Chapter 505: The Declaration Form

At eight forty, he was standing below her building.

She pushed the window open a crack to look, then turned back for her bag. The household register in the drawer was tucked under the insurance policy. She tugged at the drawer, then slid it shut—she'd already asked at the office window. She only needed her ID card.

She checked both outer pockets, the inner pocket, and the hidden compartment before heading downstairs. The two lightbulbs in the stairwell were ones he'd replaced himself on the morning of New Year's Day—glaringly bright.

"Got everything?" he asked.

"Everything." She pulled out the ID cards and flashed them at him—two, stacked together, edges aligned. "Two."

"Let's go."

He only spoke after the car had passed two intersections: "The window opens at nine."

"I know."

"If we're early, we wait outside."

"Then we wait."

Eight fifty. Chengnan District Civil Affairs Bureau, Marriage Registration Office. The roll-up door was halfway down. Someone inside was mopping, and the mop slid out from under the door to wring water onto the steps. Three or four couples were already waiting, all leaning against the wall, no one talking. The couple by the door was older—the wife cradled a red cloth bundle in both hands while the husband smoothed down her collar, then smoothed it down again.

Nine o'clock. The roll-up door went up.

Inside: white walls, a row of windows along one side, three of them open. The wall to the left was painted a block of red, red cloth stretched flat—that was where photos were taken. A woman came out from the back room and set a stack of paper on the long table against the wall. "Anyone here to register, take a form. Fill it out, then get a number."

Two pens sat on the table, each tethered to a table leg by a plastic cord, the cord ends worn shiny.

She took one. He took one. Marriage Registration Application Declaration. The fields ran down the page: name, sex, date of birth, ID number, nationality, marital status. Below were printed statements of declaration, and the final line was blank, waiting for a signature and a date.

She filled hers out fast, without pausing once. He filled his out slowly, the pen stopping and starting across the paper. At the "marital status" field, he looked up at the window. "Should this be filled in as 'unmarried'?"

"First-time registrants fill in 'unmarried,'" the woman said. "Sign on the signature line. Date is today."

He read the entire form from top to bottom, only putting pen to paper when he reached the last line. His characters were lean, the horizontal strokes drawn flat, the finishing strokes flicked back. She'd seen that handwriting on service receipts, in the seal registry, on the power of attorney under the principal's name—and now it was going down on this paper, under the printed heading Marriage Registration Application Declaration.

He wrote the date slower than everything else. After "March," the pen lifted, then wrote "21st."

She lowered her head and signed her own form, the date going down after. Her signature was broader than his, each stroke sprawling outward.

"Bring both over and take a number," the woman said.

Number seventeen. The young couple ahead of them was sitting down, the girl spinning a plastic bag in her hand. After three spins, the boy pressed his hand down on the bag to make her stop. The elderly couple by the door sat in the same row. The old woman set the red cloth bundle on her knee and unwrapped it layer by layer: inside were a folded old photograph, two ID cards, and a sheet of paper covered in writing, its edges frayed.

The old woman held up the old photo and asked if it would work. The clerk leaned halfway out of the window to look, then said the photo had to be taken on the spot. Both of them, no exceptions. The old woman wrapped the photo back in the red cloth and said fine, they'd take it. Take it, then.

"Replacing a lost certificate?" she asked quietly.

"Lost it," the old woman said. "Been over thirty years. Lost it."

Number seventeen, Window No. 3. The clerk flipped both ID cards over and back, checking names and numbers against the screen, then raised her eyes to give each of them a once-over before checking the photos again. Done, she spread out the two declarations and read the first name: "Shen Zhixia."

"Here." She blinked at herself after saying it. The clerk's eyebrows lifted slightly, then she read: "Lu Jibai."

"Here," he said.

The young couple behind them snickered. The clerk didn't. Her finger tapped the printed lines. "Read these over yourself. If you have a spouse, if you're direct blood relatives or collateral blood relatives within three generations, if you're under legal marriage age—any one of those and you can't register. If you have a serious illness, you must disclose it to the other party before registering. Any of the above?"

"No," she said.

"No," he said.

"Both here of your own free will?"

"Free will." Their words collided.

The clerk checked the signatures and dates on both declarations one by one, then stamped twice in two places with a seal. The sound was muffled.

"Go inside for the photo. Red background, two prints. Bring the photos back when you're done."

The photo room was behind the red wall. A sheet of red cloth hung from the wall to the floor; two chairs sat in front of it, a fist's width apart. The photographer was a young girl who hurried over and pulled the chairs two inches closer together. "Sit up straight. Shoulders in toward the middle a bit."

He sat upright, hands on his knees. When she sat down, her elbow bumped his.

"The one on the left, tilt your head this way a little." The girl said, "Don't smile too big, either of you. Look at the lens."

The light flashed once, then again. The girl studied the machine's screen, then looked up. "This one's good—you both have your eyes open. Let's take one more as a backup."

The photos came out fast. Four, cut and slipped into a small white paper envelope, the flap folded shut.

The clerk pressed the photos onto the two certificates, held them down a moment, then fed them through the machine for printing. When the certificates came out the other end, they were still warm. She laid them flat on the counter to cool, and only touched them after they'd been sitting a while.

"Step into the inner room and stand for the oath," the clerk said, rising. "It's quick—just a few lines. You don't have to stand if you don't want to."

"We'll stand," she said.

The ceremony room was a separate space at the back of the hall—a red dais, a national emblem mounted on the wall behind it, a plastic plant on either side, dust on their leaves. The clerk took her place behind the dais, a paper in hand, and read unhurriedly: "Having reviewed your application, you meet the requirements for marriage registration. This office hereby registers your marriage and issues this certificate. From today forward, you are husband and wife. Whatever lies ahead, you will face together, through discussion."

There were only the two of them before the dais, plus the old couple standing in the doorway watching. The old woman's hand rested on the doorframe.

The clerk separated the two certificates and laid them on the dais. "Take them."

She received hers with both hands, and only after taking it did she realize there was one more. When she looked over, he'd already taken his—with one hand, his knuckle braced against the cover, the old scar beside that knuckle.

"Congratulations," the clerk said.

The old woman at the door nodded, three times in a row. "Good. Good."

Out of the hall, down the steps. Sunlight lay on the steps, but the wind was still cold. She held the two red booklets side by side and compared them, kept the one with a faint crease at the corner for herself, and handed the other to him.

He didn't put it in his bag. He opened his coat and slipped it into the inside pocket on the right, all the way in, into the deepest compartment.

"Don't fold it," she said.

"It won't fold."

Crossing the street, he took her hand and pulled it into his coat pocket, and once it was in there, he didn't let go.

"It's signed," he said.

"It's signed."

They reached the other side without saying anything more. She thought of the pen tethered to the table leg that morning, the lift of the pen after "March."

Eleven o'clock, back at Zhongshan Road. The two plaques hung side by side downstairs, one darker, one newer, two fingers' width apart. Upstairs in the outer office, his desk and hers sat half a foot apart, lit by the late morning sun, their surfaces gleaming.

She set her bag down, sat for a while, got up to pour water, then sat back down. He pulled a form from his drawer, flipped through two pages, and slid it to the edge of her desk. "The annual report format. Some of the column headers don't match up. We need to ask the business supervisory unit first."

"I'll call this afternoon."

"Write down what they say. On paper, not in your head."

"I'll write it down."

Noon, downstairs.

The exhaust fan hummed. The sound of scallions hitting the wok rose through the floor. He Xiufen stood at the stove, her apron damp in a patch. She carried out a bowl, walked to the table by the door, set it down—and saw the two red booklets on the edge of the table.

She wiped her hands twice on her apron and picked one up, opened it, then picked up the other.

"So…" she held the certificate out at arm's length. "Neither of you is smiling."

"The photographer said not to smile too big," she said.

"Not too big." He Xiufen seemed to repeat it to herself, set the certificate back on the table, and wiped a bit of dust off the cover. "Eat your noodles."

She turned back to the stove, pulled out the bowl of poached eggs, and dropped one into each noodle bowl—one side fried crisp.

Li Huilan came downstairs with a pen still in her hand. She stopped when she saw the two booklets on the table, walked over, opened one, read it, closed it, and set it back down, straightening it.

"They really didn't ask for the household register?"

"Really didn't," she said. "They just looked at the IDs and asked a few questions."

"Then I'll strike out that note in my notebook," Li Huilan said. "Next time someone asks, I'll say it's not needed."

He Xiufen leaned halfway out from the stove. "Opening at the usual time tomorrow?"

"Usual time."

"Put those red booklets somewhere safe," He Xiufen said. "Don't keep them with the case files. Every time one of them turns up while I'm sorting materials, my heart jumps. From now on—buying a house, getting a loan, the kid's schooling—those two booklets have to come out."

"In my bag."

The noodles arrived, and the four of them sat down. He Xiufen was halfway through her bowl when she remembered to ask: "Does Zhi'an know?"

"Yes."

"Tell him to come by tonight for a bowl," He Xiufen said. "This one, he has to eat."

Twelve fifty, upstairs.

She put her bag on the corner of the desk, pulled the booklet out of it, and opened it in front of her. The booklet used her father's method of notation: date at the top of each page, then the time, then entries listed one by one—dates in Chinese characters, times in numerals.

She turned to a fresh page, and the pen nib searched for its place on the paper.

"March 21, nine o'clock."

She wrote it, and the pen stopped there.

In the seventh volume of her father's records, there was a page with the same date at its head. She'd read that page twice, and never copied a single character of it into her own notebook.

Across from her, he nudged the pen holder aside, pulled out a pen, then put it back. Outside, someone was calling for scrap collection beneath the window—two calls, then the cart dragged off and faded.

The pen nib left a small black dot on the paper. She didn't write any more.