The English translation below is the author's own. Switch to 中文 above for the original.
In September of the second year of Shunzhi, autumn in Huzhou did not feel much like autumn.
It had rained the night before. Water still lay in the roof gutters, and from the eaves a drop fell, then another, into the bluestone courtyard. Damp had turned the whitewashed walls gray. One panel of the lattice window stood half open, and the wind off the Zha River came curling in: first the smell of river mud, then the salty steam of beans cooking at the soy shop next door, and only at the very end, osmanthus.
Shen Zhao lay sprawled over his desk, very sleepy.
Thirteen was an age at which a person could fall asleep anywhere. He could sleep while the teacher lectured on the Analects, sleep when his mother told him to mind the shop, and last year, at Grandmother's birthday feast, he had even slept through half the monks' wooden-fish chanting from behind a screen. The only times he stayed awake were when there was food, or when Gu Lin called him. Clearly the sages' powers had their limits.
Gu Lin was four years older than he was, seventeen, and tall. He wore a pale moon-white cotton robe that had been washed soft with use. His forehead had been shaved according to the new rule, the remaining hair braided behind him. He had long brows and dark eyes; when he bent his head to write, his lashes lowered as though brushed with diluted ink.
Shen Zhao had always felt that a person like this ought, by rights, to suffer more. Mr. Zhou, for instance, should strike him two extra times with the ruler. Otherwise Heaven was plainly unjust.
Unfortunately, Mr. Zhou was fond of Gu Lin too.
This only made Shen Zhao more indignant, so whenever he had an excuse—or didn't—he crowded over to Gu Lin's side.
"Fourth Brother Gu, the ink's too thick."
Gu Lin added water for him.
"Fourth Brother Gu, my brush split."
Gu Lin pinched the hairs back to a point.
"Fourth Brother Gu, my back hurts."
Without looking up, Gu Lin asked, "What's the excuse this time?"
Shen Zhao collapsed over his desk. "Too much studying."
Gu Lin pushed his forehead away. "If you were truly studying, Mr. Zhou would set off firecrackers tonight."
Normally Shen Zhao would have argued. But the Chinese tallow tree outside the window was far too pretty. Half its leaves were red, half green. When the wind came, a few rocked back and forth like little red fish suspended in midair. He watched until the fish swam into the inkstone, into the black pool of ink, and suddenly Mr. Zhou's face burst up out of it.
"Shen Zhao."
"Ah!" Shen Zhao jerked upright, banged his knee, and made the ink on his desk shiver.
The entire schoolroom went silent.
Mr. Zhou stood before him, ruler in hand. "The poem I told you to review yesterday."
Shen Zhao stammered. "I—I reviewed it."
"How far?"
Shen Zhao thought. "Very... very far."
Gu Lin turned his face toward the window. One shoulder twitched.
Shen Zhao knew he was laughing.
"Mountain Journey," said Mr. Zhou.
Shen Zhao exhaled in relief. He knew this one. "Far up the cold mountain, a stone path slants; where white clouds rise, there are homes."
"And then?"
Shen Zhao froze.
Gu Lin lowered his head to dip his brush. His lips moved soundlessly.
—Stop the carriage.
Shen Zhao immediately cried, "I stop my carriage, loving the maple woods at dusk!"
"Next line?"
—Frost leaves.
"Frost leaves, frost leaves..."
Out of the corner of his eye he caught the half-red tallow leaves beyond the window, and enlightenment descended upon him.
"Frost-bitten leaves are redder than February flowers!"
His voice shook the roof tiles. A sparrow outside flapped away in alarm. Mr. Zhou looked at him, then at Gu Lin.
"Gu Lin."
"Yes, sir."
"What did you just say?"
"I said nothing."
"Then why was your mouth moving?"
Gu Lin was silent for a moment. "I was reciting my own composition."
Mr. Zhou gave a cold laugh. "Your composition has reached the frost leaves too?"
Gu Lin said nothing.
Shen Zhao nearly hurt his stomach trying not to laugh.
The ruler cracked against the desk. "One recites for another, the other leans on him to recite. A remarkably well-matched pair."
"Sir," Shen Zhao protested at once, "I wasn't leaning on him."
"No," said Mr. Zhou. "You were leaning on the window to sleep."
The whole schoolroom finally burst out laughing. Mr. Zhou had no answer for him. He only pointed at his seat. "Sit. Fall asleep again and you can stand outside."
Shen Zhao sat down cheerfully. Gu Lin went on writing. Under the desk, Shen Zhao reached over and tugged at his sleeve. Gu Lin ignored him. He tugged again. Still nothing. On the third try, Gu Lin finally murmured, "What?"
Shen Zhao produced a piece of osmanthus rice cake from his sleeve. He had filched it from the kitchen that morning. It had once been perfectly square; after spending the whole morning tucked in his sleeve, it was now somewhat flattened. He broke it in half and pressed the larger piece into Gu Lin's palm.
Gu Lin looked at it. "A bribe?"
"Tuition for my teacher."
"I'm not your teacher."
"Then give it back."
Gu Lin did not. He tucked it into his sleeve.
Shen Zhao grinned. Gu Lin could do nothing with him. When Mr. Zhou turned his back, Gu Lin reached over and lightly pinched the nape of his neck. "Sit properly."
Shen Zhao obediently sat properly.
For a full quarter of an hour.
Outside, the wind stirred the tallow tree. At the front of the room Mr. Zhou was explaining that "the gentleman is not a vessel." At the back, Shen Zhao wondered whether the cake in Gu Lin's sleeve would stick to his clothes.
At the time, he did not yet know that before something happens, it always likes to dress itself up as an ordinary day.
So that no one has the slightest chance to prepare.
Someone suddenly came running outside the courtyard. Shoes slapped across the stone paving; there was a stir at the front gate, then voices beneath the covered walk. Mr. Zhou frowned. A man stepped through the door.
Shen Zhao knew him. Gu Fu, steward of the Gu household.
Gu Fu usually wore a blue cloth gown and smiled before anyone else had a chance to. Today his hem was spattered with mud, his cap sat crooked, and sweat covered his brow. He bowed to Mr. Zhou, but straightened halfway through it. "Sir, Fourth Young Master must come home."
"What has happened?"
Gu Fu's lips moved. "Something at home."
Two men in yamen uniforms stood outside the door.
Gu Lin's brush stopped. A bead of ink fell beside the character shen—caution—on his paper. He asked no questions. He simply closed the books on his desk, one by one.
Mr. Zhou suddenly said, "No need to pack the books."
Gu Lin looked up.
Teacher and student looked at one another.
"Come back tomorrow."
Gu Lin was quiet for a moment, then smiled. "Yes, sir."
Shen Zhao relaxed too.
If he was coming back tomorrow, then naturally nothing very serious could have happened today.
At the doorway Gu Lin suddenly turned back. Shen Zhao brightened, but Gu Lin only picked up an old purple-hair brush from his desk. As he passed Shen Zhao he said quietly, "Don't go wandering about these next few days."
"Will you come tomorrow?" Shen Zhao asked.
"I will."
"Then remember to bring my picture book. I left it at your house."
"All right."
Gu Fu urged him on from the doorway. Gu Lin turned. His blue cloth shoes crossed the wooden threshold, and he went out through the courtyard gate.
Shen Zhao leaned at the window to watch. The last corner of moon-white cloth quickly vanished.
He still thought it was nothing. Adults, he decided, simply loved making a fuss. What family didn't have some business of its own?
By the time school let out in the late afternoon, he knew the business was probably larger than he had imagined.
Because he was no longer allowed out of his own house either.
The Shen family lived in the west of the city, shop in front and residence behind, selling paper and ink. Their two storefronts faced the market canal, with stone steps descending to a landing. On ordinary days, Shen Zhao would come home from school and squat by the water for half an hour, watching boatmen swear with bamboo poles in their hands before cutting through the shop to the house.
Today he had barely stepped through the shop door when his father said, "Close up."
Xu Liu, one of the shopmen, pulled the two heavy wooden doors shut, dropped the bolts, and set the crossbar along the bottom as well.
Shen Zhao stood there baffled. "Why are we closing so early?"
No one answered.
His father, Shen Tingbi, came out from behind the counter. He wore a worn brown padded jacket, with a dried blot of ink on the right sleeve. His mother came from the rear courtyard gripping a ring of keys.
"A-Zhao," his father said, "from today on, you are not to go out."
Shen Zhao was delighted for an instant, then remembered he would not see Fourth Brother Gu. Torn between pleasure and dismay, he asked, "Until when?"
"Until I say you may."
"What about school tomorrow?"
"You're not going."
The smile left Shen Zhao's face.
"Why?"
"It's dangerous outside."
"When is it ever not dangerous outside?"
His father looked up.
Shen Zhao immediately put on his most obedient expression. This was one of his gifts: widen the eyes a little, droop the brows a little, soften the voice a little, and somehow even his spine could shrink two inches.
"Father..."
"It won't work," Shen Tingbi said.
"I haven't even said anything yet."
"Nothing good ever follows when you call me Father like that."
Shen Zhao had no choice but to ask directly. "What happened to Fourth Brother Gu's family?"
The room went still.
"From now on," his father said, "mention the Gu family less."
"Why?"
"It has nothing to do with you."
"How can it have nothing to do with me? Fourth Brother Gu—"
"Go to your room."
In thirteen years Shen Zhao had caused no shortage of trouble. At eight he fell into the river. At nine he smashed the porcelain vase from Grandmother's altar. At ten he dyed the neighbor's rooster blue. At twelve he pasted a notice to Mr. Zhou's door reading THIS PREMISES CONTAINS A DANGEROUS RULER. Even at his angriest, his father had never confined him for more than half a day, and when his mother said he was not allowed out, she usually forgot by dinner.
Today was different.
The little door to the woodshed was locked. The ladder by the back wall had been taken away. Even the small window in Shen Zhao's room that opened onto the alley had been barred from outside by A-Wu with a wooden pin.
There were things in his own family that he did not know?
That only made him more curious.
The first time Shen Zhao tried to climb the wall, he fell into half a vat of bean paste in the neighboring sauce yard.
The proprietor stared at the black, sticky boy. Shen Zhao stared back. They regarded one another for a moment before the man finally bellowed, "Whose child is this? Come collect him—"
The second time Shen Zhao was wiser. He left the wall alone and hid instead in the shop's delivery cart. But Xu Liu had pushed the cart less than twenty paces before stopping.
"Young Master, your trouser leg is sticking out."
One foot withdrew farther into the cart.
After a stalemate, Shen Zhao had no choice but to crawl out by himself.
"Sixth Brother, have mercy."
"Master gave me two qian to keep an eye on you."
"Then I'll give you three."
Xu Liu considered this seriously. "Then I can take your three qian and still deliver you back to Master. That makes five altogether."
Shen Zhao was outraged. "No wonder you'll spend your whole life as a shopman if this is how you do business."
Xu Liu delivered him home.
Only then did Shen Zhao understand that his family truly had no intention of letting him out.
That night he heard his parents talking from behind a screen.
"We still have to get the travel pass."
"The Gu matter hasn't been settled yet."
"That's exactly why we should leave early."
"What about the guarantor's bond?"
"I'll ask Fifth Great-Uncle."
His mother was silent for a while. "We don't have enough silver."
"That five taels for the Gu family isn't even included yet?"
"That was only the deposit. Guarantors, middlemen, yamen clerks—every stop takes its share. We're close to twenty taels already."
His mother lowered her voice. "Nearly twenty taels. It wouldn't be a small sum even in peaceful years, and now the price of rice changes by the day. Keep pouring money into this and there'll be no ready silver left in the shop."
Shen Zhao heard the sound of a trunk opening. The next day, the silver hairpin from his mother's dowry was gone.
He later learned, from more eavesdropping, that she had pawned it. Part of the money went to a middleman to keep things moving, and part to finding someone willing to stand guarantor.
Fifth Great-Uncle agreed readily at first. When he heard that the Shen family had dealings with the Gus, he returned the bond the very next day.
His mother sighed. "Human favor spends faster than silver."
Shen Zhao did not understand.
He only knew the hairpin was gone.
A few days later, he waited until one of the shopmen went out with a paper delivery, changed into an unremarkable brown short jacket, slipped into the crowd in the street, and went to Mr. Zhou's school.
Mr. Zhou frowned as soon as he saw him. "Didn't your father excuse you from lessons?"
"I'm better now."
"Better from what?"
"I was sick yesterday."
"And today?"
"Today I'm better."
Mr. Zhou glared at him. Shen Zhao sidled closer. "Where's Fourth Brother Gu?"
Mr. Zhou did not answer.
Shen Zhao tried again. "What happened to the Gu family?"
"Whatever people are saying outside, hear it and let it pass."
"Some say the Gus hid soldiers from the old regime. Some say Third Uncle Gu kept government travel forms. Some say he took money to get people passes..."
Mr. Zhou's eyelid twitched.
Shen Zhao stopped at once. "That one isn't nonsense?"
"Shen Zhao!"
Shen Zhao immediately softened. "I made it up. Please, sir. Tell me which one is true."
Mr. Zhou was quiet for a while. At last he said, "These days there are things it is safer not to know."
Shen Zhao was unconvinced. "But my family won't even let me out of the house."
Mr. Zhou looked at him, then sighed. "Your father is applying for a travel pass too?"
Shen Zhao nodded.
"Then stay away from the Gu family."
"Why?"
"No reason. It will do you no good."
Shen Zhao was displeased, but could coax nothing more out of him.
On the way home he heard someone mention travel passes at a landing by the canal and stopped to look.
A passenger boat bound east was casting off. A guard stood beside the gangplank checking papers. Suddenly a man of about thirty was dragged from the cabin. His bundle burst open; two worn garments, a medicine jar, and a packet of roasted rice rolled across the deck.
"Sir, I have a pass!" the man cried.
The guard unfolded the paper. "Name?"
"Chen Shou."
"The pass says Zhao Cheng."
"He's my wife's brother. He's ill and can't travel. My mother is very sick in Wujiang, and I only borrowed—"
A slap cut him off.
"A travel pass can be borrowed now?"
The man dropped to his knees. "Only ten days! I only want to see my mother once, then I'll come straight back! Sir, I'm not a criminal!"
The guard struck the bend of his knee with an iron ruler. "Whether you're a criminal is for you to decide?"
The medicine jar rolled off the edge of the deck.
Plop.
It sank into the river.
Shen Zhao stood behind the crowd for a long time without moving.
A fish seller beside him glanced over. "Young Master, finished watching the excitement?"
"He has a travel pass," Shen Zhao said.
"Not his."
"But he's only going to see his mother."
The fish seller shook his head. "The paper doesn't say that."
Shen Zhao could not make sense of it. The rules of the world were very strange.
What a person said did not count. What was written on paper did.
But what if the paper was wrong?
The Shen family submitted a second petition.
His father found another guarantor and asked Third Uncle Gu to handle the matter. Plenty had already been spent on guarantors, middlemen, and yamen runners; this time another five taels went to the Gu family as a deposit. They were told that in a few days the travel pass would be ready.
What came instead was an audit.
A county clerk arrived at the shop with constables and went through the account books volume by volume. He asked why the Gu family had taken several reams of white paper on the nineteenth day of the sixth month, several more on the second day of the seventh, and why five taels of silver appeared nowhere as payment for goods.
His father hurried to explain. "That was a deposit given to Third Gu to ask after the travel document. The matter didn't go through in the end, and the silver was never returned."
The clerk smiled without warmth. "You admit it readily enough."
That same day the account books were taken away and seals pasted across the paper shop.
Shen Zhao stood inside and watched old customers who had bought paper there for years peer in past the seals. Some asked, "What happened to Shopkeeper Shen?" Others turned around and went somewhere else.
His father said nothing. He moved several chests of fine paper from the rear courtyard and entrusted them to a merchant to sell, along with several cakes of old ink left by Shen Zhao's grandfather.
Shen Zhao knew the wooden case. When he was small, touching it had been enough to earn a scolding. Now his father handed it over with his own hands.
"But the shop is open again. Why sell these?"
His father said, "Opening the doors doesn't make money walk back in by itself."
Shen Zhao did not understand. He looked at the furrow between his father's brows and asked no more.
Two days later, the family of his elder sister Shen Heng's betrothed suddenly sent people over. Since the marriage had already been agreed, they said, perhaps the wedding should be held early, before the disorder outside caused more trouble.
Shen Zhao still did not understand, but he knew his sister was leaving.
"Sister, will you come back?"
She said nothing. Just before the sedan chair departed, she lifted the curtain and pushed a packet of sweets into his arms.
"Be careful with that Fourth Brother Gu of yours."
Shen Zhao stared. "You know too?"
"Fourth Brother Gu this, Fourth Brother Gu that, every day. Even a dead man would have learned his name by now. Listen to me. Stop going to find him."
The curtain fell.
Shen Zhao stood at the mouth of the alley holding the sweets and watched the sedan chair disappear.
They had originally planned for five people to go to Huizhou.
They did not even have the travel pass yet, and already there was one fewer.
Shen Zhao finally found Gu Lin again in a waterside lane to the east.
Gu Lin wore an old dark-blue robe whose sleeves were half an inch too short; plainly it was not his. He had grown thinner. There was a faint bruise over his left cheekbone.
Shen Zhao had spent days storing up a bellyful of things to say. The moment he saw the bruise, he forgot all of them and rushed forward.
"What happened? Who hit you?"
Gu Lin looked around first. "How did you get out?"
"Never mind that."
"Go home."
Shen Zhao stared. "What?"
Gu Lin turned to leave.
Shen Zhao chased him and grabbed his sleeve. "Gu Lin."
Gu Lin stopped.
Shen Zhao almost never called him that.
"Are you avoiding me?"
"No."
"You walk away as soon as you see me."
"I have things to do."
"I've been looking for you for so long."
Gu Lin said quietly, "That's why I told you not to look."
Shen Zhao's eyes reddened at once. He thought himself pathetic for it, but could not help it.
"Did your family tell you you're not allowed to see me?"
"No."
"Is my family blaming yours, so you don't want anything to do with me?"
"No."
"Then do you just find me annoying?"
Shen Zhao regretted the question the moment it left his mouth.
Gu Lin finally turned. "No."
That only made Shen Zhao more aggrieved. "Then why?"
"Your family is trying to get a travel pass."
"How do you know?"
"Go home. Don't get involved."
"My mother's hairpin is gone, our shop was sealed for three days, even my sister had to marry early, and you're telling me not to get involved?"
Something changed in Gu Lin's face. "The shop was sealed?"
Shen Zhao stopped.
So Gu Lin had not known either.
"What exactly happened in your family? They say your third uncle was issuing passes privately. Is that true?"
Gu Lin was silent for a moment. "Some of it."
"What does 'some of it' mean?"
"June was chaos. The old officials left, the new ones came. For a while no one knew who was keeping the registers, seals, or case papers. Third Uncle had handled travel documents for the yamen before. Some old forms and registers passed through his hands. People were desperate to leave and couldn't wait for household checks and guarantors."
"So your uncle just gave them passes?"
"At first he was helping people he knew. Then someone realized there was money in it."
"And you?"
Gu Lin did not answer.
Shen Zhao suddenly remembered his father's five taels.
"The five taels my father gave your family—was that for the pass?"
"Yes."
"Did he get one?"
"No."
Shen Zhao exhaled.
Gu Lin continued, "But the money was handed over, and his name was written down."
Shen Zhao's heart sank again.
"Written where?"
Gu Lin looked at him. "Go home."
Shen Zhao tightened his grip. "You know there's some kind of book."
"Shen Zhao."
"What is it?"
"...A private ledger."
"Where?"
Gu Lin peeled his fingers from his sleeve one by one. "Stop asking. Once you know, do you think your family will be any safer?"
Shen Zhao stood there, suddenly speechless.
He wanted to ask again, but Gu Lin had already turned and walked away.
A few days later, Shen Zhao went to Linhu Gate anyway.
This time he carried neither the shop's account paper nor a letter from Mr. Zhou. He changed into a plain brown short jacket, tucked a few paper samples under his arm, and pretended to be a delivery boy from a paper shop. He sat at a tea stall for a quarter of an hour listening to people talk, made sure the checkpoint had not added any sudden inspections, then slipped in among a group of porters.
At that very moment, however, a black-canopied boat carrying paper was stopped.
The boat had declared five passengers. The guards counted six.
Everyone looked at Shen Zhao.
A clerk asked, "Which paper shop are you from?"
"Zhou's."
"Owner's name?"
"Zhou Dechang."
That much was true.
"Whose paper is this?"
Shen Zhao's heart dropped. He had forgotten that paper, too, had a look of its own.
The clerk held a sample to the light, then rubbed the corner between his fingers. "This bamboo pulp, this screen grain—looks like Shen paper. Since when does Zhou's buy from them?"
Shen Zhao knew the act would not hold, but he still refused to give his own name. "A customer brought it."
"Delivering it to whom?"
Shen Zhao pointed at random and happened to point at the boatman.
The boatman's face went green.
The clerk arched a brow. "Perhaps the two of you should get your story straight first."
Shen Zhao did not struggle and did not say another word. He knew that the more he said, the worse it would become. He lowered his head and pretended to be frightened while the constables took him into a small side room beside the water gate.
He had assumed the worst that could happen was a beating. Then he heard someone outside say that the county had given orders: suspicious youths connected to the Gu case were to be sent in as well.
"What kind?"
"Seventeen or eighteen, scholar-looking. Keep an eye out."
A chill ran down Shen Zhao's back.
This had become much more than the matter of a beating.
Gu Lin arrived at dusk.
He wore a worn dark robe under a rain cape and carried an oil-paper parcel, looking like a young clerk traveling with a merchant boat. At the gate he first presented a paper and said the servant boy from his household had gone missing and he had heard the boy was being held there.
The guard looked at him. "Whose household?"
Gu Lin named a Jiaxing merchant house.
"Your name?"
Gu Lin gave a false one without hesitation.
"What does the boy look like?"
"Twelve or thirteen. Fair face. A small mole behind the left ear. Brown short jacket."
A little later someone brought Shen Zhao out. Gu Lin gave him only a sidelong glance, cold enough to look as though he truly did not know him.
"Is that him?"
"Yes."
The guard opened the pass. "The pass says thirteen. He told us twelve."
"He's afraid of being sent home and beaten. He always shaves a year off."
The guard looked at Shen Zhao. "Name?"
Shen Zhao lowered his head and played mute.
Under his sleeve, Gu Lin tapped twice.
It was the old signal they had used to cheat in school.
Don't speak.
Shen Zhao truly did not say another word.
Linhu Gate was a water checkpoint, and it was already close to closing time. Several boats were backed up behind them waiting to be inspected. The guard bent over the pass. It carried a red seal, the paper was genuine, and nothing in the format looked wrong. After a while he decided not to check the underlying case record and waved them on.
"Take him. If he wanders off again, we'll send him to the county for a beating."
Gu Lin bowed. "Thank you."
They had gone only ten or so paces before Shen Zhao dared breathe properly. After another bridge, Gu Lin suddenly caught him by the arm, rapped him on the forehead, and hissed, "Have you lost your mind?"
Shen Zhao clutched his head, deeply aggrieved. "You're hitting me too?"
"What were you doing at the water gate?"
"...Looking for news."
"And what did you learn?"
"That you know how to forge travel passes."
Gu Lin went still.
Shen Zhao had said it idly. Seeing Gu Lin's face, his own smile vanished.
"It really was fake?"
"The seal wasn't fake."
"What does that mean?"
"The paper was real. The seal was real. There was just no case record behind it."
Shen Zhao did not understand.
Gu Lin explained. "Normally, before a pass is issued, they open a record with the applicant's native place, name, age and appearance, destination, and reason for travel. Then the paper is sealed and released. That one had no record."
Understanding came slowly to Shen Zhao.
"A blank form that already had the seal on it?"
"Yes. I filled it in last night."
Shen Zhao stared at him. "Your family really has things like that."
Gu Lin did not deny it.
Only then did Shen Zhao realize that if he had blurted out the wrong name back there, both of them might have spent the night in the county jail.
"I didn't betray you," he said quietly.
Gu Lin looked at him. "I know."
"I didn't even tell them who I was."
"I know."
Shen Zhao sounded slightly wounded. "They said any seventeen- or eighteen-year-old connected to the Gu case should be sent in. That's when I got scared."
Gu Lin straightened his rumpled collar.
"Being scared is useful. Maybe next time you'll know not to come."
Shen Zhao answered at once, "I wouldn't count on it."
Gu Lin stared at him, speechless, then gave him another rap on the head.
This child was still not entirely grown.
That travel pass saved Shen Zhao that night.
The next day, it began to bite.
The water-gate guard discovered there was no corresponding case record for the pass. Knowing he had been careless the night before and afraid of being blamed for failing to inspect it properly, he reported the matter to the county. The trail led back to the Gu household.
The Gu residence was searched.
Wall cupboards, old book chests, wooden boxes for contracts—even an unused lacquer chest behind the ancestral hall—were pried open. In the end the constables found several unfilled pass forms and a private ledger recording names and payments.
The Shen family's five taels were among them.
In an instant, rumor hardened into evidence.
When Shen Zhao learned what had happened, he did not speak all day.
That sheet of paper had saved him.
It had also pulled everything the Gu family had hidden into the light.
At last he understood why Gu Lin had been avoiding him.
The Shen family's own application for a travel pass was now completely stalled.
Before, the county had only suspected that Shen Tingbi had asked after a pass. Now there was the private ledger, and that was worse. Written there in plain characters:
Second day of the seventh month. Shen Tingbi. Five taels of silver.
After it there was no mark saying issued.
Nor any mark saying not issued.
Only a name, unmistakable, and five taels of silver.
His father came back from the county office with a copied extract. Shen Zhao asked, "Doesn't this prove we never got one?"
"How does it prove that?"
"It doesn't say issued."
"It doesn't say not issued either."
Shen Zhao had no answer.
His father went looking for guarantors again. Fifth Great-Uncle, who had once agreed, now refused to open his door. An old student Mr. Zhou approached claimed to be ill. To make up the guarantees they still lacked, his father sold another batch of the paper left in the shop and hurried to the county office overnight to submit another petition.
When he returned, his right leg was badly swollen.
Shen Zhao helped remove his shoe and saw a broad purple bruise around the ankle. His chest tightened.
"Who kicked you?"
"No one."
"Then the county-office steps must have grown feet."
His father opened his mouth to scold him. Seeing Shen Zhao's lowered head, he let it go.
Grandmother fell ill during those same days. When constables came to search the house, they struck the offering table. The old woman was badly frightened and developed a fever that night. The physician said she was too old to travel far.
They had once planned for five people to go to Huizhou.
His sister was already married. Grandmother could not go. His mother had to stay and care for her. His father's injured leg had not healed.
By the middle of the tenth month of the second Shunzhi year, Shen Zhao's was the only name still easy to put on the petition.
His father nevertheless refused to stop. Every few days he went back to the county office.
At last Shen Zhao could bear it no longer. "Father, what if we stop trying now?"
Shen Tingbi said, "We've come this far."
"How far?"
"The money's spent. The favors have been begged. We've suffered what there was to suffer. If we stop now, what was all of that for?"
Shen Zhao looked at his father.
What was it for?
He did not know. But from the look of things, his father was determined to send him away no matter what. So he stopped asking.
And then they waited two years.
In the third year of Shunzhi, rebels rose in Xiaofeng, and for a time Huzhou tightened like a fist again. In the fourth year, trouble flared around Suzhou and Songjiang; checkpoints along the Taihu routes grew stricter one after another. The Shen petition went up, then came back down. Guarantors changed. Case files changed hands. What counted as acceptable one day might not count the next.
By autumn of the fourth Shunzhi year, Shen Zhao was fifteen.
It occurred to him suddenly that he had not heard a word of Gu Lin in two years.
Gu Lin had not appeared again.
Shen Zhao had stopped looking.
Until one rainy night, when the lattice window sounded twice.
He threw on a robe and pushed it open. A tall, thin figure stood outside in the rain, a dark short cloak soaked over one shoulder. His face was paler than the night. Lightning flashed, and for an instant he looked like a ghost.
Shen Zhao flinched. "You're still alive."
Gu Lin said, "I don't like the sound of that."
Two years had passed. Gu Lin had stretched taller again, more than half a head above Shen Zhao. His features were the same, only steadier around the eyes.
Shen Zhao's own eyes had already lit up, but he forced his expression flat. "What are you doing here?"
"Get dressed."
"Where are we going?"
"To get your travel pass."
Shen Zhao did not move.
"You still dare say travel pass to me."
Gu Lin looked at him.
Shen Zhao muttered, "If you hadn't stolen that form for Linhu Gate, your family wouldn't have—"
"If I hadn't, how was I supposed to get you out?"
"Then why didn't you tell me?"
"What good would telling you do?"
"At least—"
Shen Zhao stopped.
At least what? Let him feel guilty? Let him confess?
Gu Lin plainly knew that too.
"That's why I didn't tell you."
Shen Zhao clenched his teeth. "You're always like this."
"Like what?"
"Hiding things from me. Deciding for me what I'm allowed to know and what I'm not."
Gu Lin was silent for a moment. "Tonight I'll let you know."
"What?"
"They're going to burn the private ledger."
Shen Zhao went still.
Gu Lin continued, "My uncle and the clan have already agreed. Once the ledger is gone, they can say the blank passes were stolen by servants. Who paid money, and what they paid it for—there'll be nothing left to check against."
"What about my father's five taels?"
"That will never be clear either."
"So you're taking the ledger out?"
"Yes."
Shen Zhao looked at him. "What happens to your family?"
Gu Lin did not answer.
And suddenly Shen Zhao understood.
The Gu family meant to lay everything at one person's feet and preserve the rest. If Gu Lin took the ledger out, he would not merely be proving that the Shen family was innocent. He would expose what his own family had truly done.
"Who are they going to sacrifice?"
Gu Lin said nothing.
Shen Zhao stared at him.
At last Gu Lin said, "Someone has to explain the pass from Linhu Gate."
"But you only took it to save me—"
Gu Lin clapped a hand over his mouth.
"Shh."
Shen Zhao's eyes widened.
Gu Lin lowered his voice. "From today on, you never say that to anyone."
Shen Zhao pulled his hand away. "Why?"
"That pass had false names on it. If they find out the person I took out was you, the Shen family goes straight back into the case."
Shen Zhao stopped speaking.
Gu Lin looked at him. "All the things your father has already suffered—do you want them to be for nothing?"
The words struck home at once.
The silver hairpin. The shop seals. His sister's red wedding shoes. Grandmother's hand too weak to hold a teacup. His father's swollen ankle.
All of them came back at once.
Shen Zhao stood there, and tears suddenly fell.
"But what happens to you?"
Gu Lin said, "I chose this."
"I was the one who dragged you into it."
"The first pass was for you. This ledger isn't."
"Then what's it for?"
Gu Lin thought for a moment. "So they can't write down things that never happened as if they did, and burn away the things that did happen as if they never did."
Shen Zhao's voice was thick with tears. "You make it sound very reasonable."
"It is reasonable."
"I don't believe you."
"Then don't believe me yet."
Gu Lin reached out and wiped at the wet tracks all over Shen Zhao's face.
"Think about it slowly, later."
They entered the Gu residence through the back lane.
Shen Zhao had been there many times before. In the old days lanterns hung beneath the covered walk, and on autumn nights the courtyard smelled of osmanthus. Now every lantern had been taken down. Rain ran from the roof tiles. Several lattice doors still bore torn halves of official seals.
Gu Lin led him around to a side study. The lock had already been forced. On the desk lay two thin account books, three blank travel-pass forms, and an old book of seal impressions.
Gu Lin opened one of the ledgers and pointed.
Shen Tingbi.
Five taels of silver.
After it, one small character:
Not issued.
Shen Zhao stared for a long time.
"This proves it?"
"No."
Shen Zhao looked up.
"It only proves that my uncle recorded the payment himself. If they take this and compare it with the county files, and there is no issued pass under your father's name, then they can prove the money was taken and no pass was given."
"Then why didn't anyone check before?"
"Because this wasn't the book they were shown."
Shen Zhao raised his head.
Gu Lin said, "Someone hid this one and produced another ledger for the accounting."
"Who?"
"I don't know."
Shen Zhao did not understand, so Gu Lin explained patiently.
There was not one villain inside this affair. It was not even one wicked act. It was layer upon layer of people. Some wanted to save someone. Some wanted to make money. Some wanted to hide disgrace. Some were only afraid disaster would fall on them.
In the end, all of them together had made the thing that now existed.
"You're going to hand this over?"
"Yes."
"And after that?"
"Your family's case may have a chance to be cleared."
"I'm asking about you."
Gu Lin did not answer.
Shen Zhao's voice trembled. "What will happen to you?"
Gu Lin lowered his head and wrapped the ledger. "Third Uncle admits only that he failed to keep the forms secure. They say I took all the blank passes."
Shen Zhao stared. "Even the ones you didn't take?"
"Yes."
"And you'll admit that?"
Gu Lin tightened the knot around the bundle. "The one from Linhu Gate really was mine."
Shen Zhao stared at him. "So they may as well put all of them on you?"
Gu Lin did not answer. He only said, "This ledger cannot be burned."
Something tightened painfully in Shen Zhao's chest.
Gu Lin gave the private ledger to an old student of Mr. Zhou's. Following the five-tael entry, the county rechecked Shen Tingbi's file and finally established that the money had indeed been taken, but no corresponding travel pass had ever been issued. Most of the suspicion hanging over the Shen family fell away.
But now the Gu family's affairs could no longer be covered up.
The Gu family admitted only that Third Uncle Gu, while handling government pass forms, had failed to keep them secure. Everything else was placed on Gu Lin: the blank forms, they said, had been stolen by him; the false-name pass used at Linhu Gate had been filled in by him; the private ledger had been stolen and altered after it left the family's hands. Gu Lin was beaten and then handed over to the county to await judgment.
When Gu Fu secretly brought word, Shen Zhao asked, "Not one person in his family spoke for him?"
Gu Fu shook his head.
Shen Zhao wanted to laugh and cry at once.
Nineteen years old. On ordinary days he was too young to meddle in family affairs and had to stand while his elders spoke. Now, suddenly, he was extraordinarily capable: capable of stealing government passes, altering ledgers, and committing a crime large enough for an entire household.
When adults needed a child to be small, he was small.
When they needed him grown, he grew up overnight.
Half a month later, the Shen family's travel pass was approved.
When his father brought it home, no one in the house spoke.
The paper was genuine. The vermilion seal was genuine. A case record had been opened. This time every part of it was real.
Shen Zhao took it.
His own name was written there.
Shen Zhao. Fifteen. Native of Wucheng County. Traveling to Huizhou to join relatives.
Below it was another traveler.
Gu Lin.
Nineteen.
Shen Zhao stared. "Why is his name here?"
His father said, "Before his trouble began, he asked someone among the yamen clerks to add his name to your joint petition and submitted another guarantor's bond. After the Gu case broke, the clerk never struck his name out."
"He knew?"
"Perhaps."
"He meant to go with me?"
No one answered.
By then Gu Lin had already been taken to the county jail.
Shen Zhao ran his fingers over the two names on the paper. Then suddenly he asked, "Mother?"
"She's not going."
"Father?"
"When my leg is better, we'll see."
"Grandmother?"
No one answered.
The family had spent two years chasing this piece of paper. His mother had lost the silver hairpin from her dowry. The shop had lost chests of stock and cakes of ink inherited from his grandfather. His sister had married early. Grandmother had fallen ill. His father had injured his leg. Gu Lin had taken a blank pass to save him, and that pass had dragged the Gu family's hidden business into the light, until Gu Lin himself was pushed forward to bear the blame.
Now the paper had finally arrived.
Clean.
Immaculate.
Only two names written on it.
And one of them might already be dead.
Shen Zhao suddenly thought the paper was very good at eating people.
First it ate silver. Then possessions. Then people.
And after it had eaten all the way to this point, it still made people feel that since so much had already been fed to it, they had better keep it, or all the rest would have been for nothing.
For what?
Shen Zhao still did not know.
November was approaching.
Only a few leaves remained on the Chinese tallow trees.
The Shen shop had reopened. His father could walk with a cane. Grandmother sometimes no longer recognized people. His mother still brewed medicine every day. His father said that the day after tomorrow Shen Zhao would leave with a merchant caravan.
"Alone?" Shen Zhao asked.
"There'll be people to look after you."
"What about Gu Lin?"
His father did not answer.
"His name is on the pass."
"You can leave first."
"Then what?"
"Once you're in Huizhou, we'll think of something."
Shen Zhao looked at him.
"Before, you said first get the travel pass, then we'll see. Later you said first clear the case, then we'll see. Now it's first get me out of the city, then we'll see."
He asked quietly, "Do all adults say 'we'll see later' whenever they don't know what to do?"
His father closed his eyes wearily. "If you survive, at least what we've done won't have been for—"
"Don't say that." Shen Zhao cut him off.
His father looked at him.
"Mother's hairpin wasn't pawned so that it could become worthwhile because of me. Sister didn't marry early so that it could become worthwhile because of me. Grandmother didn't fall ill so that her illness could be worth something because of me. Your leg isn't worth it either."
He clenched the travel pass in his hand.
"Gu Lin isn't either."
Shen Tingbi stared at him.
Shen Zhao said, "If I leave, that still doesn't turn any of it into something worthwhile."
For a long time the room was silent.
His father closed his eyes again. "If you live, then it is worthwhile."
That night Shen Zhao set the travel pass on the table and looked at it for a long time.
He did not tear it up. He did not burn it. He no longer thought destroying one piece of paper counted as winning.
Paper did not hurt.
People did.
He took a packet of calming medicine from Grandmother's medicine box and swallowed it without much thought. The taste was so bitter that his face twisted.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, he thought:
I'm an idiot.
If I don't want to go, I don't want to go. Why punish my mouth too?
After a while the rafters began to sway. The window swayed. The floor felt as though water moved beneath it. Shen Zhao found the travel pass, tucked it inside his robe, and went out.
The market canal at night was black as old ink in an inkstone. Bridge arches nested one after another. The moon lay broken on the water beneath the oars.
Shen Zhao followed the canal.
The stone paving had become strangely soft.
At an abandoned landing, he saw someone crouching beneath a bridge.
Torn clothes. A face he could not make out.
Shen Zhao stopped.
"Gu Lin?"
The figure jerked up his head.
The next instant he was running toward him.
"Shen Zhao?"
Shen Zhao suddenly began to laugh.
"You're not dead."
Gu Lin had no time to complain that the words were unlucky. He caught Shen Zhao by the arms. "What's wrong with you?"
"Everyone said you were dead."
"What did you take?"
"You lied to me again."
"Shen Zhao!"
Gu Lin caught the medicinal smell on his clothes. His face changed at once. "What did you take?"
"Something bitter."
Gu Lin swore.
It was not language fit for the sages.
Shen Zhao was delighted.
"You escaped?"
"Yes."
"How?"
"Later."
Shen Zhao immediately frowned.
"See? Later again."
Gu Lin looked ready to die of exasperation. Half carrying, half dragging him, he started forward.
Shen Zhao sagged against him. After a little while he remembered something.
"The travel pass."
"Where is it?"
"I have it."
"Give it to me."
Shen Zhao pressed a hand over his chest. "Call me something nice."
"Shen Zhao."
"Not that."
"Ancestor."
"That's not nice either."
Gu Lin gritted his teeth. "A-Zhao. Happy?"
Shen Zhao was satisfied. He pulled out the paper.
Gu Lin unfolded it in the moonlight.
His own name.
Shen Zhao's name.
Both there.
He stared for a long time.
Shen Zhao's thoughts were swimming, but he still remembered to ask, "You knew you'd get out?"
"No."
"Then why?"
Gu Lin folded the paper again.
"There had to be somewhere to go, just in case."
Shen Zhao looked at him.
So Gu Lin did not always have a solution either. Back when he had no idea what would happen next, he had simply put down two names and left open one road that might, perhaps, still be passable.
"Come on."
"Where?"
"Out of the city."
"Now?"
"If we wait, the gate will have the news."
"What about my family?"
Gu Lin paused. "Do you want to go back?"
Shen Zhao thought of Grandmother, no longer strong enough to travel. His mother. His father.
His sister was no longer there either.
A great ache opened inside him.
"They can't leave."
"No."
"There's no going back."
They looked at one another, and somehow both gave a bitter little smile.
Sometimes the world was simply like this.
Two families had spent everything they had just to get through one gate.
And when the gate finally opened, almost no one was left standing before it.
They caught a mule cart leaving the city by night.
The driver refused at first. Gu Lin paid him and showed him the travel pass. Only then, after some hesitation, did the man let them climb aboard.
At Qingyuan Gate, another walled enclosure lay outside the city gate. There were few lights at night. The passage through the gate tower was high and black. A wooden barrier lay across the road.
"Travel papers," the guard called.
Gu Lin handed over the pass and, in the same motion, slipped him a few pieces of silver.
The man narrowed his eyes and tucked them silently into his sleeve. He checked the seal first, then the names.
"Gu Lin?"
"Yes."
"Age?"
"Nineteen."
The lantern lifted, throwing light across his face.
"How did you get those injuries?"
"Fell."
The guard snorted. He clearly did not believe a word of it.
Then the lantern turned to Shen Zhao.
"Shen Zhao. Age?"
Shen Zhao opened his eyes.
There were two lanterns.
There were two guards too.
He seemed to have forgotten the answer and turned to Gu Lin.
Gu Lin leaned close and murmured, "Fifteen."
Shen Zhao obediently said, "Fifteen."
"You don't know your own age?"
"High fever," Gu Lin said. "He's delirious."
The guard asked his native place. Gu Lin answered. His destination. Gu Lin answered. His reason for travel. Gu Lin answered that too. The guard examined the paper twice from end to end.
The vermilion seal was genuine.
The case record was genuine.
Their ages and appearances matched.
The guard handed the pass back.
The barrier rose.
"Go."
The mule cart moved.
First through the inner gate, then around the walled enclosure, then through the outer gate.
Shen Zhao lay on the wooden bed of the cart listening to the wheels grind over the stone road.
Rumble, rumble.
The city wall slowly slid away above him. His eyelids began to slide shut with it.
Gu Lin let Shen Zhao rest his head on his shoulder and lightly patted his cheek.
"Shen Zhao."
"Mm?"
"Don't sleep."
"I'm tired."
"You can't sleep even if you're tired."
"Mr. Zhou says that too."
"Look at me."
Shen Zhao forced his eyes open. Gu Lin's face drifted near, then far. The bruises drifted with it.
"Fourth Brother Gu."
"Mm."
"Did we get out?"
Gu Lin lowered his head.
Shen Zhao saw water in his eyes.
Nineteen years old already.
And still crying.
He wanted to tease him for it, but he had no strength left.
Gu Lin tightened his hand around Shen Zhao's.
"We got out."
His voice caught badly.
"A-Zhao, we got out."
"Don't sleep."
Rumble.
Rumble.
The cart rocked beneath them.
The city gate grew farther and farther away.
The things before Shen Zhao's eyes began slowly to bleed into one another.
Official seals across doors. The abacus. The silver hairpin. Red wedding shoes. Medicine bowls. The purple bruise around his father's ankle. The blank pass in Gu Lin's hand...
Sheets of paper began falling from the sky.
They fell until the whole street was covered. Blank sheets, like strips of cloth, settling over people's eyes.
And then no one could see.
Suddenly someone struck a desk.
"Shen Zhao."
He jolted awake.
Afternoon sunlight slanted into the schoolroom. The lattice cast square shadows across the desks. The ink in his inkstone had not yet dried. Outside, the Chinese tallow tree was half red.
Mr. Zhou stood at the front.
His beard was long.
His ruler was not soft.
"Mountain Journey."
Shen Zhao stood there blankly.
"Far up the cold mountain, a stone path slants," he recited.
"Where white clouds rise, there are homes."
Then he forgot the rest.
He looked to his right.
Gu Lin was seventeen, sitting perfectly well beside the window. His moon-white robe was clean. There were no bruises on his face, no rope marks around his wrists. His brows were long. His lashes were long. His eyes were long too.
Shen Zhao looked at him.
Gu Lin glanced back.
Then his lips moved, very slightly.
—Stop the carriage.
Shen Zhao's nose suddenly stung.
"I stop my carriage, loving the maple woods at dusk."
Mr. Zhou said, "Next line."
Again Gu Lin mouthed the words.
—Frost leaves.
Shen Zhao smiled, though tears shimmered in his eyes.
"Frost-bitten leaves are redder than February flowers."
Wind came through the window. Outside, the tallow leaves swayed lightly, poised between holding on and falling.
Half red.
Half green.
No one burst through the courtyard gate.
No constables in dark uniforms stood outside.
No official seals.
No private ledger.
No piece of paper insisting on proving who they were.
The book had not been finished.
The cake was still half for each of them.
It was September.
Winter had not yet begun.
