After the Blossoms Fade

On the day the warehouse opened, only a few blossoms remained on the east branch of the plum tree. The others had faded at different times. Some still held a little white but had grown so thin that light shone through them, and a slightly stronger gust would set them loose. Gu Qing gathered the fallen flowers early that morning. In no hurry to give them away, she first spread a dry cloth outside the threshold and let the wet ones dry a little. Beyond the wall, the Wens hung up a bright new cloth sign. All the bustle seemed to swallow what little pale color remained in the tree.

What Wen Jichang invited people to see was the new gate, the storage space, and how easily carts could come and go. He had left the plum blossoms off the new sign. Yet among the visitors there was always someone who'd heard the story of saving the tree and wanted to go into the courtyard for a look. Xu Tan showed them around and told them to gather their sleeves in when they came near the goods so they wouldn't snag the openings of the new sacks. Gu Qing watched through the gap in her own gate and felt that the tree the visitors saw and the one she watered every day weren't quite the same thing.

One visitor looked at the tree and remarked that it had few flowers. A pot of camellias in full bloom under the veranda would do better. Wen Jichang agreed, saying the courtyard should be kept clear where it needed to be and there were other ways to enjoy flowers besides looking at this one tree. Gu Qing heard him through the wall. At first she was a little put out, then she breathed easier. If he had made out that keeping the tree would bring in customers every day, she might have felt obliged to apologize on behalf of the blossoms to everyone who came away disappointed.

After the New Year holidays, goods came into the East Market more slowly than before. Gu Qing sorted the wrapping paper she hadn't used into several baskets, meaning to air it before putting it back on the shelves. There was little room indoors now that the table had been moved farther in. She put the outermost basket under the wooden platform by the well for the night and planned to take it out in the morning. She had checked that it was half a palm's width from the mouth of the drain. It hardly counted as stacking firewood against the wall, she told herself, and the paper was clear of the mud. For the moment she let herself off.

Three days before the warehouse opening, it began to rain on the night of the thirteenth. The rain wasn't heavy, but it was still falling in the morning. When Gu Qing checked the basket, the edge of the wooden platform was spattered with mud, so she pushed the basket farther in and put an old board across the front. Shen Su called from inside for hot water, her voice a little hoarse, and Gu Qing didn't crouch down to look at the drain again. By the time breakfast was ready, the Wens' first cartload of rice had arrived. The wheels came through the south gate, and muddy water carrying bits of straw from the corners of the sacks ran slowly over the newly lowered threshold and into the lane.

Gu Qing was curling petals by the window when she heard Auntie Chen call. At first she thought another cart needed room to pass. She set down the petal in her hand and pushed open the door to find Auntie Chen bailing water out with a wooden dipper. Water was welling up at the foot of both walls. It had yet to reach the rim of the well, but it had already spread in a shallow sheet along the joints between the dry bricks. Gu Qing put a hand in to test it, and her fingers curled at the cold. The first thing she asked was whether the Wens’ new gate had diverted all the rainwater this way.

Auntie Chen told her to leave whose water it was for later and find something to hold it. Gu Qing went in for a basin, growing more convinced all the while that she was right. It had never been so wet before. Of course a rebuilt doorway and newly packed ground would change where the water went. By the time she set the basin down, Wen Jichang had arrived too, with mud on his trouser cuffs. A burlap sack in the Wen courtyard was already being propped up from underneath. Clearly he hadn't been sitting dry indoors waiting for everyone else to get wet.

They pointed at each other's side almost simultaneously. Wen Jichang said that if the drain was clear, that little bit of water outside the threshold shouldn't be pooling here. Gu Qing said who knew whether rubble and mortar had fallen into it when they repaired the wall. His face darkened at once. Did she want to pull down what they'd just built and inspect it right now? Having said it, she refused to back down and added that if they'd agreed to keep the drain, a line on a piece of paper wasn't enough.

Xu Tan came over a moment later with a thin strip of wood and let that remark pass. She probed the shallow channel with the strip until she hit something, then asked Gu Qing to lift the old board beside the well. As Gu Qing raised it, a piece of soggy paper from the bottom of the basket clung to the board, then sank back into the water. Her heart tightened at the sight, but she told herself it was just an outer sheet that had caught a splash. The real blockage must be farther in. How else could there be so much water?

There was more than paper in what they cleared out. Old and new mortar grit, dead leaves, straw fallen from carts, and a little black mud from years past were all mixed together. Once wet, it was impossible to pick up a handful and say how much came from each house. The little opening He Fengqiu had left for clearing the drain came in handy. Xu Tan handed the wooden strip to Wen Jichang, Auntie Chen carried off the basin to empty it, and Gu Qing squatted by the well, scooping the debris away from the mouth by the handful.

The water gradually drained away, and before long half a brick was showing. Gu Qing’s cuffs were soaked through and her knees were pressed to the cold ground when she heard Wen Jichang say they had cleared enough for now and could have a closer look farther in once the rain stopped. He didn't ask whose basket that scrap of paper had come from, and she let it pass too. But when she went to put the basin away, she carried her whole paper basket indoors. Its wet base dragged a dark streak across the threshold. It hardly looked like something a gap of half a palm could have prevented.

Shen Su looked for dry trousers for her, felt a patch of mud at the knee, and asked what she had been shouting about so loudly. Gu Qing said she was afraid water would get into the well. Grandmother said the well rim was high and things hadn't got that far. Being worried was no reason to talk as if everything the others had done was wrong. Gu Qing meant to say her fears had grounds, then saw Grandmother's hand moving slowly through the pile of clothes. In the end she took the wet trousers and said she would clear out the inside of the drain again herself tomorrow.

The rain stopped the next day and she did go to look. The mouth of the drain was clear on the surface, and when she probed it with a slat, the slat went farther in. So she put off the work she had meant to do that day until she truly had time. The water had drained away for now, after all. The wastepaper basket stayed indoors and the worktable was more crowded. To sit down she always had to turn her knees to one side first. Xiaoman saw how things stood when she came in, moved her coat onto her lap, and didn't ask about the new smell of damp in the room.

In the first few days after the warehouse opened, people of every kind came and went, making it busier than the New Year holidays. Gu Qing had thought she and the Wen family were already familiar neighbors, yet now, standing by their doorway, she was often asked by the assistants to step aside. She knew there were goods passing through and that no one meant to slight her, but whenever she was told to move, she still remembered the customers at the Western Market first asking which shop she belonged to. Carrying her empty basket back into the courtyard, she felt a more urgent desire than ever for a business that truly belonged to her.

Yao Liao came by once to deliver two flower ornaments to the women of the Wen household and see Gu Qing’s new blue samples while she was there. She didn't linger under the plum tree and scraped the mud from her shoes before coming inside. Xiaoman was making a curled petal that departed from the old pattern. Yao Liao picked it up, turned it halfway round against the light, and said the shape might sell well in a warmer color as a hair ornament at the Spring Flower Fair. Gu Qing immediately said they had used it for the blue plum blossoms and could adapt it, depending on the quantity.

Yao Liao named no quantity on the spot. She asked if Gu Qing would take another order in the second month. If so, she would bring samples in a few days. Gu Qing should hear her out before saying yes just because it was a large order. Gu Qing said she could get it done in time with Xiaoman helping. Across the table, the thread in Xiaoman’s hands went still for a moment. She neither objected at once nor nodded along. She simply put the petal she had just made in a little paper packet of her own and went on cutting the ordinary petals they had already agreed on.

Only after Xiaoman left did Gu Qing remember that, if she took on the new design, she would need that curled petal piece for comparison. Carrying a half-folded box, she hurried after her. At the mouth of the alley, however, she saw that Xiaoman had not gone straight back to the dye works, but was standing before a small stall selling hat trimmings. The stallholder handed her a soft cap. She took it, first loosening an overly neat flower on its side, then took the little paper packet from her sleeve and held its contents against the cap at an angle.

Gu Qing slowed down. On the table at the Gu house, that bit of blue had looked like a leftover from a trial that went wrong. Against the dark gray hatband it was unexpectedly lovely. Xiaoman tried on the hat, which held down her loosely gathered hair and made her whole face look sharper. Even when she smiled, she had no need to check whether Gu Qing approved. The stallholder was saying something, and Xiaoman reached up to fold the brim a little lower. A woman shopping beside her reached out too and touched the turned-back edge of silk.

Gu Qing suddenly wanted very much to go over and ask whose materials had gone into that flower. Her fingertips dented the box in her hands. She took a step, then stopped, remembering that Xiaoman had said from the start that any failed experiments were hers and wouldn't count toward the order. Pressing her on it might only make an ugly business of something they had left unclear. Gu Qing stood two steps away and watched the customer tilt the hat to the other side. Before Xiaoman could see her, she turned back into the lane with the box in her arms.

Back at the table, she picked up the blue flower she had looked at in the basin and turned it halfway around. She still could not make it look as light as the one on the hatband. She left it intact and put it back where it had been, then rubbed the dent she had made in the paper box with her fingertip. The dent never quite came out. She turned the box over to keep it from facing the door.

Grandmother left the sewing table alone that afternoon and went out to hang cloth with Auntie Chen. They wrung the wet cloth down to the last handful of water and draped it over the poles. In the wind the lengths looked like white doors opening and closing in the alley. Gu Qing went out with tea and heard Auntie Chen ask whether her legs could take the walking if she really went south. Shen Su said if she couldn't walk far, she could take a boat. She could hardly give up before she even reached the shore. Gu Qing wanted to say they hadn't saved enough for the fare, but in the end she simply set the tea down.

Back inside, she laid out the blue samples again and picked out the ones that could go into an order for the Spring Flower Fair. Those outward-curling blossoms were the work of more than one pair of hands, yet together they looked like a whole new shopfront. She tried putting a sheet of white paper beneath them and wrote 顾, the Gu in her name. Halfway through 青, Qing, she set the brush down for fear of dripping ink on the flowers. Outside, her grandmother and Auntie Chen were still laughing. The cloth on the line muffled the sound a little, and it fell very softly into the room.

On the morning of the eighteenth day of the first month, the last plum blossom on the near side of the tree fell inside the curve of the new wall, just short of the Gu courtyard. Shen Su looked over the wall for a while without asking anyone to fetch it. Gu Qing thought she hated to leave it there and asked if she wanted to go over. Her grandmother shook her head and said the flowers over there could fall where they were. Then she put away the old cloth. The petals she’d gathered in recent days had dried into a tiny bundle. Their colors, once deeper in some places than others, had all faded to much the same shade.

Gu Qing touched the new wall. The bricks still held a little of the coolness left by the rain. The wall curved to make room for the tree, but it hadn’t given the blossoms another day. She couldn’t make anything more of it yet. She simply went indoors, finished writing 青 on the white sheet, turned it over, and began calculating how many trays she could fit beside her table if Yao Liao brought the large samples.