Formed on the Living Tree

He had decided to gather the five pieces together. He never said it aloud, but his body was already moving. The first step stalled — those two lines of trade slang on the note, he could not pick up a single word; the whole trade had shut him out, and there was no one left to ask.

The note sat in his pocket, its corners gone soft under his thumb. Five fragments, scattered in five places, each lost in its own way. When his father wrote those characters, his hand had been steady. Now it fell to him to take up the thread, and he could not even read the first line through.

He pulled out his contacts and dialed the old hands he had dealt with before, one by one. Old Chen said he was busy; Old Li said the signal was bad; Old Zhou simply did not answer. No one spelled out why, but he knew — after that livestream, no one wanted anything to do with him. Before, when he called someone to look at goods, the voice on the other end would say "come on, bring it over." Now even the polite pleasantries were gone, leaving only a string of busy tones and "the subscriber you have dialed is temporarily unavailable."

He set the phone facedown on the counter. Since the two clerks had left, the space behind the counter had stayed empty, and these past days he had grown used to talking to bare wood. Now even the numbers outside had gone silent. He pulled out the note and read those two lines of slang once more — the characters were still characters, and he still could not follow them. The five fragments lay scattered in five places; he did not even know which way the first door opened, blocked at his own threshold by those two lines.

The only one willing to open a door was Shopkeeper Tan, next door at the curio shop.

Shopkeeper Tan's shop stood two storefronts away from his, selling old objects, not incense, but his connections ran wilder than Liu Jinu's. When he called, Tan was polishing a bronze censer, the wax-glow throwing the old man's oily sheen right up onto his face. On the counter sat a worn bronze mirror, a few square-holed coins gone green, a jade disc — all old things, none of them having anything to do with incense. Tan looked up at him, set the censer down. "Liu family boy. Still alive, are you."

"Uncle Tan, I need to find someone who can read two lines of trade slang. You've wide connections — introduce me to one."

Shopkeeper Tan laughed, the laugh carrying oil. "Introduce you? Easy. Tonight there's a private game, all players of Hainan oil. You go, and put in a good word for a strand — call it the real thing, open the door on it. Once that's done, I'll take you to meet the man."

He understood. That was no introduction; it was asking him to lend a false endorsement to a strand of "Hainan oil" of murky origin. The moment the endorsement left his mouth, that strand would carry his name — and if anything went wrong later, it would be him they came for.

"Uncle Tan, I can't take this job."

"You can't?" Tan turned the bronze censer to face him, its handles pointed his way. "Jinu, this temper of yours — when will it ever bend? One good word, is that so hard? That signboard of yours is nearly trampled into the mud, yet you're generous with the wrong things to say."

"Better no money than to let me say the wrong thing."

Shopkeeper Tan stared at him for two seconds, then suddenly laughed — this time without the oil. "Fine. You've got nerve. You'll still come to the game tonight; come, and I'll take you to meet the man — the endorsement, I won't force it."

He did not ask why Tan was willing to help. In these times, whoever would open a door for him did not do it for free. He guessed Shopkeeper Tan had his eye on something else, not on the man himself.

That night he followed Shopkeeper Tan to a courtyard house. The gate was old; inside, lights were on, and a warm incense scent filled the room — he could not place the wood, mixed with a hint of fruit and aged timber. Several men sat around a rosewood tray, its edges carved with entwined branches, worn to a shine. Tan brought him in; someone at the side looked up, recognized him, and his expression changed. The few who had been talking lowered their voices by a notch. The strand in the rosewood tray was covered by a hand, as if afraid he would see it first. He could tell: not one person in this room had been waiting specifically for him, yet every one of them knew his face — that livestream had nailed his face to the whole street.

"Isn't this the Liu family boy," said the speaker — a portly man, rolling a strand in his hand, its beads gleaming oily. "The one who piggybacked on the Along the River During the Qingming Festival signboard, the one who exposed reworked stock live on stream — what, you've come to play with oil tonight too?"

The two words "play with oil" came out of the portly man's mouth with a sneer. Everyone in the room had seen the livestream; they knew he was the one who took apart reworked stock, and they knew the street was pushing him out. They did not drive him away; they only laughed and watched him, like a joke that had walked into the game on its own. That laughter was the same as yesterday's, carried from the alley's end into this room, and it sounded familiar in his ears.

Shopkeeper Tan did not stop it; he only shot him a look, as if to say: see, you wouldn't say that good word, and this is what you get.

The portly man pushed a strand from the tray in front of him. "Since you're an expert, don't just look. Tell us — what's this strand's origin, what's its formation."

The beads were of sink-grade color, their oil lines dark, throwing off a dull glow under the lamp. He picked them up, ran a fingertip across the oil lines, then held them to the light. The resin path was alive, climbing up from an old scar, and around the mouth of the scar ran a raised seal.

"Let me first say what I'm unsure of," he said. "All I can smell right now is this bit of scent under the lamp; this isn't a strand I've handled and worked in, so I won't vouch outright. But this strand is living-tree formation — that much I can judge."

Someone in the room gave a humph.

"First, the oil line follows the grain of the living wood — look at this thread, climbing from the scar mouth; that's resin moving while the tree was alive, not soaked in after it fell. Second, around this wound there's a resin seal, the living tree closing its own wound; a fallen tree can't seal — you feel this edge, it's raised, not caved in. Third, when you fire it up, the incense has backbone, it's not hollow; living-tree incense stands up, deadwood incense collapses."

He held the strand, the cool of the oil lines still on his fingertip. These three points were there in the very first lesson his father had taught — agarwood forms on the living tree; only while the tree lives does the resin live; once the tree falls, the resin dies inside it, and no matter how you burn it, it won't stand straight. He had once recited these like a chant; tonight was the first time, facing a roomful of people determined not to believe him, that he spoke them out line by line — and spoke until he believed them himself.

The portly man would not let it go. "Anyone can say 'living formation, dead formation.' On what grounds do you say it stands?"

"Light one," he said. "I'll tell you from three paces off whether it rises. If it opens up, with backbone, it's living-tree formation. If it can't rise, if it collapses, it's deadwood formation. This doesn't rely on the mouth; it relies on the nose."

Silence again for an instant. Someone said quietly, "He actually did make it clear."

He answered beautifully, earned not a cent, and no one introduced him to anyone. The strand was taken back; the game went on, and no one paid him any more mind. Shopkeeper Tan clinked cups with someone at the table and did not bring up the introduction again.

He rose and took his leave. No one in the room kept him, no one saw him out. He walked to the courtyard gate and looked back once; the strand was already back at the center of the tray, the portly man pouring wine for someone, as if he had never come. He had won the argument and lost everything else — met no one, got no money, walking away with only a roomful of muttered "he actually did make it clear" and Bi Yuchen's trailing, headless remark.

An old man in the corner who had not spoken all along now rose. His hair was more than half white; he leaned on a cane, walked to the door, paused, and looked back at him.

Shopkeeper Tan added in a low voice at his side: "Master Bi."

Bi Yuchen. He remembered — the old man at the south-city tea market who picked tea stems, surname Bi. The one who had said "your father asked about this too." The old man now stood unlike he had at the tea market, head bowed picking stems; the tap of his cane on the blue brick came down beat by beat, as if keeping time for that headless remark. He wanted to chase after and ask, but the old man had already left the door, leaving him only the three words "you read it backward" and a room that had suddenly gone quiet.

"The characters on that signboard," the old man said, "you didn't misread them — but you read them backward."

He opened his mouth, wanting to ask what "backward" meant. The old man had already left the door, his cane tapping the blue brick, beat by beat, growing distant.

He stood where he was, turning those characters over in his head — shangse. Zheng Ye had read them out, the trade had laughed; now this old man said he had read them backward. But what forward and backward could there be in the two characters "shangse"? In the Song dynasty, top-grade goods were called shangse; he had hung out that signboard precisely for those two characters, and half the street laughed at him for piggybacking on Along the River During the Qingming Festival — yet no one could laugh off any fault in the characters themselves.

Could there be another reading, one he had not known in the half year he'd hung it? Over and over in his mind he turned "shangse" backward. Seshang. Nonsense. "Shangse, Chen, Tan, Jian, Xiang" backward becomes "Xiang, Jian, Tan, Chen, Seshang" — even more nonsense. Yet the old man had said it with such certainty, as if he should have understood it long ago. He thought of Old Bi's words — "your father asked about this too" — could what his father had asked and what the old man called "reading backward" be the two ends of the same matter?

He chased out to the door; the courtyard was empty. The wind left the words "you read it backward" in his ear, more stubborn than last night's thread of saltiness.

He walked back to his own shop and looked up at the signboard. "Shangse, Chen, Tan, Jian, Xiang." This eight-character signboard had hung for a thousand years; he had taken it over only half a year ago. The old man said he had read it backward; he stared at it a long while and could not see where it was reversed. The sub-landlord's deadline still hung over his head, and he had no mind for it now.

He stood at his shop door a long time. The two characters "shangse" on the signboard trembled slightly in the wind. Bi Yuchen said he had read it backward; he turned it over and over and could not find where it was reversed. Yet the old man had said it with such certainty, not like he was teasing. For the first time he felt that this signboard he had hung half a year might never have been read right by him.

He switched off the lamp; the signboard gave a small sway in the night wind.