Chapter 494: The Bronze Plaque

In the morning she copied Sun Guilan's nine lines into the case jacket. By the fifth pass, the pot started clattering downstairs, and by the time she finished, it was noon. At exactly three in the afternoon, the stairs sounded.

Song Qiming came up from the stairwell, a cloth bundle tucked under his arm.

The bundle was soft, dark blue, all four corners worn pale. He didn't pause at the door—came in two steps, pushed the stack of case jackets at the corner of the desk inward to clear half the surface, then set the bundle down. He rubbed his hand once over the opening, brushing off a little dust.

"Lawyer Shen."

"Lawyer Song."

Li Huilan glanced up from under the window, then lowered her head again, pencil moving. The inner door was shut; a strip of light leaked from beneath it.

Song Qiming drew a single page from the bundle and spread it in front of her. A ruled registration form, the grid printed with date, name, quantity, handler. The middle row was filled in neatly: Shen Qian, bronze plaque, one. Below it, in the handler column, his own name—characters square and upright, every stroke deliberate.

"Sign here." He tapped the empty box with a finger. "Name. After it, your relationship to him."

"Is this what the firm wants, or what you want."

"What the firm wants," he said. "One plaque, one page. However many came down, the paperwork has to match."

She picked up the pen, wrote "Shen Zhixia" in the box, and added the character for "daughter" after it. The nib was too stiff; the first stroke caught, and she went back over that horizontal line once.

"My signature means it's been delivered."

"Delivered," he said. "I'll write the date."

He took the page back, held it to the light from the window to look at the signature, folded it twice, and put it in the bundle.

"What happened to the wall."

"It's being redone," he said. "The wall on the first floor. The wooden frame comes down, the plaques come off one by one. Those who've left, or are no longer with us—the plaque goes back to them, or to their family. The new person at the firm said one sentence at the meeting."

"Just one sentence."

"Just one. Everything after that, I follow that one sentence." He paused. "Taking them down, registering them, delivering them—all mine."

She understood the job was already half done. Those names were no longer on the wall.

"How many came down."

"Seventeen in this batch. The ones I could find people for, delivered. The ones I couldn't, they stay in a box at the firm. Waiting."

"How many in the box."

"Five. One—I went to three addresses, the person moved. Two—the people have passed, and I couldn't find any family."

"Seventeen, and some families didn't want them."

"Two," Song Qiming said. "One said there was no place to put it. The other told me: that name shouldn't be hung up again."

"And then."

"Stayed in the box. Waiting." He smoothed down a corner of the cloth bundle. "The families were all different when I delivered. Some poured water. Some wouldn't open the door. Some told me to leave it at the threshold and not come in. I wrote 'delivered' according to the record."

"Yeah."

"When a name comes off the wall, what's left behind."

"Two holes," he said. "Filled them. The redo means everything comes down."

"That empty slot—whose will it be later."

"I don't know," Song Qiming said. "The redo is the firm's business. I only take down, register, deliver."

"My father's plaque—you took it down."

"I did."

"What day."

"Yesterday."

"You came up yourself for this one."

"If someone else delivered it, I couldn't sign that column." He glanced at the desk. "The firm told me to deliver it, so I deliver it into your hands."

Song Qiming untied the cloth bundle. First came the edge, a thin frame, the bronze dulled. He laid the plaque flat on the desk and pulled both hands back, the polished surface facing up.

She recognized it.

May thirteenth, she had stood beneath that wall. Wooden frame, row after row of bronze plaques, eight across, a line of small characters at the bottom for the year. She'd searched from the top down to the last row—nothing; stepped back half a pace and searched bottom-up again: third row from the bottom, right side, second one. That day her hand had lifted, hovered half a foot away, then withdrawn. Then the front desk had called her—said Lawyer Han had arrived—and she'd turned away, folding the visitor slip in her hand once.

The plaque was smaller than she'd imagined. Heavier, too. Horizontally it fell short of a sheet of copy paper; vertically it didn't reach the length of her hand. The name was carved into the upper half—characters level, strokes broad, cut deep. Her fingertip traced from the first character to the second, every step a groove. Below the name was a line of smaller characters, half the size: the year. She leaned in to look, didn't read it aloud.

"Hold it from underneath," Song Qiming said.

She lifted it with both hands. The bronze was cold—cold that climbed from her palms upward. She measured the thickness with her thumb. Along the edge was a fine scratch, diagonal, very shallow. The face had an old smell, not quite iron, not quite earth. She held it a moment, then set it down.

One spot on the face had been rubbed, brighter than the rest. The bright patch was uneven—wide on one side, narrow on the other, the edges blurred out, like someone had worn it smooth with repeated strokes of a finger.

"This part's bright."

"It was like that on the wall," Song Qiming said. "When I took it down, the screwdriver slipped on the corner and made a new scratch—not on this spot." He indicated the corner with a hand. "I took sandpaper to the burr twice. Don't let it snag your sweater."

She pulled her hand back, pressed it against her knee.

"I've seen that wall," she said. "That time I was waiting for someone in the reception room. Came out early."

"Everyone passes by it." He paused. "The old comrade who used to work the lobby was a woman. Just the right height—she could reach this one with her hand raised. Every morning she'd wipe it down."

"This one."

"The others she couldn't reach." He looked toward the desk. "After she retired, this one was still bright. Who it was—I never asked."

The white on the window glass thickened a degree. Someone pushed through the door downstairs, and the draft carried up a scent of scallions; the iron clasps on the door curtain struck the frame twice.

"You didn't ask."

"Even if I asked, it wouldn't go on any record," Song Qiming said. "What's in the record, I reported. What isn't, I don't."

"The year this plaque went up—you were at the firm."

"I wasn't," he said. "The year I joined, it was already up there."

"Your own plaque."

"Still up there," he said. "When the wall's redone, mine comes down with the rest. I'll pick it up myself then, sign for it myself."

"Sign to whom."

"Sign to myself."

He folded the cloth bundle and tucked it under his arm, glanced at the plaque on the desk, turned, and went downstairs.

The registration form, folded twice, was already in his bundle. She'd signed, so it counted as delivered. That name would no longer be on the wall at Hengzheng; the name had come down from the wall and settled into this room.

The stairs were narrow; he descended step by step, slowly. At the bottom, the noodle shop's door curtain swished, and someone called, "Two inside, please."

She sat without moving.

Her coat was draped over the back of the chair. She wiped her hand against the coat, then pulled out two tissues and wiped the plaque front and back. When she wiped the bright spot on the front, the tissue came away white—that place held no dust. She folded the tissue and dropped it into the wastebasket by her foot.

She turned the plaque over.

The back was older than the front, a gray-green film across the middle. Two screw holes at the top, one on each side, the metal around each hole brighter than elsewhere—screwed in many times. Ash was packed into the holes; she worked a pen tip in and dug out a small clump, shook it into the basket. In the lower right on the back was a pale white mark, perfectly square—adhesive residue from something once stuck there.

She stood it upright on the desk to gauge the thickness. It wouldn't stand—tipped over and knocked against the desktop, the sound dull. She caught it, wiped the face she'd held once more. Two fingerprints remained in the bronze.

That sentence in the reception room on May thirteenth—she'd gone back and listened to it twice. Fifty minutes of recording, but she only heard "Han Chongli says." That line: Let it stay up. His first answer: "It stays." His second: "It stays until the day it should come down." That day she hadn't pressed further, just wrote those two lines in the back of her notebook.

Now the plaque was on her desk, and the wall was being torn down.

Li Huilan closed the file in her hands and stepped over.

"From the wall at Hengzheng."

"My father's."

"I stood under it once when I went to Hengzheng to deliver documents," Li Huilan said. "Twenty-some years in this line of work. My name's never been on that wall, and it never will be." She gathered the file back to the window, squared off the corners. "It's delivered. Put it away properly."

"Yeah."

"I'm heading out. The day laborer case goes to enforcement; still have to ask about the account." She wound her scarf twice around her neck. "Lock up."

"Okay."

After Li Huilan went down, she was alone in the outer office. The four o'clock light came through the window, filtered by the white film on the glass, landing on the desk—half the plaque bright, half in shadow.

She poured herself half a cup of water, drank it, and drank the last cold mouthful at the bottom too.

She opened her notebook to today's page. The header as always: December 20th, 3:00 p.m. Below she wrote: one bronze plaque, delivered by Song Qiming, an item from Hengzheng's first floor, signed the registration form. She read it over, then added one line: no one knows who wiped the bright spot.

The inner door opened.

Lu Jibai came out, walked over, and stood by her desk. His sleeve was rolled once; his hands were empty. He studied the plaque for a while—the front, the edges, the bright spot. Then he reached out, turned it over, examined the two holes on the back, and turned it back face-up.

His finger paused at the edge of the plaque, not touching the bright spot.

"Put it away properly," he said.

"Okay."

He went back into the inner room and shut the door. The strip of light beneath it was a little narrower than before.

She pulled open the drawer and found a washed piece of white cloth. It had been an old pillowcase, taken apart and washed soft, kept in the drawer for wiping things. She spread the cloth on the desk, set the plaque on it, bright side up, and folded the four corners toward the middle.

At the last fold, she hesitated, then tucked it in, leaving a small opening.

She stood, pushed aside the empty case jackets on the top shelf of the steel cabinet to make room. The shelf's old iron smell pressed down. Inside sat three boxes of ink paste, a stack of empty envelopes, two unopened rolls of tape.

The plaque went in, leaning against the cabinet wall.

Downstairs, He Xiufen shouted something over the stove; the sound came up through the floorboards and steam, already scattered. She pushed the cabinet door halfway shut, reached in, and brushed a finger over the spot where the cloth opening exposed it.

Cold.

She tucked the cloth corner back in, closed the door, and latched it.