a Han widow of Yongchong wore at the half-mourning in the lane after the dusk drum.
She walked to the writing-room.
The lacquered letter-box was at its corner.
She did not lift it.
She walked out the rear gate well into the seventh hour.
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The southern wards of Chang'an the middle of the seventh hour of the afternoon of the thirteenth day were the southern wards of a city whose summer had not yet quite arrived.
The lanes were narrow, the houses low, the walls of the public buildings older and less freshly lacquered than the walls of the eastern. A vegetable-seller at the second arcade was sorting, with her daughter, the last of the spring radishes by the size of their cut tails. A small boy at the third-arcade corner was pulling a string at a small wooden cart his grandfather had set him to pull. A woman at the fourth lane was setting wet linen on a hempen line in the slow patient work of a laundress at the end of the second-day cycle.
The southern Buddhist hospital was at the third southern arcade and the fourth lane east.
It was a small building of the old eastern-Tang plan — a single low gate, a small inner court, four halls at the cardinal walls. The east hall was the hall of the sick. The west hall was the hall of the dying. The north hall was the hall of the dispensary. The south hall was the hall of the lay-attendants — the laundresses and the kitchen-boys and the bone-collectors of the southern wards' poor.
Madam Khorshid's second cousin's wife was at the gate.
She was a Persian woman of perhaps thirty-five in the plain dark cotton of a Pingkang servant in her off-day, with the small carrying-basket of a household errand at her left hip. She inclined her head a finger's width.
"Sister."
"Sister."
"By the second room of the south hall. The third door from the gate."
She stepped back from the gate.
Wanjun walked through.
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The south hall was the south hall of a Buddhist hospital that had been the south hall of a Buddhist hospital for perhaps a hundred and twenty years.
The corridor was the corridor of a low cypress hall whose roof-beams had been set in the second decade of the eighth century. The walls were the unpainted plaster of a hall whose lay-attendants had not, in any year, asked the dispensary for a coat of vermilion. The floor was the worn cypress plank of a hall whose laundresses walked, at the dawn drum and the dusk drum, the seven paces from the door to the dispensary at the third hall.
The third door from the gate was the third door.
She knocked.
A small dry voice from inside.
"Come."
She opened the door.
The room was a small narrow room with a single low platform-bed at the eastern wall, a small clay brazier at the southern, and a small wooden writing-stool at the north. There was no second chair. There was no second platform-bed.
On the platform-bed sat a Han woman of perhaps forty-five.
She was thin. Her hair was the dark grey of a Han widow who had not, in the years since the daughter she would not see again, set her hair in any oil but the unmarked vegetable oil the dispensary set out beside the fourth hall on the first day of the second moon. Her cotton over-tunic was the unbleached cotton of a laundress at the second-day cycle, washed in the lye of the household's own kitchen-yard for fifteen years.
She did not stand when Wanjun came in.
She set her hands at her lap.
"Sister."
"Sister."
"You are the one."
"I am."
"The Persian sister said a Daoist."
"In half-mourning. By the eighteen-month count."
The laundress inclined her head a finger's width.
"Sit, sister."
There was no second chair. Wanjun knelt at the western edge of the platform-bed in the careful kneeling of a Daoist nun at a small private blessing.
\ \ \*
"Sister."
"Sister."
"You came for the matter of the daughter."
"I came for the matter of the daughter."
"At the willows."
"At the willows."
The laundress did not, at the platform-bed, look at her hands.
She set her hands at her lap and held them there for perhaps fifteen breaths.
"Sister. The daughter was the daughter of a man who came, in the spring of last year, into the middle of the third hour of an afternoon in the second moon, at the front gate of this hall. He had been, by his own account at the gate, the friend of a sister-of-the-pots at the dispensary at the second moon of 729 in the matter of a small wooden box of the older medicines the old dispenser had given the sister-of-the-pots for the cough of a Han laundress of Anyi who had, in the seventh moon of that year, had a daughter she did not know the father of."
She paused.
She kept his reckoning.
"I was the laundress, sister."
"I know, sister."
"The daughter was Aroka."
"I know."
"She was twelve when he came back. She had been twelve, sister, for three months. The man had not seen her in twelve years."
"Sister."
"He came as it neared its midpoint the third hour. He sat at the bench at the front gate. He did not come in. He asked the sister-at-the-gate for a brief private hour with the laundress at the second house. The sister-at-the-gate brought him to me at the south-yard corner. The man had on him a small dark robe of a Han merchant of the second arcade. He had on his right hand a small carved ring of the kind the Eastern Market silk-merchants of the second decade of the autumn of 740 had brought up from a single Khotan-cut jade workshop. He had at his sleeve the small private purse of a Han merchant of the second arcade whose silk had run, by the autumn of last year, at four hundred bolts a moon."
She set her hands at her lap.
"He was the man, sister, who had been at the laundress's bedside, in the seventh moon of 738, at the bedside of a junior silk-clerk's bastard daughter who had been told, by the senior silk-clerk's wife at the writing-desk of the back study of the second arcade, that the daughter was not, by the senior silk-clerk's reading, a daughter of the senior silk-clerk's bed and would not, by his hand, be brought into his household."
"Sister."
"He had been, sister, the man at the bedside. He had told me, at the seventh moon of 738, in the small careful Han of a junior silk-clerk who had not yet, at twenty-five, the seniority of his own writing-desk, that the daughter was his and that she would, by his hand at the spring of the year of her twelfth birthday, be set at a private household of the foreign quarter in the careful unmarked way a Han merchant of the second arcade set a daughter at the foreign quarter against the day he would, in a later season, need a hand at the inner court of a Sogdian compound whose patriarch he had decided to read."
She paused.
She set her hands beside the platform-bed.
"I believed him, sister. I believed, in the second moon of last year, in the unhurried clean Han of a man whose silk ran at four hundred bolts a moon, that he had come back for the daughter against the twelfth-year promise. I believed that the household of the Sogdian patriarch would be a safe household — a household whose women, by the foreign custom, did not lose their daughters at the labour of the laundry-yard at sixteen. I believed, sister, that the man at the gate had set the daughter's twelfth-year mark because the man at the gate had set himself to keep, in his own quiet way, the promise he had made at the bedside in the seventh moon of 738."
She did not weep.
She set her hands at her lap.
"The man had not, sister, kept that promise."
"Sister."
"The man at the gate had set the daughter at the household of the Sogdian patriarch not against the daughter's safety. The man had set the daughter at the inner court of the An clan's middle-tier branch against the grammar of the patriarch's table, the patriarch's brazier, the elderly aunt's place at the patriarch's table who would, by the spring of the year after, be the only Han hand at the household's table to be readable from the inner kitchen at the noon-drum."
"Sister."
"The daughter, sister, was the man's inside hand at the inner court of the An clan."
She lifted her eyes.
"The man, sister, was the man who killed the household."
"Sister."
"By the laundress at the second house of the south hall of the southern Buddhist hospital, midway into the seventh of the thirteenth day of the late spring of 750, the man at the gate in the second moon of last year was a Han silk-merchant of the second arcade of the Eastern Market whose name was Master Zhang Cong."
Wanjun did not, at the western edge of the platform-bed, lift her eyes.
She set her right hand at the inside of her left sleeve.
In the half-mourning she did not let her hand lift to her face.
\ \ \*
"Sister."
"Sister."
"How did you know."
"At the dusk drum of the eleventh day, sister, a Persian sister of the wineshop of the Cool Vine at the second lane of the Pingkang sent a slip by her own household's runner to the gate of this hall. The slip, in the careful Persian-grade Han of a wineshop's proprietress, asked the laundress at the second house of the south hall of the southern Buddhist hospital, in the brief private idiom of a daughter who had a daughter once, the daughter's place at the inner court of the An clan. The slip, sister, named the daughter. The daughter, sister, by the slip's reading, had been at the inner court of the An clan in the late spring of the household's last day."
"Sister."
"I had not, since the spring of last year, heard the daughter's name in any room of this hospital. I had not, in the eleven months since she had been set at the inner court of the An clan, received from the daughter a single slip of paper. I had not, in eleven months, set my hand to a fresh dipper of lye that did not, in the slow patient work of the laundress at the rinsing, register at my hand the eleven months I had not seen the daughter."
She lifted her hands from her lap.
She held them, briefly, beside the platform-bed.
"At the slip, sister, I read the daughter's name. At the slip I read that the daughter had been at the inner court of the An clan on the night the household had been killed. At the slip I read that the daughter had not been at the inner court of the An clan the morning after — that the daughter had been, by the slip's reading, missing at the noon-drum of the morning the bodies had been counted by the sabao's deputy."
She set her hands.
"At the seventh hour of the eleventh day, sister, a runner of the prefecture's clerk's house came to the gate of this hall with a small carrying-basket of a private rite. The basket, sister, was the basket of an unclaimed daughter's body brought up from the willows of Bashang mid-second watch of the morning of the eleventh day. The basket was the basket the prefecture sent to the south hall of this hospital, the seventh hour at its midpoint of the day of an unclaimed laundress's daughter's body, against the laundress's reading."
"Sister."
"The basket was set at the south-yard corner. I walked out to the corner. I set my hand at the upper edge of the basket. I drew back the linen at the upper edge."
She did not weep.
"The daughter was at the basket, sister."
"Sister."
"I knew, sister, on the lifting of the linen at the upper edge, that the man at the gate in the second moon of last year had been a man who had set the daughter at the inner court of the An clan not against the daughter's safety. I knew, sister, on the lifting, that the man had been the man whose silk had run at four hundred bolts a moon and whose ledger had set the patriarch's table-grammar at the inner court. I knew, sister, on the lifting, that the man had set the daughter at the inner court of a household he had, in the autumn of last year, set himself to kill."
She set her hands at her lap.
"The daughter had grown uneasy, sister. By the spring of this year. By the small private idiom of a daughter who had been at the inner court of the An clan for ten months and had read, at the inner court, the patriarch's slow Sogdian compound at the second cabinet of the inner kitchen and the elderly aunt's table-grammar at the lower stool and the cloth-pins of the second arcade at the upper edge of the patriarch's silk-bolt at the writing-desk of the back study. The daughter, sister, had grown uneasy at what she had read."
"Sister."
"The man, sister, had killed the daughter when the daughter had become a thing the man could no longer read at the inner court."
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Wanjun did not, at the western edge of the platform-bed, lift her eyes.
She set her right hand at the inside of her left sleeve.
She held, at the inside of her chest, the picture of the daughter at the inner court, the laundress at the second house, and the man at the gate well into the third hour of an afternoon in the second moon of last year.
She held, in the same inside, the picture of her own father at the writing-desk of the third house of Yongchong the seventh nearing its midpoint of an evening in the second moon of 738, when he had taught her, at twelve, the second-moon rite of the small clay jar he was teaching her against the day a daughter she did not yet have would be a daughter she had buried.
Her father had not, in any moon of any year of her life, sold her to anyone.
The shame was a small narrow shame. It was the shame of a daughter of a Han circuit-judge sitting at the western edge of the platform-bed of a Han laundress whose daughter had been set at the inner court of a Sogdian compound by a Han father.
She held it, briefly, in the place she kept the shames of the day.
She lifted her eyes.
\ \ \*
"Sister."
"Sister."
"The daughter's body."
"Was buried, sister, deep into the third hour of the eleventh day, by the brother-of-the-bones of the south hall of this hospital, at the unclaimed yard of the south wall of the city, in the careful unhurried way the brother-of-the-bones of the south hall buried, in any week, the daughters of the laundresses of the southern wards whose laundresses had not, by the bone-collector's count, the means to buy a small wooden box past the dawn drum of the day after."
"Sister."
"You have not asked for the body."
"I have not. I had not, by the eleventh day, the silver."
"Sister."
The laundress lifted her hands from her lap.
She set them beside the platform-bed.
She set them on the unbleached cotton.
She did not weep.
"Sister. I would, this evening, by the dusk drum, walk to the south wall and set my hand at the upper edge of the unclaimed yard. I would set my hand for the daughter's twelve years at the inner court of the laundress's own kitchen-yard. I would lay a stalk of the southern willows at the upper edge of the yard."
"Sister."
She lifted her eyes.
"You will not, sister, set the willows on the yard."
"Sister."
"Past the dawn drum of the morning of the fifteenth day, the brother-of-the-bones of the south hall of this hospital will, by my hand, lift the daughter from the unclaimed yard and set her at the southern lacquer-yard of the kiln-master of the south wall. He will, at the noon-drum, set her at the southern kiln. He will, the third watch half-spent, set her at the small clay jar of the unhurried kiln-master's bench. He will, past the dawn drum of the sixteenth day, bring the small clay jar to the gate of this hall."
The laundress did not lift her eyes.
She inclined her head a finger's width.
"You will set the jar at the corner of the second house, sister, of the south hall. You will set it beside the brazier at the southern wall. You will set, at the lower edge of the jar, a stalk of the southern willows you would, this evening, have laid at the upper edge of the yard. You will, near the dusk drum of the sixteenth day, sit beside the brazier at the southern wall and not lift the jar."
"Sister."
"This is not a Buddhist rite, sister. This is a Han one."
"Sister."
"It is the rite a Han father sets at the writing-desk of his own study, in the second moon of an evening in the seventh moon of the year his daughter has been buried at the unclaimed yard of the south wall in the brother-of-the-bones' reading. The rite, sister, is the rite of a Han father at the writing-desk who had not, in any moon of any year of his daughter's life, set her at the inner court of a Sogdian compound."
She lifted her eyes.
"My father, sister, was a Han circuit-judge of the Henan circuit. He taught me, in the second moon of 738, the rite of the small clay jar."
"Sister."
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She lifted her right hand from the inside of her left sleeve.
She drew, from the inside of the cuff, the small folded slip of Pei's three lines that she had set at the inside of her sleeve at the alcove of the tea-house of the Sparrow Bridge yesterday afternoon. She set the slip beside the platform-bed.
She drew, from the inside of the second cabinet of the right cuff, the small bronze pin her father had given her at twelve. She set the pin beside the platform-bed beside the slip.
She drew, from the inner cuff of the half-mourning, a small folded square of the unbleached paper a Han widow of Yongchong kept against the small private silver of a household errand. The square held, by the careful private idiom of the cuff, perhaps twelve liang of the unmarked household silver Wanjun had kept at the second drawer of the writing-desk against the day a small private silver would be required.
She set the silver beside the platform-bed.
"Sister."
"Sister."
"The silver."
"Twelve liang. By the slow patient idiom of a Han widow of Yongchong who had not, in eighteen months, the daily errand of a household with a daughter. The silver, sister, by just past the dawn drum of the morning of the fifteenth day, will be the silver of the south wall's kiln-master at the southern lacquer-yard. The silver of the kiln-master will, at the noon-drum, be the silver of the kiln. The silver of the kiln will, the third watch at its midpoint, be the silver of the small clay jar. The silver, sister, by just past the dawn drum of the sixteenth day, will be at the gate of this hall in the small clay jar."
The laundress did not lift her hands from the corner of the platform-bed.
She inclined her head a finger's width.
"Sister."
"Sister."
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Wanjun rose near the dusk drum.
She inclined her head.
She walked to the door.
She did not, at the door, turn.
She walked out the third door from the gate of the south hall and the small inner court of the southern Buddhist hospital of the third southern arcade. The second cousin's wife was at the front gate. She inclined her head. She walked west by the back lanes.
Wanjun walked east.
She walked the back lanes through the third arcade. She walked the public arcade behind the bakery of the second eastern ward in the slow Daoist walk of a Han widow of Yongchong in the cotton half-mourning of the eighteenth month near the dusk drum.
She reached her own rear gate into the heart of the first watch of the evening of the thirteenth day.
At the gate she did not lift her hand to the brass ring.
Nanny took her at the gate.
"Mistress."
"Nanny."
"The southern wards."
"The southern wards, Nanny."
"The laundress."
"The laundress."
She walked, in the cotton half-mourning, into the writing-room. She did not, in writing-room, light a third lamp. That evening she did not set the half-mourning beside the cabinet. She set her hands on the wood of the desk on either side of the lacquered letter-box. She held them there for perhaps a hundred breaths.
She did not open it.
She rose.
She walked to the inner court. The swallow at the kitchen eave was at the fifth course of the nest, at the slow patient tucking of the third joint of the rafter and the wall. She sat at the bench by the cistern in the dark.
She held against the inside of her chest the daughter at the inner court of a Sogdian compound.
She held also, in the same inside, the picture of her own father at the writing-desk of an evening in the second moon of 738.
She rose, in her own slow patient time, and walked to the writing-room.
She drew, from the inner drawer of the writing-desk, a small fresh slip of plain paper.
She set the brush. She lifted it. She wrote, in her own careful hand, a single line.
He killed his daughter to keep his trade.
She set the brush down.
At the writing-desk she did not, read the line a second time.
At the writing-desk she did not, weep.
That evening she did not, light a third lamp.
She rose.
She walked to the kitchen door. Nanny had set, beside the brazier, the small clay water-jar of the boiled water cooled to the inside-of-the-wrist temperature.
She drank.