Chapter 392: Three Lines on the Bag

At 8:20 AM on May 7, the van stopped at the mouth of the alley. He Xiufen's broom rested against the second step.

She pulled the door halfway open and looked back at the window upstairs. The window was shut, last week's dust still smeared on the glass.

"Coming home for lunch or not?" He Xiufen asked.

"Depends."

"'Depends' means no." He Xiufen leaned the broom against the wall. "I'll set aside a bowl for you, reheat it tonight if it's cold."

Cai Qingru got out, shoved the plastic buckets lying crosswise in the trunk to one side, cleared a space. "Sit in the back. Front's piled with stuff."

"Those two from the provincial capital here yet?"

"Called me at 7:40. Standing at the Intermediate Court gate." Cai Qingru opened the driver's door. "They brought their own seal, own pen too. Said they'd sign the signature column on the spot."

The car left the Old Town District, skirted the edge of the new district heading north. Every manhole cover, Cai Qingru drove straight over it; the empty buckets in the back never rattled once.

"Where did you put that page of yours?"

"In front of the plan, on its own." She said it plainly. "Signed with the firm's name. The handwriting's mine."

"What if they take issue with it?"

"Everything they'd take issue with came straight off the public posting—their own procurement platform, last September. Every time they nitpick, I read it back."

Cai Qingru glanced at her in the rearview mirror. "You're talkative today."

"There's paper to hand in today."

They reached the Intermediate Court gate at 9:25. The two from the provincial capital were already standing by the flower bed. The man was in his forties, dark jacket, a flat document envelope in one hand; the woman with him carried a cloth bag, and the square hard corner of a seal box showed through the fabric.

"Lawyer Shen," the man said. "We proofread the plan once more last night. Only changed the sentence about the timeline—now reads 'from the effective date.' Not one other character touched."

"That sentence is correct." She took the envelope. "Effective date is April 24. Thirty days runs to May 24; one hundred eighty days runs to October 21."

"The dates were entered exactly as you provided."

The woman hitched the cloth bag higher on her shoulder. "The seal is carved with the Center's name. Once it's stamped on that column, if anything goes wrong later, the Center answers for it."

"It answers to the Center, and to me." She said, "I wrote that page. I signed it."

They entered the building, registered, presented practice certificates, signed in. The room at the end of the corridor had its door half open; someone inside was photocopying, the machine humming and stuttering.

The clerk for the Environmental and Resources Tribunal was a woman with short hair. She looked up at them. "The Qinghe one?"

"Yes."

"Put it here." She pulled the plan out, flipping through page by page, her finger pressing the corner of each. When she finished, she wrote a line in the register, then looked up again. "This front page—it's a standalone sheet?"

"Yes. Why we're not using the local firm for supervision—it's written on this page."

"Whose name does it carry?"

"The firm's. The opinion is the firm's; the signature is mine."

"Should this page also be served on the defendant?"

"Serve it too."

"Alright." She tucked the page back to the front, pressed it flat with her palm. "The plan goes to the defendant today. It has until the deadline to submit comments. Once it does, the collegial panel reviews, then confirms. If we need supplementary materials from you, we'll call."

"The defendant gets the full set?"

"Full set. This page included."

"Will we be able to see the comments it submits?"

"Yes. Whatever it writes, we forward a copy to you."

"Fill in the 'prepared by' signature and seal column now," the clerk said, flipping the plan back to the last page and pushing it out across the counter.

The man took a pen from the document envelope and signed slowly, then stepped aside. The woman set the seal box on the counter's edge, lifted the red cloth, took out the seal, pressed it twice on the ink pad, lined it up against the column, set one corner down first, then pressed down with her palm.

A red seal on paper is just red. She watched that smear of red slowly set through the glass of the counter, and thought of the seals on those five scanned pages in the hard drive—copied out in blue-gray.

The clerk wrote the receipt slip: name of materials, how many items delivered, page count, date. She finished and pushed it over. Shen Zhixia signed the recipient column, two lines aligned.

[Thud. The plan went in. It still has to be shown to the defendant.]

There was a draft in the corridor when they came out.

"Will it submit comments?" Cai Qingru closed the door behind them.

"If it does, it'll be nothing more than saying that page is us speaking for our own people."

"Then what?"

"All three lines are from the public posting: what day the tender notice went out, who the tenderer was, who signed the acceptance inspection column. Every time it raises an objection, those three lines get read back."

Cai Qingru turned the receipt over in her hand, looked at it, folded it once, and tucked it into the inner pocket of her coat.

"I'm taking this one home."

"I'll make a copy at the firm."

"A copy or not, doesn't matter." Cai Qingru said, "What I need isn't this piece of paper. What I need is for the acceptance inspection to have one sentence in that column: how many were replanted at this site, how many survived, and whose signature is on it."

"That column is empty right now."

"Empty." She flipped the car key in her hand. "If it's empty, I'll come back."

The car reached the alley mouth after eleven. She borrowed the receipt slip from Cai Qingru, went upstairs to make a copy, came back down and returned it. The copy went into the Qingshi Village paper envelope—the opening hadn't closed properly for days now, paper pushing out the top. She slid it in, pressed twice, couldn't flatten it.

She added a line in the notebook: May 7, plan delivered to Intermediate Court, receipt slip one.

At three-something in the afternoon, Li Huilan came back from the Enforcement Bureau and hung her cloth bag on the back of her chair. "Lao Kan's still waiting on the ruling. The window says it'll come out in the next couple of days." She made a sound of acknowledgment and kept checking the form in front of her.

At 5:00, Lu Jibai closed his folder. "I'm going down for noodles."

"Mhm."

Downstairs the exhaust fan hadn't kicked on yet; water was heating on the stove. She heard the glass door swing, then a voice stop at the entrance, another voice answer half a sentence; the sounds under the floorboards were buried by the water noise, and only the name "Zhi'an" came up.

At 6:00, He Xiufen brought noodles up and set the bowl on the corner of her desk. "Eat first."

"Mhm."

"Zhi'an called him outside the shop just now."

She pulled chopsticks from the holder. "Called him what?"

"Lawyer Lu." He Xiufen laid the spoon flat. "He answered, and called Zhi'an by name. Zhi'an went through the glass door first; he held it open from behind."

"What did he eat?"

"A bowl of noodles, added an egg. When he finished he tucked the money under the bowl. By the time I got outside, he'd already reached the alley mouth."

She took a bite. The broth was hot; she picked the cilantro off the top and set it on the bowl lid.

"Zhi'an came in with his schoolbag, called out that greeting at the door, then went in and found a table." He Xiufen said, "Both kids stood up straight."

Then she went downstairs.

When she finished, she carried the bowl to the windowsill and looked down. The table by the door was empty, the bowl cleared, the tabletop wiped in one streak.

She got home at 9:00. Zhi'an was in the kitchen washing his bowl, the water running thin.

"Jie, today outside the noodle shop I called him Lawyer Lu."

"Mhm."

"I had to call him something." He stood the bowl up in the drying rack. "He didn't ask anything. Said my name, and asked if I'd finished playing basketball."

"You called him right." She set her bag down. "From now on, call him that."

Zhi'an made a sound and went back to his room, the door not quite shut.

May 8: the courts were closed. She stayed in all day, read the five pages through once from beginning to end, didn't change a single character, and spent a long time looking at the blank strip at the bottom of the fifth page. Zhi'an went out to play basketball in the morning and brought back two baked flatbreads at noon, one each.

May 9, 8:00 PM. She switched on the desk lamp.

The household register was still on top of the stack of papers, first page facing up, her father's name and the crooked square seal stamped over it showing. She moved it aside. The five pages were still underneath, their edges pressed flat.

The bottom section of the last page had been empty since May 4. She uncapped the pen, set the nib after "Petitioner," and paused.

At the top of the first page, below her own line, was her father: original defendant Shen Qian, deceased. This last cell waited for her name alone.

She wrote: Shen Zhixia.

Then a new line: May 9.

Her handwriting was slower than usual; the final downward stroke of "Xia" pressed once before lifting. She held the last page up to the lamp to let the ink dry, and thought of how her father wrote the name "Shen"—that dot on the right side always flung wide. Her stroke didn't fling.

She flipped back page by page to the first, looked at the header, looked at the court name left in the blank space.

She turned the notebook to a fresh page and wrote: May 9, 8:00 PM. Signed.

When she finished, she glanced at the index pinned under the desk lamp's corner: Volume Seven's row had its last cell filled on May 1. The rows for Volume Eight and Volume Nine were still blank.

She squared the whole set, tapped it twice against the desk edge. The new kraft paper envelope lay flat on the desk, its mouth facing her. The five pages sat on top, underneath was the set: the household register, the certificate of release from prison, her father's death certificate, the photocopy of the judgment with the corner trimmed, the set stamped "Verified Against Original" by the Chengnan District Court, the pages printed from scans, the appraisal opinion, the notarial certificate. On submission day the originals would be shown at the window and then taken back.

She folded the envelope's flap once, pressed it flat, and turned it over to the front. She wrote three lines:

Shen Qian

Petition

Shen Zhixia

On the final stroke of "Shen Zhixia," the nib paused on the paper, lifted, and left a small dot behind.

[Thud. This bag doesn't get a number. It doesn't go in the cabinet.]

Zhi'an came out of his room for water and saw the bag on the table. "All packed up?"

"Packed up."

"Taking it out tomorrow?"

"No. Staying home."

He carried his cup back to his room, paused at the door, looked back at the face of the bag, and said nothing.

At 9:00, the stack of volumes sat at the corner of the desk, Volume Seven at the bottom, just a sliver of blue cloth showing. Volume Eight sat beside the stack, a finger's width between the two. She placed the paper envelope on the other side of Volume Eight—three objects in a row: volume, envelope, volume.

She pressed the lamp switch once; the room went dark. Outside in the alley a tricycle rolled slowly past, its metal panels clattering in scattered pieces.

She wouldn't look at Volume Eight tonight. She'd open it after meeting that person on May 13.