Part One · Beneath the Harmony
Chapter 7Page One of the Register
名单第一页
Translated from the original Chinese.
A cloth-bound ledger lay flat on the long table in the Zhenpu Martial Arts Hall.
The dust on the long table was thin. The patch under the ledger was clean, its four edges square, not one corner out of line.
The cloth was dark brown, worn pale, and its corners had gone fuzzy. There was no writing on the cover. A small paper label was stuck to the top left corner. It read “Book One.”
The first half was the hall rules, one after another, each with a space beneath for marks. The second half was the register, beginning on its first page. The paper was a shade whiter than the pages before it, and had not been turned many times. Only the margins had grown fuzzy. Every page had a number at its top right, and all the numbers were written with the same brush.
The register had six columns: number, name, tag number, entry, mark and defeat. Above the first line of the first page, one line had been left blank, with no ruled lines and no characters. The number on the first line was “One.” The name column held three characters: Shen Zhenpu.
He had not written these three characters. He had never written his own name in the book. The copyist he hired had written them, stroke by stroke. Each character sat on the same baseline, and every one was the same height.
The copyist was the first person he hired. Her name was not printed on any page of this book, and the register had no line for her. Those who came after her wrote in her hand. Even around the hundredth page, the characters were still the same height.
The inkstone used for copying was a block of stone, set on the left of the long table.
Around the edge of the inkstone ran a ring of ink stains, one laid over another, in uneven shades. The ink in the well was still half full. A skin had formed on its surface, and across the skin ran a crack, from the edge towards the middle.
Beside the inkstone lay a brush. Its tip was worn down for a stretch, and on the worn side the line of ink broke off. Where the brush had rested, a mark of ink lay on the table, its shape exactly that of the brush shaft.
The characters on the first page were written with this brush. So were the more than a hundred pages after them.
The bookcase stood against the wall, three shelves high. On the second shelf stood another cloth-bound ledger of the same kind, dark brown, its cover blank, its label reading “Book Two.”
Its spine had been pasted, not sewn. The paper was new, not yet turned, and not a page had been written on. Its corners were neat. They pressed against the wooden shelf and left a very faint dent.
On line thirty-six of the register, one character had been scraped away.
A scraper had gone down across the paper at a slant and taken off a layer. Where it had gone, the paper was thin. Held up to the window, you could see the left-falling stroke of the character beneath, and half of a horizontal. The new character had been traced over the ones beside it. Its strokes stood at the same height, and its feet sat on the same line.
The number, the entry and the mark on this line had not been touched. Only one character of the name had been changed.
The first line of the hall rules was written in the hall’s first year. It read: “Whoever enters keeps their word and never changes it.”
The copyist had written the characters. Eleven people had set their marks beneath this rule. Eight had written their names. Three had pressed their fingerprints. The prints were pressed into the blank beside the names, hard, so that a ring of dark showed through the back of the paper. The edge of each print had a fine ring of lines, the kind worn in by years of gripping things. Of the eight names, two had been written by the same hand, and the two lines had strokes of the same weight.
The people who set their marks were all porters.
The characters of Rules Two and Four had been thumbed fuzzy, and could no longer be read. Rule Three read: “Disciples must not break step.” Its characters were the same size as those of Rule One, and only one fingerprint had been pressed in its mark column.
In the margin beside Rule One, a line of small writing had been added later, in pale ink: Three had gone. All three had been taken by other gangs to carry sacks.
Those three names were still on the register. Each had a thin line drawn through it, so lightly that the names could still be read.
Rule Five was written in the second year.
“To enter the hall, you must have a tag.”
There were no marks beneath this rule. Beneath it was a line of small writing: Tags are drawn each month against the dues. Those who do not pay leave their tag in the hall. It is not returned.
That same year, the book at the workers’ shed had a line in it. The writing in the name column had been rubbed with a finger until it was grey and could not be read. The tag number column was empty. At the end of the line, in red ink, one word had been added: Barred.
A wooden sign was nailed to the door frame of the workers’ shed, white ground, black characters. The characters were his, far larger than those in the book: No tag, no entry.
Inside the workers’ shed was a row of benches. The people sitting on them all wore tags. The tags were iron, one after another, hung round the neck, and when a person moved, the tags knocked together. The man standing at the door had no tag, so there was no sound from him.
The dues were kept in an iron box. The box was square. The slot for coins was a narrow crack, its edges worn bright. Under the box lay a sheet of paper, with one line for each month. Each line had a tag number, and after the number a column that read “Paid” or “Held.”
In the Held column were only the tag numbers of porters.
The lock on the iron box was new. A small ball of paper had been pushed into the keyhole. The paper was white, with no writing on it.
The marks beside the hall rules had been counted through, once.
Rule One had eleven. Rule Two: the lines where the characters had been worn fuzzy could not be counted. Rule Three had one. Rule Five had none. Rule Nine had none. Rule Fourteen had one, pressed by a square seal, and the seal was his. Rule Seventeen had none. Rule Twenty-two had none.
The number of marks fell with each rule. The later rules had narrower line spacing, and their characters were packed tighter.
Rule Nine, “Those who enter may not start a family,” was squeezed in between Rule Eight and Rule Ten.
The line spacing was half that of the rest. The characters were one size smaller than those before and after, and the ink was darker. Beneath Rule Eight’s marks lay the left-falling stroke of the character for ‘enter’, the first character of Rule Nine.
This rule had no marks. The mark column was empty.
In the hall’s fourth year, the woman who sewed canvas left. She went on an upriver boat.
She had sewn canvas and mended work clothes. She had sewn the spine of this book. The thread was red and thick, with wide stitches, and every stitch was knotted, the ends left hanging outside the spine. There were forty-seven holes along the spine, evenly spaced. The thread had faded to grey. Only in the hollows of the knots did a little of the original red remain.
A bookbinder hides the ends of the thread inside. She did not hide hers.
In the back yard, the ground was marked out in squares with white lime. One person to a square. The squares were all the same size, and every line was straight.
The third rule, “Disciples must not break step,” was written in the book. These squares were its shape on the ground. Inside each square, the earth had a patch darker than the rest, left by feet that had stood in the same place for a long time.
Outside the squares the ground was bare earth, worn flat by all the walking. No one had ever stepped out of a square.
The tags were iron, one number to each. The number was nailed to the front. On the back, two characters had been cut: Zhenpu.
The number for zero had been cut in later. Its cuts were shallower than the rest, and the edges were still sharp. The edges of the other numbers had all been worn round.
The book for issuing tags lay on the counter. It was thinner than the hall rules, and its paper was the rough paper used on the docks. The counter was a door panel laid across two wooden crates. The first line was zero. The date of registration was March of the hall’s first year.
On the line for the zero tag, the occupation column said porter, and the remarks column said self-issued. No one had issued this tag. He had taken it himself, so the book said self-issued.
After the zero tag, the remarks column on every line gave the number of months of dues paid. The longest line read: seventeen months.
Before the hall’s seventh year, the zero tag hung at his waist. Everyone on the docks had seen it.
After the seventh year, it hung on a nail behind the hall door. The nail was iron, and its head had been rubbed bright. The tag faced the wall, its back outwards, so anyone outside could see the two characters.
Rule Fourteen was written in the seventh year. The copyist wrote the characters.
“The master’s tag must not leave the hall.”
In the margin beside this rule was a line of small annotation. Its characters were smaller than the text, each stroke drawn with care, very even: The master is in the hall. The characters were his.
The last stroke of the character for ‘hall’ was very dark, and a white thread was caught in the ink. The thread had come off a cloth. The ink had dried with the thread still in it, and one end stood up from the paper by a millimetre and a half.
The cloth on his right wrist had reached its fourteenth turn that year. With each rule added, one more turn. Each turn was one finger wide. The fourteenth was thicker than those before it. It lay over the edge of the turn before, and pressed a pale line there.
The nail behind the hall door was driven into the inside of the door frame, two steps from the threshold.
On the wall below the nail was a square patch whiter than the rest of the wall, its edges straight, the shape of a tag. Where the tag had hung, dust could not settle, so the wall kept its original white.
The longer a tag hung, the longer the mark stayed. Dust settled only along the edge of the mark, and over time the edge grew clearer.
The hall door had two leaves, and they were wooden. Along the top of each leaf ran a horizontal grain, darker than the rest, pressed there by the hands that pushed the door.
The bolt was on the inside. The dust in its slot was even, with no mark where anything had touched it. The bolt lay to one side, its head up. It had never once been slid into its slot.
When the leaves were shut, light from outside came through the crack. When they were open, the threshold faced the street.
On the floor behind the door stood two pairs of cloth shoes. One pair was his, toes turned in, soles clean, with no dock mud. The other was the new disciple’s. Its soles had mud on them, and the mud was dry.
The threshold of the hall door was a single piece of timber, a finger’s height above the ground. Its top had a groove, worn by the leaves that had been pushed across it for years.
The board on the inside was brighter than the rest. It was the size of a palm, its edges clear, its shape the forepart of a shoe. The board on the outside was grey and had several scratches. The scratches had been made by dragging things, not by feet.
The bright patch had been worn in the hall’s eighth year.
That year, another labourer was barred outside the dock gate by the workers’ shed. He had no tag. To bring him into the hall and enter his name, you had to go to the gate.
That day, the zero tag was still on its nail, two steps from the threshold, its back turned out.
The new disciple had a tag at his waist. He went out first, down three steps, into the street. Fine grass grew in the joints of the flagstones beyond the steps, and all the grass leaned the same way. Before he left, the new disciple glanced back at the nail behind the door, then turned away again.
The master followed behind, lifting his foot over the threshold. Where the foot came down was the board on the inside. On the board outside, there was no footprint.
The next day, the same foot came down in the same place. Still nothing outside.
From the third day, dust settled back over that board.
That year, the fist marks on the post grew by one more layer.
In the middle of the Hall of Harmony stood a wooden post. It was ink-black, and a good deal taller than a man.
The post had stood in the back yard of the Zhenpu Martial Arts Hall. It was an old mooring post, pulled up beside the dock gate. Its stone footing had been dragged into the hall along with it. A number was carved on the footing: seven. When it was dragged in, the post already had a crack.
Later it was no longer in the back yard. No record was left of who moved it.
The body of the post was rows of shallow hollows, twelve to a row, each with its edge worn round. There were more than three thousand, of uneven depth. Each time a disciple was defeated, one hollow was struck into the post. Each hollow stood for one disciple he had knocked down. On the register, every name like that had a stroke in the defeat column.
The deepest fist marks were on the right side of the post, one over another. That stretch had been struck after the hall’s eighth year. The ones who struck the post were disciples. Not one of the marks on the post came from a hand wrapped in white cloth.
The top of the post had been sawn off. The cut faced the sky, and the raw wood was pale.
An old crack ran down the post, slanting from top to bottom. Lodged in the crack was a small piece of white cloth, its edge curled, wedged in tight. The post did not record whose cloth it had been.
Rule Seventeen was written in the tenth year. The copyist wrote the characters.
“Rules are not changed by people. Only fists decide them.”
In the margin beside this rule was a note, its characters larger than the text, the ink heavy. Dots of ink showed through the back of the paper, one after another. The note was in his hand, and matched the text character for character.
After the tenth year, no rule in the book was crossed out, and no character was altered. Every rule was in its original characters, and every mark was its original mark.
That year, a loose sheet was tucked into the register. On it was written a sentence that was to be changed. Half a line had been written, then struck out with a single horizontal stroke. On the back of the loose sheet was a line from the register: a name, with a vertical stroke in the defeat column, and beside the stroke, the date of that year.
That year, the fist marks newly added to the post were deeper than all the earlier ones. The raw wood had not been worn smooth, and its edges were still pale.
Rule Twenty-two was the last of the hall rules. It was written in the eleventh year.
“Zhenpu disciples must not be defeated.”
He wrote this rule with his own hand. The brush was soft at the tip, and a ring of white thread was wound round the shaft, where the hand grips.
After the character for ‘not’, the first stroke of the next character broke off halfway. The two ends of the break were offset by half a stroke’s width, and the break was flat. The section that rejoined was paler in ink, and its tail trailed a fine thread before turning back onto the original line. The brush had slipped a little in the hand, and then been pulled back.
That day, the cloth on his right wrist reached its twenty-second turn. There was not enough cloth.
He cut a length from the cloth. The cut was straight, made with a ruler pressed along the line. The cloth had once been the lining of a quilt cover, white coarse cotton, cut from a scrap left by the woman who sewed canvas. The length he cut was tucked into the gutter of the page for Rule Twenty-two. It was three fingers wide, with no writing on it and no thread.
After Rule Twenty-two, the last page of the hall rules was blank. There were no marks at the foot of the page, and no note. The next page was the register.
On page three hundred and seven of the register, the seventh line from the bottom had been struck out.
A straight line ran across it, and both ends stopped exactly at the edges of the characters. The line had been pressed hard, and a grey streak showed through the back of the paper. The characters underneath could still be read.
The characters on this line ran across three columns: name, tag number and entry. The number column was empty. Read together, they said: “LM-1, Huangpu Orbital Shipyard. A thing not yet admitted. Not to be let through.”
Also tucked into this page was a letter. The heading was printed with the name of the Huangpu Orbital Shipyard. The body held a single sentence: “LM-1 is waiting outside the gate. Please let it through.” On the back of the letter was written a single word, and the word was his: No.
The characters on this page were not in the copyist’s hand. Another hand had written them. They were one size larger than those before, and the weight of each character sat a little to the right, though not by much. The page number was still in the worn brush’s hand.
The year this line was struck out was the hall’s ninth. The ink of the strike was not from the same batch as the other ink on the page. It had been added later.
In the register, only this line had an empty number column. Every other line had a number, the numbers following one another with no gap.
The defeat column appeared on every page of the register. Most of its lines were empty.
Before the hundredth page, the defeat column had almost no marks. Now and then there was a vertical stroke, at most one a year. Around the two hundredth page, the strokes grew thick: one to a line, then two to a line. Every vertical stroke had a small hook at its top, added without thought when the blow was struck.
The new disciple’s name was on line forty-one of the register. The entry column said the hall’s seventh year, and the defeat column was empty.
On the wall behind the counter hung a map of the docks. It was drawn in ink lines, its paper gone yellow, pinned at the four corners with drawing pins.
On the map, the dock gate was drawn as a box, and inside the box was one word: “Enter.” Everywhere else on the docks there were only lines, no words. The workers’ shed was drawn as a small square with no name. The shipyard was at the very edge of the map, and its lines ran to the edge of the paper and stopped.
The dock gate had a wooden barrier.
Across the top of the barrier ran a wooden crossbar, and beneath the crossbar a long board was nailed. On the board was a row of iron hooks. Each hook held a tag, and the numbers ran from one to forty. The numbers had been punched in with an iron nail, one blow at a time, and every stroke showed where it had been struck.
The hook on the far left was empty. Its paint was new, with the bright look of a hook that had never held anything. On the board above it was written “Zero,” freshly traced, very straight.
In the middle of the barrier was a square hole, just big enough for one tag. Its edges had been rubbed bright. When a tag was pushed in, the crossbar of the barrier lifted.
The gap between the bars was just wide enough for one person to pass sideways.
Those without tags stood outside the barrier. The barrier did not move.
The winter of the hall’s twelfth year.
Agui stood outside the barrier. His carrying pole leaned against the bars, the ropes still hanging from both ends, the knots loose.
His two hands rested on the crossbar. There was dock dust on the backs of his hands. His knuckles were thick. On the pads of his fingers were calluses, their edges hard. The calluses had been worn by carrying sacks, one layer over another. His nails were cut very short, down to the flesh, and there was grey dirt under them.
He had no tag.
Two people stood behind him, and they had no tags either. Inside the barrier, the people sitting on the benches wore tags round their necks, and the tags knocked together with small, separate clinks.
The water on the stone steps outside the gate drew back one step at a time, down to the third step, stopped there, and rose a little again.
His tag hung behind the hall door. Tags were paid for month by month. He had not paid this month, so his tag had stayed in the hall, on a nail beside the zero tag. That row of nails held several tags, and each one was turned face to the wall.
The square hole in the middle of the barrier was empty. Agui took his hands back from the crossbar and laid them along the seams of his trousers, palms turned in.
The barrier did not move. He did not go in.