The Fortnight Before the Boat Was Let

After Xiaoman and her son left, the early ferry in Liuwan ran as usual. A-Zhao took a few loads of vegetables across and took on a pair of trousers from a neighbor. Her days hadn't suddenly opened up just because one line about a lantern had been crossed out of the ledger. She could say out loud now that she was going to Lanting, but every time she turned toward the stern, that little water mark still showed where repairs were needed. She couldn't simply pick up her trunk and leave it all to someone else.

Ding Quan first named a rent after trying the passenger route from West Landing for two days. People there really did save themselves a stretch of walking and were willing to pay the fare, though there were many loads of firewood and the gunwale wore faster too. A-Zhao asked what he had made. He kept the money in its tube and simply said that if she was willing to rent the boat out, he could pay two hundred and forty cash a month. If she was still hoping to find someone to buy the boat outright, she had better hold off on taking his money and spare them both an awkward turn a few days later.

A-Zhao had worked it out at three hundred in her head. Hearing two hundred and forty, she wondered why he was talking her down now that he’d found passengers. She was about to say so when she saw Ding Quan toss a length of worn old mooring rope onto the bank. The passengers hadn’t simply turned up when the boat pulled in. He’d gone around in the mud asking people and had to wait if they weren’t all there. She’d never gone with him on those rounds and was already working out how much more to charge him.

She still held off agreeing and arranged to haul the boat onto the shallows for another look. Over a dozen days and nights, she had changed her mind about leaving again and again. If she kept the boat, she was afraid she would always look back. If she sold it, she was afraid that if things went wrong away from home, she would have nowhere left to fall back on. Now that she really could keep the boat and take rent, she felt that since it was hers she ought to have the last word on where it was damaged and where it docked. She knew she could hardly fit all those wishes into one little boat, yet she was unwilling to let go of any of them just then.

Luo Yan came on the day they hauled the boat out, bringing a bundle of fresh bamboo strips and two short pieces of wood. She was in no hurry to agree to a price. First she tested the mud on the shoal with her foot and told Ding Quan to make sure the blocking was firm as well as seeing to the boat. They propped up one side a little, and Ding Quan showed A-Zhao the outer planking. The damage hadn’t reached the ribs, so it could be patched for now. They could haul it out again once the high water had passed, but if she wanted to keep using it safely, that section would eventually have to be replaced.

A-Zhao asked roughly how much it would cost. Ding Quan gave her the figures for timber and labor, about four hundred and eighty cash in all, with extra if they found soft wood elsewhere once they took it apart. Her chest tightened. For a moment she thought she could sell the boat to Shopkeeper Xie now and be done with it. Luo Yan’s first question was who would pay and in which month. It was no good saying today they could afford the rent if tomorrow’s repairs would eat all the money she made from her bamboo work. Ding Quan looked at her and said that was what he wanted them to discuss together.

The three sat beside the dry shoal, with the paper held down on a flat piece of wood. A-Zhao first wrote He Huaizhou. Then she paused, gently crossed out those three characters, and wrote He Zhao instead. This paper was not her father’s old ledger, and she was not merely a daughter looking after things for him for a few days. If the boat was to remain in someone else’s use, she would have to answer for what she said today. Luo Yan saw but offered no praise, only moved the stone holding the paper a little so it would not obstruct the writing.

The broad outer planks, hull, and main beams would still be the owner's responsibility to repair. Whoever used the boat would pay for everyday caulking hemp, worn mooring lines, and small patches. If Ding Quan spotted serious damage, he was to send word first and couldn't act as though he hadn't seen it. And if Azhao heard in Lanting that the boat was leaking, she couldn't tell people how to fix something she hadn't seen. At that last point, she couldn't help saying she knew this stretch of water. Ding Quan replied, “I didn't learn to handle an oar just this morning either.”

A-Zhao pressed her lips together. Luo Yan put in a word from the side. Precisely because they both knew the water, they shouldn't mistake the louder voice for the one that knew better. Then she went and kicked a wooden wedge back where it had slipped. Clearly she was doing more than keeping things fair between them. If something really happened to the boat, she'd have to roll up her sleeves too. A-Zhao watched, then slowly crossed out the requirement she'd written about asking her before every stop and kept only the ban on handing the boat over to a third party without permission.

The rent was finally set at two hundred and sixty cash for each month of a six-month term, beginning on the twenty-seventh of the third month and ending on the twenty-seventh of the ninth month, with payment on the same day each month. The deposit of two hundred and sixty was to be kept separately and returned at the end of the term if there was nothing to deduct. It couldn't count as money Azhao could spend on her trip. Luo Yan took out the string of coins for the deposit. Ding Quan went to take it, but she set it beside Azhao's hand first. She'd saved the money herself, she said, and when the time came to return it, Azhao could give it back to her. Otherwise he'd be off looking at new boats with it again.

Ding Quan looked embarrassed, then admitted that he really would be tempted to look. Until then, everything A Zhao had heard was a reason for caution, yet this made her laugh, and the ink at the edge of the paper trembled with her. She dipped her brush again and wrote the deposit and rent on separate lines, keeping those two identical sums from crowding together. Her wish to leave should not depend on using someone else’s money temporarily in her hands to make the coming months look secure.

When she reached the bronze plaque, she paused again. She said it had to stay: it could neither be removed nor sold. Ding Quan looked toward the bow and asked whether it would make it harder for people to tell who was operating the boat. A Zhao answered that those who knew him would naturally recognize him. As soon as she said it, she felt she was being unreasonable, but had not yet corrected herself. Luo Yan said the plaque could stay, and the person working aboard was no shadow either. They could think later about how to make that clear. There was no need to overturn the entire rental price over this piece of bronze right now.

Azhao wrote down that the brass plate was to stay at the bow, without adding anything about it being the only name allowed there. She hadn't altogether come round to it, but when Ding Quan stood to steady the boat, she saw that the first thing his hand went to was the seam he'd just patched. The plate could wait. For him, what the boat could actually do came before whose past it held. If she really wanted a living person to use it, she had to let him do more than stand in the old place for her.

When the papers were written, they asked the old man who managed the ferry landing to witness them. Gao Man wasn't there, so it was up to Azhao to sort out what belonged to the ferry and what was private. She read the papers aloud herself and asked Ding Quan and Luo Yan to point out anything they didn't understand. The old man spared them a speech about keeping peace between relatives and neighbors. He simply reminded them to get the names right. Later, when they took out the papers to check, they couldn't fall back on saying everyone had meant well. The three each kept a copy, and the flat piece of wood they'd used to hold the paper down was left with faint ink marks.

Once the boat was back in the water, the two of them took it out again. Ding Quan had A-Zhao try the new sculling oar. She gripped it where she’d held the old one, and on the first stroke splashed water onto her own shoes. Ding Quan pointed out that the handle was a little longer and she shouldn’t put her hand exactly where it used to go. She shifted her grip and the next stroke went smoothly. She nearly put on a brave face and said she’d known that, but when she saw Luo Yan laughing on the bank, she laughed too. Once they were ashore, Luo Yan just told them to put the papers away safely. They could dry their own wet shoes, but if the writing got wet, they shouldn’t ask her to read a blot of ink. A-Zhao tucked all three copies into dry cloth. For the first time she wasn’t keeping the whole stack to herself.

Early on the twenty-seventh day of the third month, Ding Quan brought the first month’s rent and the deposit, two strings of two hundred and sixty cash each. A-Zhao put the deposit in a separate little box, wrote down whose it was, and locked it away. She kept the key and control of the house herself. The other string would cover new lodgings, meals, and part of the travel there and back, but it was hardly enough to let her forget about the outer plank. She set a little of it aside, saying she would start saving for repairs this month, before early summer came and she found she’d spent it all on sewing.

She left the rest of her travel money uncounted in front of Ding Quan and simply asked him to look over the dates she had written down again. If something urgent came up, there was always someone on one of the passenger boats running in stages to Lanting who would carry a message. He needn't wait for her to come back in person every time. Ding Quan agreed and asked if she still wanted him to ferry her to the east bank. A-Zhao said she did, and the fare would be the usual. He accepted that readily. With a little less of the old courtesy of looking after a late friend's boat, both of them stood more firmly beside it.

Before she left, Granny Qin brought the old bamboo lamp herself. One side of its shade had been replaced with plain paper. She pointed it out to A-Zhao, saying the old side had got damp and needed replacing anyway; she could not simply let go of it when returning the lamp. She handed A-Zhao the handle, saying she was returning what she had borrowed this time too. There was a new lamp in the shop, enough to light it. A-Zhao accepted it and first felt the split in the repaired bamboo strip. She did not ask again what would happen by the window afterward, only said that if Granny Qin ever really needed a tall shade, she could still come and borrow it.

Granny Qin stood in the doorway wanting to ask if A-Zhao would see Xiaoman every day once she got there. In the end she asked whether it got cold at night in the South Hall. A-Zhao said it was drier than the boat, though her hands still felt the cold. The old woman drew a little bundle of leftover soft cloth from her sleeve and told her to wrap it around the needle case so the old bamboo edge wouldn’t prick her again. A-Zhao accepted it. She could take a scrap of cloth without taking on the job of carrying messages.

She didn't take the lantern to Lanting. For now she put it on a sturdy wooden shelf in her own room. It had lit the water for her father and the window for the Qin family. Now it could spend a while doing nothing for anyone, drying quietly in the daylight. She looked back as she shut the door. The brass clasp was dark. Leaving the lantern unlit for a night hardly looked like it would make the past disappear.

The bamboo chest was lighter this time. With no lamp to protect separately, she could use her hand to steady herself on the gangplank first. Ding Quan was already aboard. The old sculling oar lay to one side, while the new one was beneath his hands. At his first stroke, A-Zhao almost told him to go a little farther left. Before the words left her mouth, he turned and caught her expression. Smiling, he asked whether she wanted to take command before they had even reached shore. She smiled too and said he had never taught her how to hold a needle either; for now, they should each mind their own work.

Once across the river, A-Zhao waited for the passenger boat for the next leg to take on cargo without looking back the whole time. She recognized the pottery dealer’s chipped bowl from last time, still in the same spot at the bottom of the load. It felt more familiar than the good pieces people kept cradling all the way. She put a strip of wood under her trunk and made sure there was room for people to pass. Only when the sliver of sunlight by the sail moved into the cabin did she roll her sleeves high enough to free her wrists.

The boat behind her was still in Liuwan, the bronze plaque still on its bow. A-Zhao had not handed over all the keys, and she had not left herself behind with those few keys either. She took the sheet of measurements, already covered in a jumble of writing, out of the chest, meaning to look it over again in Sangqiao. The boat moved, and the edge of the paper fluttered. She weighed it down with a copper coin of her own and did not reach out again to shield a lamp that was nowhere beside her.