Two Small Strings of Coins

The money looked like less once it was tipped out onto the table than it had in the clothes chest. There were six small strings of fifty coins each, with another fifteen loose at the bottom of the bowl. Gu Qing counted twice. The five wen for Mr. Ding had indeed been spent, and no extra coin came rolling out from some hidden compartment. Shen Su sat beside her, slowly bending and straightening her fingers on her knees, letting her take her time before saying how much there was.

Gu Qing pushed two of the strings to the left. Taking out a hundred cash would leave two hundred and fifteen. She would set a hundred aside as a reserve for rice, vegetables, and fuel, and even in winter she could no longer dip into it to buy materials. The rest had to keep them in silk, thread, paste, and bamboo stems. The covered stall she had meant to rent for two hundred cash had already been taken by someone else before her eyes, and with it had gone her plans for that money. Thinking of it now, it felt like something from a long time ago.

Shen Su asked what she would do with the money left if a whole batch of flowers went wrong. Gu Qing said she had not ruined a big batch in months. No sooner had she said it than she caught sight of the unsold silk plum spray by the window and changed her answer. She would hold off on taking orders for difficult colors. Grandmother let the glance pass without a lesson. She simply set a small roll of old thread in the middle of the table and said that thread already on hand had a cost all the same.

Gu Qing took up her brush and wrote a few characters she knew on the back of the paper: tree, wall, flower. When she came to the price beside flower, she hesitated again. An ordinary little stem sold for eight copper coins, about two of which went for materials. Even counting the fine work, it would cost her another half a day of daylight. If she made a few more stems for the Wens, what she’d be putting toward the cost was the time she could otherwise spend selling other kinds of flowers over the next several days, rather than new money dropping into her purse.

She stopped well before midnight. Early on the twenty-first, she went next door with a newly made silk plum spray and two small strings of cash, leaving the other four at home. As Wen Jichang watched her set the money in an empty bowl, he looked more serious than he had while marking out the gate the day before. He said Master He had given him a figure. The stretch of wall by the tree, including protecting the drain and building the curve, would cost four hundred and twenty cash. Lowering the south gate’s threshold, mending its lintel, and joining up the awning would all be extra. The changes would save money in some places and cost more in plenty of others.

Gu Qing said the lintel served the warehouse entrance, and the Gu family could hardly buy a gate for freight carts. Wen Jichang answered that the warehouse could have managed without keeping the tree. She said she knew, which was why she had come with something to offer. They paused there and let it rest. At the table, Xu Tan was turning a silk bag inside out. She waited until they had finished and then showed her husband the split seam. Pack fine goods in a bag that old, she said, and they stood to lose more than the bag.

Wen Jichang asked how much she could actually contribute. Gu Qing pushed the two strings of coins in the bowl closer and said she had one hundred in cash, and would make twenty silk plum blossoms to cover another hundred. They would follow the sample she had brought; the stems need not be long, but the colors and thread knots would all be fully finished, and the whole order delivered before the twelfth of the twelfth month. If he wanted only money, she could not produce two hundred now. She could not empty out her means of living just to say yes today.

Xu Tan took the flower and, before asking anything about its looks, gently bent a petal backward and let go to see whether it would spring back. Gu Qing tensed, wanting to tell her to stop before she bent it too far. Before she could speak, Xu Tan handed the flower back. The thread end had to be tucked away securely, she said. These were gifts for the women in the buyers’ households, and even a beautiful flower would draw complaints if it snagged their clothes. She would take them at five cash a spray. She wanted nothing too deep a red, and asked for the twenty sprays in three deliveries so she could spot any problems before the whole lot arrived.

Gu Qing hadn't expected her flowers to have a real destination. She felt a moment's relief, then immediately added that she couldn't change the design for every stem. Xu Tan looked at her. Bring two designs first, she said, and once we've chosen, make them to match. Better to settle it now than to have twenty stems arrive before I pick one color. Only then did Gu Qing lower her shoulders. She took back the sample, ready to tuck the thread ends away again.

When they got to that stretch of wall, Wen Jichang still wanted the Gu household to pay half, saying the simplest thing would be to split the four hundred and twenty wen into two shares of two hundred and ten. Gu Qing counted the two strings of coins in her bowl and suddenly felt she couldn’t simply let the extra ten wen go. She said she’d agreed to two hundred, with no obligation to pay more every time something was added. The wall by the well and tree was shared, but the work at the warehouse door didn’t touch the Gu courtyard. Wen Jichang was about to say more when Xu Tan asked whether the mason had already listed the work of extending the awning to the south veranda separately.

The three went back to He Fengqiu. The mason used an old cord to mark out again where the curved wall would start and end, then broke down the half day of work they hadn't been able to separate. Here he had to curve the wall around the tree, and there he had to see where the rain would fall from the new gate. They couldn't just sit at a table and divide it in half. Gu Qing listened closely. Before, she had felt that asking about the price only made her look stingy because she was poor. Now that He Fengqiu was just as unwilling to let half a day's work go unaccounted for, she let the ten coins stand.

In the end, they agreed that the Gu household would contribute two hundred wen, one hundred in cash and another hundred in the form of twenty flower stems. The Wen household would cover the remaining two hundred and twenty wen for the work by the tree and pay separately for its south gate. He Fengqiu was booked solid before the New Year and could only come on the fourth day of the twelfth month. The Wens could clear the old stove and mend the north room first, so the ten or so days in between would be put to use. Only when Gu Qing heard the date did she feel that the tree was safe for the moment. An agreement alone had yet to put up a new wall to protect it.

Aunt Chen and Granny Liu hadn't sat in on the discussion about splitting the cost of the wall, but both wanted to see where the new gate would go. Aunt Chen brought a strip of old cloth that had been wetted and hung out to dry, and let it hang down to see whether it would brush the carts. Granny Liu pulled in the front stand of her bean stall and asked whether there would still be room for her under the gate awning for a little while when it rained. Wen Jichang said she couldn't set up in the cart entrance all day. She could have a corner morning and evening when there were no carts, but if a load came in, she'd have to give way first. Granny Liu thought he talked too much and gave him no answer, though she turned the stand the way he had said.

Gu Qing had to give a little ground too. The warehouse carts would no longer pass by the plum tree, but her family couldn't keep stacking winter firewood against that stretch of wall. The old drain at the foot of it had to stay clear, with no dead leaves or paper supplies blocking it. She began by saying she always cleared the drain. Shen Su, who'd appeared at the Gu family's door without her noticing, called over the wall that it had clogged the winter before last and she shouldn't be so sure of herself. Her face hot, Gu Qing could only nod. From now on they'd check when it rained, she said, and clear it together if it did clog.

The broker had fetched the paper from a chest in the old house. It was a little damp at the edges, and when Ding Fengquan came and examined it, he said it wouldn't keep and asked for a dry sheet. He set down the boundaries on both sides, the provisions for keeping the tree and the drain, and the shares of the cost of repairing the wall, item by item. He left ownership of the tree unsettled and made no promise that it would live through the next year. When he read out that the Gu family couldn't stack firewood there, Gu Qing still felt uncomfortable and couldn't help glancing at her grandmother. Shen Su stood listening as if the words brought shame to no one.

Wen Jichang paid the six cash for paper, ink, and the writing, and Gu Qing let him. She could write her own name, but the lower horizontal stroke of 青 ran too long and nearly touched the entry beside it. She wanted to rub it out and start again. Ding Fengquan stopped her. As long as she acknowledged it in person, it was enough that she'd written it herself. She didn't need to groom her name like a silk flower. She gave a little laugh with the brush still in her hand, and her fingers loosened.

When Wen Jichang took the money, he recorded the quantity and delivery dates for the twenty silk plum sprays separately and said he would check them off as they came in, leaving any receipt until they were actually in his storeroom. Gu Qing asked Mr. Ding to read that part out once more. Once she was sure, she folded her copy. The paper was lighter than the cash, but she could feel one stiff corner when she slipped it into her sleeve. She finally knew that what she carried there included both a promise that others wouldn't take advantage of her and work she herself would have to do.

When they got back, Shen Su asked where Gu Qing meant to move the winter firewood before she asked about the money left over. Gu Qing immediately said behind the kitchen, only to find half a basket of old bamboo strips and a broken water bucket already there. They spent a long time shifting things before they cleared a small patch for the wood that wouldn't block the door. A piece of bark caught a thread in Gu Qing's cuff and tore open the spot she had mended just the day before. In a fit of temper she kicked the broken bucket. It rolled away and knocked over her grandmother's little dish of charcoal ash.

Shen Su made no remark about how they ought to be happy now the tree was staying. She just leaned against the doorframe and laughed. Gu Qing turned and glared, but her grandmother said every year they complained that the bucket ought to go, and every year neither of them threw it out. Now it looked as if the bucket had made the decision for them. Gu Qing wanted to kick it again, but spotted one of her own fallen needles among the ashes and finally crouched down to look for it. Her grandmother brought over a low stool and sifted the ashes through an old basket. The wind passed between them and left both their noses black at the tip.

That afternoon, they made no flowers. They restrung the two hundred and fifteen cash left on the table, and Gu Qing took a separate piece of cloth to wrap the portion for materials. Her grandmother asked why she no longer called the money saved from selling flowers their travel money. Gu Qing said they had other things to see to first. Shen Su nodded, then turned and tucked the little cloth bundle in her clothes chest back into its hidden compartment. She did it quickly. Gu Qing saw her but asked nothing, assuming it was more old thread her grandmother had put away and couldn't bear to use.

On the third day, the Wens pulled out the old stove first. Dust rose over the wall, and Gu Qing gathered up the pieces of white silk one by one. She couldn't help feeling a little impatient. The tree had stayed, but life hadn't quieted down at once. She carried water out to sprinkle the ground and heard someone call for Madam Xu from the other side, saying there wasn't a single stove brick they could use whole. Xu Tan called back loudly to sort out the cracked ones. There was no point saving today what would come tumbling down tomorrow. Gu Qing swallowed the complaint on the tip of her tongue, picked three split stems out of her own bamboo basket, and left the paste alone.

Later, Shen Su moved the first unsold silk plum blossom a little farther from the window, saying the flower head wouldn't stand up to the sun in that drafty spot. Gu Qing was about to tell her that silk flowers didn't mind the wind, but then saw a very faint change along the edge of a light-colored petal and simply moved the vase farther in. The scent of plum blossoms still drifted in through the window, now strong, now faint, impossible to reckon at so many a day like the twenty stems she had promised. She spread fresh silk on the table, pinned down the template for the earliest blossom beside it, and cut the first two petals.