Chapter 9Every Name

He did not come down.

He raised his right hand, palm forward. It was the opening move of tai chi.

She had never learned this move. What she had learned was the Flying Apsara, the opening phrase she had heard backstage at the storytelling hall, and the beat the listeners knew. Tai chi belonged to other families, yet he used it more evenly than anyone, so evenly that every beat seemed to have been measured in advance.

Her voice had not yet died away. The line she had spoken had dropped at her feet, and no one in the hall had taken it up. Now his palm rose and took the line from her. He pushed forward, and the ring of sound took on a layer of gold. It was Harmony gold, even in colour, every thread pressed as flat as the next. He sent her voice back to her exactly as it had been. Each word came back to the same place in her ear. It was not fast, not slow, and not one beat more.

She stepped back. A second step. A third.

Her shoe soles squeaked once on the jade-white tiles. The sound was short. The wall cut it off, and it left no tail.

He pushed a second time, and this time more slowly. Left, then right, the force on each side the same, landing on the strong beats. He did not lift his shoulders or sink his waist. He only sent his palms out, drew them back an inch, and sent them out again. It was he who was even. Nothing in the hall was out of line by one millimetre.

There were twenty-seven steps, and he stood in the centre of the top one. From this distance he was only a shape, a very orderly shape. Both hands were wrapped in white cloth, wound from the base of the fingers to the wrist. An ink-black hall headband was tied across his forehead and knotted at the back of his head, its edge straight.

She watched that hand. The gold had been painted on in layers, rising, until it reached the fingertips. Once it filled them, it ran down.

She did not call out again.

The three-level demotion still pressed on her. He had said she could speak only the words that were permitted. She remembered how each of those words had been forced out of her throat, every one having to pass through a door first. The door was still there. Only she no longer went through it. What she meant to say was fact, and facts did not have to pass through a door. These things had been outside the door all along.

She lifted both hands from her sides, the elbows leading and the wrists following. It was the opening stance of the Flying Apsara. When she was ten she had watched from backstage at the storytelling hall. She had watched the whole piece, and the one thing she remembered was this move. Her waist bent back, folding through the third bend. The shawl flew off her shoulder, looped round her right arm, and was flung up again from the arm. The long ink-green cloth had long since broken into points of light at its end, and the points lit one by one in the air and rose.

She began to speak. There was a touch of melody in her voice, the opening phrase she had learned in the storytelling hall.

“Which road.”

The gold rose to meet it and landed on the first word.

“Anfu Branch Road. East end to west end, one thousand one hundred metres.”

The second word was struck too. She did not stop. The gold ran back along the sound, trying to reach her mouth, but the third word had already gone out.

“Three passes a day. By the second bin there is always an opened courier bag. Its mouth is torn into strips.”

When that line ended, she had left half a beat behind it. The gold had already gone out to meet it, and it met an empty space that could not be counted. The space was not a word, and no word could be pushed into it. The gold slid down in one sheet, landed on the tiles, and left no mark.

His right fist came out from his chest. Every punch landed on the beat of the wooden post, exactly on time. Her half beat lay in the gaps between the beats, and his fist went in and touched only the edge of the gap. The fist drew back, and the withdrawal left no place to breathe.

“By the fifth bin, half a portion of rice, not finished. The lid of the box not closed. Chopsticks stuck in the rice.”

His fist came out again, still on the beat. It landed in that gap and touched nothing.

“The ninth bin is by the third bridge pier. The mark at the base of the bin has to be swept round once with the slanted end, and the wrist has to turn.”

She had not read these off a list. She had kept them night after night, sitting at the seventh table of the night stall and watching a person sweep from the west end to the east end, the slanted end of the broom turned back and knocking against the calf once with every step. She had kept track for three weeks. The facts went out one at a time, and each one had its place, its number and its object. The gold was painted over them, but it could not cover these things. They stood in the hall one after another, and no one had to write a name for each of them.

His hand stopped for a moment.

“This is a slogan.”

When he said this, his voice was still one voice, each word landing on the beat, and when he had finished there was no echo.

She pressed the shawl against her body. The sound rings lit up around it, one ring, then two.

“This is not a slogan. This is what time she got to yesterday.”

“Yesterday she swept as far as the night stall. It was twenty past ten.”

“She knocked off at half past ten. Her broom hangs on the fourth hook, slanted end up.”

That night she sat at the seventh table. Her phone was propped against the bamboo skewer tube, its screen lit the whole time, and she did not type anything. Zhou Sulan crouched down and gathered the bamboo skewers from under the table, one at a time. Then Zhou Sulan stood up and pushed the broom forward. She watched that person’s right shoulder, which sat a little lower than the left. Each sweep pressed it a little lower. These were the things she had noted down.

When the number was spoken, the hall fell silent at once. It was not that he had stopped. He had not taken up this line. The gold, pushed only halfway, stopped between her and him, like a wall without a door.

She saw his right fist tighten once against his chest, then loosen.

He pushed a third time. This time it was not his palm but his whole arm. A wave of sound came out of him and pressed down on her chest. She was pushed into the wall. The wall was soft, and yet not soft. Her back met it and did not spring back. The shawl was pressed flat against the ground.

She did not dodge. Using that force, she flipped her body up and touched a foot to the wall. There was no dust on the wall, and the place her foot touched was dry. She went over the crest of the wave of sound, bent her back to its deepest curve, and froze in mid-air in a rebound-pipa pose. The pipa lay in her arms, its strings taut and its plectrum hanging, waiting for someone to pluck it.

The shawl flew out.

The ink-green cloth, its points of light dragged out into a single line, went over his shoulder, round behind him, and round the wooden post. It went round once, then again, and the last turn bound tight round the upper half of the post. The post gave a dull sound. He did not turn his head.

She came down.

The string of arcs began to light from the innermost ring. One ring, two, three. Ring by ring it lit to cyan, all the way down to her collarbone. Every word she spoke lit a ring. This time she did not choose which words she was allowed to say.

“Every name. Not one deleted.”

The line went out and was not struck. The gold was still in the hall. He did not block it, and he did not reach to tint it. The line went straight across and struck the hall headband.

The headband broke in the middle. Two ink-black lengths fell away from his forehead. One landed on his shoulder, and the other fell to the floor, onto the jade-white tiles, without a single sound.

He raised his left hand and touched the top of his head. He touched it twice before he found that there was nothing there.

His right hand opened at his side, as if to catch something. There was nothing in the palm. That hand was a beat late in the air. It stopped, drew back, and closed into a fist. The grip was tight enough that the knuckles went white.

At the moment the fist closed, the cloth wound round his right wrist came loose. He did not look down.

The cloth loosened, ring after ring, sliding from the wrist bone to the back of the hand, and stopped at the base of the fingers. The back of his hand under the cloth was smooth. It had no calluses. There were more than three thousand fist marks on the post, and not one of them had come from this hand.

She stood where she was. Her feather shapes had folded in at her back, leaving only a narrow band. She did not pick up the headband from the floor, and she did not draw the shawl back in. She did not take a single step forward.

The hall was quiet. The water from her shoes had left two prints on the tiles, one from the right foot and one from the left. She did not move again.

His face.

His mouth was shut, and it had been shut for a long time. His eyes were open. They were black, without light, and they rested on the place where she stood.

He drew a breath. The front of his gown swelled an inch with it, then fell back.

He spoke. One voice, each word landing on the beat.

“I was not trapped. I chose this.”

The line struck the wall and did not come back. When he had finished, he did not look at her again.

She did not answer the line, and she did not point out anything. The only thing she saw was this: that hand had been gripped for a long time and had not let go. She took this one thing in and did not say it aloud.

His left hand rested on his right wrist and wound the loosened cloth upward. He wound it to the third turn and stopped halfway. The cloth loosened a little more. He did not pull it tight. At the edge of the cloth was a single stitch. The thread had once been red, and it had faded to grey. He lined up that corner, exactly.

He did not speak again. No one in the hall answered. The right hand was still clenched, the knuckles white.

※

He lowered his hand from his right wrist. He turned, and with his back to her he began to untie the cloth wound round the post.

He pushed the cloth loose with the outer side of his knuckles, one stroke after another. The cloth was light. Its ends were still points of light, floating one by one on his palm. He untied it very slowly.

At the moment the cloth left the post, a thin crack sounded in the wood. She was too far away. She saw only that beside the old crack in the middle of the post, a new white line had appeared, running from top to bottom on a slant, about a palm’s length.

He turned back, held the cloth on his palm, and lowered it from the top of the steps. The cloth slid down the steps, one step at a time, until it reached her feet.

“Returned to you.”

This time his voice had a place. The wall caught those three words and sent them back. They came back more slowly than her voice had, and they were still there.

She bent down and caught it, folded the cloth once, and laid it over her arm. The cloth was warm in her hand. Points of light rose from her fingertips, went into her sleeve, and kept climbing to the ring behind her right ear. That ring lit a little more clearly. She did not speak. She only nodded once. The points of light were still circling her wrist and would not scatter, so she let them circle.

The wall had gone see-through. The hall had had no lamps. The light had come from the wall itself, even, equally bright on all four sides. Now light came in from outside, in patches, slanting onto the tiles.

The jade-white wall thinned in patches, until the outside could be seen through it, as if someone had wiped away a layer of mist. Where it had been wiped away was the outside of the Pearl Tower.

There were three pillars and several diagonal braces, and the great sphere was wedged between the pillars. The windows on the sphere lit up one pane at a time, in an ordinary white, with no light moving through them. The mast ran straight up. She could not see what lay above it. The clouds were there. This time she saw the whole outline of the tower, from the river, up through the lower sphere and the upper sphere, to the space capsule. It was a building. The tower no longer flowed with light. It was only a building.

Just then, deep inside the tower, something very large moved once.

It was not light. It was a thing. It was very large and very still, and it had been inside the tower for so long that the weight of the tower lay on top of it. The thing moved once. A low sound came out of the tower’s body, so low that the ears felt it first and only then heard it. When the sound passed, the thing was still again.

A panel rose out of the wall, facing the thing. It was faint, with a jade-white ground and no frame. The panel bore only one line of writing: “Anything not admitted to the hall will not be let through.”

She could not see the edge of the thing. She knew only that it was there, beneath her feet, outside the wall, in a deeper place.

She turned and walked towards the wall on the west side. The wall thinned once more, until it became a window.

Outside the window, the lamps on the far bank of the river came back on, one by one, first those to the east and then those to the west. Before, fifteen had been lit. This time all seventeen were lit, and the two at the west end that had been broken for a long time came on as well.

She looked up. In the north-east sky the disc was still hanging. Its rim was pale violet. There was white cloud. The black mouth had a white ring along its edge. Only the left side was missing a piece. In the gap the sky was an ordinary night, with no cloud, no ring, and nothing hanging. The disc beyond the gap was still there.

Under the awning, someone stood up. The stall owner’s voice came across the river, warm and loud, and in one shout it reached the window:

“Come in and sit down! The soup is still hot!”

The people under the awning sat down one by one. Bowls and chopsticks clinked. The sound came across the river, so thin it was almost inaudible, and yet it stayed.

People in the street were still looking down. One by one they turned and walked west, passing under the elevated road, until they reached the lit awning. A few of them stopped outside it for a moment, then went in.

The stall owner did not shout a second time. He rested the long-handled ladle on the rim of the pot and lifted the lid. White steam pushed up, then sank back down. The dark-grey towel was still over his right shoulder. She had sat at the seventh table for many nights, and he had never once called a line out to the street. When he did call out, he did not turn his head. This time he turned, looked once at the window on her side, and turned back.

※

The phone in her pocket lit up once.

The screen was white. The white drained away little by little until it became an ordinary sheet of glass. On it floated a very old message, one that had come in three weeks earlier and had never been read. The contact was saved as ‘Umbrella Repair’.

The message had only one line:

“The third rib has been replaced. Come and collect it on whatever day suits you.”

She did not reply. Her thumb rested on the screen for half a second, then lifted away. Her other hand hung at her side, and she pressed the outside of her thigh three times. Tap. Tap. Tap.

The window in the wall closed. On the front of the hall, where there had been wall, a door opened.

Outside the door was not the riverbank. It was stone steps.

The stone steps climbed one level at a time, broken here and there, and each gap was one step wide. She walked over to them. First step, second step. The shallow groove was still beside the gap. This time she was near enough to see its edge. Inside it was one stroke that ran straight up and down, very straight, and the rest had been worn away. She lowered her head and looked again, but still could not see all of it. She did not crouch down.

The steps going up could not be counted. She counted to seventy, and then the numbers came apart. She stopped counting and looked only at the step under her feet. Each step had a gap, and every gap was the same width, exactly one step. She was not the first person to walk this way. Each step had first to be found, the place where the next one lay. Only once it was found could she step onto it. This was not like going down the stairs. People going down did not need to search.

She thought of his list. The list held names, and names could be deleted. He could delete one person. He could not delete a bin, or one thousand one hundred metres, or one person hanging the broom back on the fourth hook at half past ten. These things were not on his list, so he had no place to draw a line.

On one side of the steps, a door hung in the air, transparent. Through it was a street in Tokyo, the ground wet and the lamps white. A man in an old shirt stood in front of an automatic door. The door did not open. He had buttoned his shirt right up to the top. He bowed his head towards that door, deeply, then stayed bent. After a long time he bowed again.

There was no one else inside. The door was empty, and so was the ground.

She stood on the steps and turned to face the direction of that door.

“Tokyo. Someone is apologising for something they never did wrong.”

The door slowly closed. There was no writing on it, and the man behind it did not raise his head. The stone steps still climbed many more levels, each gap one step wide. She found where the next level was, and stepped across.

※

At twenty to four the next day, Zhou Sulan woke. She did not turn on the light.

She pinched the crease in the brim of her cap twice, back into its original place. The porridge had been cooked the night before. She poured it into an insulated flask and drank half a bowl standing up. The rest she covered and put in the right-hand pocket of her jacket. The steamed buns were in a paper bag, pressed flat. She kept half of them back. The bag bore the name of a breakfast shop, its lettering worn away by half, leaving only one character, the character for ‘bean’. She saw that character every day.

Two pairs of shoes stood at the door. She put on her own and tied the laces again into two knots.

She turned the lock three and a half times. The key hung from her wrist on an elastic band, which had one more notch in it.

She reached the sanitation depot at ten past four. Her broom hung on the fourth hook, slanted end up. Xiao Huang was the second to arrive, his gloves on back to front again, and she said nothing.

At five she began to sweep. One thousand one hundred metres, three passes a day. The first pass swept up last night’s fallen leaves, the second swept the morning market’s vegetable leaves, and the third came at night, starting at nine.

Last night everyone on the street had walked with their heads down. She had swept with her head down too. Over by the bridge pier, a light fell from the tower and shone under the elevated road, but she did not look up. The dust by the bins mattered more than what was in the sky. Dust that was not swept clean had to be swept again the next day.

The third pass began at the west end. The woman from the hairdresser’s carried her stool in from the doorway, looked back at her, and said nothing. The fruit seller covered the watermelons with cloth, a brick weighing down each corner. Her broom went east, past the roller shutters, the light boxes and the utility poles, sweeping each one.

By the second bin there was always an opened courier bag. There was one today too. She had swept here in the afternoon, and there had been nothing by the bin. Now the courier bag was back, its mouth torn into strips. She gathered the bag to the side, to leave it for the bin lorry.

This time, when she swept to the bin, her hand came against something.

It was a bowl. It was wrapped in a layer of oil paper, which the heat had softened, and it was still warm. She peeled the oil paper back. The warmth from the base of the bowl rose into her palm. A little steam came from the rim and was scattered by the night wind. Inside was a bowl of noodles. No oil floated on the broth. The noodles lay at the bottom, with spring onion laid over them.

A sheet of paper was pressed under the base of the bowl.

There was only one time on the paper.

The writing was quick. The last stroke trailed out, leaving a short tail of ink.

Half past ten.

She knew this number. It was the one she had given three weeks earlier to the girl in glasses. That day the girl had crouched under the table and asked her, and she had said the number. The girl had typed it into her phone and said thank you. That thank you had been a little hurried.

The red ring at the base of the bowl was chilli oil. The smell was faint. It came through a gap in the oil paper, and she sniffed it, but could not tell which shop it had come from.

Xiao Huang ran over from the junction opposite, holding a bun wrapper. His laces were loose. Halfway across, he stopped to tie them.

“Sister Zhou, who gave you that?”

She said she did not know.

Xiao Huang passed over a paper parcel. She took it and put it in her bag. There were already three paper parcels in the bag, and she did not take this one out either.

She held the paper up and looked at it under the streetlamp. There was no name on it, no house number, no other writing. There was only a time, and one unhurried stroke.

She did not think about who had written the paper. She thought about the number, and that it was right. That day the girl had asked her, and she had answered neither quickly nor slowly. It was this number.

She pressed the paper back under the bowl, folded the oil paper, and set it on the rim of the bin. Slanted end up.

She picked up the bowl of noodles and went on sweeping.