The Cost

He took Saturday and Sunday off.

He had not, in five months, taken a weekend off in any meaningful sense. He had spent his Saturdays at the library and his Sundays at the Eastern Hall. He had read, in the evenings, and written, and walked. But he had not — until the weekend after the inquiry formally closed — given himself permission to simply do nothing.

On Saturday morning he woke at six, as he always did, and began to dress to go to the library. He was halfway through buttoning his shirt when he stopped. He stood for a moment in the cold grey light of the window. He looked at his half-buttoned shirt. He looked at the brush hanging on the wall, beside the new character 行.

He thought: *I do not have to go.*

He thought: *I have given Su Wanyin no reason to expect me. I have not promised her this Saturday. I have promised, in fact, that we would not — for some weeks — repeat the kiss. The library can spare me for one Saturday. I can spare myself.*

He unbuttoned the shirt. He hung it back on the chair. He went back to bed in his undershirt.

He slept until eleven.

When he woke, the light through the window was a flat grey wedge across the floor. The alley outside was loud in the way alleys are loud at midday on a Saturday — children shouting, a vendor calling out the names of vegetables, somewhere a small motorcycle starting and dying and starting again. He lay in bed for another twenty minutes, listening to the alley, and he did not think about anything in particular.

Then he got up. He boiled water. He made tea. He sat at the desk and drank it.

He did not work. He did not read. He did not write. He simply sat at the desk in his undershirt with the cup of tea between his hands, and he watched the light move slowly across the floor.

The headache that had been with him for nine days — the dull pressure of holding the rewind ready, of holding too many calculations open, of sleeping poorly — began, for the first time, to lift.

He noticed the lifting. He noticed it the way a man notices, after a long fever, the moment when the fever first begins to break.

He thought: *I have been — sustained — at a level of attention that I cannot maintain for long periods. The audit maneuver. The conversation with Lao Wei. The waiting for the memorandum. The choice. I have been carrying all of it for two months. It has cost me something I had not been measuring.*

He thought: *Bodies do not — handle this — without rest.*

He thought: *I will not — go anywhere — today.*

He stayed in the room.

He read three poems by Du Fu — slowly, without taking notes. He ate, at one in the afternoon, a small meal he prepared himself on the electric ring: a bowl of plain rice, a single fried egg, some pickled cabbage from a jar a colleague had brought back from her village in November and given to the office in small portions. The meal was — adequate. He ate it sitting at the desk.

In the afternoon he napped for an hour.

In the early evening he walked, in the alley below the boarding house, for perhaps thirty minutes. He did not walk far. He simply walked. The cold air was good. The sky over the rooftops was a deep clear winter blue, with the first stars showing in the east.

He came back. He boiled more water. He made tea. He sat at the desk.

He thought, watching the early dark settle over the alley: *I have been twenty-two years old since August. I will be twenty-three in three months. I will be — for forty more years — in this work. I cannot maintain the pace of the past two months for forty years. I will burn through. I will become — like the thirty-five-year-old cadres I have observed in this building, who carry their weight in the hollows under their eyes.*

He thought: *I will need — to learn — when to stop. The audit maneuver and the rewind have one thing in common: both of them cost. Both of them require — recovery. The web is — patient. The web does not need me at full attention every day. The web needs me at full attention on the days that matter, and at restoration on the days that do not.*

He thought: *Today is a day that does not matter. I will treat it that way.*

#

In the evening he wrote a single line in his daily-record notebook:

*Took the day off. The first day off in five months. The headache lifted. Note for the future: bodies do not handle the level without rest. Plan rest deliberately, the way one plans work.*

He closed the notebook.

He read three poems by Su Shi. He read them slowly. He went to bed at nine. He slept for ten hours.

#

Sunday was the same.

He did not go to the Eastern Hall. He did not call anyone. He did not check his work email. He did not write to his sister. He simply spent the day in the small room, reading, walking, eating slowly, sleeping when he wished, and not — for the first time in many months — calculating anything.

In the late afternoon, he took down his grandfather's calligraphy brush. He ground a thin film of ink. He wrote, on a clean sheet of newsprint, six characters.

慢一点也不要紧.

*To be a little slower does not matter.*

It was not — strictly — a saying. It was something his mother used to say to him when he was small and had been, in her judgment, working too hard at his arithmetic. She had said it in a particular tone that he had not, at the time, understood: a tone of quiet protectiveness, the tone of a mother who had observed that her child was at risk of a particular kind of damage and who was attempting, in the gentle way she knew, to head off the damage.

He had not, until this Sunday afternoon at twenty-two, fully understood the tone.

He hung the new character beside 行 and beside the new brush. The wall above his desk now held three pieces — 行 the new character, the small brush with 心如止水, and 慢一点也不要紧 the slow one.

He looked at the wall for a moment.

He thought: *The wall is — beginning to be — a kind of self-portrait. Each piece I hang is a fragment of who I have decided I want to be. By the time I am sixty, the wall will be — many walls. I will be able to walk through them and know which year I was in when I added each piece.*

He thought: *That is a — pleasant — thought. I will preserve the practice.*

He went to bed. He slept until morning.

#

On Monday morning he returned to the office.

The headache was gone. He worked through the day at a steady, unhurried pace. He drafted a small routine memorandum. He attended a meeting. He took notes. He left at six-thirty.

Lao Wei, when Lin came back into the office at nine on Monday morning, looked up briefly from his journal and observed Lin for perhaps a full second. Then he returned to his journal. He did not say anything.

But at five-fifty, before he packed his own things to leave, Lao Wei walked past Lin's desk and dropped a small foil packet onto it.

Tieguanyin. The same grade as the first day.

The sixth packet.

Lin took it. He stood. He walked to the hot water dispenser. He made a fresh cup of tea.

He sat back down. He drank.

The afternoon light through the small window changed slowly. Outside the camphor trees were entirely bare now. The first ice was forming in the courtyard's small fountain. The year was deep into winter.

He worked until six-thirty. He went home.

He ate. He slept.

The week began.

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