Chapter 389: Notes in the Margin of December

On May 1st, the noodle shop in Old Town District didn't fire up its stove.

The alley below was quiet enough to hear other things: the neighbor's TV was on, volume cranked up, sentence after sentence drifting out; farther east, a produce vendor's tricycle rattled over the flagstones, its metal panels clattering. She pushed the window open halfway. Wind came in and lifted a corner of the paper on the desk.

At nine, she wiped down the table, then pulled Volume Seven from the bottom of the stack of notebooks.

Volume One still sat on top, wrapped in those two sheets of old newspaper, the edges yellowed. Volume Eight lay beside the stack, exactly as she'd straightened it the night before last. She set Volume Seven in the center of the table and opened to the title page.

Her father's handwriting: Baixi Village, well water.

She turned a page in her own notebook and wrote at the top, in his style: May 1st, nine o'clock. Setting the pen down, she went back and counted the pages of Volume Seven, one by one, all the way to the end. One hundred and twelve pages. On the second line she wrote: Volume Seven, 112 pages. The number in the table of contents said the same. It matched.

Then she began reading, page by page.

The entry for December 3rd was short—only four lines. The first three recorded other people's business: a slip that never got delivered, a phone call that never connected, a three-hundred-yuan balance two years overdue. She read through the three lines, then looked down. Squeezed into the bottom margin was one more line, thinner than the rest, pressed tight against the edge of the paper:

Zhixia fronted 1,200. Remember it.

Her hand stopped on the page.

She knew that money. She remembered that winter too. She'd scraped it together herself over two months: evening shifts at the print shop by the school gate after class, copying page after page, the side of her finger always stained with black that wouldn't wash off. The day she handed it over, her father was crouched at the door trimming vegetables. She told him the amount. He grunted and took the extra piece of meat from her bowl and put it back in his own. In all the years since, he never mentioned it once.

She stood up, tossed the rag into the basin, and poured herself half a glass of water from the stove. She drank half, left the rest on the windowsill. The pot of scallions beside it had grown thin, leaves all leaning one way.

Back at the desk, she pulled out Volume Six and turned to the final page. The bottom margin there had a line too—shorter, just a date and a number: The 30th, 1,200.

The two notebooks lay open side by side. Between the two lines of writing, the only distance was the act of switching notebooks. She understood something then, and understood it slowly: the notebook had changed, but the account hadn't. When he started a new volume, the first thing he did wasn't write "Baixi Village"—it was carrying that figure over from the bottom of the last one, then continuing the record.

In her own notebook she copied: December 3rd, page margin—Zhixia fronted 1,200. Remember it. When she finished, she pressed a period after "remember it"—pressed hard enough that it bled through the paper.

She slid the notebook half an inch away, then realized she was the only one in the apartment. Zhi'an had grabbed his basketball and left before seven. If she wanted to tell him this, she'd have to wait until he got back—and pick a moment when he wasn't just through the door or still holding a bowl.

She closed Volume Six and slid it back into the stack, position unchanged, then turned back to Volume Seven.

December 11th, home visits. Seven households visited in the village. The notes were scattered, trivial: whose well sat at the base of the east wall, whose well had long been sealed off in favor of tap water, whose child worked away and when they'd be back. One man refused to write his name on the form—said if he didn't sign he could still work, and if he did the shift lead would be on him tomorrow. Her father wrote in the margin: Come back tomorrow.

December 19th, that form half filled in. The "signature" box had three empty lines beneath it.

December 27th, he'd come back from the village, mud caked on his shoes. First thing through the door, he wrote in the notebook, "Still nobody signed today," left a blank line, then added: go again after the new year.

The January pages were thin: the court's receipt slip pasted to the margin, a small line at the top of the page—case accepted. The other half-page was a copied section of the complaint; the heading had been revised twice.

February's pages suddenly tightened: First batch, I delivered, window received, signed my name. Below was a column of serial numbers, copied one digit at a time, neater than his normal hand, followed by the time each sample was received, the surname of the person at the window, the number of copies. In February, three pages held only dates; the rest was blank. No records those days.

She'd jotted down ten-some lines when she looked up. The half-glass of water on the windowsill had gone lukewarm. Her wrist pressed against the edge of the paper and left a crease.

Her father's way of keeping notes was different from hers. She wrote line by line, recording outcomes. He recorded even the attempts that failed: which doorway a person stood in, whose dog barked, which sentence he stopped halfway through. She wrote both side by side in her notebook, leaving a blank space between.

The page for March 20th read: Second batch, twelve samples. Two cardboard boxes, small plastic buckets inside. Samples stored overnight at the Village Committee.

March 21st, morning. Collected samples, delivered to Qingyuan. A new line below: Sample deliverer, intern Lu Jibai. And below that: Packing staple on the box tore the skin on his knuckle. Didn't make a sound. Gave him a Band-Aid.

She read that page slower than any other. Her finger pressed against the margin for a long while, smoothing the corner, then she turned past it without copying a word.

[Thud. Three items: the Original True Sample, the Sample Delivery Record, and a person willing to tell the truth.]

[Thud. This notebook in your hand doesn't count.]

She pulled the notebook closer, capped the pen. The cap took two tries to snap on.

A little past eleven, Zhi'an came home from outside, hair wet, the back of his T-shirt stuck to his skin. First thing through the door, he chugged half a glass of cold water and said he'd played two games, got blocked three times. He cracked two eggs by the stove himself and asked if she wanted some. She said yes.

He cooked a pot of noodles into two bowls, sliding the extra half egg into hers. It was only when he sat down with the bowl that he noticed Volume Seven open on the table, her notebook beside it.

"What are you copying that for?"

"Sorting out the dates."

"His dates?"

"Dad's."

Zhi'an didn't ask again. He lowered his head and worked at the noodles. Halfway through he said, "I'm going to the river with some friends this afternoon." She made a sound of acknowledgment.

She washed the bowls. Afterward, she pulled the table of contents page out from behind the title page of Volume One. One page, four columns: volume, start and end, page count, what's inside. In Volume Seven's row, the first two boxes were in her father's hand. The page-count box she'd already filled in: 112. The last box was empty. She wrote in pencil: Baixi Village, well water; second batch, sample delivery.

Finished, she slipped the contents page back into Volume One and pushed Volume Seven to the bottom of the stack, edge facing out so she could pull it out by feel next time. She sat down and flipped through her own notebook from the beginning, checking dates line by line. At the twenty-ninth line, she found two dates copied twice. She crossed one out.

Volume Eight still sat to the side. She glanced at it but didn't open it.

At three o'clock the next afternoon, May 2nd, there were three knocks at the door, then a pause, then two more. She opened it. Tang Guo stood outside holding a plastic mesh bag full of cherries, red so deep they were nearly black.

"Surprised?" Tang Guo laughed at her own delivery. "Carried these all the way. The bag's cut lines into my hand."

"The breakfast stall at the mouth of the alley is still open."

"What about the noodle shop? I passed through Old Town just now. Door was shut."

"Closed until after the holiday."

"So what are you eating for five days?"

"There's a stove."

Tang Guo stepped out of her shoes and came in, dumping the cherries into a basin and running water over them, rubbing them one by one. As she worked, she told Shen Zhixia about the old man at the market entrance who insisted on throwing in an extra two handfuls, then weighed them back and scooped some out. She carried the basin to the table, popped one into her mouth, spat the pit into a small dish. Then her eyes landed on the half-glass of water on the windowsill. She picked it up, poured it out, washed the glass, and filled a fresh one, setting it by Shen Zhixia's hand.

"It's cold," Tang Guo said.

"I can still drink it."

"I meant the water in this apartment. You're home alone. Who's heating it for you?"

She didn't answer. Tang Guo didn't push. She dragged a stool over and sat across the table.

"The streets on May Day were so packed you couldn't move," Tang Guo said. "I squeezed through half an hour of crowd just to come back with this one bag."

"What about your channel?"

"Nothing new. Couple days ago someone dug up my old video and started cursing in the comments. They got tired and left after two days." She picked out a cracked cherry and tossed it into her mouth. "Views dropped, but the follower count that went up didn't come down. Someone asked if I'd do an ad for a cast-iron pan. I tried it out for two days—that pan is seriously heavy. I need both hands just to stir-fry vegetables."

"Taking it?"

"Still thinking. Afraid I'll lose my grip and drop it on my foot."

The pits piled up in the dish, red-red.

"You two didn't go anywhere?" Tang Guo asked, casual, still rubbing cherries. "Five whole days."

She drained the water from the basin and rinsed her hands.

"I broke up with him."

Tang Guo's hands paused. She set the cherry in her hand back on the rim of the basin, pulled out a paper towel, and wiped her hands slowly.

"I heard you," she said.

"Mm."

"Okay." Tang Guo wadded the paper and tossed it into the trash bag. "I won't ask. The day you want to talk, I'm here."

"At the firm it's like this too," she said. "Director He set it up. I take the desk by the door, he takes the one by the stove. One table between two bowls of noodles."

"Director He knows?"

"She knows. She said the noodles still taste the same."

"Mm." Tang Guo slid the dish toward the middle of the table. "I won't rush you."

She didn't mention Xiaoyu's case; Shen Zhixia brought it up herself: "April 30th, Chengxi District Court. It's filed. His dad paid the filing fee. I stood at the door with his grandmother." Tang Guo nodded and said the old woman probably couldn't sleep these days. Shen Zhixia said she'd have to sleep anyway; the hearing was still far off.

Sunlight slanted in through the west wall, a yellow stripe crawling from the table's edge up the wall, slowly shrinking back. Tang Guo said her room faced west too; the wall got hot to the touch in the afternoon, so she'd moved her bed half a foot. She said the mint on her balcony was dead—overwatered, roots rotted. She said her mom called to ask if she was going home for May Day, and she'd said she'd decide later.

The sky dimmed. Shen Zhixia got up to turn on the light. In the moment the lamp came on, Tang Guo's eyes flicked to the table, caught the line of writing exposed on the open notebook, lingered half a second longer than usual, then lowered her head and kept eating cherries.

Past seven, Tang Guo stood to leave, saying she still had to catch the bus—any later and there wouldn't be a transfer left. Shen Zhixia picked a few cherries from the basin, bagged them, and pressed them into Tang Guo's hand.

At the door, Tang Guo braced against the wall to pull on her shoes. She straightened and looked back.

"Zhixia."

"Mm."

"That line in your notebook—what does it say?"

"Dates."

Tang Guo studied her for a moment, nodded, and headed downstairs. Her soles sounded on the stairs, one floor at a time. At the third floor, the steps paused, then continued.

The door closed. Shen Zhixia dumped the pits from the dish into the trash, scrubbed the basin, set it upside down on the rack, and brought the unfinished glass of water to the table. Back in her seat, she shifted the notebook into the lamplight and turned back to the morning's page. The date at the top was in her own writing, straighter than usual.

From downstairs someone called out again, the sound muffled through the floorboards, and she couldn't make out whose name it was.