Overnight

The lamp he had not turned off last night. When he opened up this morning, the dust on the counter lay a layer thicker than yesterday; the incense ash had gone cold through. Outside the sky was overcast, the lane nearly empty — only the sweeping woman pushing refuse into her bucket; she looked at him and said nothing.

His first thought was for the old woman.

Among all of yesterday's crowd, an old woman had stood at the outermost edge, a small paper packet in her fist, and from start to finish had not said one word. His glance had caught it: a thread of saltiness seeping from the packet's seam, right for nothing else in that room full of scent. When the crowd dispersed she had dispersed with it. This morning he had come early on purpose, hoping at the morning market by the mouth of the lane someone might know such a person.

The breakfast seller hadn't noticed. The old watchmaker looked up at him: this street is crowded every day; who can remember who. At the third stall, the dried-fruit seller's wife thought, then said: from the back lane, she thought — which courtyard, no idea; hadn't come around in years.

He should have let it go. He could not forget that thread of salt, though he had smelled it once.

Today he had to win back yesterday's ground. In the livestream he had won — and insulted the entire street. The trade feared him now more than it feared fakes: a man who will take a forger apart in front of thousands — who will let him look at their goods after this? He had to let people see that he was still of the trade, not here to wreck it.

He went first to Old Chen.

Old Chen opened the door, saw him, and his face fell; he gave the door half an inch, then pushed it shut. "Jinu, it's not that I won't help you. Yesterday is all over the groups. Word came down: for a while, whoever stands too close to you — their downstream goods route around them."

The door shut in his face.

He went to Old Zhou's. Old Zhou used to supply him raw material — Hainan split-blocks, fair prices. Old Zhou was airing wood in the courtyard; seeing him, he set down the piece he was turning and dusted off his hands. "Jinu, I don't dare supply you now. It's not the money. Last night someone passed me word: the water around your place runs deep; get in and you won't get out."

"What water?" he asked.

Old Zhou did not answer, just started carrying the wood inside. "Work it out yourself."

Two more shops, each farther out. One said its supply channel had dried up; one said flatly it was not taking raw stock. Nobody said why, but every door opened a crack and no farther.

He stood at the mouth of the lane while the sun slid west. He had run this street since he was a boy; he knew which counter had wormhole in its wood. Now, one by one, they shut him out. Once, coming for stock, who had not pressed a cigarette on him, waved him into the back room? Today nobody offered a cigarette.

His phone buzzed. Old Ma, a customer of three years' standing, an old-ship-sandalwood strand set for viewing next week; the message had changed its tune: Liu — the wind's gotten tight lately. Let that one sit a couple of days. Nothing after. He stared at the line. A couple of days meant there was no day. A man like Old Ma was not afraid of him; he was afraid of being drawn out of the street along with him.

The second landlord's deadline, dropped on him the day before yesterday, expired today. The man did not come; the phone did, twice, each call shorter, the last one a single sentence: Think it over.

Back at the shop, the tall thin dealer from next door stuck his head out, voice pressed low. "This Liu kid has guts. But he wears that signboard of his pretty smoothly — 'from the Qingming scroll.' It hung in that painting nearly a thousand years; it's hung on his wall a few days, and he dares call it Shangse Chentan Jianxiang."

Two dealers nearby heard, and laughed. Not loudly. Loud enough.

Later, at the lane's end, he saw the two who had laughed, heads together; seeing him come, they stopped, and drifted apart.

In the trade, that signboard was not an honor. It was a joke. Yesterday he had believed he had won a round; today someone was using it as grounds to push him out of the craft itself. Out of the craft was worse than out of the viewing business — the viewing business was half a month's rent.

He did not answer. To answer was to lose; not to answer was to lose too. Either way, he swallowed it.

He wiped the counter, from the inside out. At this hour, once, the counter would have someone sitting at it. Now it was him and a rag on bare wood.

All day, no head poked in to ask a price.

One did come, after noon. A stranger's face, standing at the door a while, a strand raised in his hand and lowered again, undecided. Liu Jinu was rising to greet him when the man glanced up the lane and down, stuffed the strand back in his pocket, and left. Not that he didn't want it looked at. He didn't dare, on this street.

The two old hands brought their resignations at dusk.

The older one folded his apron and laid it on the counter. "Jinu, it's not that we're against you. Last month's wages ran half a month late; this month looks worse. My girl marries in the fall; I need steady work."

The younger one said nothing. He set the keys beside the apron, gave him a look, and went.

Two more objects on the counter: a folded apron, a key. Two fewer people. The apron stayed folded, untouched — folding it at close of day was the old man's habit. Now it lay folded on the counter like a goodbye that never got said.

He sat behind the empty counter and counted the small change. Enough for one more day of meals. Not for the month.

He sat without the light. Outside, night had come down; the street went dark shop by shop, until only his lamp burned. The neighbor's light died too; the whole street black, and his still lit, like a man who had missed the order to put the lights out.

At night he locked up and went home. Past midnight, the phone dragged him up: the police station — the shop's door had been forced.

He hurried back. The roller door had been pried open a slit, the lock skewed sideways, half a length of twisted wire still jammed in its core. His flashlight swept in: the stock cabinets untouched, row upon row in place. The cashbox untouched; the small money still in the drawer. Everything still there — as if someone had come in, walked one round, taken nothing, and gone.

He crouched to study the prying. The wire work was neither fresh nor clumsy — not a first job, not a novice's. The roller door's lock is a surface lock; half a minute for anyone who knows how. But this one had opened it, taken no money, no goods, and pushed a single slip of paper to the bottom of a box. That bottom layer he never turned over — old ledgers and his father's odds and ends. The slip lay beneath a ledger; you would never find it without digging.

Except that at the bottom of the box there was one more slip of paper.

Old xuan paper, edges furred, the ink a shade darker than today's. Several lines in his father's hand — he knew that hand: upright strokes, tight-finished diagonals; the hand he had traced as a child.

Line one: Five relic pieces, scattered in five places; their whereabouts listed severally.

Line two: The first piece is among the old household things in the capital. No need to search far.

Line three: The second piece went aboard a ship — the year it went into the water is older than any man.

Line four: The third piece is in a temple, fed by incense. Do not move it.

Below, two more lines — a sentence he could not read. Not trade cant, not any formula he had seen; he knew every character and could not make them join. Three words he did understand: down, water, year.

He turned it over three times. First as cant; then as formula; the third time he admitted it was neither — it was something he had never touched. His father had written it; he had never received it. Which meant that half of his father's craft had never truly passed into his hands.

The slip was dated at the foot.

He took out his phone and matched the date to the day his father disappeared. The same day.

That morning, before going out, his father had left this slip on the counter. Then the man was gone. Half a year now.

He held the paper; his fingers trembled a little. Not fear — something he could not name: what his father had written below, he could not catch in a single word. Five relic pieces, and he had never seen one. What his father hunted before he vanished, and what yesterday's crowd jammed his door to show him — different ends, it seemed, of one thing.

He thought of the eighteen-bead strand in yesterday's stream. Zhao said wholesale; he had proved it reworked on the spot. But the slip said "went aboard a ship." Which ship? Which water? He had not one word of answer. His father had hunted all his life; he had held the shop half a day and did not know which way the door faced.

On the slip's back, one small line, as if added later: The last man alive who can read this keeps a stall in the old tea market, south of the city. Family name Bi.

Near dawn he went to the old tea market in the south of the city.

The market had not fully opened; the entry lamp still burned over water and tea stems on the ground. The Bi shop's boards were half down; a white-haired old man crouched at the door, picking stems. He stood a while, waited for the old man to finish opening, went in, and handed over the slip, pointing at the two unreadable lines.

The old man put on reading glasses and looked a long time.

"These two lines," the old man said. "Your father asked me about them too."

Liu Jinu waited for the rest.

The old man handed the slip back. "Your father asked about these lines too. The next day, the man was gone."

The room went quiet. On the stove, water came to a boil; the steam hissed thin.

"There is still one person searching," the old man said, not raising his head. "Before you. Before your father too. Don't ask who."

Liu Jinu pocketed the slip. The old man bowed his head and went back to his stems, as if the last few words had nothing to do with him.

He came out of the tea market into full daylight. The slip sat in his pocket, heavier than it had come. The question his father had asked, he had now asked too. His father was gone the next day. He did not know which of his days it would be.

Outside, the sky had turned half white.