On the morning of the ceremony Zhou Shu put on her school uniform and left the red scarf off, saying the teacher had told them to wear scarves instead — backstage was hot, it wouldn't have stayed on. When Lin Wanzhao pinned the order badge on her, the pin took two goes, the second before it went through the cloth: the No. 1 badge, plastic shell, a sheet of printer paper inside it. Zhou Shu looked down at that No. 1 and said, all right. It isn't red.
The roads around the hall were closed from nine. The city's old auditorium had been done over; over the door hung the banner of the Thirty-Year Full Translation Ceremony, and under the banner stood the broadcast vans, four dishes on their roofs in all, two aimed at the sky, two aimed at the building. She came in with the station's car and gave two identities — the station's delegate, the child's parent — and the ticket-taker searched back and forth between those two lines before finally letting her through the family entrance.
The corridor backstage was all children. One hundred and four, ranked by order, one adult attending each child, and the adults were the nervous ones — a woman kept kneading a child's ears. In the air, the smell of throat lozenges, sweet, in waves. Zhou Shu stood in the queue, speaking to no one fore or aft, the program sheet crushed in her hand, one corner folded over, which she smoothed flat again herself. From the wings, Lin Wanzhao could see the ages of this crowd of children in the way they listened — the posture of listening is different: the small ones tip the whole upper body forward, like reaching for something on a table; the big ones move only their ears, the body stays straight. In the queue, the ones leaning forward — not many.
Gu Ling was in the wings. He wasn't in the Bureau jacket today but a dark suit, tie knotted properly, and in his hand the same red pen. The sheaf of program sheets in his hand was the fullest one there; he had marked every page. Seeing her, he came over, and the two of them stood by the cables talking, the speakers overhead testing, playing the first four characters of the welcome speech over and over.
He Che is on the technical bench, Gu Ling said. He asked to come. The library intake doesn't turn without him.
Mm.
I know what you're going to say, Gu Ling said. Don't say it. Whatever today turns into, on me alone.
On the word "carry," the red pen tapped the program sheet once, on the line of the deep-rendering segment. Beside that line he had already written in the margin three times over; what it said she hadn't been able to see.
She watched the first half of the morning from the family seats. The thirty-year retrospective ran across the big screen, session by session: the First Session's registration long-table, white cloth, enamel mugs; the Fourth Session's green shuttle bus; the Sixth Session's broadcasting room shot from outside — and when that door came on, an old man in the front row lowered his head and kept it down a long time, never lifting it. Zhu Aizhen went up on behalf of the old translators and read a passage from a script, the script not long; when she reached "us of the Sixth Session" she stopped herself and said "of the Sixth Session" once more, and some in the audience laughed, not many. Lao Xie sat in the third row, cloth bag on the lap, unopened start to finish; Zou sat beside Lao Xie, little notebook laid open, one timestamp entered at the door, another when Zhu Aizhen came down off the stage. Thirty years walked themselves out inside that half hour, walked even and square, like the ledger.
Then the addresses. Gu Ling read from the script, slower than she'd expected — the places that should have risen were all pressed flat, and she guessed that on the original draft those places had been written higher, and the red pen had brought them down.
At the interval she saw Lao Xie undo the cloth bag — the first time in thirty years she had seen that bag open — and draw out from it a single sheet, the paper's edges furred, and lift it a little toward the big screen, not high, showing it to no one; lifted, drawn back in. The bag was retied, the knot back in its old place.
The loudspeaker called the first twenty in the order to stand by. Gu Ling shifted the sheaf to his left hand and put his right out to Zhou Shu; Zhou Shu looked at that hand, shook it, shook it briefly.
Before going up, Zhou Shu looked back once. Not at her — at this row of people in the wings, from Gu Ling to her, then farther back to He Che on the technical bench, and then she went in.
The hall's light was warm. The deep-rendering stand had been built at the center: one desk, one set of headphones, one microphone. The headphones were props-department issue, black, bigger than the pair Zhou Shu usually wore. Sixteen cameras in all, the farthest one mounted at the back of the balcony, its lens never once moving. The simultaneous booths sat in the side balconies, the glass filled with people from every country, each in headphones, and those people's work today was to carry a child's words over once more into each of their languages — coming in, she had stood a few seconds under that glass, stood there without arriving at anything, and moved on.
Before the deep rendering began, the master of ceremonies read the rules aloud, three in all: only free relays were to be collected live, no questioning; the relay originals would enter the library on the spot, not one character altered after; and the relays grow shorter each time — shortened to nothing, and that is completion. When the third was read out, a brief patter of applause came off the floor; what the applause was for she couldn't tell — it seemed clapped for the thirty years, not for that rule.
Zhou Shu sat, put on the headphones, squared them. The red light went on.
She couldn't see the director's screens; what she watched was the floor: the front rows held the old translators of every session, twenty-odd of them invited, someone with a cloth bag on the lap; farther forward, two rows that had stood empty through the morning, no seat cards placed — and before the deep rendering began, someone had placed the cards. Across half the hall she looked at them: no names on the cards, square after square, printed with nothing but session numbers, first to the Seventh, and past the Seventh a few squares more, empty, unprinted. She couldn't tell whether those squares were waiting to be printed or kept for what came after.
For the first three minutes, Zhou Shu did not move. The director cut to the audience, cut to Gu Ling, cut to thirty-year-old archive footage — the staff housing compound in snow static, the textile mill's shuttle bus, the broadcasting room's exterior, the year stamped in the corner. The hall was very quiet, a quiet being saved up; over a hundred countries waited on the far end of the airwaves for the same sentence.
In the fourth minute, Zhou Shu took the headphones off.
She set them on the desk, squared them, and leaned in to the microphone. Before she spoke she looked out at the floor once — at this same row in the wings.
What over there said today can't be translated.
She sat back up as soon as she'd said it. The quiet in the hall held another three seconds, then a layer of sound rose from the back toward the front, not loud, like wind moving through low trees. The director cut to scenery — archive footage of the array station, antennas in snow, the shot panning step by step. At the wings, the live director dragged his headphones down and shouted into the cord for people, and what he shouted wasn't names, it was camera positions; in the row of foreign delegations someone stood, sat back down — and someone didn't sit back down, standing in the aisle searching with their eyes for whoever was in charge. Two people with media badges squeezed toward the wings and were stopped at the mouth of it by security; one of them raised the badge and lowered it again and withdrew on his own.
Gu Ling walked up. Not fast — wings to center stage, eleven steps, give or take. At the microphone he said something to Zhou Shu first — this sentence did not go into the microphone; Zhou Shu nodded — and then, facing the hall, he announced the deep-rendering segment's postponement, per contingency, the order filled by substitution. He read the names at an even pace, like calling roll for a class. Read, he folded the script once, the crease held under a finger, and that hand stayed on the lectern two seconds more before drawing back.
The substitute came up — second in the order, a boy, eight or nine, in a wool coat with the collar starched stiff. His parent peeked out from the mouth of the wings, hands clenched at the chest, two gold rings on them, one plain, one patterned, clenched together so the patterned one rode to the outside. Before the boy went up, that parent pressed a throat lozenge into his mouth, and when it was in, gave him one push between the shoulders. The boy put on the headphones, listened less than a minute, and began to relay, sentence after sentence, very even, even as print. In the booths the sound of nibs all rose together. People in the audience began to nod. Standing in the wings she listened to the child's relay, and at the third sentence — that sentence's shape she knew by sight, knew it well enough not to want to admit where she'd seen it.
Luminescence. Progression. Duration. Whole sentences, regular parts of speech, not one break. She thought of the three-page recommendation of non-acceptance, of the seventh clause quoted in its annex. The child on the stage got not one word wrong. Below, the nodding spread.
She turned to find He Che. The technical bench sat at the very edge, a row of monitors, He Che in the last seat, one earphone on, the other hanging at his neck. He was typing into the library — typing a while, stopping, dragging the progress bar back, listening again, typing again. When she came up to him he didn't lift his head; he only turned the little monitor in front of him a few degrees toward her. On the screen ran the tape's timeline, and the four minutes that had been Zhou Shu's: the waveform lay flat, one line, level as those "not reported" days of the first April.
Before that stop of hers, He Che said, there was nothing.
She said, people heard it.
I know, He Che said. He dragged the progress bar back again and pointed at that flat line, his finger on the square just before Zhou Shu took the headphones off. The human testimony I've entered. The library's format doesn't take human testimony — my own book does. He patted a black notebook on the desk, its corners curled, bound with a rubber band. She said, if you're re-listening anyway, why keep passing over it — pass it all you like, there's nothing to see. He Che put both earphones on and said through them: someone has to own the machine's mistake for it.
He said no more. The progress bar went back once more.
At four in the afternoon the notice was delivered to the house. Notice of Suspension of Comrade Zhou Shu's Deep-Rendering Collection Credentials, two parts, receipt signed by the parent. The man who brought it was a new face; he stood at the door waiting for the signature, a unit-issued basket of mandarins at his feet — the New Year was near. She signed. The seal in the notice's upper corner was the same seal as on the three-page recommendation of non-acceptance, even the ink's color matched: a credentials matter, one the collection side had no authority to initiate — this one had come straight from the Bureau. From four o'clock on, Zhou Shu's deep-rendering credentials stood suspended. The thing He Che's recommendation had asked for had come down, one full circle around, wearing another face.
The evening calls came one after another. Xiao Cai's — don't take outside calls, the station would have a line out by morning. Teacher Zheng's — would Zhou Shu come to school tomorrow; if she did, he'd moved her seat to the inner row. And one strange number that rang twice and cut off, rang again — she pulled the cord. She didn't look at the parents' group; Zhou Shu looked at it a while and handed the phone back, said, two camps. Fighting very evenly.
Zhou Yu's call came at nine. Behind him it was empty-sounding — a corridor, you could tell. I watched it, he said. A pause. I'm coming back tomorrow. She said no need, his testing couldn't spare him. Zhou Yu said, I'm not coming back to see the child. A pause. I'm coming back to sign. From now on, whatever needs a parent's signature, you make me the list — I'll sign them one by one. She held the phone and said nothing, and the other end didn't hang up either; the corridor's sound-triggered light on his end came on and went off. At the last he said sleep now, and hung up first.
Gu Ling's call came later, two sentences only. The first: the afternoon's notice was not signed by him — he couldn't have signed it, and didn't mean to let anyone else. The second: the day after tomorrow the Verification Section would re-listen to those four minutes; they had meant to have the child there. She said, you people have suspended the child's credentials. Gu Ling paused on his end for exactly as long as he had on stage that morning, and said: then I'll listen.
Somewhere in between, the neighbor from upstairs had come down and knocked once, carrying a steamer of dumplings, said they'd made too many at home, set them down and left, never crossing the door. Cabbage leaves padded the bottom of the steamer; two of them stuck to the cloth.
Past ten, the light in the inner room was still on. She took water in. Zhou Shu wasn't doing homework; she sat at the desk, headphones at her hand, not on. The suspension notice lay open on the desk — her copy; she had read it.
Today, Lin Wanzhao set the water down — what did it say.
Zhou Shu was silent a moment. The silence wasn't long, but she waited.
It came wrong today, Zhou Shu said that first. Usually it's like water, spreading in from very far off, spreading to under my feet. Today it didn't spread. It stood at the door. As if it had knocked first and I hadn't heard the knock; I looked up, and it was already standing there, waiting for me to see it.
It said a word, Zhou Shu said. One I'd never heard. Not new — old. Old enough to be crumbling.
What was it like.
Said out, that word — Zhou Shu gestured, both hands rising, rising halfway, stopping — like setting one more bowl on a stack of bowls. It's on. My hand still doesn't dare let go.
Her own hand stopped once on the table where she had signed. Setting the glass down it clipped the table's edge; water slopped a little, and she wiped it with her cuff.
That's what it said today, Zhou Shu said. It can't be translated. Not that it's hard. The word was said pointed at someone. It said a 'you' today as well. I counted — it said it once today, only once. The important things it says twice; on registration day it said bright eleven times. This once, it was waiting for me to hand it out unchanged.
You.
Before, when it said 'you,' it was saying it to me, Zhou Shu said. Today's 'you' — that wasn't me. I took the words in, and that 'you' wouldn't stand in my mouth. The moment I translated it, they would turn that 'you' into 'everyone.' Translated, it would belong to everyone.
She said all this without excitement, setting one word down and then the next, like setting things on a table. Done, she picked the headphones up, and set them down again.
It finished and stayed there, Zhou Shu said. The staying was longer than the saying. Like waiting for someone to take it.
Lin Wanzhao didn't take it. She sat on the edge of the bed a while, squared the two parts of the suspension notice, hers into the drawer, Zhou Shu's left on the desk. In the drawer the three authorization forms still lay, waiver columns empty, a receipt pressed on top.
Mom, Zhou Shu said.
Mm.
That word — I've kept it, Zhou Shu said. Not in the mouth; in the hands. If ever you want to hear it — I can't say it out. I can show you.
Lin Wanzhao looked at those two hands stopped at half-rise. Thirty years before, someone had said much the same to her — remember it, that's all, don't write; written down, it changes. The one who had said it kept a county gatehouse now, night shift. She reached over and turned the lamp down one notch.
Sleep, she said. No school tomorrow. Teacher Zheng moved your seat — moved or not, don't go for now.
Zhou Shu lay down and put the headphones on, no cord plugged in. Her old posture for falling asleep — easier with them on. After the light went out, what was left in the room was one small gleam off the headphones.
She came out and sat at the table. Outside, a car passed on the road now and then, its lights sweeping the curtain, one stroke. She drew the soft notebook over, turned to a blank page, set the pen on it, and after a long while wrote one number: a one. Every answer over there had given in thirty years — she had entered them all in the account; today's one sentence had no square for it in the book. She looked at that one, didn't strike it out, and closed the book.
He Che's text came at half past eleven, one line: I proofed the library text three times. The substitution passage — the format's all correct. She read it and didn't answer. Ten minutes on, another came: If you're free tomorrow — bring that tape of yours. Let's talk.
She laid the phone face-down on the table. The calendar sat pressed under the telephone; the little circle in the square for the first of the twelfth month she drew out, traced over once more in pencil, and slid back. The drawer wasn't shut tight; a crack stood open, and in the crack you could see the white edge of the authorization forms, and under the white edge the receipt, and on the receipt the two squares for the date, filled in. A tape that has passed hands — there's no handing it back. The sentence at the noodle shop had been said very plainly, and now, thinking of it, she couldn't have said which end of it she feared coming true.
The last car to pass outside went a long way before its sound gave out. She thought of those four minutes in the daytime: the child on the stage not moving, a thousand-odd people below keeping her company in not moving, sixteen machines, a hundred-odd countries, all waiting for one original sentence — and the original had come, pointed at someone, passing by every ear in front of her, stopping in one child's hands.
Forty-two days left.