The station's duty roster hung behind the door of the duty room; November's shifts had been assigned on October 20 and nobody had touched it since — anyone who wanted a change picked up a pencil and changed it himself, then signed a surname by the alteration, scrawled, legible enough to count as made. On the nineteenth's square Lin Wanzhao drew a circle — around the second character of her own name — set the pencil down, thought for a moment, and put a dot to the right of the circle: this was the day she was trading shifts with Xiao Jiang, and trading into a day shift at that, seven thirty in the morning to six at night with a ninety-minute handover folded in the middle, and the handover meant filling in a form, the Duty Handover Record, thirteen columns, the thirteenth called "other," which she left blank every time.
Xiao Jiang asked what she wanted the day for. She said, duty. He said, it's already your day shift. She said, I want them back to back. He stubbed out his cigarette and said, fine, have them back to back, just don't tell people it was a trade. She said, nobody's asking.
The nineteenth was not a Watching Day. She had checked the moon phases in advance: this month's full moon fell in the first ten days and had already passed, the next in December; she copied the phases onto a memo slip, and at the nineteenth's square she wrote a character beside it meaning "none" — then decided the character was useless, crossed it out, and under the scratch the "none" was still visible.
She gave herself four items, on the bottom half of the slip. One: collect the translation sheet. Two: copy out — date, time block, entry, magnitude. Three: pull the station's own records for that block that day, plus three days before and after at the same block, for comparison. Four: compare against the first-year same-day sequence copied back from the archive room; compute the difference. After the fourth she added four characters: no conclusions drawn. She looked at those four characters for a while, and smoothed the space in front of the "no" a little flatter.
The translation sheet came home on the shoe cabinet after school, set down by Zhou Shu without handing it to her, as always. She picked it up and checked the date first: November 19. Time block: 16:10 to 16:40, the translation class's fixed half hour, the half hour she was in the machine room. Entries column: one. Magnitude column: luminous, seven. The verification column stood empty. And the square behind the entry — the one that printed the two characters "to-verify," the one she had counted nine empty squares of — was empty today too. Nothing on the paper.
She laid the sheet on the dining table and went to the study for the soft notebook — the one with "twenty-nine, zero point four, November nineteenth" written in it. She set that line beside today's sheet: entry against entry, magnitude against magnitude, date against date. Difference in entry count: zero. Difference in magnitude: zero. Difference in date: zero. She ran it three times, three times the same; on the third pass she changed pens — to the station pencil with the tape wound around its barrel. Doing the same thing a second time with a different pen was a rule she had set for herself: the changed pen slows the hand, and a slowed hand is less likely to follow the grooves of the pass before.
She computed the decay once more. Last cycle had been a seven; four parts in a thousand of seven is 0.028. The magnitude column took whole numbers only — no squares past the decimal point. She wrote in the soft notebook: magnitude recorded in whole units; four parts in a thousand not resolvable in this entry. She circled the sentence when it was written, decided the circle meant nothing, and put a dot outside the circle.
The station's records she pulled at 5:10 in the afternoon. She took the two files covering the sheet's time block, added three days on either side at the same block, and plotted two charts: one baseline, one the rise of the underhum in that block — not a Watching Day, so the rise should have been flat by rights. Both were flat. She printed them, pinned them together, and wrote date, block, and file number in the header; one section of the number was its classification, and there she filled in "translation-sheet data" again, the same four characters as on the receipt three months before, which she had not applied to correct then and did not now.
At the filing drawer she stopped for a moment — a second, maybe two — then let go.
The notice about the contact meeting had come the previous Wednesday, from the mail room. A kraft envelope, its string untied, just the flap tucked in. Inside, one mimeographed sheet, blue ink, the characters doubled — a ghost shifted to the right, heavier the further right. The heading, four characters: Contact Meeting of Translation Officers, All Sessions. Four lines of body: time, the last Sunday of November, 9:30 in the morning; place, the Second Workers' Activity Room outside the south gate, second floor, east room; to bring, nothing; contact, Zhu Aizhen, followed by a seven-digit number — not the same one as the number copied on the back of the soft notebook. At the foot it printed "Contact Group," and above that, in smaller type: convener, Wei Dongquan.
Inside the envelope was also a reply slip, two squares: coming, not coming. She ticked "coming," wrote her name and session beside it, and as she slid the slip back she saw a line of old address printed on the envelope's inner layer — a misprint reprinted over, the scraping not done clean, the original street number still pushing up underneath.
Sunday morning she took two buses. Sand and cement bags were piled at the gate of the activity room's yard, boards pressed on the sand, and on the boards someone had chalked the character for "Li" — written it backwards. The door of the second-floor east room stood open; a dozen or so people were already seated inside. The tables were pushed together, a flowered plastic cloth over them, disposable paper cups on top, two thermos flasks, one with a crack down its wooden stopper. On the wall hung a length of red cloth with six paper-cut characters pinned to it — the character for "association" had lost its right half, and the pin was fastened through the gap.
The sign-in sheet lay pressed under a stone at the corner of the table by the door. Hand-ruled: the horizontal lines drawn with a ruler, the vertical ones by eye, and a little crooked. Four columns: session, name, phone, remarks. She wrote "7" in the session column, looked up, and saw that the Seventh Session's row held only her line — the line above it blank, and one more row up, the Sixth. Nineteen present: seven from the Sixth, five from the Fifth, three from the Fourth, two from the Third, one from the Second; and in the First Session's column a single row — surname Wei, the given name written large, the phone square empty, two small characters in the remarks column. She didn't lean close to read them.
The one running it was a woman of about fifty, who stood at the head of the table and said first that her name was Zhu Aizhen, Sixth Session. Someone hadn't caught it and asked; she said it again: Sixth Session. She said Old Wei wasn't here today. She said there was no telling whether he'd come — he hadn't last year either, and the year before he'd come for half a morning. She offered no explanation and nobody pressed. Lin Wanzhao recorded the three items in her phone — notes app, one entry, fourteen characters.
The meeting itself had no content. Once a year, sit together; announce family troubles, ask each other after medicines. A plate of oranges on the table, one each for whoever took them; some didn't. Zhu Aizhen raised one matter: next year she wanted to apply for a room of their own — this one was borrowed, and the day a family in the building held a funeral, the borrowing would stop. Someone said, then let it stop. Someone said, no, we need the room. After those two sentences nobody picked it up, and Zhu Aizhen turned a page of her notebook.
Around ten someone proposed a photograph. Chairs back, tables forward, people in two rows, the front row squatting or sitting; the camera belonged to a young man, digital, with a screen on the back, and after shooting he turned the screen around for everyone; someone said too dark, so he shot again. On the west wall were pinned the photographs of past years, one per year, the year written in pencil beneath the oldest one, the pencil faded; the prints were pasted up with clear tape gone yellow with age, all four corners lifting. Lin Wanzhao counted: fourteen photographs. She counted the heads in each: twenty-six in the oldest, nineteen in last year's, this year's not yet up. When she finished she stood before the wall a few seconds, and on her way back to her seat pressed down one lifted corner.
The insomnia came out when they got to talking about medicine. A man surnamed Zou — Fifth Session, holding up five fingers as he said so, then folding two back — said he slept badly. Another asked what hour he woke. Zou said 3:20. The other man said, 3:40, me. A third said, four o'clock on the nose. Somebody laughed and said, you sound like you're reporting numbers. Nobody took that up.
Zou said he had kept the record nineteen years, one entry a day, three full notebooks at home. He said he had tried medicine, and on the medicine he woke more exactly. Lin Wanzhao asked whether he had tried sleeping anywhere but his own home. He said he had — at his daughter's, 3:40 — and his daughter's was across the city, in the east. He stopped there and looked at her.
Lin Wanzhao looked down, finished writing that up, looked up, and found Zou still looking at her, waiting for her to speak. She said: mm. Only then did he go on.
Later she counted it — she counted everything that could be counted — seven such pauses in all before the meeting broke up. The pauses fell at the end of a finished sentence, never mid-sentence; while paused, the speaker didn't look elsewhere but at the one who had just been listening; of the seven, five went on only when the other had answered, and two the speaker carried on himself, and when he carried on himself he added half a sentence to the one before.
Once it was her own. She asked the Fourth-Session woman seated cattycorner — others called her Lao Xie — whether the stubs of early translation sheets could be kept by individuals. Lao Xie answered, and stopped. Lin Wanzhao thought she had lost the word and waited. The wait was long enough to say a sentence and a half, and Lao Xie was still looking at her. She said: mm. Lao Xie said: they can't be kept. Only then did she understand the previous sentence had been finished.
Twice she deliberately did not pause. Once when Zhu Aizhen asked how old Zhou Shu was — she said eleven years nine months and went straight on into the translation-sheet business without stopping; Zhu Aizhen did not cut in, but waited until she had finished and paused before speaking. She remembered this one, and remembered it by opening the soft notebook and drawing a short dash on a blank page, leaving an empty stretch after the dash. She left the stretch empty. Wrote nothing.
At Lao Xie's feet was a cloth bag, bulging. During the meeting she had hoisted it twice, both times when someone passed close. After the meeting she collected the oranges nobody had taken from the table — two — put them in the bag, and gave the mouth of it a half twist. Then she opened the bag to show Lin Wanzhao: paper inside, bundles of it, rubber-banded, the topmost bundle showing a corner, and the column width of that corner Lin Wanzhao recognized at a glance — thirty millimeters, same as the translation sheet. Lao Xie said: all of it, what people didn't want.
Lin Wanzhao said: what is this paper?
Lao Xie said: tickets. Bus tickets. Sheets.
Lin Wanzhao said: why keep them?
Lao Xie said: I can't throw them out.
Lin Wanzhao said: afraid of what?
Lao Xie said: don't know. She wound the rubber band at the bag's mouth around one more time.
Lin Wanzhao asked her one thing: the sheets from your time — the square behind the entry, the one printed "to-verify" — did anyone ever fill it in?
Lao Xie said: which square?
Lin Wanzhao said: after the magnitude. The narrow one.
Lao Xie said: never filled.
Lin Wanzhao said: what was it kept for, then?
Lao Xie said: kept for words. Not for numbers.
Lin Wanzhao said: and if someone filled it — what then?
Lao Xie said: don't know. Nobody ever asked me, filled or not.
Around ten thirty, Zhu Aizhen brought up a dual-cassette recorder from under the table — black, half its handle broken off, the break wound with tape. She said: a stretch of tape. She pressed the key.
The reel began to turn. From the speaker came one click, then a long hiss. The hiss had highs and lows in it; at the highs it was like someone riffling paper in the next room.
It played about a minute and a half. She pressed stop. Nobody said anything.
Lao Xie said: that stretch — the way I hear it — She stopped. She said: I can't say it.
Zou said: the tune of it, I can hear.
Lin Wanzhao said: what tune?
Zou said: can't say. Whether it's in a hurry — that I can hear.
Lin Wanzhao had a clip in her phone, recorded at home last month: Zhou Shu reporting, forty seconds. She had known it was useless to record and recorded anyway. She asked if she could play it. Zhu Aizhen said play it.
She played it. The room listened. When it ended nobody spoke for a few seconds; then Zou said: she isn't in a hurry.
Lin Wanzhao said: what is "not in a hurry"?
Zou said: the meaning I don't have. This much only, I can hear.
Lin Wanzhao said: then what is she saying?
Zou said: that I don't have.
Lao Xie asked: how old? Lin Wanzhao said: eleven years nine months. The room went quiet for a moment, and the quiet was of a different kind than those seven pauses — this time several people went silent at once.
Lao Xie said: at this age, the words go sweet.
Lin Wanzhao said: what is sweet?
Lao Xie said: can't say it. The children say it themselves. First they go sweet; when the sweet is done, they flatten.
Lin Wanzhao said: sweet for how many days?
Lao Xie said: it varies. Some three days. Some a month.
Lin Wanzhao said: and after the flattening?
Lao Xie said: flattened is flattened.
She wrote these lines into the soft notebook, three pages past "twenty-nine, zero point four, November nineteenth." She wrote: sweet (children's own word); sweet first, then flattened; three days to a month; sample size unknown. She capped the pen. Lao Xie was already talking to someone else.
When she got home she spread this month's copied translation sheets on the table. The entry counts she had long since copied; the column she counted now was another one — the "to-verify" square, empty for thirty years, nine empty squares, she had counted. This month the square had writing in it on seven days: eleven characters in all. The earliest fell on November 9.
She copied the eleven characters into a column: very, bright, down, go, done, good, look, horse, up, soon, slow. She read the column through once, then again. Entry count unchanged, magnitude unchanged, time block unchanged. What had been added was eleven characters.
She put a sheet from early November beside yesterday's. The early-November characters were small, the strokes finished to a point; yesterday's had grown a size larger, the strokes finished round, not carrying outward — as if written to the end and then walked back a little. She looked for two seconds and stacked the sheets together again.
The desk calendar lay under the phone. She pulled it out and turned it: the "nine" in the November 19 square was still there; she hadn't erased it. She turned further; the December page carried a print of skiers, off-color, the faces purple. She pressed the calendar back under the phone, pressing the December page in with it.
On yesterday's sheet the guardian column carried her signature, in the second square; Zhou Shu signed in the square below, the last stroke of her name looping up a little more than last month. When she finished she put the sheet back on the shoe cabinet, under tomorrow's tear-off strip.
Tuesday evening Zhou Yu came to deliver the notification form. Under Attachment 2, forty-eight hours ahead, one copy; in the reason field he wrote: take Zhou Shu for pure-tone audiometry, to establish a baseline; place: the special services department of the Municipal Third Hospital; date: December 3. Under the form he'd pasted a sample audiogram, the machine's model number printed in the sample's footer, and after the model number a year in parentheses — a year older than Zhou Shu.
In the "guardian has been informed" field Lin Wanzhao signed her name and the date: 11.25. Then she photographed it with her phone; the photo went into an album she had created offhand last year, named "paperwork."
She said: why establish a baseline now?
He said: sooner done, sooner had.
She said: a baseline is a reference for change.
He said: right.
She didn't ask again. As he left, a sheet of paper slid from his bag — A4, a printed map, one patch of it circled three times in pencil. She didn't open it. She slid it into the kraft envelope, in at the very back.
At two in the night she got up for water. Under the crack of Zhou Shu's door, light.
She didn't push the door. She stood a moment, and the door opened. Zhou Shu was sitting up in bed, wearing the headphones — the pair Zhou Yu had made by hand, left ear marked CH1-L, right CH2-R, judged failed a month ago and put away in the living-room drawer.
Zhou Shu said: it's not on.
Lin Wanzhao said: mm.
Zhou Shu said: I don't play anything through it.
Lin Wanzhao said: if you can't sleep, take them off.
Zhou Shu said: they help me sleep.
She didn't say more. She stepped back to the door and drew it shut.
The line of light under the door was still there.