Keeping the Fifth Month Free of Business

On the eighth day of the fourth month, Xu Tan asked Gu Qing to come and measure a table in the courtyard. It was pale green beneath the plum tree now, the leaves still sparse enough for sunlight to fall in squares on the flagstones. When she heard about measuring a table, Gu Qing assumed at first that the warehouse wanted to add a counter beside the curved wall, and she felt a little stab of apprehension. But Xu Tan led her to the other end and pointed out three temporary spots. In the fifth month they planned to invite merchants traveling north and south to look at summer goods. They would set out samples in the courtyard and let people rest in the shade. The winter flower display would have no place there this time.

The tables were for the people doing the work. The Wens wanted a flower maker and a decorative cord maker to work on site for half a month, making things in front of the visiting merchants each day. They could sell the finished pieces separately, and Gu Qing could try out her designs and settle on what to make beforehand. Xu Tan offered four hundred cash for the half month, with materials and labor paid separately on anything that sold, and one meal each day. Gu Qing’s fingers clenched the corner of her garment. This money would come without waiting for flowers to sell one by one, and it would go a long way toward closing the gap in her travel funds that she could see no end to.

She asked about the dates. Xu Tan said the tenth to the twenty-fifth of the fifth month. They would open early to be ready for the merchants and keep those dates regardless of any one person's comings and goings. Half the brightness left Gu Qing's face. She'd already asked several times about the boat on the twelfth. She hadn't paid a deposit yet, but she'd talked over the berths and the rough length of the journey with her grandmother. They were waiting for just that stretch when the water at Heze would be warm and the heat still bearable for the old woman.

Xu Tan gave her time to answer and took her over to try setting out a crate first. The table was at a good height, the windows and doors stood open, and air came through from both sides. She bound a little sample flower there while several clerks moved stock without getting in her way. It was as if the next half month were already before her. She reckoned up the four hundred wen in a flash. She could stop worrying about those two strings of coins, keep the pieces of silk she'd had in stock for so long, and still have some capital when she got back. She might even hire a better cart.

She asked whether she could come for the first five days, then have Xiaoman take over. Xu Tan asked whether Xiaoman could make pieces to customers' measurements in front of them. Gu Qing said she could do some of that. Xu Tan shook her head. She needed the same person from sample making through taking orders, so merchants returning could get clear answers. Splitting the work between two people might be possible with a different arrangement, but she had no spare time here to bridge what they had left unclear. Nor could the four hundred wen be treated as payment merely for samples, without anyone appearing.

Wen Jichang came over in time to hear the latter part and said it was only half a month. As if the lotuses would cut their blooming short by a fortnight. Gu Qing didn't talk back. He meant no harm. In his own business, if he missed one boat he had to catch the next, and he was unwilling to spend money he could earn now on a day that might be no better. The Wens were still paying back their loan. He couldn't wait for things to settle at the warehouse before opening, and he assumed other people's plans had to be squeezed in bit by bit the same way.

When Gu Qing got home, she left the four hundred cash unmentioned at first. Her grandmother was mending a hat strap. On hearing that Gu Qing might work at the warehouse in the fifth month, she asked what day they'd move the boat trip to. Gu Qing said perhaps the sixth month, though they might still make the end of the fifth. Shen Su put down her thread and slowly rolled her left thumb between the fingers of her right hand. After a long silence, she only said that the sixth month was hot and she didn't do well in the heat. Whether she could bear it would depend on how she felt then.

Gu Qing hurried to say there would be curtains and hot water aboard, and with four hundred cash they could pay for a more comfortable berth. Midway through, she saw her grandmother was still rubbing her thumb, and suddenly heard herself making promises for a sixth month that hadn't even come. She stopped and asked when the old woman wanted to go if they set the money aside. Shen Su said she wanted to try going in the fifth month, while her leg could still bear a trial on the road and the weather was still cool. She said it evenly, without setting all those years she had never gone on the table to weigh on anyone.

That afternoon Gu Qing was making sash flowers and tied a layer of apricot-colored petals in the wrong place. She took it apart, dropped the ball of thread, and bumped into the space cleared by shifting half the table when she crouched to pick it up. She hated how small the table was, hated having to measure every piece of silk she bought in palm widths, and hated even more that she was treating four hundred cash she could earn as something that might hurt someone. Surely she could have had a little of both. Why did the timing have to leave her so little room?

That night she deliberately kept at her sums till late, returning to the lamp even after she’d washed Grandmother’s knee pads. Four hundred wen really would make the journey easier, and earning less really would make life tighter when they got back. She remembered the disappointment she’d felt hearing laughter outside the Chen house. Now that disappointment had taken another shape, and she was hoping Grandmother would say of her own accord that there was no hurry. If Grandmother said there was no hurry, Gu Qing wouldn’t have to admit how reluctant she was to give up the money.

The next day she went to the Zhous’ new shop without a flower tray and simply asked whether she should take the work. Zhou Jiping heard her out and said he probably would if it were him. He and his sister-in-law still owed money for two sections of awning at the new shop. Gu Qing looked at him. She had hoped to hear something that would give her courage, and what she heard was the shape of his own life. She asked if that meant she should take it too. He set his plane down and said he had no grandmother waiting to go and see lotuses with him. He couldn't spare her the thinking.

She was a little angry that he hadn't offered a single word of comfort, though she knew he cared. Zhou Jiping brought out an unfinished lightweight umbrella from the back to show her. He was testing whether it would hold with two fewer thick ribs. It was small, so two people would have to stand close to fit under it, and it wouldn't do to insist on using it in heavy rain. He said he could finish it in time if she left in the fifth month. If she left in the sixth, he could keep it till then, and the price wouldn't go up while he waited. He didn't use the umbrella to hurry her into choosing a day.

After dinner on the twelfth, Shen Su took off her knee wrap. The worn patch had been mended with new cloth. Gu Qing asked if she'd resent being taken on the trip if her knee still hurt when they left. The old woman asked in turn whether, if Gu Qing stayed to work, she would resent her for never once urging her to go. They sat facing each other, neither able to say there would be no resentment at all. Eventually Shen Su stretched out her leg to show her the patch. If it hurt, they'd stop, she said. If she really couldn't manage then, they could turn back. She wouldn't decide it was impossible before she'd even stepped across the threshold.

That night Gu Qing spread out every piece of usable material on her half of the table and looked at them one by one, moving past the great undifferentiated heap in her head. Besides the smoky purple silk, there were two pieces of the same pale gray in different weights. One could stay for linings. The other had gone unused for years. She ran a fingernail along the old folds, remembering how sure she had been when she bought it that the next big customer would want it straight away. By the time she had finished reckoning, the four hundred cash no longer looked like a lone string of coins hanging from the sky. Tied to it were half a month of mornings and evenings, empty berths on a boat, the heat of the sixth month, and the little stretch of road she and Grandmother had only just learned they could manage.

As dawn approached, she folded the materials again, setting the three pieces she had selected apart under an empty spool. There was no hurry to sell them to anyone. The spool was worth nothing, but she no longer kept it among the full ones she could use. She slept briefly before going to the Wens’. There were faint dark circles under her eyes, but she said nothing more about shifting things to the sixth month.

On the thirteenth, Gu Qing returned the measurements for the demonstration table to Xu Tan and said she wouldn't take the engagement. She gave a short reason. She was taking her grandmother away in the fifth month and keeping the dates they'd set. Xu Tan frowned and asked whether she really couldn't come for the first five days. Gu Qing said that if she did, she'd still want to stay longer, so it was better to be clear from the start. Xu Tan put the paper with the measurements back in her ledger and said she'd find someone else. She couldn't keep the place open for her.

Four hundred wen were gone in those few words. Standing at the edge of the shade, Gu Qing was offered no further sympathy. Her shoulders felt a little lighter, and there was a hollow in her chest. Xu Tan asked her to pass a coil of rope. She handed it over and took her leave. Outside, A-Chun was sweeping fallen leaves. He looked up and asked whether Miss Gu would be away in the fifth month. She said she would, in Nanpu. The boy told her about a kind of rice cake there with a thin crust. It was best eaten straight from the pan and would harden if she wrapped it up to bring home. She remembered this piece of news that she had no way of turning into money ahead of time.

She made hardly any flowers that afternoon. The day had yet to come, and already regret at losing the income was knocking at her door. She took out the whole piece of smoky purple silk she had meant to save for sample flowers and tucked it away again. It was unsuitable for the boxed flowers she was making now. She could sell it, but silk she bought later might never catch the light in quite the same way. She felt a loose strand at the corner, as if someone had reached out a finger to tug at her and tell her to hold on. In the end she held off cutting it, folding it into the stock she still had to sort and setting it beside her travel notes.

The next day Xu Tan brought in a woman named Meng, who made a pomegranate blossom on the spot. Her hands were steadier than Gu Qing’s, though her colors were heavier. Watching from the well, Gu Qing’s first thought was still that the red overwhelmed the green. Then she felt ridiculous. Madam Meng had to eat too, and she might be counting on those four hundred cash. Gu Qing stayed out in the yard. When Xu Tan called over the wall to ask if they could borrow a bucket of water, she filled one and carried it to the door. Madam Meng nodded to her, and she returned the courtesy as usual.

That night Shen Su saw her going through the stock and asked if Gu Qing wanted to count her little bundle in as well. Gu Qing said it was too early to count the money. She was first sorting out what they really wouldn't use. Her grandmother sat down and picked up the smoky purple silk, saying that once she too had been reluctant to use that color. Gu Qing expected her to urge her to keep it. Instead Shen Su asked which cloth merchant would take an old piece that was still whole, so she wouldn't have to sell it for a pittance as an offcut. Gu Qing burst out laughing and asked Granny how she could bear to part with it so easily.

“It does hurt.” Shen Su smoothed the fabric. “So keep a palm-sized piece. Don't sell it all. What you want to keep is this color; you don't have to carry such a great piece across the river.”

Gu Qing cut off a palm's width and held it across her fingers. With the lamplight through it, the smoky purple seemed to take on another kind of light. She hadn't forgotten the four hundred cash. When she heard Madam Meng working on samples next door, she still looked up. But the two apricot-colored sash flowers she finished that night went back in the slots for their assigned dates, and the box for the twelfth day of the fifth month went unaltered.