Fifty-Eight Years

Bi Shunli finished with that line — "If you really know your stuff, you go talk to him" — and walked off. He didn't say who the man was, or where the talk would happen.

So he went to the eastern quarter.

He still hadn't matched the origin of the Bi family's bead strand to anything he knew. And whether the one-thread bead in his pocket had really come loose from that strand, no one had confirmed for him. Bi Shunli had passed him the word: that man was willing to see a young fellow like him, one whose own shop was all but lost. He didn't understand why. But what puzzled him more was this — if he couldn't even say where this strand came from, what was there to talk about?

At the pawnshop, he had helped run the price up to a place Bi Shunli couldn't refuse, and the bead strand had gone into the drawer. He'd tried to block it for ages, and ended up helping it along. Now he stood on the curb, thinking over his accounts of these past two days: his skill at repairing beads was solid, but the moment people were involved, the accounts went crooked. He didn't understand why — the more he wanted to do the right thing, the more easily he did it wrong.

He still went around the sealed notice on his own door. The bead in his pocket stayed cool, as unsettled as he was. Lately every step he took felt like tightening someone else's knot. First the old man under the awning, then the pawnshop counter, now the Bi family. He couldn't stop.

He had been to the eastern quarter before. Last time, threading beads for the old man under the awning, the old man had said the Bis lived right here. He followed the route he'd noted, through two alleys. The wind carried dust; the incense ash he'd wiped on his apron that morning still clung, impossible to brush off. He stopped outside a courtyard of gray brick. The gate stood half open, and from inside drifted the smell of medicine, mixed with old wood and camphor. He pushed the gate.

The courtyard was quiet. Against the wall stood a rattan chair, and in it sat an old man — thin, hunched, a length of bead strand showing past his cuff. He recognized it at a glance: the same strand he'd seen on the pawnshop counter. Only this time he couldn't get his hands on it; the old man's hands were cupped over it, the beads pressed to his wrist as if they'd grown there.

"Old Master Bi."

The old man looked up, and did not answer.

"I'm from the Liu family shop. Bi Shunli sent me."

"Bi Shunli sent you," the old man drew the beads a little further up his sleeve, "so you came."

He stood there. The old man neither invited him in nor sent him away. He could see the patina on the length of beads at the old man's wrist — richer than what he'd seen under the pawnshop lamp last time. The oily sheen on the flesh-side had been warmed out over decades; no year or two could make it. He didn't dare reach out.

"You were looking at my beads just now."

"One look. I didn't touch."

"One look is enough?"

"One look isn't enough. But you won't let me touch."

The old man looked at him a long while.

"This strand of mine," the old man pushed his sleeve up a little, revealing the whole strand, "I've worn it fifty-eight years. Tell me where it came from."

He hadn't expected the test to be this.

"Let me see it, and I'll tell you."

The old man thought a moment, and held out his wrist.

He squatted, cradling the bead strand in his palm. Eighteen beads. The guru bead was there, the Buddha-head facing out, three spacers, the counter beads all present. He turned it over and ran his thumb across the flesh-side of each bead.

Oil lines. He read the course of the oil line on each bead under the light. On all eighteen, the oil line entered slantwise from one end and exited slantwise at the same end — the path resin had cut for itself inside living wood after the tree was wounded, not something dead stock had been soaked in to resell. The trade calls this sheng. More to the point, the eighteen oil lines had all grown in one direction. This strand wasn't a mix of stray beads; it had been sawn from a single block.

He worked the beads one by one toward the wrist section and studied the wear. On the flesh-side, the notches at the drill-holes faced every which way — the result of a single bead worn long, then restrung several times by later hands and threaded back into place. On the red cord he felt the marks of its joinings: this strand had been restrung three times, and at each joining the bead positions had shifted; the grooves worn by the new cord and the old ran in different depths and directions. Reading those marks, he traced the whole strand's timeline. The first cord had worn the shallowest, the beads bright; the later two cords cut deeper, the beads darkened. The bright section had been worn longest. Three joinings added together came close to the old man's fifty-eight years.

One more thing. He turned to the base of the guru bead and looked at the opposing holes. The relative positions the eighteen beads had held in the block, once sawn apart, left their opposing holes radiating from a single center. That told him the man who sawed knew his business — he had cut the block laid out for a full strand, not bead by bead as he went.

"Your strand," he said, "came from a living tree — sheng. The eighteen beads came off one block, not cobbled together later. The red cord was changed three times, and the years you've worn it match those three joinings. Fifty-eight years, close enough. And the man who sawed it laid out a full strand before he cut."

The old man said nothing.

"How it came to be," he said, "is it was sawn. One whole block, sawn into eighteen beads, strung into a strand. When it was cut, the block was still alive and the oil lines hadn't broken, so all eighteen beads' oil ran one way. The one who restrung it wasn't the first to saw it."

After a long while, the old man spoke.

"You see right," the old man said. "But you've seen only half."

He looked up.

"This strand isn't my family's," Bi Yuchen said. "Fifty-eight years ago, two young men carried this block into the capital. One was a Liu, and the other was a Liu too. The block was their family's, the beads were their cutting. This strand of mine — I'm keeping it for someone."

His hands stilled for a moment.

Keeping it for someone. Those four characters weighed more than any answer he'd guessed. He'd thought he was chasing a bead strand — and chasing it, he'd chased out another branch of the Lius.

"Those two young men," Bi Yuchen said, "one stayed behind in the capital and opened a shop; the other went south. The one who went south is the strand's true owner. My fifty-eight years have been spent watching it for him."

The wind came into the courtyard, and the medicine smell grew clearer. He suddenly felt this strand in his hand was heavier than the one on the pawnshop counter. It didn't belong to the Bis; it belonged to that other branch of the Lius. And his surname was Liu; the signboard of the Liu family shop was a Liu's too. Two threads, wound together once, on that block fifty-eight years ago.

"That you'd let me see it is already more than enough," he said.

Bi Yuchen looked at him a long while, drew his wrist back, then pulled the sleeve up again.

"You, young man," Bi Yuchen said, "see true, and keep a tight mouth. But you haven't touched it yet."

The old man slipped the strand off his wrist, beads and cord together, and pressed it into his hand.

"Hold it. Weren't you wanting to know where it came from?"

The beads were cool. He held them.

What he wanted to ask was an older question: from which block, on which night, this strand had been parted. He held it, and did not ask it aloud.

When the vision came, he did not keep his footing.

It was a workshop. A small lamp lit a spread-out, still-damp block. Two men bent over it, one holding it down, one pulling the saw. The saw's sound was muffled, stroke after stroke, and wood shavings curled up, falling on the block and onto their sleeves. The block was alive; where it was cut, oil slowly wept out of the grain, shining.

He counted. On the side holding the block, two hands. On the sawing side, two hands. Yet in the lamplight crouched a third man, head bowed, his hands also moving, as if gathering the offcuts. The door had opened only twice, and two men had come in. The third man — he never saw where he entered from.

Maybe it was a trick of the lamplight. Maybe he'd miscounted.

The vision broke off there. The break was clean.

He loosed his hands and passed the strand back. His hands felt empty, as if something had just been drawn out of him. What he couldn't recall was whether, the first time his father had spread that signboard's rubbing before him as a child, a blue porcelain cup with its mouth chipped sat on the windowsill. He remembered the cup existed, remembered it on the sill — but at this moment he couldn't picture what it looked like.

Bi Yuchen took the beads and slipped them back onto his wrist.

"What did you see?" the old man asked.

"Nothing," he said. "Just held it."

He stood, and took his leave. At the gate the wind was stronger, driving the courtyard's medicine smell back. He walked toward his own shop, the one-thread bead still in his pocket, cool. Now he knew: the Bis' strand and the bead in his hand were very likely of one origin. The same night of sawing, the same living block. Yet he'd held that strand and confirmed nothing — only gained one more small thing he couldn't remember.

He thought of that line under the awning — "I trust you." It was still warm. But today he'd trusted his own eyes, and his eyes had led him to touch another branch of the Lius. Fifty-eight years, one bead strand, watched for someone else for fifty-eight. His own shop still lay under the sealed notice, sinking a little deeper each day.

He suddenly felt that the step out of the Bi family's gate had set his foot into a layer deeper than the pawnshop's.