Beyond Taste

Back from the south of the city, he pressed the slip under the counter glass. The IOU still sat with the creditor; his father's old ledger was there too — a buyer had his eye on it, said he would come for it in a day or two. He had to get there first.

He knocked at the creditor's door. The man was surnamed Kong, keeper of a small pawnshop, old frontage, glass gray with dust. The debt went back half a year, to when his father had pawned the ledger. Boss Kong took the book from a drawer, weighed it in his hand, in no hurry. "Nobody wants this thing. It's an old account book. You want it, bring money."

He asked how much. Kong named a figure.

The figure ran past everything in his pockets, with a little to spare. He did not bargain. He drew the petty cash from the cabinet, then turned out his father's old wallet — a few loose notes he counted three times. The first count ran one over, the second one short, the third came out even. When he had scraped it together his palm was sweating; the roll of bills was stiff in his hand.

Kong's pawnshop smelled of camphor wood; the counter was high, and he had to stand to reach the ledger. Kong flipped through the accounts, said the book had been worth little coming in and worth less now. "Your father said at the time: this thing must not be sold. Keep it pledged." Kong looked at him. "I have kept that sentence better than half a year."

Kong took the money and pushed the ledger across, tapping the cover with a finger. "This half year your father came asking after it more than once. I could not bring myself to sell. I was waiting for you."

The ledger sat in his hands heavy as a brick. He carried it and sat a long time, remembering how his father used to turn these pages. The sound of Kong's shutter pulled him back.

In the shop he was alone. The place had never really lived since the day his father left; now the last two hands had gone as well. It came to him suddenly: what he was keeping was not a shop. It was an empty house and a ledger nobody wanted.

He sat and began to read. His father's hand he had traced since childhood; every stroke familiar. But he had never been allowed to touch this book — the words in a ledger do not leave the family, his father said. With his father gone, that rule had gone too. Page by page, thumb along the paper's edge; the paper was more brittle than he had imagined.

Yellowed pages, his father's lines, one by one: the whole provenance of every piece viewed across these years — where a strand came from, whose hands it passed through, where it went after. One entry he half recognized: an old-ship sandalwood strand his father had viewed for someone last winter, provenance written clear as daylight, ending in three characters: returned. He remembered that day — his father came home, said only "that strand cannot stay," and no more. Now he understood: his father had been recording not sales but the passage of every thing. Some he had seen; some he had only heard of; entry by entry his father had nailed down where each thing came from and where it went. This was not an account book. It was a list of every object his father had ever vouched for in his life.

A few pages on, an older entry: ten years ago, a pair of prayer beads, in his father's hand: left in keeping by an old client of the east wing; to be collected next year. After it, a circle. Further on, more circles; some circles held a dot. He did not know what the circles meant, but he could see his father waiting for someone to come back.

Toward the middle he stopped — one line of ink a shade deeper than those around it; under a scrape, the tail of older writing, as if the words had been changed and smoothed over. He looked once, decided his father had simply traced it again later, turned the page, and went to light the charcoal.

As the pages turned he noticed: in the lower right corner of every page a number, various in size, no rule he could see — except that each page's number ran a little smaller than the last. He did not work it out; an old habit of his father's, he supposed.

Pressed in the ledger, a small sliver of wood, smaller than a palm, one edge freshly cut. He pinched it out, looked, put it back.

The slip said his father had blended incense in the shop the night before he vanished, and that the five relic pieces had been divided out from that one batch. He did not trust paper; he trusted only the batch he could re-create himself. His father had kept a small jar of aged incense on top of the inner-room cabinet, sealed for half a year. He fetched a stool, took it down, broke the seal. An aged, bitter base note rose out — not sharp, like wood kept long. He leaned in: the scent went downward, did not rise like living incense. Living scent is bright; this jar was muffled, like something pressed under a chest bottom for years. And suddenly he understood a little why his father had forbidden him to touch it. This was not incense for selling. This was incense for record-keeping. With that one batch, his father had nailed that night down inside the jar.

Following the method written in the ledger, he poured the powder into a white porcelain dish to re-blend. He had seen his father's formula; never done it by hand — his father would not let him near this batch. Your fire is not ready, he used to say. Nobody to stop him now.

The powder ran dark, with a thread of red, like blood-stock long kept. He rubbed it between his fingers: fine, not gritty. His father's method was a few lines only: dark before light; when you marry them, one direction only — never against. He followed it; three turns of the wrist, and the powder in the dish went slowly even.

He reached out, drew back once. This jar his father had forbidden; sealed half a year; today was the first time he dared move it. A deep breath, and his fingers came down.

The moment his fingers touched the jar, the vision came.

The shop. Night. Lamps lit, falling on a row of small dishes behind the counter. His father inside, back to him, hands weighing, marrying, passing over. The vantage stood with the incense — only his father's hands and the dishes visible, the face blocked by the counter. First his father weighed a dark powder into a small scale and poured it into the main dish; then took another, lighter in color, rubbed it fine between finger and thumb before marrying it in. The powder in the main dish stood in a small mountain; his father flattened the peak with the back of his hand, like pressing a seal. He divided the finished blend into five small packets, pressed each once, set them in a row, mouths upward. Then he stopped — as if he had heard something — and raised his head toward the door. The vision broke there.

He felt half an hour had passed. He looked at the wall clock: an instant.

He stepped back and set the jar on the cabinet top again. His hand was stiff, knuckles white. He stood against the counter until the stiffness passed. The room was still in daylight; a teacup still on the counter. Yet in that instant he had seen his father. The slip was real. That night his father had truly blended that batch: five small packets, one to one — matching the slip's "five relic pieces."

The old man's "there is still one searching" fit too — that night his father had raised his head to the door, as if someone stood outside. Not him; not his mother. Someone else. He remembered the slip's back: the last man who can read this, family name Bi. Old Bi said one person was still searching. The one his father had looked toward that night — perhaps that was the same person. The slip said five relic pieces; his father had divided five packets; the ancestral rule said "five scents" — one thing. Five pieces of agarwood scattered in five places; one man had hunted them all his life; another was hunting still. For the first time it struck him that what his father gripped as he vanished was not a debt. It was an unfinished thing.

He took the slip out and read it again. Five relic pieces, scattered in five places — the old house in the capital; gone aboard a ship; in a temple. His father never gathered them in his lifetime; plainly the one "still searching" had not either. Two parties — one to keep them apart, one to bring them together — and his father caught between. He thought: I am probably the third. The slip said the first piece lay among the old household things in the capital — no need to search far. So of the five, at least one was here, under his feet, in this city. The other four — ship, temple, scattered farther — out of reach for now; and the near one sat under his very eyes.

In the evening he boiled a bowl of noodles and thought of a dish his mother used to make. He thought a long time and could only remember that she had made it — not how it tasted. He cooked another dish from memory: oil hot, into the wok, two turns, out, one bite — and his tongue was empty. Not wrong in salt. The whole taste was gone, as if someone had lifted a layer out of his head. He remembered she had made it; remembered he loved it; remembered her at the stove, stirring. Nothing else. He stood at the stove staring at the empty bowl and could no longer tell whether he had forgotten the taste, or whether when his mother went, the taste had gone with her. He did not dare think further.

He washed the bowl and stood a while. The stove kept her arrangement still: salt jar left, soy right. He remembered the arrangement, remembered every motion of her hands — only not the taste of that dish. He set the bowl down and did not try again. Some things do not come back by cooking them twice.

He sat back behind the counter and turned the ledger to its last page. On the half page there, his father had written one line:

The five scents must never be gathered.

He read it as: never let someone else gather them. His reasoning: if the ancestral rule meant "do nothing," then his father's half-year of absence had been thrown away for nothing. He could not let it be thrown away. The slip said five pieces scattered in five places; the one still searching plainly wanted them gathered. He could not let that man be first.

He told no one of the decision. He closed the book; that line lay on the last page like a seed pressed into soil. He did not know what it would grow into. He knew only that he could not wait.

He decided: before anyone else, he would bring the five together.

The five scents must never be gathered.