The Lantern Needn't Burn All Night

On the afternoon of the twenty-seventh, A-Zhao stepped off the passenger boat from the north and bought a small bowl of hot porridge in Tongxu while she waited for Ding Quan to pole over from the west bank. She’d spent the previous night in Sangqiao and taken Zheng Qin’s boat again that morning. A few months had passed and many of the passengers were different, but the two days by water hadn’t lost a night just because she was anxious to get home. A vegetable seller at the east landing recognized her and asked if the He boat had finally sold. She shook her head and said she’d come to renew the lease.

There were few people left aboard. Ding Quan steadied the last longtime passenger’s basket and put away the fare before greeting her and asking how the autumn performances had gone. A Zhao said they had managed it: neither night had sold out, but they had not lost money. Hearing that, Ding Quan nodded. He did not keep asking who had won the most applause, as people at the theater did. What he still needed to keep track of was how many people would hurry to catch tonight’s ferry, and which stretch of mud at the eastern landing would be slippery after the autumn water receded.

Azhao sat near the edge of the boat's well and saw a few shoe prints on the plank they'd replaced in June. A fine scratch ran across the paint. She reached out to feel it, and Ding Quan said someone had dragged a shoulder load of bamboo baskets across it two days ago without putting anything underneath. He'd already touched it up and would look again tomorrow when it had dried through. She still felt a pang, but let him go on carrying baskets. If people could only look at it, the boat would certainly age more slowly. The boat was alive because it had work to do.

Luo Yan was waiting when they came ashore, holding the rent ledger for the past six months. The two hundred and sixty cash for the twenty-seventh of the eighth month had already gone to Lanting with a passing boat, and she asked A-Zhao to check it again. The twenty-six deducted in the sixth month was written beside the original entry. The rent actually paid over six months came to one thousand five hundred and thirty-four cash. The deposit was another two hundred and sixty and had always been kept separate. A-Zhao put her receipts together and saw that the two of them kept their records differently, but the sums matched.

Luo Yan asked her to fetch the deposit box from the house. She wanted to see the money before they talked. A-Zhao took no offense at her wanting to check. She opened the box and set the whole bundle on the table, still tied with the knot Luo Yan had made in the third month. The money had never counted as hers. When she came up eighty cash short on the planking in the sixth month, she had made it up from her wages. She had had no need to scrape that money together today for anyone's benefit. Luo Yan counted it, then tied it up again with a new cord she had brought herself.

Ding Quan wanted to rent the boat for another six months, but there were fewer ferry passengers in winter, so he asked whether he could pay twenty cash less for each of the first three months. He spoke slowly, as though afraid A-Zhao would think he was trying to push the price down because she lived far away. Luo Yan came straight out with what they had in mind. Some people didn't go out in winter, and it got dark early. An extra crossing couldn't bring back all the passengers they lost. She had to keep money for materials for her bamboo work, too. They couldn't keep making up every shortfall at the ferry from the other side of the household.

A-Zhao had already come to count on two hundred and sixty cash a month. Twenty less would hardly leave her without food, but it would put off buying the worktable she wanted after autumn. She took her time answering. First she asked how they would record it if someone hired the whole boat in winter, then went with Ding Quan to look at the new landing again. A-Zhao knew how to run a ferry and understood that he could hardly count an empty boat as full just by imagining it. Ding Quan knew the money for her replacement planking had hardly come off the riverbed, and never suggested that because the owner no longer sculled herself, she should settle for a token payment.

In the end they agreed on another half year, from today through the twenty-seventh of the twelfth month. The first three months would be 240 cash apiece and the next three 260, with another discussion on the twenty-seventh of the third month the following year. She would cover major structural repairs and the Dings would pay for minor supplies. If the boat had to stop running for repairs, the rent would be reduced for the actual days lost, with no extension of the lease for three days spent on repairs. The three of them added the terms to a fresh sheet. Luo Yan pressed the 260-cash deposit back into the box and said herself that it would stay at that amount. If they didn't renew, it was to be returned to her directly, with nobody else settling on her behalf.

The first month's rent at the new rate, two hundred and forty cash, was paid then and there. A-Zhao took the money and looked again at the two plaques. The old bronze one was on the inside, with the wooden one beside it, and the new tassel Ding Sui had tied was a different color. She asked whether they would have to take it down in winter to protect it from damp. Luo Yan said they would bring in the tassel and leave the plaque. The words “Ding Quan's Ferry” would stay there. Tomorrow he would still have to rise early. A-Zhao's return today would hardly turn him back into a neighbor minding He Huaizhou's boat for a night.

Azhao told them her letters for the eleventh month should still go to Lanting. Xiaoman could take them in, and if she moved, she'd write first. Luo Yan asked whether she might end up joining Gu Ming's troupe outright. Azhao smiled a little and said she wasn't going now and didn't know about later. Even if she went, though, someone would still have to ask her about boat repairs. Going away wouldn't suddenly produce a Miss He with no responsibilities. She put the paper away when she finished, without signing away where she'd spend the rest of her life.

That night she swept the He family's house alone. Her mother's sewing compartments were still there. Her father's straw rain cape, once hung high, had now been put away elsewhere by Ding Quan and no longer dripped all the time. She took out the old lamp accounts and turned to the line for the third month. Her own words, lamp returned, sat beside her father's final entry. The date, the seventeenth of the second month, had faded a little. She did not trace over it, nor did she add how many times his daughter had come home afterward, as though that could make this account more complete for him.

The boat she had failed to sell three times still needed repairs. And it turned out you could start again with some of the old accounts of your life still open. She kept the thought to herself and left it off the end of the ledger. On a fresh page she recorded only that today's monthly rent was 240 cash and the deposit of 260 was still held. Her handwriting lacked her father's flourish, but the numbers were hers, and behind every line were people who would come asking for meal money or wages or about the seams between the planks.

On the twenty-eighth, Granny Qin invited her to lunch. A-Qiao was making square lanterns by the cabinet and held one up when A-Zhao arrived. Granny Qin first said the corners could be a little finer, then laughed and gestured for her to look at the bamboo joint. A-Zhao said it looked good left showing, and Granny Qin said the customer particularly liked it that way. They could face other people without first hiding every trace of old habits, and having the key did not put A-Qiao's work beyond a little criticism.

Xiaoman's letter had already come. Granny Qin said she'd meant it about salted fish going well with porridge, though she might buy a different one next time, and it would be better if Xiaoman put in a little less salt herself. Azhao thought she wanted her to carry an answer back and waited a while. But Granny Qin took a short note she'd already written out of the cabinet and said she'd send it back by boat. There was no need to keep putting Azhao in the middle and asking her to remember everything. The note lay beside Asheng's drawing of a flute. A few words were enough to make a letter.

At dinner no one asked why A-Zhao hadn't married yet. Granny Qin did ask whether she'd have enough money if the workroom had nothing for her in a slow month, then worried it sounded as if she were urging her back to the ferry. A-Zhao said she had enough for now. She'd already arranged to make everyday clothes with Ye Zhen in the winter, and if a month came up short she'd have to do the sums again. She could also ask the bigger troupe for odd jobs. If one door closed, she'd still have places to turn besides the river. Granny Qin nodded and put a piece of tofu in her own bowl, without taking A-Zhao's ability to get by as proof of what a little more advice from her could accomplish.

At dusk she went home to the Hes’, and Granny Qin came along to sit for a while. Just then Ding Quan came to borrow the tall lantern to look at a fastening at the old mooring. His own lantern was short and awkward to hold up along the embankment. A-Zhao took it down from the wooden rack, and Granny Qin smoothed a bit of paper that had lifted on the shade and told Ding Quan to keep it clear of the water. All three had their hands on it for a moment, then the lantern went out the door. Anyone could take it to look at an ordinary mooring fastening without first having to tell what it had lit over the years.

Ding Quan brought the lantern back that evening as soon as he’d finished looking. The rope was only frayed, he said. He’d replace it himself tomorrow, and the larger timbers hadn’t been touched. A-Zhao set the lantern by the door and only noticed after supper that there was still a sip of oil left. She snuffed it and put it away before the oil burned off. Someone would come to open the window in the morning, and they’d be able to see once it was light. Other people’s lamps still shone on the river, some near and some far, scattered here and close together there. Her one doorway didn’t have to tend them all.

On the twenty-ninth she left one key to the house with Luo Yan as before and put her own in the bamboo case. She didn't take the old brass plaque or empty her mother's compartments all at once. She packed just two good needles and the scissors she used all the time. Before she boarded, Ding Sui came running with a design for a new tassel she wanted to sell and asked whether anyone in Lanting would want such a fine tail. A-Zhao looked it over and said she could take one along and ask, but told her not to assume everyone would want it just because Lanting was bigger.

The case was lighter than it had been in the second month, but she still paid forty-two cash for passage and luggage and stayed a night at Sangqiao. A woman from the shop next door lent her a needle to tack down her collar. A-Zhao thanked her and gave it back without being asked whose celebrated pupil she might be. After two stitches A-Zhao saw that the thread was the wrong color and borrowed a different strand before finishing. She didn't want to let her greater skill make it easy to hurry past what was wrong. Water moved in the dark beneath the window. She remembered her first trip, how she'd been so busy shielding the lamp that she'd forgotten to make way. She got up and moved the case in close beside her feet.

When Azhao returned to Lanting on the thirtieth, Xiaoman was in the courtyard drying those two chi of blue cloth in the sun, and Asheng rushed to report which new characters he'd learned to recognize. Azhao put down the bamboo chest and first paid the forty-five cash she owed for the coming month's bed. Before leaving on the twenty-sixth, she'd promised to pay when she got back on the thirtieth. Xiaoman had held the bed for her, so the days away still counted. When the two of them had gone over the little food account, the boy was still standing there, waiting for her to have time at last to look at his characters.

That afternoon Gao Man brought a lined jacket to alter and a message from Lu Heniang. Azhao was to stop making only Han Rong look sharp. Her old collar edging needed unpicking too. Azhao laughed when she heard and took her needle pouch to the hall. A stretch of the drying line was free, and the everyday clothes they'd just taken in hadn't crowded onto it yet. Ye Zhen was waiting by the door for her to measure a sleeve. The first thing she said was that Azhao would have to write the numbers down this time. She always got them in a muddle.

A-Zhao turned to a fresh page in the book and asked which hand the wearer favored and how many layers he wore underneath in winter. As soon as he lifted his arm, a fine crease pulled tight at the shoulder of his old garment. She asked him to relax, then raise it once more. A boat passed outside the window, the sound of its oar growing fainter. She heard it, but her hand stayed on the shoulder she had yet to measure properly.