The thirteenth of the first month, the following year; I was on the night shift. The day was Zhou Shu's thirteenth birthday, and the day the window had been closed one full year. The two days are one and the same. The calendar doesn't say so. I keep it.
Two-forty in the morning; I was alone at the station. The machines were in the next room, the door ajar, the sound of the fans coming in gusts. One thing had been added at the station that year: two notebooks on the duty desk. The left one was old — entry column, remarks column, the format copied from the meteorological yearbook, thirty years unchanged. The right one was new, a kraft-paper cover printed with Duty Register of Testimony Notes, He Che's format shrunk down — instruments left, testimony right. The right-hand column stood empty most of the year round. The written rule said: when someone comes to report, record it; when no one comes, leaving it blank is no dereliction. The station chief had called a meeting for that one frame, and at the meeting said, blank is also a kind of data. The sentence was later pasted on the duty-room wall, pinned up with the operating procedures.
I filled in the day's record: pressure, temperature, tape-run time, frame by frame, copied the same way as that ledger of thirty years before — the format the old format, and me still one of that batch of people, what was left of them. At the remarks column I stopped a beat. In the remarks column I left a stretch empty. One sentence written, the pen lifted, two frames skipped, the next sentence written. When it was done I could see it: that habit of mine in speaking — one sentence, one stop, the stopping place left for someone to take. On paper there was no one to take it. I left it anyway. The stretch stayed empty, nothing struck through.
Xiao Cai had tested into the Bureau the year before; leaving, she put a note in my drawer, one line: Sister, I've archived all the charts, the numbers running unbroken; nobody can delete them. After she left, the new young ones at the station called me Teacher Lin; they didn't know how to call me anything else. Once I pointed out the thirty-second chart to one of them. He looked a long time and asked, what kind of fault is this. I said, it isn't a fault. He said, then what do I log. I said, log thirty seconds. He logged it, and when it was logged drew a question mark after it. I didn't make him erase it. Thirty years before, a recorder had written the two characters to verify, just as small.
On the duty-room wall hung a chart, printed by Xiao Cai the year before: the thirty seconds pasted into one strip, its head squared, its tail squared. Beside it a smaller one, three seconds, so short it was nearly invisible, cut from that long strip. The two charts sat side by side; whoever came in took them for the front and back of the same one. They were the same one.
Three sharp, I made the routine listening. The layer in my ears was still there — sway once, sound once, sixteen to the minute, the same number as the twelfth month of the year before, the same tune as thirty years before. It carried on as usual. I listened five minutes, took the headphones off, and wrote in the notebook: as usual. Then I looked at the word. Thirty years of the ledger, better than fifteen hundred volumes, and not one volume had used those two characters — the ledger holds numbers only, and numbers have no need to say as usual. I sat a while at the duty desk and traced the word again, traced it solid. The testimony column I glanced at: blank. Blank is also a kind of data.
Coming on shift the evening before, I rode the new minibus. The old green bus with its wooden-slat seats had been retired the year before; on the day it went, a few of the old hands from the station went to see it off, touched the wooden slats of its door, and dispersed. The minibus is fast, twenty minutes, the seats plastic, cold in winter. I couldn't sleep on it, and watched out the window. The snow was falling thin; the fields lay ridge on ridge, running the same direction as those lines in the ledger. Once in my mind I dotted the desk calendar — no more dotting. There was no number left to dot. The time on the road stood empty, so I watched the snow. Watching snow is slower than counting days. That works too.
Seven in the morning I got home; the porridge was keeping warm in the pot. Zhou Shu was up, wearing that red vest, finished the winter before — the stitches close-set in the first stretch, loose in the back one; she had picked them over once herself, hadn't picked them even, and wore it as it was. Thirteen now, taller than my chin. She saw me come in and said, Mom, there's porridge in the pot for you. I'm off — classroom duty today. She shouldered her schoolbag and put on the headphones — nothing at all plugged into the other end of the cord, the cord's end wrapped once with tape. She wore them every day. Asked what she listened to, she said, nothing, just having them there. She had said it once: it's a comfort, having them there. After that nobody asked.
She didn't remember. That I had known a long time; the file says it plainly: window closed, no residue. I had tried once. Only once. A walk last summer, out to the bridgehead, and I said, Shushu, do you remember Bright, Let Go, Steady. She thought a moment and said, of course — bright is the light being on, let go is school letting out, steady is carrying water without spilling. She was right, all of it right, every one of them the Chinese meanings. Then she looked down and walked on, and her hand flicked once at the schoolbag strap, two fingers brought together in the air, then turned over and pressed at nothing. She didn't know she had made those three motions. I said nothing. We came off the bridge, each watching our own way.
She was doing well at school. The Chinese teacher said she used her sentence-final le well — it's dark out; finished knitting; arrived. The teacher didn't know that those characters had caved in on her once, and grown back after, grown back sturdier than other people's. In front of her and behind her sat that boy, the one substituted in at last year's ceremony; their homes lay two streets apart. At the parents' meeting I had seen his mother, the gold ring still on, just the one now. We nodded; neither of us brought up those four minutes on the stage. The boy's marks were middling; his characters were written extremely even, even as printing. Zhou Shu had spoken of him once: he memorizes fast and forgets as soon as he's done — same as I used to be. When she said same as I used to be, her tone was flat, the tone for other people's affairs.
Zhou Yu had transferred back to this city the year before, the order approved in the weekly, nobody asked on his behalf. He had overhauled the family radio, and re-corded Zhou Shu's headphones once — the cord wound by his own hand, one turn of tape, the end pressed in under it, the same technique as my father's, thirty years before, when he wound the ends of the recorder cord. He had never seen my father wind a cord; I never taught him. Some things come up through the hands, and where they came from can't be said. Every Wednesday night he checks Zhou Shu's headphones, measures them once with the meter, logs it in a small notebook whose format he drew himself. I asked him once, an unpowered pair of headphones — what is there to measure. He said, measuring, I'm at ease. That habit of his and my leaving blank frames are one habit.
Nine in the morning Wei Dongquan came; he had telephoned ahead. A year had hardly aged him; he was only slower, one hand on the rail going up the steps, then a rest. The cloth bag was still with him, the square thing still in its place. He sat, drank the water I poured, set the bag on his knees, and weighed it once — a motion he had made thirty years — then took the square thing out and pushed it across the table to me.
It was a page. Heavier than the other pages, laid lines against the lamp; the writing running script, a grown-up's hand: Upon study, approved: the entries listed above shall be removed from this session's word list. No name signed, only a seal, its characters worn nearly flat — half of the single character approve still to be made out. I knew the page. The one in the surviving volume was thick paper substituted in; this page was the true one, thirty years without seeing daylight.
I asked him, you kept it thirty years.
He said, handed out the day of registration. A pause. He said, I was told to keep it; told it would be wanted later. I asked, told by whom. He set his cup down and said, who approved it — don't ask. What's on the paper belongs to the paper.
He sat a while longer and spoke of the dam. He said He Laosan had sent half a bag of pine nuts by someone's hand at the start of spring, no writing with them, the bag mouth twisted shut with wire, the head twisted two turns. He said, no need to look him up; the pine nuts come every year. He had divided them out — the station's share, the Bureau's, Zhu Aizhen's, one handful to a house. His own handful sat on the windowsill; he said the taste of the pine nuts was the same taste as the rosin in the announcing room that year — and when he had said that he went blank a moment himself, and said, you see — this I do remember.
I put the page away in the tin box. The tin box lives at home, stacked in a pile with the two tapes, the sheet with the reason written on it, the testimony copy. He watched me set the things in order, nodded, and said, all complete. He said he now slept straight through to morning, the first time in thirty years. He said, the layer in the ears is still there; he doesn't count it anymore; listening is enough. When he left I carried the cloth bag out for him; he weighed it once, and this time the bag was light. In the corridor he said, from now on this bag carries my lunch box.
In the afternoon He Che sent texts, three. The first: the new column has its name — Testimony Notes; numbers one through thirty-nine are all being transcribed. The second: the two frames, thirty-seven and eighty-seven, he still keeps empty — if someone comes to fill them, they'll be filled; if no one comes, they stay empty. The third held five characters only: frames full, come check.
At dusk Gu Ling called. His retirement papers would be finished that month. He said, the last thing is done: that column in the register, the separate column, has been merged into the ordinary one; from now on the translators' children register in the same place as everyone else's children. He said, the white van isn't sent anymore; what has to go through seals doesn't go a single day early. Saying all this he was still one sentence, one stop; only this time the pause after each sentence sounded like a man catching his own breath, not like waiting for someone. At the end he said, retired, he means to fill in as a teacher at an elementary school, teaching Chinese. He said, grading compositions, I'll still use red ink. He rang off.
Lao Xie had died at the start of spring the year before. His people had taken his cloth sack to the Bureau; nobody dared throw it out; after passing through several hands it entered the archives. The register reads: one sack of paper goods, provenance uncertain. Xiao Jiang told me afterward that the earliest ticket in the sack was thirty-nine years old, better than two thousand slips in all, and every slip's column width thirty millimeters. I said, then keep them all. They were kept.
In the evening Zhou Shu came back from classroom duty, and Zhou Yu got home too, a cardboard box in his hand. The longevity noodles were eaten at six, two eggs. She ate one first and set the other on the rim of the bowl, eating it only when the noodles were done. She said, Mom, next birthday I want a new pair of headphones. I said, what's wrong with these. She said, nothing wrong, these are good. She said, I just want a new pair; the old cord I'll keep — wound and put away in the box. When the noodles were done she carried her bowl into the kitchen, washed it, and set it upside down.
After dinner Zhou Yu opened the cardboard box: inside was a magnetic head for the old tape recorder, brought up from the south, a good one, he said, bought the week before and kept for exactly this day. He took the recorder apart, fitted it, and tried three tapes — one of music, one blank, and the seven-year-old one from the tin box. He said, there; from now on, listen whenever you like — a machine has to work. Zhou Shu watched the whole of it, handing him the screwdriver, never once the wrong one.
At eight-thirty she went to sleep, the headphones on, one pull of the cord and the light was out. I looked through the gap in the door: she lay on her side, headphones on, the cord hanging by the pillow, not a movement. By the pillow lay her soft-cover notebook, worn from turning, bound with a rubber band. I went in to tuck her quilt; she didn't wake. The notebook I didn't touch. I know which lines are in it: one, number thirty-one, the last time, said by the people themselves; and after that, Bright, Let Go, Steady. Of all that she remembers nothing; the notebook remembers it for her. She slept deep.
Back at the desk I finished the day's log. In the entry column: tape run normal. In the remarks column: home at seven, porridge kept warm. Afternoon, no visitors — Wei Dongquan came in the morning, that isn't afternoon. There I stopped again, the pen lifted, two frames skipped, and wrote on. The two frames stayed empty. I know whom they're left for. No one can take them. But with them empty, the sentence stands steady.
I opened the desk calendar. The thirteenth of the first month — a dot stood in that square from last year; this year there was no number left to dot. Tomorrow the fourteenth, the day after the fifteenth. Square after square, page after page, all of them empty, all of them days.
On the last line of the log I wrote: today, over there, as usual. I was here, as usual.
Written, closed, light off. The layer in my ears swayed once, sounded once. I didn't even count. I slept.