Chapter 5How Many Times She Swept It

Twenty to four. No light.

Zhou Sulan sat on the edge of the bed. She pinched the brim of her cap between two fingers and pressed the crease back into its place. It was a dark grey work cap. The crease had been pinched into it every day, and each day it fell in the same place, so she did not need to look. Once it was pinched right, she put it on.

The porridge had been cooked the night before and poured into the insulated tub. It was still a little warm. She drank half a bowl standing up. She put the lid back on what was left and slipped it into the right-hand pocket of her jacket, to drink at noon. The steamed bun was in a paper bag, squashed flat. She broke it open with her hands and kept half.

By the door stood two pairs of shoes. One pair was hers, with rubber soles, the uppers washed pale. The other was a man’s, size forty-one. The outside of the left shoe was worn a little lower than the right. The laces were still tied in the same dead knot, never once undone. She had never set that pair straight. She put on her own, and retied her laces in two knots.

The lock on the downstairs door was an old-fashioned one. The key had to be turned three and a half times before it reached the end. She turned it three and a half times, and slipped the key over her wrist. The elastic band had gone stiff. When she stretched it, a small split opened.

※

At ten past four she reached the sanitation depot. It stood at the east end of the street: a tin shed with a table inside, an iron kettle, and a row of hooks along the wall. She knew every broom hanging on the hooks. The handle of each one had been worn by hands, to different depths. Hers hung on the fourth hook. He had nailed that hook up himself. He had worked at this depot for twelve years, and when he put the hook up it had gone a little crooked. She had not straightened it.

A big broom of bamboo twigs, with a bamboo handle. Where the hand gripped, a shallow groove had been worn, and the groove lined up exactly with the web of her right hand. Anyone else holding it would have their palm slip. When she picked it up, her palm went straight in. She did not have to look for it.

On one side the bristle end was not cut straight across. A corner had been cut away at an angle, and the slope of the cut was very even. The slanted end could reach into the gap at the kerb, into the bottom of a bin, into the corner of a step.

She had not cut this slant herself. That year she had only just started sweeping the streets. The bristles were ragged, and they did not sweep clean. He took the broom, crouched in the doorway, and cut at it with an old craft knife, one cut at a time. When he had finished, he blew off the bamboo shavings and handed it back to her.

“A slant can get in there,” he said.

Later she taught herself. The first cut went crooked. The second went too far. The third gave her the angle it has now. When she had a new broom, she still cut it to this angle.

The craft knife was still there. It was in the drawer, with a band of black tape wound round its spine. He had wound the tape, and he had wound it very close. She had changed the blade three times. Each time she fitted the new one to the slope of the old, and held it up to the light to check. When the tape came loose, she did not rewind it. She only wound one more turn round the outside.

Every day she was the first to reach the depot, and Xiao Huang the second. The lights in the depot were hers to switch on. The switch was by the door. You pulled it, and the tube flickered twice before it came on.

The tap was fixed to the outside wall of the tin shed, and the water was cold. She washed her hands and wiped them on her trousers. Then she went back to the hooks and wiped the dust off the third one. The third hook was Xiao Huang’s. He was in his early twenties. He had put his gloves on inside out three times. She did not say anything. Each time, Xiao Huang caught it himself, and turned them the right way round, grinning.

“Morning, Sister Zhou.”

She nodded once.

Five o’clock. Sweeping began.

※

Anfu Branch Road ran one thousand one hundred metres from the east end to the west end. The whole street was hers, and no one took over any part of it in between. She swept it three times a day.

The first sweep ran from five until seven. She swept up last night’s fallen leaves, paper scraps, and the water that had run out from the doorways. The breakfast sellers had not come out yet, and the roller shutters were all down. Only the steamer in one soya milk shop had started sending up white steam. The steam climbed along the top of the doorway and thinned out halfway. Her broom went through the white at its foot, and pushed the water along that stretch into the gutter. The woman who sold soya milk crawled out from under the shutter with two buckets. She glanced at Zhou Sulan first, nodded, and crawled back in.

At the crossroads, an old man did his boxing under a plane tree every day at half past five. His movements were very slow. His two hands rose and fell together, and his feet did not move from the spot. When she swept to the tree, he stopped and waited for her to pass, then picked up again. The two of them never spoke. He did not look at her either. He only raised his hands to the height they were meant to reach.

The street lamps went out one at a time. At ten past five the lamps on Anfu Branch Road were still on. At twenty past five the first lamp at the east end went out, then the second, then the third. The lamps ran on a timer, but the order they went out in was not fixed. Sometimes it started from the west end. When the lamps over the stretch she had swept went out, she swept in the dark, and the sound of the broom arrived before her eyes did. At this hour few people were awake to watch the street. Apart from the sweepers, there were only the people pushing carts.

For most of the middle of the day she did not sweep. She sat in the tin shed, drank water, wiped the hooks, and filled the kettle. During this time she wiped the dust off every hook until the hooks shone, and then she wiped the broom handles. A handle would split if it was wiped too dry, so she used a little water, dipping her fingers in it, and wiped along the direction of the bamboo joints. The flask she used was a different one. His was still on the cupboard at home. Its lid no longer screwed on tight, and she had not brought it over. Xiao Huang swept his own stretch outside. When he came back he sat on the doorstep and ate a bao. He ate one and kept one back. He wrapped the spare one in paper and put it in her hand. She took it and put it in her bag. She never ate this one. She kept it until the next day’s lunch, and ate it with the porridge.

At noon she sat in the doorway of the tin shed, ate the half bun she had kept, and drank cold porridge. The porridge was last night’s rice, cooked soft. Once it cooled it set into a layer, and it had to be stirred apart with a spoon. On the wall opposite was a patch, put on last year. Its edge was a little different in colour from the wall. Every day she sat there and looked at it, looking at that small difference.

Inside the tin shed was a radio, tuned to one station, and it was giving the weather. She listened to the weather, and to nothing else.

Xiao Huang asked her once, “Sister Zhou, do you live alone?”

She gave a hum, through her nose, without opening her mouth. Xiao Huang did not ask again. His phone screen had a crack running across it. Every day he ran his thumb over it, stopping wherever it reached, then sliding on again. She took that bao every day, and never ate it. She only put it in her bag. There were already three paper packets in the bag. She did not throw them away, and she did not take them out. Her phone was an old model. It could only make calls. It could not take photographs, and it could not write. She did not think there was any inconvenience in that.

The second sweep was in the afternoon. She swept up the vegetable leaves that had been scattered from the morning market. In the afternoon there had been a short spell of light rain. It was not heavy, and it drove slantwise against the window of the tin shed. She did not stop. Once the rain had soaked into the ground, the leaves stuck fast, every one. The broom had to be kept low, and she had to scrape with the whole length of the bristles: scrape, lift, scrape again. Her knees began to creak in the rain, very softly, as if reminding her, or as if saying nothing at all. She crouched down and picked them up one at a time.

Vegetable leaves were the hardest to sweep. They were wet, and they stuck to the ground, and one by one they had to be lifted with the tip of the broom. Sometimes what she lifted was a whole plant, yellow and rotten, with mud still on the roots. She put it in the dustpan and tipped it into the collection lorry.

The collection vehicle was a small green lorry. Its driver was a fat man who never got out of the cab. He pressed a switch on the hopper, and everything in the dustpan went in. He said once, “Auntie, you sweep clean.” She did not answer. She moved the dustpan to her other hand.

The third sweep was at night. She began at nine. The stretch with the night stall was left till last, and she would not reach it until twenty past ten.

At nine the street was not the same as in the daytime. The shops closed one after another. The roller shutters came down with a clatter, and then another. The woman at the hair-washing shop at the west end carried her stools inside. As she carried them she turned and glanced at Zhou Sulan, said nothing, and brought the empty shampoo bottles in as well. The man at the fruit stall covered the watermelons with plastic sheeting, one at a time, and when that was done he weighed the corners down with bricks. Xiao Huang did not come that day, and she swept alone. Her broom started at the west end and went east. Past every roller shutter, every light box and every telegraph pole, she swept on and on. By the time she got further along, the lights had come on.

The rhythm of the third sweep was the same as the first. One, two, three, stop. Only it was a little slower, because there were more things to go round.

At ten to nine she came out of the depot and fastened the latch. One hand carried the dustpan. The other carried the broom on her shoulder, with the slanted end facing back, knocking against her calf once with each step. She did not switch hands. There was no need to switch when walking.

At the end of the first sweep, at seven o’clock on the dot, she leaned the broom against the wall and drank a mouthful of water. She did not sit down. She stood and rolled her shoulders twice, then went on to the next stretch.

Her sweeping had a rhythm. The first stroke was the heavy one, one sound. After it came two light strokes, two sounds. She paused, changed direction, and brought it down again. One, two, three, stop. She did not count. Her hand counted by itself. Later someone told her that this was called one strong beat and three weak, a term used by opera-goers. She had never listened to an opera. The rhythm had grown up by itself, as she swept and swept.

Her right shoulder sat lower than her left. When she swept, her right hand was on top, and her right shoulder kept pressing down. Years of pressing had made it like this.

At twenty past six she reached the fourth crossroads. A man came along from under the elevated road, pushing an electric bike. He pushed it, and did not ride it. The insulated box on the back seat was packed tight, and the rear wheel sank. On the stretch under the bridge there was a crack running across the road. When he reached it the bike wobbled. He pressed the handlebars down, steadied it, and did not stop. She did not know him. He came along this road at this time every day. She swept to the kerb, stepped aside, and let him pass.

By the second bin there was always a parcel bag that had been opened, its mouth torn into strips. By the fifth bin there was always half a meal left uneaten, the lid not closed, chopsticks standing up in the rice. She did not pick these up, and she did not scold. She swept them to the side, gathered them into a heap, and left them for the rubbish lorry.

The food changed sometimes. Today it was fried rice, in a white takeaway box, with a sticky note pressed under the box. She did not look at what was written on the note. She only pushed the box a little to one side, to where it would not block the way.

The horizontal reflective band across the back of the hi-vis vest had been washed grey, and the white would not come back. The enamel badge on the chest had no lettering. Its surface was smooth.

※

The ninth bin was beside the third bridge pier.

The floor tiles beside the bin were lower than the rest, and dust had settled on them. In the dust there was a faint ring, an imprint pressed in by the base of the bin. Every day, when she swept to this point in the third sweep, she had to circle the tip of the broom inside the ring, to draw the dust out and sweep it away. As she turned it, her wrist had to rotate, and the slanted end sat right on the edge of the imprint.

Every day, when she reached this spot, she had to stop for a moment.

The pause was very short. It was just one breath. The length of that breath was about the same as the time it took to say a sentence.

When the pause was over, she went on sweeping. The broom came down, one sound, two sounds, and a stop. Some of the dust by the bin was swept up, and some of it settled back on the edge of the imprint. She did not wipe it.

He used to wait here. When she swept to this stretch in the third sweep, he would stand on the far side of the bin, an old flask in his hand, and wait for her to sweep across. When she reached the bin and stopped the broom, he would say, “No rush. The bin isn’t going to run off.”

Then he reached over, took the broom, swept the ring at the base of the bin clean, and handed it back to her. When he handed it back, the slanted end faced up. He said the slanted end should face up, so that the next round could carry on.

He had a small cut on his hand, from shaving bamboo. He said it was nothing, and would be better in a couple of days. She had been pricked by a bamboo splinter herself, later on. That time she did not put any ointment on it. She let it close up by itself.

After he said that, she never laughed. He did not laugh either. The two of them stood under the bridge pier for one breath. Then she took the broom and went on sweeping.

The bulb in the street lamp by the bridge pier was one he had changed. The old one was still in the drawer of the tin shed, wrapped in a sheet of newspaper. She had not thrown it away.

He had been gone four years. She had not changed this stretch. In the third sweep she still reached the bin at the same time, and still stopped for one breath. There was no one at the bin. She held the broom herself, and she swept the ring at the base herself. No one said those words again. The pause she took was a little shorter than the time it had taken him to speak. Talking used up breath, and she did not talk.

The enamel badge on her chest had been his. That year his vest had shrunk in the wash, and the badge would not pin on any more, so he took it off and left it on the table. Later she picked it up and pinned it to her own vest, over the left chest. She had found the place for the pin herself. It was an inch lower than where he had put it.

She looked at the pair of shoes by the door every morning. The worn patch on the outside of the left shoe had been made by him walking. She had never put anything under it.

※

Three weeks ago, the girl with glasses had crouched down and asked her a question.

That day, on the third sweep, she reached the front of the night stall. The girl was sitting at the seventh table, with her phone propped against the bamboo skewer tube, writing something. She wrote for a while and then stopped, her thumb moving back and forth on the screen. The space under the tables had to be swept clean before closing. She crouched down and gathered the skewers out one at a time. The girl looked up, then crouched down too. One of her shoelaces had come loose and was trailing on the ground. The girl did not tie it. Zhou Sulan looked at the lace, and said nothing.

“Auntie, what time do you knock off?”

She was taken aback for a moment. Hardly anyone asked what time she knocked off.

She said, “Half past ten.”

The girl noted it down on her phone. When she had finished, she said thank you. The thank you came out a little quick, as if she were afraid there was not enough time.

She had not thought what use it could be.

※

Today she reached the night stall at twenty past ten.

She had never sat under this awning. She ate her evening meal at home: a bowl of porridge, a steamed bun, and sometimes an egg as well. She swept this stretch every day. The lights of the awning, the number of tables, the place of the skewer tube, she knew all of them. But what she remembered belonged to the street, not to the people who ate there.

Under the awning there were seven tables, and three of them were occupied. In the corner a man in a work uniform had a bowl of noodles in front of him. The noodles had gone soggy, and he had not picked up his chopsticks. He was watching a video on his phone, with no sound. By the bridge pier someone was waiting for a seat, leaning against a concrete pillar, a phone in hand, not looking at the street. Cars on the elevated road went over their heads one after another, and the sound came pressing down from behind. She did not look up.

The stall owner had his back to the street. He stood in the space among the three pots, his heels not moving, the flame turned down as low as it would go. The broth in the pot gurgled once, and then again. She had counted. One gurgle was roughly one beat, and it did not match the rhythm of her sweeping. It was always half a beat slow. She did not try to match it.

He did not turn round. He only pressed his right hand on his apron, one press and one wipe. She nodded in his direction.

Last summer a wind had blown through, and a corner of the awning’s plastic sheeting had lifted. The stall owner pulled the four corners tight with rope, on his own, and kept pulling all night. That night she swept until dawn. No one told her to stop, and no one told her to go faster.

A row of seventeen lamps hung from the roof of the awning. She had counted them. Fifteen were on. The two at the west end were broken, and had never been replaced. The light from the fifteen reached only as far as the edge of the tables. Beyond that it was black.

The seventh table was at the edge of the awning. That seat was empty. The bamboo skewer tube stood at the corner of the table, two fingers’ width in from the edge. On the table was an enamel bowl with a fine crack along its rim. It had been set apart on its own, and it held nothing.

She did not touch the bowl.

She drew the skewers out from under the table, one by one, and gathered them into a heap. When that was done, she pushed the broom forward to the kerb. In the drain by the roadside there was a piece of tissue, soaked into a ball. She hooked it out with the slanted end, shook it twice, and dropped it into the dustpan.

A child ran past the edge of the awning, holding up a bamboo skewer with a small piece of meat still on the tip. The child’s mother called out behind him, and he did not look round. A skewer dropped on the ground. She picked it up and put it back in the tube. As she did, one of the skewers already in the tube was standing crooked, and she straightened it with two fingers.

There were still some skewers in the dustpan, a few crumpled sheets of paper, and a short piece of straw. She swept it all in. Nothing was left behind.

At the girl’s place the tabletop had been wiped very clean. Only at the edge of the skewer tube was there a white ring left by a phone. She glanced at it and did not stop. By tomorrow that ring would be wiped away.

She did not know whether the girl came back later. She did not look, either.

※

Half past ten.

She swept the last of the tissues into the dustpan, and tipped them into the collection bin at the kerb. She held the broom with the slanted end down, let it tap the ground once, then lifted it and switched hands.

Half past ten. The light by the bridge pier was still on. She did not look at her watch. Time was something in her body, so there was no need to look.

When she switched hands, her right shoulder dropped a little, and the left did not follow. She carried the broom on her shoulder and walked east. The traffic lights at the crossroads changed as usual: red, then green, then red again. She waited for one green, crossed the road, and on the far side the pavement was narrower. She stood the broom upright, bristles up, and squeezed between two parked electric bikes. The last stretch of the one thousand one hundred metres was an uphill pavement. Vehicles had worn two shallow ruts into it. The slanted end of the broom caught in a rut, and she pushed along the rut to the end.

The depot door had no lock. Only a latch hung across it. Xiao Huang had already gone. A bao wrapper had been left on the threshold. She picked it up and dropped it into the bin in the corner.

She washed her hands under the tap. The water was still cold. She washed until her knuckles were red. Her finger joints were thick, and her nails were cut so short that the flesh at their edges showed. She dried her hands on a grey towel, and hung the towel back on the nail behind the door. She smoothed it flat so that it did not droop.

She hung the broom back on the fourth hook, bristles down, slanted end up. There was half a kettle of cold water left. She poured half a cup, drank a mouthful, and tipped what was left into the sink.

The wall clock was seven minutes slow. She did not set it. She knew what time it was. It made no difference whether it was a little earlier or a little later than the clock said.

She did not turn on the light. She felt her way in the dark and pulled the door to. The hinge creaked once.

The key was on her wrist. All the way home it knocked, once, and again, against her bone.