The twenty-third of the twelfth month, Little New Year. I stood on a stool to tear a page off the desk calendar, one sound of paper. Grandma handed me a sheet to wipe my sticky hands on; the sheet had no writing on it. The page I had torn off she folded in four and tucked into the stove's mouth, and said, send it off. The flame licked it once and it was gone. The snow had stopped two days before; somebody's snowman at the door had melted down to half, its coal eyes dropped into the snow.
There was still class that day. Two things in my schoolbag, the pencil stub in the left pocket, the copper button in the right. Every stretch of the way I pressed at them through the cloth. Both there.
In the top right corner of the blackboard stood: the twenty-fifth of the twelfth month, the last day before the New Year. The student on duty erased the board; at those two lines he stopped a moment and did not erase them. Two knocks at the back door, Old Wei came in, a layer of snow unswept on his shoulders, his coat buttoned to the collar. He sat down in the corner of the back row. The stool wobbled. He did not steady it.
The grey jacket came in, someone behind her with a black bag, walking without a sound. The chalk stopped. She said, all of you, sit still. One word at a time. She said, the last lesson before the New Year runs to the twenty-fifth. She said, the lessons from over there will run until you no longer understand them; after that, adults will do the listening. Notebooks all handed in. A person grows, the notebooks aren't kept. There she stopped. Through that stop I waited. She said, that's all.
The stack of notebooks on the windowsill was taken away, pile by pile stacked into the black bag, its mouth stretched to the widest. Mine was in the middle, a patch of blue on one corner. I didn't see it go in; I saw the mouth of the bag close, the snap click once. Wang Chaosheng's notebook was rolled up in his pocket; when the roll call reached him he pulled it out, smoothed it flat, and handed it over. The grey jacket said, dismissed. There are people outside giving you candy. Don't take it.
When the notebooks were announced collected, Old Wei sat in the back row and did not move. The others all stood; he sat, hat off, set on his knees. Only when the black bag had gone out first, the grey jacket followed, and the door closed did he get up, carry the stool back to its place, the stool's legs making no sound at all. He went out the back door; passing my desk he stopped half a step, and said nothing. I saw a cut on the back of his neck, red, the skin unbroken.
When I got home I moved a stool and looked behind Mom's loom. The wicker basket was there. I felt the core of the red yarn; the thread's end still faced outward. Mom wove on without turning her head, and said, it's cold out, warm your hands first. I said, they collected the notebooks today. The shuttle went across, came back. She said, collected is collected. Dad came home late, bringing a breath of snow in with him. At dinner I said, from now on there's no going in to report numbers. Dad said, saves a trip. Mom pushed the dish a little toward me. Nobody said more.
—On the twenty-sixth of the twelfth month, Zhou Yu got home at six in the morning; the last train had been forty minutes late. Coming in, he looked first at Zhou Shu's door. It was closed. He stood outside it a while and did not knock. I had reheated breakfast three times. Zhou Shu came out at seven, saw the pair of shoes at the door, stopped, and said, Dad. Zhou Yu said, back now. Zhou Shu said, Mm. Those two sentences were all the two of them said.
In the morning he spread the list out. Seven lines; he signed line by line. Signing down to the last line — the Confirmation for the Thirtieth Day Before Window Closure, in duplicate, its columns two millimeters narrower than the Bureau's — he read it three times, felt for his own pen out of his bag, signed his name, then pressed a thumbprint across the seam of each copy. Done, he separated the two, folded one and gave it to me, and put the other into his own kraft envelope, pressed to the very bottom. He said, a few lines still left. I said, none. Just this one. He said, if any more come, bring them to me anytime. Zhou Shu stood beside watching him put his pen away, and said, Dad, you press thumbprints slower than Mom signs. Zhou Yu said, thumbprints are slow. They can't be denied. Zhou Shu laughed once and went into her room.
The desk calendar was turned to the twenty-sixth of the twelfth month. With the pencil I set a dot in that day's square. Seventeen.
—On the twenty-fourth of the twelfth month there had been a smell of smoke in the ground-floor corridor. The fire was on the first floor, small, a cotton jacket laid under it, the flames low. Old Wei squatted by it with the fire tongs, feeding paper in a sheet at a time. On the paper were characters, a blue letterhead: seventh-session translator. A sheet went in, curled once; the characters went first, the paper after. I asked, what are you burning. He said, paper that's no use. I said, there's writing on it. He set the tongs down and looked up at me. He said, those characters aren't what they say they are. He said, what the grown-ups tell you to keep, keep. What the grown-ups didn't tell you to keep, I burn. The cloth bag sat at his feet, its mouth drawn shut, one square corner bulging. I looked at that square. With his foot he pushed the bag half a foot behind him and said, watch the road. When it had burned he spread the ash out with the tongs and said, spread it thin, it cools faster. He carried the bag upstairs. The bag made no sound.
Back in my room I flipped through the knitting notebook to the page from the first time: it said, Bright. The characters were still there, traced over once, soaked in oil, the paper translucent. I closed the notebook and pressed it under my pillow. That sentence I said to myself twice, inside. Like setting one more bowl on a stack of bowls. It's on. My hand still doesn't dare let go. The second time was like the first, not one character different.
After saying it I went out once, around to the back of the broadcasting station. The back window was high; on my toes my fingertips just caught the sill's edge. That length of wire on the door's lock hasp was still there, its head twisted two turns. I watched a while across the snow and did not go over. Coming back it was near dark; the streetlight stretched my shadow out ahead of me, and I walked that street stepping on my shadow.
—On the twenty-seventh of the twelfth month He Che came in the morning, the wheels of his case sounding down the corridor to the door. He had not brought the three volumes of the manuscript; he had brought only the black notebook. The notebook lay open, a fresh frame at the end, ruled lengthwise into two columns, the left for instruments, the right for human testimony. The testimony column stood empty; the two characters of its heading had been traced twice, the strokes deep. He set the notebook down in the middle of the table and said to Zhou Shu, the frame is opened. He said, a testimony column — the first in thirty years. From now on, what people say counts too.
Zhou Shu was tidying her drawer. The suspension notice came out, the three authorizations, one receipt, each clipped to its own. In the drawer's innermost reach one frame stood emptied. She said, this frame is the one I kept for myself. She pulled He Che's notebook over, looked at it once, and said, then write today into it.
He Che said, what's today.
Zhou Shu said, I want to listen once more. The last time. She straightened the collar of her sweater, the way you do going somewhere formal. She said, this time I won't translate. And I won't record, and I won't ask. Let it say it itself. She finished and looked at He Che. He Che set his pen down and said, then I'll be the one counting. Zhou Shu brought her soft-cover notebook out of her room, weighed it once in her hand, and put it back. She said to me, Mom, this one I'll record myself. She patted the back of her own hand.
She sat down beside the radiator, both hands on her knees. I stood in the kitchen doorway, wiped my hands on the apron twice, wiping at nothing. In the room there was only the sound of water in the radiator. He Che took his watch off and set it on the table; you could hear the hand go round.
When she closed her eyes I lifted the pot lid over, gently, so the water would sound less. Nobody told me to move it. I moved it myself.
First Zhou Shu's finger lifted. Lifted small, the way you reach to take something, and set back on her knee. Then there was a word in my mouth.
I didn't know I was saying it. The word took up a whole breath; halfway through, my mouth was full, and still it went on; I changed breath in the middle, finished the change, and it was still it. While I said it, both my hands wanted to be holding something up; there was nothing at hand to hold, and they just hovered. When it was done, the hands went back to my knees on their own. And on my knees there truly was a pair of hands. The water in the pot had come to a boil; nobody went to turn it off. When it was quiet again I saw He Che's watch still going on the table, and Zhou Shu still with her eyes closed, her lashes not moving.
Zhou Shu looked at me. She said, Mom, you said it.
I said, what did I say.
She said, you said it. I said it too. The two of us said the same one.
He Che asked her, you didn't translate?
Zhou Shu shook her head. She said, it didn't let me translate. She said, the word on the stage on the first of the twelfth month was pointed at me; I didn't take it. Today's is pointed at you. At the word you she raised a hand and circled it round the room, drawing me, He Che, and certain other people inside it.
He Che's hand lay on the watch. He lifted his head, his voice flat: from seventeen-oh-six, thirty seconds. He said, I counted it twice. Difference, zero. He pulled the black notebook over and wrote in the instruments column: all bands, same instant up, same instant down, thirty seconds. When that was written he stopped a moment, and in the testimony column wrote: three persons, simultaneous, one word each, word identical. He capped the pen, and capped it twice.
Zhou Shu said, there's one more. He Che looked up. Zhou Shu pointed at the telephone and said, wait for tonight; then you'll know. He Che looked at that telephone a while, opened the notebook again, and beneath the testimony column left one line blank — no writing, one horizontal line drawn. He said, this line is kept.
At dusk Xiao Cai called, her voice held down. She said, at the station this afternoon all the bands rose together and fell together, thirty seconds, baseline difference zero. She said, the section chief asked whether to log it as a record; I said I'd hold the numbers first and wait for your call. I said, hold them. She said, I printed one chart, the thirty seconds pasted into a single strip, head and tail in one glance; I'll bring it to you tomorrow. She said, Sister, thirty years, the bands have never done that. I said, I know. She waited a stretch at her end, got nothing after, and rang off.
At night Zou called. No greeting; the number came first: seventeen-oh-six, said it. He said, my wife says I was saying it in the room, half a minute of it; when I finished I sat on the bed; she asked me what I'd said; I said I didn't know. He said, another line went into my notebook. His three notebooks, nineteen years, had held nothing but the hours of waking; this was the first entry of something from inside sleep. He said, nineteen years of noting the hours, and not one entry ever carried a word. Today's carries one. He finished and rang off, faster than his usual.
Zhu Aizhen's call came after Zou's. She said, I said it too. A pause. She said, ours — the Sixth Session. She said it once more: the Sixth Session — did all of us say it. I said, Zou said it, I said it. She said, while I said it my hands were stringing beans; halfway through, the beans scattered all over the floor, and my two hands were still hovering, like they were waiting to receive something. She was quiet at her end a while, then said, then everyone was in.
When those three calls were hung up, Wei Dongquan's came. One sentence only: I heard it. One sentence, a pause. The pause nobody took. He said, that's it, and rang off. Only afterward did I remember he never said whether he had said it himself. That ear of his had been half-deaf thirty years; he had taken the rise and fall inside it for his shift. Which layer he heard this time, I didn't ask. Some numbers, once they're matched, you set them down.
I set the times of the three calls in the soft-cover notebook, one line each: Zou, seven twenty-one; Zhu Aizhen, seven thirty-five; Wei Dongquan, seven forty-eight. I read it through once. Thirty years ago they recorded the reports; thirty years later I recorded this. The notebook closed as quick as that child's motion of thirty years before.
Zhou Shu added a line on that slip of paper and showed me when she had written: number thirty-one, the last time, said by the people themselves. She dated it, the twenty-seventh of the twelfth month. She slipped the paper into the innermost frame of the drawer, not touching the suspension notice, the authorizations, the receipt — a finger's width of space left between. She said, this one doesn't count as theirs. She pointed at the things outside the drawer.
At night Gu Ling called; across the table I knew his rhythm already, one sentence, one stop. He said, the four-minute frame — the line is drawn; whoever comes to fill it may. He said, today's thirty seconds goes into the testimony column. A pause. He said, write every name; leave no one out. Before he hung up he said, the one thirty years ago I watched on television; this one I was in my office, just me alone, and I said it too. After that sentence he waited a stretch. That stretch I took. I said, I know. Everyone said it. At his end he gave an Mm, and that Mm was shorter than all his pauses. He rang off. Zhou Shu put her head out of her room and said, Mom, that was Director Gu? I said, it was. She said, then the frame's line has been filled. She drew the door to and left a finger's width of gap.
Before He Che left he had asked how the names should be written. I gave them: Zhu Aizhen, Sixth Session. Zou, Fifth Session. At the third I stopped a beat and said, Lin Wanzhao, Seventh Session. He wrote stroke by stroke, the session following the name, frame by frame, filled full. Done, he pointed to that line for me and said, this row, tomorrow morning.
—On the twenty-fifth, the blackboard went un-erased. Children from the other classes came, leaned on the sill, copied those two lines, and left; the characters stayed where they were. At midday I leaned at the window. The sun came from the south and struck the board's right side first, then moved left, bit by bit — past the twenty-fifth of the twelfth month, past before-the-New-Year, and into the four characters of the last day; the characters whitened for a stretch, the sun passed, and they went black again. I watched the whole of it through, then wrote the two lines once in my mind, stroke by stroke; one stroke wrong, and I started over. Downstairs there was a white van; a cardboard box was carried up, the footsteps passing our floor and going higher, and a half hour later they came down, empty-handed. Two prints in the snow.
That afternoon thirty years ago, I didn't know the word would wait. Wait thirty years; wait for three people who couldn't put a whole sentence together, and in one same minute say it to the full. That afternoon I knew one thing only: the notebooks were taken, and the lesson was with me. I said it twice more in my mind; the second time was like the first, not one character different.
At night I opened the tin box. The two tapes lay side by side, the twelfth-year one behind, the seventh-year one in front. With one finger I pushed the two tapes in a little, squared them, and played neither. The page of the testimony copy He Che had left, I pressed on the lid, its paper edge squared to the box's edge. The desk calendar stood straight, turned to the twenty-seventh of the twelfth month, and with the pencil I set a dot in that square. Done, the lid came down, one soft sound.
Sixteen days left.