The South-Facing Room

Only after measuring the window did Xu Shen realize he had not asked the rent. Fang Guiniang leaned by the doorway holding a bamboo tray of broken rice and watched him. When he drew back his bamboo ruler, she smiled first: three people had come; the first lifted the bed, the second inspected the stove, and only he had first asked which brick the winter sunlight reached.

“My mother’s eyesight is poor,” Xu Shen said. Once spoken, the words sounded as though he had already rented the room for her. He stepped outside again and looked back at the courtyard wall. The winter sun hung low. Two washed-pale straw mats hung on the wall, their lower edges slicing a patch of warm light into pieces. To put a sewing basket beneath the window, he would first have to shift the bed half a chi inward; once the bed moved, there would be no room by the entrance for the large cupboard from home.

Fang Guiniang named the rent: one hundred and twenty copper coins a month, with another month as deposit. Xu Shen’s fingertips stopped on the ruler; he did not bargain at once. There were rooms nearby for eighty coins, facing the well, where lamps were needed even at noon. In nearly twenty years he had made many south-facing windows, some with decorative latticework, some even papered in two layers. Now that it was truly his mother’s turn, he found himself deliberating so long before this plain window.

“It gets sun until the beginning of the shen hour; later than that it passes over the wall.” Fang Guiniang set the tray on a small table. “If you want sunshine all day, I haven’t a room like that.”

Her bluntness actually relieved Xu Shen. He pushed open the wooden shutter; the pivot gave a soft creak but was sound. Still, he pressed it out of habit, as though leaving someone evidence with which to trouble him later. A small stove stood in the corner, enough to warm soup; a large pot of rice had to be cooked outside. Water had to be carried from the well, firewood could not be stacked in the front passage, and any substantial fire not needed at night had to be put out. As Fang Guiniang explained, she nudged the broken stool blocking the doorway straight with her foot, revealing a tiny pair of embroidered shoes underneath.

Her niece huddled behind the front room’s curtain, clutching a rice cake and staring at the saw at Xu Shen’s waist. He turned the saw behind him and bent down to show her a curled wood shaving. The little girl did not take it, only asked whether it could be blown to make a sound. Fang Guiniang told her to go inside and eat, then went to fetch the rental agreement, leaving Xu Shen to look around. He tried the passage from the bed to the stove, spreading both arms; he would not quite touch the walls.

His mother had spent most of her life in that mountain house: one step brought her to the stove, another to the courtyard. The threshold was high; in winter she often braced one hand on the door and used the other to lift her own leg over. Several times he had proposed bringing her down, and each time she said to wait until the beans were harvested, until the yellow dog had shed its coat, until the vegetable by the west wall had set seed. Now she had finally sent word that she would leave on the ninth, and he found himself afraid that if he were even a little late, those words would turn back into countless waits.

He was halfway through counting the string of coins when Fang Guiniang reached out to stop him: “First tell me who’s living here. Your mother alone, or you too?”

“Just her. I’m at the Ren family’s shop, down at the end of East Street.”

Only then did Fang Guiniang take up her brush. She was no landlady who simply sat collecting rent: rice still needed pounding in the front room, and the three households’ water jars, firewood, and pickle crocks were forever competing for a dry patch in the courtyard. Every time Xu Shen said it did not matter, she tapped the corner of the paper, saying that important things should be settled beforehand so neither would be unhappy later. He thought her a little long-winded, but remembered the hour when the courtyard gate was shut for the night.

After paying the deposit, he picked a few more coins from his string to buy window paper. Fang Guiniang saw and said that although the old paper was no longer new, it still kept the wind out; there was no need to hurry. Xu Shen paused, laid the paper back, and bought only a small piece to patch the edges. He had not realized how many things he was replacing for his mother before she had even entered the room.

He returned only as lunch at the Ren family’s woodworking shop was breaking up. Wei Ce crouched at the doorway, shaving a narrow strip of wood down to a thin edge. Hearing footsteps, he hid it behind his knee. Xu Shen held out his hand, and the boy hesitantly surrendered it. It was a small comb for pinning up someone’s hair. Its teeth had not been sawn, but half a flower had been shaped on its back.

“Have you finished the door leaves?”

Wei Ce pointed beneath the shed. Two panels had been assembled, their joints still unfinished, with Ren Quan’s long ruler weighing them down. He hastily said he had made the comb only in his spare time after lunch, then corrected himself and admitted he had started somewhat earlier. Xu Shen meant to scold him, but the flower on the comb’s back, scarcely resembling a flower, suddenly reminded him of his own first year in the shop. He too had stolen a corner of good wood, just to carve his mother a sewing case. In the end he failed to make it round, and his master sawed it in two to prop up table legs.

He did not confiscate the comb, only told Wei Ce to sweep up the shavings first. Ren Quan came out from the inner room carrying a bowl of leftover soup and said Xu Shen’s house rental seemed more like some grand business deal, keeping him away all morning. Xu Shen said he would need to go into the mountains on the eighth and ninth to fetch someone. Ren Quan lowered his eyelids and stopped drinking his soup.

Two jobs stood side by side in the shop: new doors for Ji’an Pharmacy and window latticework for a household on North Street. The pharmacy wanted its doors fitted before the winter solstice; the customer had said so twice. Without Xu Shen, Wei Ce dared only assemble the panels, not touch the two long timbers. Ren Quan set his bowl on the workbench, its greasy rim leaving a circle. He did not forbid him to go, only asked whether he expected to collect his wages for those two days as usual.

“Don’t count those two days,” Xu Shen said. “I’ll make up the work on the door leaves when I’m back.”

He thought that settled it, but Ren Quan went on: after moving there would be setting up the bed, adding a stove, an old woman unused to sleeping there on her first night—how many more two-day absences would follow? Wei Ce lowered his head and swept the same spot for the third time. Hearing the broom brush the floor, Xu Shen knew his master’s words were not necessarily all unkindness. After all these years working for the shop, what he feared most too was someone promising a date and having nothing ready when it came.

They finally agreed he would return on the tenth. Ren Quan allowed him to take his own plane, chisels, and small saw; the shop’s long drill would stay, and Wei Ce was told to learn which tools belonged to the shop. Wrapping them one by one, Xu Shen realized his possessions amounted to little more than that small comb whose teeth had yet to be cut. He had thought that after repairing so many doors for others, his own life must already have a sturdy frame; now that his mother was truly coming to town, every part of that frame needed measuring anew.

That afternoon, delivering timber to the pharmacy, he deliberately took a detour past the entrance to South Locust Lane. Someone in Ji’an Pharmacy was sifting dried roots; the rush of medicinal smells reminded him of the old cloth over his mother’s knees, never quite clean however often it was washed. By the door, Zhou Tong was directing a stonemason moving a stepping stone. Water collected before the steps, he said, and when the weather cleared they would raise it another layer. He told Xu Shen to put the door timber in the back courtyard first, rather than leave it by the road. Xu Shen glanced at the pile of stones and wanted to ask exactly how high they would raise it, but a customer inside had already called Zhou Tong away.

Once the door timber was under the shed, he added a stroke beside an old mark, planning to ask again when he returned. Zhou Tong hurried after him with a message to take to the woodworking shop: the person delivering empty jars from Gaopu had not arrived yet; if it took a few more days, they should leave the wooden crates by the back door unsealed. Xu Shen agreed without asking who it was. So many people carrying shoulder poles passed through Qinglan every day. In the past, he remembered only which loads had blocked a door he was fitting, never the faces beneath them.

Across the street, a steamed-bread seller who knew the people at the Ren family’s shop saw that he was in no hurry to leave and asked whether he was making the new door himself. Xu Shen could have said it was still under discussion, but he had already answered yes. The seller raised his voice: good, he would call on Master Xu in future too. Those words, “Master Xu,” planted his feet firmly on the ground. He accepted a loaf split by baking and deliberately did not ask for a few coins off. Only two shopfronts later did he remember that he had always disliked people paying extra for a title.

He broke the loaf open, and its steam rushed against his eyelashes. When his mother used to take him to market, if an older woman praised his clever hands, she could hardly bear to let him carry the heavy basket all afternoon. Later, when money ran short, she used that praise to coax him into town to learn woodworking. He said he no longer remembered, yet he could still recall the missing button on that woman’s sleeve. If today’s “Master Xu” reached the mountains, his mother would probably repeat it to Auntie Liu several times.

Leaving the pharmacy, he saw Shi Yan’s ox cart unloading reeds. The driver had the reins wound around his wrist, an old scar across the back of his hand. The ox kept lifting its nose, trying to reach scraps of vegetables by the door. Xu Shen negotiated the fare for the ninth: eighty copper coins, twenty paid in advance. Shi Yan would make no firm promise. If the mountain pass was blocked, the cart would not go up; a path people could walk was not necessarily passable by cart. Stroking the shaft, he said that with an elderly person aboard, no amount of hurry could justify making the ox run.

Xu Shen also asked whether they could lay down another layer of straw. Shi Yan said there was straw, and rope too; any jars or pots should be padded with old clothes, lest they arrive in town with nothing but a cartload of broken sounds. Taking out the money, Xu Shen suddenly smiled. That cracked salt jar his mother said was still usable was, after all, another thing that needed a place on the cart. He had meant to bring down just one person; now he had to bring along the things that had lain within her reach for years.

At dusk, when the shop put away its saws, Wei Ce took the little comb to the well to rinse it clean. The flower on its back was missing a petal and looked more like a bird with a crooked foot. Xu Shen threaded hemp cord through a small hole for him and told him not to give away a freshly oiled comb. Wei Ce blushed and said it was for his own younger sister, nobody else. He said it twice, and Xu Shen asked no more.

Wei Ce asked whether the room in town could hold the large cupboard from home. Xu Shen indicated its width with his hands. The boy copied him until his arms could stretch no farther, then laughed and said they could simply cut one end off. Xu Shen scolded him for always wanting to ruin things, then laughed himself. He had spent half the day thinking beneath that window, yet had never asked whether his mother wanted the cupboard itself or some small thing inside it.

Night fell. Ren Quan closed the shop door, and Xu Shen lay on the short couch in the timber room. His tool bag sat at his feet; the quilt for his mother was rolled behind the door. He turned over, and the wooden couch creaked. Suddenly he longed to know whether, when he reached home tomorrow, the yellow dog would hear his footsteps first or smell the town’s rice scent on the quilt. Wind slipped through the door crack and turned a thin scrap of paper at the mouth of his bag. It was left over from the south room’s window. Snow had not yet fallen, but already he did not want it getting damp.