The Old Bead Market

Liu Jinu folded the pawn ticket and slipped it into his inner pocket.

The prayer beads were still in that pawnshop, not yet put on the shelf. The man at the back door yesterday had said that to redeem them he would have to wait for a nod from his side. Liu Jinu did not wait. He had refused that man's terms for clearing his debt, meaning to redeem the beads himself. To redeem them himself, he first needed money. He could not let the beads fall into that man's hands.

Money was his whole trouble, right now.

The thirty percent of the daily take that Shopkeeper Tan had skimmed off had drained more than half the shop's income. The fame earned from the livestream had brought back orders, but those orders still lay on the books and had not turned into cash. The pawnshop did not recognize fame, only figures. He turned out his pockets, then the counter drawers; everything that could move had been moved, and he was still short of what it would take to redeem that strand.

The orders on the books had been won through the livestream; the buyers were waiting for shipment, the goods sat in the storeroom, the money sat on the books, and neither end could move. If he moved the goods from the storeroom to raise cash, he could not fill the orders, and his reputation would collapse. Reputation was the only thing he could still grow; once it collapsed, even the hands that knew the Old Bead Market would have nowhere to be put to use. So he could only find money outside, and could not touch the capital inside.

The pawnshop had given him a short deadline. He had asked: for a live pawn like this, the redemption window was only a few days. If he could not scrape it together within those few days, the beads would no longer be his.

So within those few days he had to earn a sum of money with his own hands. The thirty percent of the take had already been skimmed by Shopkeeper Tan; every cent that landed in his hands would be split off another layer, so the gap was larger than the books showed.

He had no capital in hand, only a pair of hands and a pair of eyes that had looked at beads for more than ten years. What those hands could do was the most wearying work in the Old Bead Market, and also the work that least required principal. He thought of the Old Bead Market.

It was a place where junk collecting and bargain-hunting were mixed together — beneath the pedestrian bridge, with a tarp slung over a frame and oilcloth spread on the ground, the goods laid out on the oilcloth. Most of the sellers did not understand what they had, and most of the buyers did not either; it was all a matter of luck. As a child he had gone there once with his father, who had taught him to read an oil grain there, saying that the cheapest tuition in this trade was a flaw no one else could see. Later he stopped squatting there himself; a proper shopkeeper did not sit at a street stall. Now he could not afford to be proper.

The Old Bead Market had an early market and a late market. The early market opened before dawn, with fresh goods and inflated prices. The late market ran to noon, when the stall-keepers grew tired of sitting and the prices finally loosened. He chose the late market, for his capital was thin and could not survive inflated prices.

On the first day he left before the sky was light, but by the time he arrived it was already the late market.

People were packed between the tarps, the air thick with a smell of old wood mixed with sweat. He looked row by row; most stalls held ordinary goods not worth stopping for. One stall displayed several strands of so-called old agarwood beads; he sniffed them across the oilcloth and the oily scent drifted, false — soaked in, not grown. He did not touch them.

He stopped at the third row. A young fellow was minding a stall of old beads, among them a bracelet of eighteen beads, the cord gone old, one spacer bead cracked with a seam. The young fellow said it had been his grandfather's; nothing else was worth anything, and this strand was cracked too, so name a price and he would let it go.

Liu Jinu picked it up to look. The ingrained yellow on the inside of his right index finger and thumb — a stain that would never wash out — rubbed against the beads, and it was hard to say which was older. The crack was an old wound, its edges already patinated from years of wear, not a fall. The other seventeen beads were heavy with oil, their drill-holes worn toward one end from being thumbed. The whole strand was genuine, ruined only by that one cracked bead, which the seller himself took for junk.

He set it down and asked the price. The young fellow asked little. He said, "For the cracked one I'll swap in a replacement, and re-string the cord — this strand can still be worn." The young fellow shook his head and said the family was in urgent need and he did not want it anymore.

Liu Jinu counted out the money and gave it to him — a small sum, exactly the strand's cost.

He brought it back to the shop, dug out his own box of loose beads, and picked through them one by one until he found an old spacer bead of the same color and same oil. He measured the red cord, strung it through, set the mother bead straight with the Buddha-head facing up, and turned the newly swapped spacer to the unobtrusive side. He sat under the lamp half the night, running the cord smooth with his fingers again and again, pressing each bead once with his thumb to be sure the old wounded one would not crack again in wear. Early the next morning Old Zhou, who mended watches at the street corner, came to look; he hefted it, held it to the light for a glance, and on the spot gave him a sum higher than what he had paid.

Old Zhou said, "This strand was ruined on a single bead, and you brought it back to life."

Liu Jinu did not answer, only ran the cord smooth once more.

First take, in the bag.

He pocketed that money and walked back to the shop, passing a stall selling old bronze ware where the keeper was arguing with someone over the age of a seal knob. He did not stop. He understood that kind of argument — it was won by the mouth, not by what the eyes saw. His own skill lay in the beads, in the places others could not be bothered to look closely. The first day had already proven this. The flaw had been hidden in a single cracked bead; the seller himself had thought nothing of it. He saw it, mended it, and the money came.

He closed up the stall and counted — not enough. The pawnshop's deadline now left two days.

Before closing, in another basket he spotted another strand, priced not low, said to be old kan'an. He brought it close to look: the drill-holes were fresh, the patina floated on the surface — it had been aged by artifice. His fingers came up, almost reaching for the seam that looked most real, then dropped. He did not buy it. The seller thought he found it too dear; in truth he was afraid of misjudging it himself, and afraid that once he took it in hand he would not be able to stop.

The next day he squatted half an hour before a stall selling mixed lots. A mixed lot was a sack of loose beads, the seller said they had been cleared out together and were sold by the heap. Liu Jinu poured the beads into his palm and went through them one by one. Most were common wooden beads, dyed, worth little. Grain by grain his fingertips brushed them, setting aside the warm ones, the light ones, the ones with dead color, then turning over what remained. Beneath lay a few different ones, heavy with oil, showing the grain of living wood against the light — shavings of real agarwood, ground long ago. He counted: seven.

Beyond the seven, there were a dozen or so filler beads; he picked these out one by one and set them on the corner of the oilcloth, not throwing them away, leaving them as a sweetener for the mixed-lot seller. As he picked, his thumb kept to the drill-holes of the beads — a freshly ground hole had a fuzzy edge, an old hole was round, and one touch told them apart. The fake agarwood mixed into the lots was mostly pine soaked in oil: sharp to smell, light to the hand, and he could judge it through his palm.

The mixed-lot seller was in a hurry to leave, saying take the whole sack, no picking. Liu Jinu wrapped up the whole sack. Back home he laid the seven agarwood pieces out and read the oil grain's direction against the light — each different, yet all alive. Matched with common spacers, the mother bead pressed at the center, strung into one strand, held to the light, those few dim pieces showed their oil all the more against the common beads. Another stall-keeper looked, asked nothing more, and took the remaining loose beads at the mixed-lot price.

Second take, also in the bag.

The second day's money was thicker than the first. Those half hours squatting before the stall had numbed his knees and left his fingertips imprinted by the loose beads, and he had spent half a night at home laying them out against the light. Worth it.

He counted: the two days' income together was still far from the full sum. The pawnshop's deadline now left one day.

The third day was overcast. He did not go to the market, but waited in the shop. The previous day's money was enough to last a while, but he was still short the final stretch, and what was short was one large sum. He feared that going back to the market for small bargains would let the deadline pass before he could gather enough. A large sum had to ride on a single thing — a thing others were unsure of and he was sure of.

That third morning the door curtain lifted once, and the wind carried in a dampness from outside. A middle-aged man set a cloth bundle on the counter, his hand pressing the bundle and not letting go, as if afraid someone would snatch it. Liu Jinu gestured for him to open it. Inside the cloth was a single incense plaque, wrapped in old newspaper, its date long illegible.

The middle-aged man said it had been passed down in the family and he wanted to sell it. Liu Jinu took it and turned it over. The incense plaque was the size of a palm, carved with cloud patterns, and smelled of an old scent, beneath which lay a thread of something else, like lacquer left too long, stifling. He hefted it: light.

His thumb pressed the back of the plaque, and at one spot his hand stopped.

There ran an exceedingly fine seam of a join, covered by the lacquer color, invisible without a close look. New material carved with old patterns, then lacquered to look old, with glue mended beneath. It was a new thing, dressed up as an old one.

The middle-aged man fixed his eyes on him: "Real or fake."

Liu Jinu turned the incense plaque over, so the side with the seam faced down.

"An old piece," he said.

In the moment the words left his mouth, he himself paused. He had not lied. He had only left that sentence unfinished. To finish it would have been another matter. He did not say it.

The middle-aged man let out a breath, and the price was open to discussion. Liu Jinu talked him down and closed the deal. That same day he passed it to a man who specialized in old pieces, and made the largest profit of the trip.

At night he closed the shop door and took the incense plaque out of its cloth, looking at it once more by the lamp. His thumb pressed the seam on its back — still flat, still covered by the lacquer color. He looked a long while, then put it back in the cloth, and never mentioned that seam to anyone. The stack of money on the table was thicker than three days before; the part that had grown was partly earned by his eye, and partly by that unfinished sentence. He had swallowed those words, and what came back was money, while what stayed was a seam he himself could not press flat.

The money reached just over seventy percent. Still short a stretch.

The seventy percent had been bargain-hunted out, every sum won by his looking one extra time. The missing thirty percent could not be hunted out by bargain-hunting; it needed one large item, or one truth he left unspoken. He had tried both roads — one only reached seventy percent, the other left him staring at the incense plaque past midnight.

He stared at that seventy percent, and for the first time felt how heavy the words "not quite enough" were. In three days he had done all he could; the remaining few tenths were not something his eye could make up. He remembered his father's words: a flaw no one else can see is the cheapest tuition, and also the easiest debt to owe.

Early on the fourth day he pocketed the money and went to the back door of that pawnshop.

It was the same alley, the iron grate half open. He knocked twice; a light came on inside, and it was the same young clerk as before.

"Redeeming something. The Bi family's prayer-bead strand."

The clerk gave him a look, pulled out the pawn ticket, then closed it again.

"You're late," the clerk said. "That strand was taken apart this morning."

"Taken apart."

"The side that had given word from above came this morning to do the paperwork. They redeemed the beads, took them apart and left, the loose beads going a separate way."

Liu Jinu's hand in his trouser pocket touched that stack of money. The money was still there; the beads were gone.

He thought of what the man at the back door had said yesterday: with every step you take, we are already half a step ahead of you.

In the days after, several times he felt his trouser pocket and touched that money, and his fingertip always found the very spot where he had once pressed the seam. That spot was flat, holding nothing. He had pressed it, said nothing, and the money came. Three days of bargain-hunting had ridden on flaws no one else could see. Only this one sum had ridden on a flaw he himself had seen — and swallowed the words about it.

He stood at the mouth of the alley, the wind pouring down his collar. The fourth day's wind was colder than the days before. Behind him the scent of old wood mixed with camphor was fainter than last time.

He pulled that pawn ticket from his inner pocket, looked at it one last time, folded it, and put it back. The ticket was still there; the beads had gone first. That seventy percent of money could not redeem the strand, yet it redeemed the first debt he owed himself. The debt was recorded in his heart, in no writing.