Chapter 433: The Sealed File Envelope

At eight o'clock on the night of July 19, Shen Zhixia upended the paper bag.

The papers slid out one by one, and the last thing to land on the table was the disc. She pressed it still with her hand and moved it to the far right, then laid everything out in a line from left to right: the petition for review, the household register, the certificate of release from prison, the death certificate, the seven verified pages from the Chengbei District Court archive room, Pang Chunlai's interview record, the disc.

There was another disc in the drawer. Both recordings were on it. That night she had listened through line by line, only stopping after the third pass. Tonight she left that drawer unopened.

She pulled out the chair and sat down. The room was so quiet she could hear the water pipes downstairs.

"This one." She spoke at the desk, her voice scattering in the empty room, sounding strange to her. She paused, then went on: "June 17, copied in the Chengbei District People's Court archive room. I made the copy myself. The stamp was put on by the archive room."

"Pang Chunlai's three pages, done at his home on July 1. I wrote, he sat and talked. After I finished writing, I read it back to him. He signed it and pressed his fingerprint."

"These two, the household register and the release certificate, are for the petition."

When she reached the household register, she stalled. On the first page, a square seal sat diagonally over her father's name. Who had applied that seal, and on what date—she only knew it was the police station; she couldn't answer the rest. She wrote this down on the sheet of paper beside her: "square seal," and after it a note: if you can't answer, say you don't know. Don't guess.

Next came the disc.

"This recording is..." She stopped, changed tack. "I made it."

She wrote that sentence down too.

No one in the room was asking her questions; she asked them herself. Of these seven items, which one had someone else found for her, which one had she obtained sitting across from someone at their desk; what day it had been given to her, by whom, how it had come into her hands. She went through them one by one. By the fifth pass, her voice finally came out smooth.

After the provenance, the destinations: the original petition was in her bag, and the photocopied set was at the Intermediate Court; the original interview record was also in her bag; the disc had been burned in two copies—one submitted to the Intermediate Court on July 2, one in her bag. She recited both of these slowly.

Once she was smooth, she practiced another line. This one wasn't on the paper; it was one she guessed they'd ask: why hadn't she filed with the Chengnan District Court. She answered twice. The first time she said, "That's the original trial court." The second time, "The Intermediate Court can hear it themselves." Both answers came out sounding memorized. By the third pass she couldn't stand listening to herself. She pressed the paper flat on the desk.

Traveling with a question she couldn't answer weighed worse than carrying a stack of papers.

The door opened. Zhi'an came out to get water and saw the line of items laid out on the table. His steps slowed. He set a cup of water by her elbow.

"Who were you talking to just now?"

"Reciting," she said.

Zhi'an stood there without leaving. After a moment he said, "You paused when you got to the recording."

She looked up at him. He nudged the cup closer to her hand, turned, and went back to his room without pulling the door fully shut.

She drank down the half cup of water. A ring of fingerprints stayed on the glass.

Her phone buzzed at the corner of the desk. A text from the Intermediate Court's Trial Supervision Division: tomorrow, 10:30 a.m., interview room. Bring originals. Register on the first floor; ask for the Trial Supervision Division.

She replied, "Received," then after a thought added: I'm bringing everything.

One by one, the items went back into the paper bag. The top of the bag still bore those three lines: Shen Qian, Petition, Shen Zhixia, and the two lines she'd added below. The sheet with "square seal" and "recording" written on it was folded in half and tucked at the very bottom. She folded the bag's opening twice, hugged it to her chest. The light was still on in Zhi'an's room. She stood there a while, then went back to her own room.

[Thud. This trip, not logged on the ticket.]

She didn't sleep soundly that night.

The next day at 9:20 a.m., the door to the Chengbei District Court archive room was open.

Comrade Chu had arrived at 8:50. She'd already pulled the volume from storage and carried it out with both hands under its base—the label on the spine had frayed edges, the cause-of-action field read "Labor Dispute," and the binding thread was white cotton, the knot tied at the back, still firm to the touch. She set it on the reading table but didn't open it yet. Instead she wiped the desktop with a rag.

At 9:20, the archive room supervisor arrived too, a ring of keys in his hand, standing to the side of the reading table checking the paperwork. He said less than Comrade Chu.

At 9:30, there was a knock at the door. Two people had come from the Intermediate Court: Judge Zhuo and his court clerk.

An evidence retrieval letter was handed over, the Intermediate Court's seal stamped on it. Comrade Chu took it, smoothed it flat, and checked it against the volume on the table item by item: cause of action, match; parties, match; one volume.

"The whole volume?" she asked.

"The whole volume," Judge Zhuo said.

"The volume doesn't come apart." She placed both hands on it. "The originals are stapled inside. Not one page comes out. This volume leaves here and comes back exactly the way it left."

"That's up to you."

She opened the volume and, following the binding thread, pressed from the first page to the last, letting Judge Zhuo see where the five original pages sat—at the end of the plaintiff's evidence section, the paper stiffer than the surrounding materials and more yellowed. Judge Zhuo leaned down and counted page by page, stopping at the small line of text on the first page, then flipping to the end of the fifth page to read the line: "Attachment: Sample Handover Form (copy)."

Page six was not there.

"I want this entire volume," he said.

"The entire volume is here," Comrade Chu said. "The first page of this report states six pages total. The volume contains five. I counted twice. Whether the missing page is elsewhere, we don't have it here. However many pages were there at archiving is however many pages there are."

She turned the volume to the inside back cover and showed Judge Zhuo the loan form pasted there: nine rows, not a single character written in any of them.

"From archiving to now, no one has borrowed it. A lawyer came to look at it once in June, right at this table. It didn't leave the room." She closed the volume. "She wanted copies; I supervised. She wanted to take anything away; I wouldn't give her a page."

Judge Zhuo cast a long look at the volume and said nothing.

The handover form came in duplicate, pre-printed, with blanks to fill: lending unit, cause of action, number of volumes, number of pages, lending date. The return date field was left blank. The clerk filled it out line by line and handed it to Judge Zhuo. Judge Zhuo reviewed it and signed after the lending unit. Comrade Chu took both copies and signed beneath those two lines.

"Two copies of the form. One stays with me," the supervisor said. Comrade Chu answered, "Keeping it," and clipped one into the binder behind her, handing the other to the clerk.

"I won't rush you on the return date," she said. "When you're done on your end, send a letter. I'll check it against that."

"When the letter comes, I count the pages first," the supervisor added.

Comrade Chu worked slowly when bagging the volume. The file envelope was thick kraft paper, its face printed with a grid. The clerk filled in the cause of action, volume count, lending unit, and date. The volume went in, and she folded the opening twice. From the drawer she took a small bottle of paste and a pre-cut strip of white paper. The bottle's mouth had crusted over; she pried it open with a bamboo skewer, spread the paste evenly, and smoothed the strip down over the envelope's opening, an inch overhanging each end and wrapping onto the face.

"Sign across the seam," she said, handing over the pen. "One signs this end, the other that end. Across the paper strip and the envelope both. Not just on the face."

Judge Zhuo signed one spot, she signed the other. The two names, one above the other, both straddled the edge.

"This volume is no longer in my custody as of today," Comrade Chu said, standing the envelope upright to let the paste air.

Judge Zhuo took the envelope in hand and asked, "That lawyer who came to make copies in June—at this same table?"

"This very table," Comrade Chu said. "She didn't even touch the spine. Seven pages. I stamped them."

"Hm," Judge Zhuo acknowledged, and asked no more.

The two went downstairs. Comrade Chu saw them to the door, came back, pulled open the drawer, and took out a blank substitute file card. She wrote the lending unit and date, then added a small line: borrowed by superior court. She walked into the stacks, slid the card into the spot where that volume had been, pressed it flat with her hand, and stepped back to check the neatness of the row. Before locking the door, she turned back for one more look at that row of cabinets.

At 10:15, Shen Zhixia registered on the first floor of the Intermediate Court.

The register sat open on the counter by the door. She filled it out line by line: name, unit, who she was seeing, time. The security guard looked up. "Got ID? Which division?"

"Trial Supervision Division."

"Elevator up, turn right when you get out."

The corridor was floored in gray vinyl, which gave a soft sound under each step. Against the window at the far end sat a row of three connected chairs. Outside was the parking lot, sun glaring off the car roofs. She didn't take the middle chair; she took the one nearest the door, the paper bag on her lap, both hands pressing its opening shut.

The lines she'd rehearsed last night ran through her mind again. When they reached the recording, she pressed the bag shut tighter. The line she hadn't been able to practice, she tried answering now: that was the original trial court—but halfway through the sentence she forced it down and refused to think further.

A young person carrying case files passed down the corridor, and she pulled her legs in. She looked down and felt the two folds at the bag's opening. Still the same folds from last night. They hadn't loosened.

At 10:20, the sound of chairs moving came from behind the door at the end of the corridor. She stood up, switched the paper bag to her left hand. Voices came from inside, muffled through the door. She sat back down, lifting the bag a little higher. At 10:25, the door was pulled open from within.

Judge Zhuo stood in the doorway, shirtsleeves rolled to the elbows, a cup in one hand. He glanced down the corridor at her. "Come in."

Inside was a long table, one chair behind it, two chairs facing it. On the table lay a kraft paper file envelope, directly across from her. The strip of white paper over its opening was pasted flat, and two signatures, one above the other, straddled the edge.

She recognized the lower one. The brushstroke in the June 17 register—"received by"—had the same handwriting: a heavy hand, the last stroke dragging downward.

The clerk was already seated to the side, the hearing record spread open, the time and place written on the first page.

She set her paper bag down beside the chair leg, not on the table, then sat up straight.

Judge Zhuo placed his cup at the other end of the table and lifted his eyes to her.

"Sit. You first—why didn't you file with the Chengnan District Court?"