Chapter 443: Statement of Defense

The door downstairs opened and closed. The clerk's canvas bag knocked against the doorframe, and footsteps went off down the alley.

He Xiufen still sat in the chair by the window. The rag lay across her knee. She picked it up and shook it once; dust scattered in the light.

"Who's writing the statement of defense?"

"I'll write it myself." Lu Jibai squared the three-page complaint copy on the desk and neatened the edge.

"When?"

"Tonight. The office has work during the day."

"Don't drag it out when you write. The paper's dated—the 26th." He Xiufen folded the rag twice and pressed it flat on her knee. "And don't rush to file it once it's written. Let it sit overnight, read it again the next day. What a person writes while angry, he wants to cross out on a second read."

"I'll remember."

Li Huilan found a pen in the drawer and made two strokes on a scrap of paper. The ink flowed evenly. She put the pen back. "If the Bar Association comes asking about the office, who signs the firm's line?"

"Which line?"

"The line for the person in charge." Li Huilan said. "You're the respondent, and you're also the person in charge. The same name written twice on one reply—it doesn't look good."

"Then that's how it'll be." He said. "If that day comes, I'll speak first."

"Speak first to whom?" He Xiufen asked.

"First to the Bar Association. Then to you."

"What about the hearing?" He Xiufen asked. "She said it could be requested. File or not?"

"Not for now." He said. "Submit the statement, see what else they ask. If they want to hear it in person, I'll file another one then."

"File too early, and you're saying everything up front—giving them a script to question from." Li Huilan said.

"But if you don't file, doesn't that mean one less place to speak?" He Xiufen asked.

"What can't be made clear on paper won't be made clear in a chair either." He said. "In this matter, paper is clearer than the mouth."

He Xiufen leaned back in her chair; the chair legs creaked against the floorboards. "You write this one out clearly first. The firm's line—wait until the Bar Association actually comes knocking. If they come, I'll sit in this chair and answer. Whatever they ask, I'll answer."

Downstairs, a knife tapped against a cutting board—steady, one after another. The noodle shop was starting the dinner rush.

She flipped her notebook to the August page; the pen tip tapped once on the paper.

"Can I read the complaint?"

Lu Jibai pushed the three pages toward her and moved the attachments to the corner of the desk. "Go ahead."

She sat down and opened it.

The paper was fresh, with a line of black text at the top. Complainant: Jiangzhou Hengzheng Law Firm. Respondent: Lu Jibai. The first page stated the first allegation: Since July of this year, the respondent made statements to judicial authorities about matters learned during his internship at this firm, without prior notification to the firm. Below that, a line saying the conduct violated a lawyer's duty of confidentiality regarding matters learned in practice.

"How do they know I went?" she asked.

"July 22nd, the Intermediate Court went to their office to pull my internship file from that year." He said. "If they came to pull it, it means someone out there mentioned that visit. They have the logs—one line per day, dates matching. They can infer the rest themselves."

The second page stated the second allegation. The sentence was long, layered: If his statement indicated that he had discovered irregularities during the sample submission that year and did not report them, then he failed to truthfully disclose this when applying to practice, and is suspected of obtaining his practice certificate through improper means; if his statement was false, then he is suspected of committing perjury.

"Perjury." The word sat there in that line. She stared at the page, the pen turning once in her hand—and not a second time. Nine years ago, on that indictment, it had been the same charge, printed the same way. She smoothed the corner of the page and kept reading.

The third page was only half full. A request to handle the matter according to regulations, and regarding the second allegation, a recommendation that the judicial administrative authority review, in accordance with law, whether to revoke the decision approving his practice. The bottom right bore the date: August 2. The firm seal pressed over the signature; the ink in the center of the seal was darker than at the edges. The signature was straight and level, one stroke to the end.

She lifted a corner of the attachments. Internship agreement, internship log, assessment form—all photocopies, each with a square seal in the lower right stamped "Verified Against Original," and a perforation seal running across the seams of the pages.

"This sentence in the second allegation—" She turned the second page back, tapping the two "ifs" with her fingertip. "What grounds do they have to write it? They don't know what you said."

"They don't." He said. "What they know is that I went and spoke. They don't know what I said. So both ends are 'if.'"

She read the two lines again, slowing on the second pass. "Two 'ifs' nesting—never landing on a single factual word." She said. "They don't write what you said. They only write what you might have said."

"Correct."

She squared the three pages and pushed them back with both hands.

"Both roads are theirs." She said.

He looked up.

"First allegation: you spoke this year—that means you didn't tell the firm first. Second allegation: if you say you saw it back then, then you didn't truthfully disclose it on your practice application—obtaining a certificate through improper means, grounds for revocation. If you say you didn't see it, then it's perjury." She drew her hand back from the paper. "Speak—it's a problem. Don't speak—it's also a problem. Both roads lead to that certificate."

"I'm not taking either road." He said.

"Then how do you walk?"

"Answer them one by one." He opened the three pages, flipping back to the first, his fingertip pausing beneath that line. "The first allegation asks why I didn't tell the firm first. My answer: I went to the Procuratorate. That trip was mine—not the firm's, and not Hengzheng's."

"Noon, July 8th."

"That noon, downstairs, I told everyone about it." He said. "Director He was there. Lawyer Li was there."

"That day I was upstairs." She said.

"I know."

He Xiufen spoke from by the window: "He said it at the inner table, spoke slowly, one sentence at a time. I served him his noodles first and didn't let him pick up the chopsticks until he'd finished. I remember."

"On Hengzheng's side, it was July 22nd when Administration called to tell me." He said. "What they're asking about is this end."

"The second allegation." She said.

"The second allegation asks about that year." He said. "The tape on the crate wasn't the same strip from the night before—I saw it. That sentence I won't change. As for the form I filled out the year I applied to practice—I signed my name on the assessment form. What I signed was where I went and what I did, not what I saw."

He Xiufen only spoke after he'd finished: "The statement of defense is written for the Bar Association, not for Hengzheng. Keep that in mind when you write it. Whatever Hengzheng wants to see, you can't guess it, and you don't need to guess it."

"All right."

"The attachments stay with me." She turned to Li Huilan. "Keep these here."

Li Huilan took the stack of photocopies, locked them in the drawer, and asked as she pulled out the key, "Does he take the originals home to write?"

"No." Lu Jibai said. "The paper stays at the office. I'll write it here."

She closed her notebook, pressed her hand flat on the cover for a moment, then said, "Before the 26th. After you've written it, I'll look it over."

"Which pass?"

"Format." She said. "I won't touch the substance. Director He looked over my statement last year the same way—one sentence at a time, asking me about every formatting discrepancy."

He nodded, unscrewed the pen cap, screwed it back, and set the pen in the holder without writing.

The next day, 3 p.m. Only she and Li Huilan were in the outer room on the second floor. Downstairs they were clearing the lunch service bowls—porcelain against porcelain, clink after clink into the dish tub.

"Someone in one of the trade group chats forwarded something." Li Huilan pushed her phone to the edge of the desk, screen up.

The line sat beneath a pile of case listings and job ads: The Bar Association has opened a case against a partner at a small firm. No firm name, no person's name. Two replies followed: one asking which firm, one saying "Only a matter of time." The original poster didn't respond.

"Who posted it?"

"Someone in non-litigation. Doesn't say three sentences a year." Li Huilan took her phone back, pressed the screen dark, and set it face-down on the desk. "I didn't reply."

"Did anyone find out which firm?"

"Someone asked. He didn't answer." She paused. "The sign downstairs doesn't have anyone's name on it, but people know who it is."

She opened her notebook and wrote a line under August 12: One line in the group chat, no name. She capped the pen.

"Should I say something in the group?" Li Huilan asked.

"No."

"What if someone asks me directly later?"

"Then ask him whether what he saw was paper or talk." She said. "The paper is with the Bar Association. We wait for the Bar Association to speak. The talk isn't ours to manage."

Li Huilan nodded, gathered her own papers, and turned them over. "I've got two cases still in filing. Don't want them dragged in."

"They can't be dragged in. Your cases are yours—the paper is about him." She said. "If someone really does bring up that group chat line to you, show him the intake register—what day it was accepted, what matter it concerned, line by line, all there."

"I know." Li Huilan put the papers in the drawer and suddenly added, "Last year, when it was your matter, word got out too. Reached my ears twice."

"And then?"

"The third time, nobody mentioned it." Li Huilan said. "It circulated for half a month and died on its own. After it died, what remained was those few pages on paper."

"This time it's him they're talking about."

"Whoever they talk about, it comes down to paper." Li Huilan said. "You remember how you got through that half month last year."

She didn't respond. That half month last year, she'd gone upstairs every day as usual, taken cases as usual, and at night written down the questions she'd need to ask the next day. Whatever other people said, she never copied down a single word.

6 p.m. There were still customers in the noodle shop downstairs; the smell of scallion oil drifted up through the stairwell. She put the files back in the cabinet, slipped her notebook into her bag, and got up to turn off the light in the outer room.

The inner room door stood half open, light on, no one there. A cup of water on the desk; the condensation on the sides had long dried. The chair pushed back half a foot. The desktop was cleared bare except for a stack of grid paper.

Old-fashioned green-grid manuscript paper, page after page pressed flat, corners perfectly aligned. The first page had one empty line, then at the top, flush left: "Statement of Defense." The boxes below—not a single one filled in. A pen lay on top, cap on, tip facing inward.

She stood at the door; she didn't go in. Her hand pressed against the doorframe once, and she pulled the door to, leaving it half open, leaving the light on.

Down the stairs, she said a word to He Xiufen at the stove and went out past the light by the door. She looked back; from the top of the stairs, a thin line of light spilled down from the second floor, falling across the toe of her shoe.

The grid paper lay on the desk upstairs, the pen pressing down on the paper.