Chapter_41_The_Petition

Chen Jin had been held to the order "stay within the harbor" for three days, and by then the city's petition of names had already spread.

But it went back further. The first night, a sheet had been pressed under the threshold—the first name Zhou Zhengting's, in pencil, with a red thumbprint beside it, pressed hard. When Chen Jin tucked it into his chest, he took it for someone standing up for him, and gave it no more thought. The same hand that had gone line by line through the grain accounts for the defense officer in the hearing room that day had signed first that night. He had not imagined that one sheet would walk half the city along the wall's foot.

The next morning, the word went out with the men at the tail of the grain line. They had watched the barracks all night, and as they queued for rations they fed the phrase "the wall changed hands, but the accounts cannot" into every line, one by one. Zhou Zhengting's sheet was copied once, into a new sheet, and that one was carried off and copied again. By dusk, there was no longer one sheet outside Chen Jin's door.

He could not leave, but the paper could come in.

For the first days it was the street corner. At the old spot, beneath the wall where notices used to hang, someone had set out a lame-legged table, and on it a stack of rough paper, the edges cut uneven—patched together from several households, with blank pages torn from ledgers added on. Those who came to set down a name did not queue and did not raise their voices. They stepped up one at a time, took up the brush, wrote their name; those who could not write pressed a red thumbprint. The brush was water-loaded and dried slowly, and the paper bled small soft pools of ink.

No one hurried, no one shouted. When a name was set down, the brush was laid aside and the writer stepped aside, and the next took his place.

At first no one kept the table; then Zhou Zhengting came, and after him a few old men he did not know took turns in the seat—whoever was free came, and the table was never empty.

The night-watch soldier who reported the count could not give a number. He only said the stack at the table's edge had grown from one finger's width to three, and after that even three fingers would not measure it, and it was tied with string.

True silence. This was the first true silence Chen Jin had felt in days—not the silence of the two sides brushing past each other at the wall as it changed hands, but the silence of a whole city setting down names without a sound. The brush tip crossed the paper, the red print went down, and now and then someone wrote a name wrong, the loaded brush paused on the page, and wrote again. Those were the only sounds.

A whole city wrote its urgent words into a form that needed no voice. At night the wind came in from the street corner, and the distant scratch of brush tips came one stroke at a time, falling into the wind, sounding far, falling outside this city's own roof.

What went unnoticed were the hands.

An old man's hand shook; he could not hold the brush steady, and his name leaned, but his red thumbprint was the firmest of all, the pad pressed into the paper as if to drive that bit of red in. Standing beside him was his wife, who did not set down her own name but gave the names of the two children in her arms. The old man hesitated, then wrote them anyway—the youngest was seven, and the name went down with a small red print beneath the father's.

At the other end, a man who could not write clutched the brush and fumbled with it for a long while, then set it down, pressed his thumb into the ink, and stabbed it onto the paper; he missed, and pressed again to make it even. The ink was red, and it soaked onto his thumb, and when he closed his fist the red ran out between his fingers, and he did not notice.

A veteran, once mustered out, set down his name and did not leave. He stood at the table watching others write, and after a long while he said that the time they held the East Sluice he had pressed a print too—then it was onto the roll of the living, and this time onto the heart of a living man. He fell quiet at his own words, and there was no more.

The ones who came to set down names from the shelter were the most. They had been behind the fence, and now they slipped out in twos and threes, walked to the table, set down a name, and went back, lingering nowhere.

One woman came leading two children; she set down her own name and then gave the children's names too, and the old man writing shook as he wrote, so she traced the children's names clear for him. When she was done she said those two names would be repaid one day. The old man asked, repaid with what. She said, with the days under the wall they were owed. The old man did not understand, but he wrote the names anyway.

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Zhou Zhengting still went to balance accounts by day. He ran between the two now—before noon he reported figures to the defense officer in the hearing room, and at dusk he took his place behind that table at the street corner, reading names and calling numbers for those who could not write.

Someone asked him, by day you balance accounts for the office, by night you sign for General Chen—do they not clash. He did not look up. He said, what is balanced is one ledger, what is signed is one man; they do not clash.

Someone else asked if he was afraid. He said he was. Not of signing, but of the roster going up and the office not acknowledging this ledger. As he spoke his hand was still holding the paper's corner for the man, so the wind would not lift it.

In his room Chen Jin turned out that first sheet from his chest and laid it beside the stack that had come in later. The paper kept coming until it would not fit, and he tied the stack with the frayed bit of sling-rope—the same length the old hand had passed to the relief men at the handover, frayed at the end, which he had kept. The tied stack went in the corner of the desk, with the accounts he had not finished counting.

When he had nothing else he turned the pages, not to count men but to know the writing. More than half the names he could put a face to; a smaller half he had only met at the wall's foot; a few were entering his ledger for the first time. Many were from the shelter; he had only seen their surnames on the roster before, and now he had seen the men, and he put face to name, one by one.

The twenty-first regret came at noon that day.

The defense officer came again with word that the committee wanted a "roster of adherents" under his name, for the record. Chen Jin took the message and said without thinking, "Tell them to strike the names; they need not share my burden." The words were out before he regretted them—the paper had grown to three fingers thick; tell a man to strike his name and could he. He added, low, "I can bear it, and so can they."

No one heard it. He chewed it over for a long while. The twentieth had been "two short and a long, don't change it"; this one was "tell them to strike the names." He weighed it; the later was lighter than the former, and lighter than it should be.

Bi Chengzhang's side Chen Jin could not see.

In the assembly hall, a copied petition had been laid before them, pressed beside the charge book. As Bi Chengzhang turned the roster, his sleeve slid and the ornament on his wrist showed half—thorns turned inward, the grain grown the wrong way, like a barb set in backwards. The whole hall was reading the names on the roster, and no one looked twice at his hand. He drew it back, closed the roster, and pressed it under a stack of papers. The reversed thorns, this time, only he saw.

He had paused at one page as he turned—a name he knew, an old subordinate who had once handed him a surrender token, now also red-printed. He said nothing, and turned that page over.

Wen Heng's ledger Chen Jin had kept in mind.

The lamp in the casualty tent still burned. Passing at night, he saw through the tent cloth Wen Heng turning a book slowly by the lamp, and at the middle pages she lingered longer than elsewhere. Those pages were the injury roster from the night fight; Chen Jin knew them—every name on them had come in from beyond the wall, and which should be recorded and which rewarded he knew in his heart. Wen Heng closed those pages and did not set them elsewhere, but pressed them under the lamp, one hand still guarding them, afraid the wind would lift them and afraid another would turn them.

Chen Jin did not go in; he could not leave, and should not add to the confusion. He only remembered: that book, Wen Heng had turned to the three pages of the night fight and lingered long. Those three pages would matter later. If someone would turn those three pages to the one who should see them, the book would be more than a roster of wounds—Bi Chengzhang's old account of trafficking relief grain might yet be answered.

On the third dusk a man came to the door—the old hand—and slipped a note through the crack: the table at the street corner was closed, the roster sent in; he had counted it, and the stack that had been three fingers thick had gained half a finger more. Chen Jin, through the door, heard him stand a moment outside, not leaving, a word at his lips that he swallowed back, unsaid.

Chen Jin said, "Don't stand there. Go rest."

The old hand said, "General, I've kept the roster for you. One man, one mark."

The day after the roster went in, the committee made no move. The defense officer came once, looked at the stack in the corner, said nothing, and left. Chen Jin knew the stack now rested in someone's hand, and in someone's mind.

Inside the door there was no sound. Chen Jin gathered the stack in the corner again, red print over red print, name over name. The wall changed hands, but the accounts cannot—that phrase was no longer on the back of a sheet; it had fallen into the three-finger stack, into every thumbprint that pressed it, into the distance Zhou Zhengting walked between two duties, into the three pages Wen Heng lingered over under the lamp.

He blew out the lamp.

The wind came in from the street corner, and the distant scratch of brush tips still came, one stroke, then another. This city wrote its names, stroke by stroke, into the roster, and into someone's ledger. The accounts cannot change the men, but the men wrote the accounts, stroke by stroke, into their own.