From the twenty-seventh of the twelfth month to the twelfth of the first month, the string of numbers on the desk calendar walked down square by square. Every day I set a dot. Two days in the middle I was on duty at the station and Zhou Shu dotted them for me, reporting over the phone when she had: fourteen. Thirteen. Her voice giving numbers was the same tune as when she was small giving Bright.
Through that half month I watched her words go shorter. The Chinese hadn't caved; what caved was the language from over there. In the twelfth month she could still hand over whole sentences; past the fifth of the first month, a stretch less each day. On the tenth she said to me, Mom, the words from over there — three left in my hands. I asked which three. She said, Bright, Let Go, Steady. She held out three fingers, drew two back, left one, and said, yesterday it was four. She said it without hurry, the tone of reporting weather. I said, does it hurt. She said, it doesn't hurt. She said, like a candy in your pocket — it's melted away, the wrapper's still there. She patted her pocket. The wrapper still there — she patted the same place.
That afternoon she taught me the last three words. All of it taught on the hands. Let Go: both hands rise, palms up, brought toward each other, halfway, stop. Steady: the palms turn over, down, press at nothing, touching nothing. Bright: the forefinger flicks once in the air, and when the flick is done points at the light and looks a while. She taught one, I learned one. Learning Bright I flicked crooked and pointed at the wall. She said, it's all right, it doesn't pick directions. She said, these three words I've given to you. Later, when you can't get a word out, your hands can still say it.
On the fourth of the first month He Che came by and filled in the line in the black notebook. What he filled in was Gu Ling's name; the column for the session after it stood empty — he belonged to no session, so in that frame He Che wrote: on the rolls since the First Session. Gu Ling's name going into the testimony column made him, in thirty years, the first who had never been on the rolls. He Che had also brought a page proof of a new document, an errata to that piece on post-translation eidetism; at its end one line had been added: after the fourth case, three further cases, none of them translators, all falling on the twenty-seventh of the twelfth month. He showed me the line and said, the sentence is void. It went void faster than I thought. He said, our column, from today, is no longer called post-translation eidetism. I asked, called what. He said, it has no name yet. He said, no hurry. First get the numbers right.
On the sixth Zhu Aizhen called — New Year's greetings. First she went through the news of her session: who was in hospital, who had moved to a son's place. When the news was done she said, that day, when I finished saying it, I picked the beans up off the floor and went on stringing them; only when they were strung did it come to me — my hands hadn't been this steady in thirty years. She said that this steady twice. Zou didn't call; his wife rang for him, and said he had copied all these days' hours into a new notebook, and when the copying was done took the eraser to the old ones — the old ones aren't accurate, the new ones are.
On the tenth of the first month the newspaper's middle column carried an item: Wang Chaosheng's case had been sentenced — trafficking in archival materials, three years, suspended for four; the confiscated recordings and old dictionaries were transferred to the archives. I cut the piece out and slipped it into the kraft envelope. While I cut, Zhou Shu watched beside me. She said, Mom, the sentence is light. I said, he never sold a real one. She said, he did. She said, the one he sold me was real. She meant the seven-year-old tape, the one with her mother's sentence in the middle. I said, that tape is in our tin box, not in this case. She said, Mm. That's why I say it was real. She didn't go on, and I didn't ask.
On the eighth I played a tape once. The seven-year-old one; at the sentence in the middle I pressed stop and let it wait. Zhou Shu sat beside me and said the sentence along with it. In the tape, me at seven; outside the tape, her at eleven. The two sentences lay edge to edge, thirty years between them. When she finished she said, Mom, even then your tune was steady. I said, your grandmother said it — I talked early. She rewound the tape and listened once more; this time she didn't follow.
The twelfth of the first month, the day before the window closed. Up in the morning, Zhou Shu looked over the windowsill first. The red yarn was still on the bamboo needles, the vest knitted up half an inch; she pressed the stitches once with a finger — didn't pull them out, didn't knit on. She took up the headphones from the bedhead, wound the cord twice around, and hung them back on their nail. She said, Mom, tomorrow I'll use them. I asked, use the headphones for what. She said, for nothing. It's a comfort, having them there.
In the morning Wei Dongquan called. He said, that sentence of mine — there's a second half. A pause. He said, your session did it once. The eighth of the twelfth month: every child in the city said it together, one minute. Nobody organized it. Halfway through, some of the grown-ups said it along — I was one. He said, the next day nobody remembered. You were there too. You said it the most together of anyone. I had no words at my end. I asked him, how do you know mine was the most together. He said, I counted. A pause. He said, afterward I asked three children; all said they hadn't said it. But the candy wrappers in their pockets were all crumpled tight. He said, the trial was written on paper; the doing of it wasn't on paper. A pause. He said, I've kept the paper. That square thing in the cloth bag — that's it. Tomorrow I'll bring it to you. He said, that's it, and rang off.
I set the call down as one line in the soft-cover notebook. Setting it down, I found: that eighth of the twelfth month thirty years ago — where I was, whether I said it — not a trace in me. He Che had said it: the part that talks with you is the only part you remember. The part you say isn't the memory's business.
In the afternoon Zhou Yu bought tomorrow's ticket, then returned it. He said, tomorrow I'm not going. The day after. He gave no reason for the change. He only pressed the refund slip under the desk calendar, pressed it flat. With the ticket returned he went to the hardware store and came back with two bulbs, a roll of fuse wire, a new lock. He tried every light in the house, one by one, and changed the one in the kitchen that wouldn't light. Zhou Shu followed behind him handing him things; at the third handing, Zhou Yu said, what do you want to eat tomorrow. Zhou Shu said, porridge. Zhou Yu said, just porridge. Zhou Shu said, just porridge. The two voices carried over from the kitchen, calm and flat, no different from any ordinary Sunday. I listened from the living room, knitting that vest in my hands. The vest was up half an inch; I counted the stitches, missed none.
At six Zhou Shu opened her drawer. She took out the slip in the innermost frame, read it once, put it back, and after the date added three words: Bright, Let Go, Steady. She shut the drawer and said to me across the table, Mom, tomorrow, if you want to talk to me, talk Chinese. I understand Chinese. She said, it's the over-there one — from tomorrow on, it isn't mine to mind. I said, all right. She said, you don't mind it either. I said, all right. Two all-rights, and the room went quiet.
Eight in the evening, Zhou Shu knocked at my door. She came in, didn't turn on the big light, and sat down on the edge of the bed. Three cards in her hand. I knew them — from He Che's box. Number four, number fifty-four, and one with no number, on its face only the single character for one. She laid the three cards on the quilt in front of my knees, in a row, writing up. First she poured me a glass of water and set it on the nightstand, pushed it in a little, far from the edge. It was the first time she had ever poured me water.
She said, Mom, I'm giving you that lesson. She said, you listened to thirty years of the ledger; He Che made six years of cards; neither is complete. Where the incompleteness lies — I know now. She said, it talked thirty years, and what it said is one sentence. The sentence was split into one hundred words, a little said each day, a stretch said each session. She pointed at the three cards on the quilt and said, one hundred; these three in your hands are the ones I picked. The rest are on the tapes, in your thirty years of the ledger — one number to one frame, and they all match. I've said it's like it reporting a very slow thing — it isn't the thing that's slow, it's the sentence that's long. Today I'll give you it whole.
She said, listen well. I'll say it once. She held up one finger: don't say it along — say it along, and the sentence won't tell yours from mine. A second finger: don't write it down tonight; write tomorrow. What's written down, after a night between, is still yours. A third: don't translate it. Translate it into a sentence anyone can use, and it comes apart. She drew the three fingers back and said, the rules they set when I was small — turned inside out.
She said it. Long, one breath unbroken. Where the breath changed, changed, and it was still it. Not one word of it could I keep; my notebook wasn't at hand, nor my pen. I sat and listened, and my two hands had risen without my knowing, halfway up, hovering. When she finished, the hands came down. She said, pressed together in Chinese, this is what it means —
She said it one character at a time: Watch me, until I end; then watch on in my place.
She said, which meaning of end — over there they don't split it. Over there it's one word: finished, and not finished, both. She said, it picks children to say it to, because when a child answers this sentence, the child doesn't know until what day the watching goes. She stopped a beat, and said, you have a word; translating theirs, it comes out forever. When a child answers, the child doesn't know how big forever is. By the time they know, the window has closed. She said, but an answer, once given, can't be taken back. It counted, inside the not-knowing. She said, thirty years, every session answered. I answered. You answered — that day you said it the most together of anyone; Grandpa Wei said so. She said, after this there will still be children, and still children to answer. It has known that a long time. It isn't in a hurry; the words over there have no hurry in them.
When that sentence was done, the room held only the sound of the refrigerator. I picked up the glass from the nightstand and drank a mouthful. The water was warm; she had mixed it warm when she poured it. I asked, the year I was seven, the eighth of the twelfth month — which sentence did the whole city say.
She said, the same one I gave you today. She said, it has one sentence. Thirty years, over and over, this one. She said, taken apart it seems two hundred sentences; pressed together, it is one. She said, what you all said that day and what I say tonight — not one character different.
I said, not one character different — then how did none of you hear it was one sentence.
She said, they heard it. She said, every child could hear it; they only couldn't say it. She said, once said, it comes apart. So today I don't say it to the files. I say it to you.
I said, this sentence you translated — does it go into the files.
She said, it doesn't. She said, this sentence is mine to you; it doesn't go through their frames. She gathered the three cards up — four and fifty-four back into her pocket; the one with the single character on it she pressed under my desk calendar, beside Zhou Yu's refund slip. She said, this is for you. This character is nowhere in thirty years of the books, nor on He Che's cards. She said, when they come to fill the gap, let them start from this one character.
I said, is there anything else.
She said, one more sentence. That one isn't its. It's mine.
She sat up a little straighter. She said, in this sentence of mine there's one word I added. It never taught me that use of it. I'm trying it out.
She said it. Far shorter than the one before, with a stop in the middle, as if waiting for me to take it. I didn't take it — this time on purpose: that stretch of pause was left for me, and I left it empty, and heard her through to the second half. Halfway through, I heard three characters. Three Chinese characters, set into it, like a hard thing sewn into a bolt of soft cloth. The three characters were my name.
Lin Wanzhao. What she said was: from now on I watch; I watch for Lin Wanzhao.
She was done. The room went quiet. A quiet unlike the usual kind — that layer in my ears, the one that swayed once and sounded once, the one that had lain at the very bottom for thirty years, was gone. I could hear the refrigerator's compressor; someone climbing in the stairwell, one floor, two floors. Only the under-layer I couldn't hear. I counted: one. Two. Three.
The fourth beat, it came back. Sway once, sound once, the same tune as ever.
Zhou Shu looked at me. She said, Mom, you counted just now. I said, I did. She said, I counted too. She said, three beats. When she had said that, she reached her hand over and patted the back of my hand twice, the same pat she had given her own hand. She said, this sentence counts. How long it counts for, I don't know. Let it count for now.
She said, Mom, I'm going back to my room. She said, tomorrow, the moment I wake, the words from over there reach their end. She said, don't get up early. She said, if you're up early, set the porridge on for me; everything else waits till I wake myself. I said, all right. At the door she turned her head and said, I've hung the headphones at my bedhead. She said, from tomorrow on, I'm one of the people who wear headphones. She finished the sentence and went to sleep, the door drawn to with a finger's width of gap.
After she left I sat at the desk a while. I wanted a second check; I coughed on purpose. The layer didn't follow me out. It was still it — sway once, sound once, four-six-eight time, none of my business. I took Zhou Shu's soft-cover notebook to hand to write in; the pen wasn't there. So I pressed the page down with the back of my hand, and pressed a while. At nine forty a text came in from Xiao Cai at the station, two lines: 21:21:00 to 21:21:03, all bands, zero. She said, I've saved the chart, not reported it. The section chief asked what today had; I said nothing.
After she left I sat a while more and sent Zhou Yu a text, three characters: she's asleep. From the living room Zhou Yu sent one back: I've set the porridge to soak. At a quarter to twelve the living-room light went out; the line under his door went dark. I stood at the desk calendar and drafted a text to He Che, to send in the morning: the three cards are with her; the one-character card is with me; you opened the frames — come tomorrow and check. Drafted, unsent, kept.
I turned the desk calendar to tomorrow's square. The square was empty; I set no dot. The pencil lay by the calendar, its point turned in.
One day left.