Chapter 390: Five Pages of a Petition

On May 3rd, the noodle shop in the Old Town District was still closed.

The smells in the alley had changed. The first couple of days, the neighbor's cooking oil drifted up constantly. Today the wind came from the east, carrying the raw smell of the river. She opened the window half a pane, then closed it, leaving only a crack.

Zhi'an came in just after six, carrying a plastic bag with a handful of greens, two blocks of tofu, and a bag of dried noodles. He set the bag on the stove. "The market opens day after tomorrow. This was all they had."

"It's enough."

He cooked the noodles, dividing the greens and tofu between two bowls, and as usual scraped the extra half egg into hers. They sat. Half the table was taken up by bowls, the other half by Volume Seven and her notebook, which she nudged closer to her side.

Halfway through eating, she set her chopsticks down.

"Zhi'an."

"Yeah."

"I'm going to petition for a retrial of Dad's case."

He looked up, still chewing, and only spoke after he swallowed. "What's a petition?"

"It's asking the court to look at the case again. A judgment can be reopened, as long as you produce something that wasn't there before."

"Something that wasn't there before. Do you have that?"

"A little."

"How much is a little?"

"A few pieces of paper."

He looked down at the greens in his bowl and tapped his chopsticks against the rim.

"So what do I do?"

"Nothing. You just need to know."

"That's it?"

"That's it."

He lifted a mouthful of noodles, then lowered it again.

"If Dad were here," he said, "he'd tell you not to reopen it."

"Did he say that?"

"He didn't. I'm guessing."

She didn't answer. The pot on the stove was still hissing, steam fogging a patch of the window glass.

"I was little when Mom left," Zhi'an said. "Those three years of Dad's — I remember them clearly."

"I remember them more clearly."

He nudged his bowl aside.

"Then reopen it."

"Yeah."

"Tell me where you're going, once it's decided."

"Not decided yet."

"Tell me when it is."

"Okay."

He carried the two bowls off to wash, the water running for a while. She sat at the table, turned the notebook to a fresh page, and wrote in her father's old style at the top: May 3rd, 19:00. On the line below: I told him. On the next line, she wrote only: Petition.

She set the pen down. The rest of the half page stayed blank; she didn't add anything more.

* * *

On May 4th at nine, she wiped down the table and spread out a stack of blank paper.

The paper was from the firm — A4, with slightly curled edges.

On the first line she wrote "Petition for Retrial." She stared at it for a while, then pulled the sheet out, flipped it over, and wrote it again. Three times. The third attempt came out smaller than the first, the strokes drawn tight.

She circled around the opening section: the last line had to say where the petition was being filed, and she hadn't decided that yet, so she left a blank space after "To:".

The three lines of the signature block she wrote clearly: Petitioner: Shen Zhixia, daughter of Shen Qian, the original defendant. On a new line: Original defendant: Shen Qian, deceased. On another: Original trial court: Jiangzhou Chengnan District People's Court.

Those three lines took her twenty minutes. After each line, she reread the one before from top to bottom.

For contact information, she copied down her own cell number, then added the firm's landline after it with a note: "after the holiday." No one was answering the landline those days, but she wrote it anyway.

She thought about calling He Xiufen to ask how the document should begin. She even pulled the number up, but didn't hit dial. This time she wanted to write it herself.

The request section was short: Requesting a retrial according to law, reversal of the original judgment, and a verdict of not guilty for Shen Qian.

The pen tip pressed down hard under the words "not guilty." She lifted her head to look out the window, then lowered it and kept writing.

The facts and reasoning went paragraph by paragraph.

What the original judgment had found: she copied it from the judgment itself — her father, acting as representative in the Baixi Village villagers' case, was found to have provided a falsified water test report and obstructed testimony. The conviction rested on Qingyuan Testing's re-test, and the re-test conclusion was that it "did not match the initial test."

She copied the word "did not match" slowly. Apart from that one sentence, the judgment contained nothing else explaining what was false about the report.

She considered writing her father's words in too: I signed it, but I didn't write that report. Written out it would only take one line, and it read with weight. She paused over that line for a long time and finally didn't set it down. No one had heard those words but her, and once they went onto paper they would still be just one sentence — not enough to carry the pages that followed.

She went on to write what she had in hand. This section took the longest.

Five scanned pages recovered from a hard drive: Qingyuan Testing's re-test report, the sample field reading "Baixi Village well water (second sample)," conclusion: cadmium exceeded standards, issuer Cen Shouye, dated April 1st. The report's first page stated that the document totaled six pages, including one attachment page. The sixth page — the sample handover form — she did not have. She had a forensic appraisal opinion confirming which disk the five pages had been read from; and a notarized certificate confirming how the disk had come into her hands.

When she got to the original, the pen stopped.

Where the original was, she didn't know. The line on the envelope was Lu Jibai's addition: The report original and the seal's original are both absent.

She wrote it as it was: The whereabouts of the original re-test report — the petitioner does not currently know where it is. After writing it, she crossed out "does not currently know where it is" and changed it to "does not possess," thought it over, and changed it back.

The original wasn't there, but the papers still had to be filed.

Next came the original trial file. She had copied the main file's index once — the page number for the "Attachment" row was blank; on the archive inspection form, that box was marked missing. She wrote those two sentences plainly, without a single adjective.

When she reached the second batch of samples, she set the pen down.

Volume Seven sat at the very bottom of the stack of notes. She reached in and pulled it out, flipping to the March 20th page: twelve samples, two cardboard boxes, the samples left overnight at the village committee. The 21st's page was right after it — sampling and delivery to Qingyuan, the signature line on the sample submission form, and that Band-Aid.

She spread Volume Seven open beside the draft paper and looked at it for a long time.

Those two pages were her father's own notebook. There was no seal on them, no sample recipient's name, no second person's fingerprint. To write it into the petition, she'd have to write: "The second batch of samples was switched before testing." The only thing holding up that sentence was two pages of uncorroborated notes, and one person's word. A person who, after the holiday, would still be sitting across from her at that other desk.

She closed Volume Seven and pressed it back to the bottom of the stack, not moving its position.

In the petition she left one line: The sample delivery record for the second batch — the petitioner does not possess it.

[Thud. What goes onto the paper is paper.]

She looked at that line, then kept writing.

* * *

The afternoon grew stuffy. She pushed the window all the way open; the wind lifted the corners of the paper, so she weighed it down with a mug. At four she got up and made noodles, ate half a bowl, and left the other in the sink.

Zhi'an went out in the evening, saying he was heading to the school for a bit and asking if she needed anything brought back. She said no.

She wrote until dark, then turned on the lamp. In between, she reread the first four pages from the top and made three changes: one, after "Baixi Village villagers" she added "drinking"; two, she broke two long sentences into shorter ones; three, she changed "caused to" to "led to."

At eleven, the final paragraph: the contact and date line she left blank. She counted — five pages, with a stretch still empty at the bottom of the fifth.

She straightened the five pages, squared them against the table edge once, twice, and clipped them together with a binder clip.

Her wrist ached. She pressed the back of her right hand against the table edge, the knuckles flushing red.

* * *

On May 5th at ten, she dragged the cardboard box out from under the bed.

The box had been moved out of the old house nine years ago. The cardboard had gone soft, one corner caved in. A strip of tape had once been stuck across the lid; the tape was yellow now, its edges curling. It had rained the day of the move. The tricycle stopped in front of the house twice, and only on the second trip did they get the box settled flat.

She wiped the lid with a damp cloth. The dust that came off was black; she went and washed her hands twice.

She lifted the lid. On top lay a stack of medical folders, a few paper bags, an old sweater. She reached to the very bottom and took things out one by one.

The household register was at the very bottom — blue cloth cover, thin. She opened to the first page: her father's name. A square seal was stamped diagonally over the name, the red ink faded over the strokes. She turned the page; there was her own entry, the "relationship to household head" column printed with a "daughter."

She spread the register open on the table and didn't close it right away.

Beneath it was a kraft paper envelope, the string wound three times around the flap. Inside was the certificate of release from prison — a single sheet, yellowed, a crease down the middle, the characters above the crease still clear. She held it up to the light for a while; the paper was so thin her hand's shadow showed through.

Below that, her father's death certificate — one sheet, slightly stiffer than the release certificate.

Below that, the family's copy of the judgment, its upper-right corner trimmed.

At the bottom, the set from Chengnan District Court: judgment, trial transcript, defender's opinion, appraisal opinion, file index — each sheet stamped "Verified against original."

She arranged them across the table, neatly aligned.

At the very bottom of the box, the hardcover notebook was still pressed flat. She saw it, reached in, and nudged it — pushing it to the very back of the box, not taking it out.

After eleven, she turned the register back to the first page and studied the square seal again. That seal had been stamped after her father left. She'd glanced at it once at the police station, not daring to look closely, and only remembered it was crooked.

At noon she made a little noodles and fried the remaining tofu. Zhi'an was going out in the afternoon; she told him to come back early.

In the afternoon she reread the five pages from top to bottom. At "does not currently know where it is" she stopped and made a small dot in the margin. She changed nothing else.

After reading, she opened her notebook and wrote a checklist, one item at a time, ticking as she went: household register — have; death certificate — have; release certificate — have; judgment and the verified set — have; the five printed pages from the hard drive — in the metal cabinet at the firm. When she reached the original re-test report, the pen stopped, and that box she left unticked, blank.

Zhi'an came back after five. Coming in, he saw the row of papers laid out on the table and stood there looking.

"All of this has to be submitted?"

"It has to. The originals get shown at the window, then I take them back."

"Dad's release certificate too?"

"Too."

"Why?"

"He was convicted. He served time. He got out." She gathered the papers together slightly. "To reopen this case, people need to see all of that is still here."

Zhi'an studied the square seal for a while but didn't reach for it.

"Sis."

"Yeah."

"What if it can't be reopened?"

She thought about it. "Then we try a second time."

After dark she sorted everything into piles: originals in one, copies in another, pressed next to the five pages. In her notebook she wrote: May 5th. On the line below: household register, release certificate, death certificate, copy of judgment, verified set.

At twenty-two hundred, she picked the five pages up, smoothed them, and pressed them under the household register.

The register's first page faced up, her father's name visible, the square seal stamped diagonally across the strokes.

The lamp went off. Someone wheeled a cart past in the alley; a metal sheet clanged once.

The name faced up.