The Library, Third Visit
He had, on Saturday morning, two things to do.
The first was a book.
He had spent two evenings at the small bookshop on Long Hua Lane, the same lane he had detoured into on the night of the errand. The shop was kept by an old man named Zhou whose face he had begun, by his second visit, to recognize without speaking. The shop's specialty was old editions — pre-1980, pre-Cultural Revolution if he could get them. Lin had been looking for a particular book.
It was a volume of Su Shi's poetry — *East Slope's Verses,* in the Republican-era edition annotated by the scholar Wang Wenzheng. The book had been printed in 1934 in Shanghai and was now, in its surviving copies, a small object that turned up in good shops perhaps once or twice a year. Lin had asked Zhou about it on his first visit. Zhou had said: *I have a copy. I have not put it out.* On the second visit Zhou had said: *Come back Saturday morning.*
The second thing was Su Wanyin.
She was expecting him at the library at nine. She did not know about the book. He did not, walking through the cold air of the November morning toward Long Hua Lane, know whether he would give her the book today or wait. He had decided he would decide when he saw her.
He arrived at the bookshop at eight twelve. Old Zhou was opening the door. The book was wrapped, on the counter, in a square of plain cotton cloth tied with cotton twine. Zhou named a price. The price was — Lin understood, having spent the past three weeks looking up auction records and edition guides — about sixty percent of what the book was worth.
"Old Zhou," he said, "this is too low."
"It is not too low. It is what I paid for it in nineteen seventy-eight. I have decided I will sell it for what I paid for it. The decision is mine. Take it."
"I cannot —"
"Young man." Old Zhou looked at him. "I am eighty-one. I do not need the money. I will tell you a small story. The book belonged to my teacher. My teacher gave it to me in nineteen seventy-eight, when he was dying, and he said to me: *Zhou, sell this book to a young person who deserves it, and sell it cheaply, so that the young person remembers.* I have been waiting forty-five years to sell it. I have sold it now. Take the book and go. Do not come back to this shop for one month. After one month you may come back and buy normal books at normal prices."
Lin took the book. He bowed his head. He paid. He left.
In the cold air outside the shop he stood for a moment, looking at the wrapped bundle in his hand.
He thought: *I have been here in this city for fifty-eight days. The city has — already — given me three things I did not earn. A cup of good tea on the first morning. A noodle lunch in a back alley two weeks ago. A book sold below its price.*
He thought: *None of these are gifts I asked for. All of them are gifts.*
He thought: *I will spend my life owing things. I would like, when I am eighty-one, to be the kind of old man who is selling a book below its price to a young person who has just walked in.*
He walked to the library.
#
She was at her desk when he arrived. She looked up. She did not say good morning. She gestured at a stack of three boxes beside her desk.
"Display rotation today. Forty-two pieces in. Forty-two pieces out. We will be done by twelve."
"How was the opening."
"Adequate."
"That means it was good."
"That means it was adequate."
He smiled, very slightly. He set down his bag. He set the wrapped bundle on the corner of her desk. He did not say anything about it.
She looked at the bundle. She looked at him. She did not ask.
"Boxes," she said.
He took up the first box.
#
They worked for three hours. By eleven-thirty they had cleared all forty-two old pieces and installed thirty-six of the new ones.
At eleven-thirty, Su Wanyin set down the small enamel tray she had been carrying and said: "Tea."
She made it on a small electric kettle in the third-floor staff alcove. Two cups. Plain green.
They drank standing up. The alcove was warm.
She said, looking down at her cup: "What is in the bundle."
"A book."
"For me."
"If you want it."
"What book."
He told her.
She set her cup down, very carefully, on the edge of the small alcove counter.
She looked at him.
She did not speak for almost a full minute.
"Lin Zhaoxu."
"Yes."
"Do you know what that book is."
"I know its history. I know its edition. I know its scarcity."
"Do you know what it costs."
"I know what it cost me. The price was — a courtesy from the seller."
"It cost you what."
He named the figure.
She said, after a moment: "That figure is approximately — three months of your salary."
"Yes."
"Did you — borrow money."
"No. I have lived, since I arrived, on slightly less than my salary. I have been saving. I had not yet decided what I was saving for. The book — when I learned that it might be available — became the answer."
"You were saving for a book you had not yet seen."
"I was saving without knowing what I was saving for. I had an idea, perhaps three weeks ago, that something would arrive. I did not know it would be a book. I am not surprised, today, that it was."
She was silent for another long moment.
Then she said: "I cannot accept it."
"All right."
"I will not have a book that cost you three months of your salary placed into my hands by you. I will not — I am not a woman who can be —" She stopped. She pressed her lips together for a moment. She looked away, at the wall of the alcove, where there was a small black-and-white photograph of the original library staff from 1956. "I am not a woman who can be made to feel — owed. By any man. By a man I am beginning to — be careful about. Not by him."
"I understand."
"Do you."
"I understand the refusal. I understand the reason. I will take the book back. I will not return to that bookshop for one month, by the seller's instruction. After the month I will think about what to do with it."
"You will not — sell it."
"No."
"You will keep it."
"I will keep it. I will read it on Saturday evenings. I have been meaning to read Su Shi more carefully. The book will give me a reason."
She looked at him.
"That is — a much better arrangement than the gift."
"Yes. I think so too. I had not thought of it before this moment."
A pause.
"Lin Zhaoxu."
"Yes."
"You are difficult."
"I am sorry."
"You are not sorry. You did this — this whole thing, the bookshop, the saving, the offering, the readiness to take it back — on purpose."
"I did the bookshop on purpose. The saving I did not. The offering and the taking back — those happened in this room. I did not know, when I walked in, which one I would do."
"And now."
"And now, I will read Su Shi on Saturday evenings."
She picked up her cup. She drank. She set it down.
She said: "On Wednesday — next Wednesday, not tomorrow — I will go to my father's house for dinner. He has a small library. He has, on a shelf in the second cabinet from the left in his study, a copy of the same book. The Wang Wenzheng edition. He has had it since nineteen sixty-three. He does not read it any more. He has begun to give books away to me, slowly, one at a time, when he thinks I will appreciate them. I will ask him, on Wednesday, if I may have it. He will say yes. He will give it to me on Wednesday night.
"Then, on Thursday, I will bring it to the Eastern Hall for the reading group. After the reading group, when everyone has left, I will give it to you. Not as a gift. As — a loan. A long loan. You may have it for as long as you read Su Shi on Saturday evenings, which is, I suspect, the rest of your life. When you stop reading him, you may return it to me, or not."
She looked at him.
"That arrangement," she said, "I can live with."
"Yes."
"You will keep the book you bought."
"I will keep it."
"You will not give it to me later, at some other moment, in some other form."
"I will not."
"Good."
She picked up her cup again. She drank the rest of her tea. She set the cup down. She walked out of the alcove and back to the exhibition hall to continue placing the remaining pieces, and after a moment Lin followed.
#
They did not speak about the book again that morning. They finished the rotation at twelve fifteen.
The Sichuan woman gave them their usual table. They ordered. The food came. They ate. They were, both of them, slower than usual.
Halfway through the meal she said, looking down at her bowl: "Thursday. Eastern Hall. Six-thirty. You should come."
"I will be there."
"It will be cold. The Eastern Hall does not heat well."
"I will wear a thicker jacket."
"Good."
She ate.
She said, more quietly: "I have — wanted to give you something. For weeks. I did not know what. I am giving you, on Thursday, a book that will not be a gift, by a long arrangement."
"Yes."
"This is not the same as accepting your book."
"It is not."
"But it is — something."
"Yes."
She looked up. She looked at him for a long moment over the small bowls of noodles.
She said: "I am twenty-six years old, Lin Zhaoxu. I have not been — careful about a man. In a long time. I am being careful about you. I do not yet know what the carefulness is. I do not want to know yet. I would like to read poems with you on Thursday nights, and have noodles with you on Saturday afternoons, and not know anything else for some time. Is that an arrangement you can live with."
"It is an arrangement I can live with."
"Good. Eat your noodles."
He ate.
When the meal was over and they had paid separately and were walking back to the library in the cold November air, she said, suddenly, half-laughing, half not: "Three months of your salary. Lin Zhaoxu. Three months of your salary. You are an idiot."
"Yes," he said. "Probably."
"You should have spent it on better shoes."
"My shoes are adequate."
"They are not adequate. Your shoes are — eighteen months old, and the soles are wearing on the inside of the right heel, which suggests you walk slightly turned-in, which will eventually cause you knee trouble. You should buy new shoes. With the money you saved, you could have bought five pairs."
He laughed.
It was, he thought afterward, the first time he had laughed at something a person said to him in this entire city.
She did not laugh back. But the small expression that was her version of a smile remained on her face for the entire walk to the library steps, and when she said *Thursday, six-thirty,* and turned and went up the steps, the expression was still there.
He turned and walked back across the bridge over the Yu River.
The wrapped book was under his arm.
Walking across the bridge, he thought: *I have, in three weeks, found the second person I do not have to calculate around.*
He thought: *That is — more than I had a right to.*
He went home. He unwrapped the book. He set it on the desk beside his grandfather's calligraphy brush case. He read, that evening, the first ten poems by lamplight, very slowly, with the small careful concentration of a man who had been waiting for the book without knowing it for a long time.
He went to bed at eleven.
He slept.
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