6: The Hours Between

He slept the way a young man sleeps when he does not want to.

It was not real sleep. It was the kind of half-sleep into which the body sinks because the body has not been asked, and the mind goes along because the mind has been arguing with itself for hours and is exhausted by the argument and grateful, finally, for any room in which it does not have to keep talking. He drifted. He came back. He drifted again. He could feel the wadded coat over his chest, and the warmth of the kang at his back, and beyond those two warmths a cold that lived in the corners of the house and that came in around the doorframe in small thin drafts, and beyond the cold the larger absence of the third thing — the breathing in the back room — which on every other night of his life he had felt as the third anchor that held the house at four corners (himself, Old Zhang, Mei-er, the dog), but which tonight, although his sister was four paces away, behind a hemp curtain, was a thing he could not feel.

He could not feel her breath.

He told himself, in the half-sleep, that this was because he was on the kang and not on the floor — that the kang's warmth made small sounds in itself, the slow tick of bricks settling, the small breathing of the banked embers underneath, and these small sounds covered the small breath of a sleeping girl on the other side of a curtain. He told himself, in the half-sleep, that he had been listening for her breath all his life without listening, and that he was now trying to listen for it deliberately, and that the deliberate listening was different from the unthinking listening, and that the difference was the only reason he could not hear it.

He drifted.

He came back.

In the corner of the room, Old Zhang was not asleep.

He could tell. He had grown up listening to his foster father sleep. The old man slept on his right side because his left hip had been bad since a winter eight years past when he had slipped on the path to the well with a full carrying pole and had come down hard on the stones. He slept with one arm crooked under his head, because the head needed lifting from the mat to be comfortable, because the mat was thin and the floor was hard and the years had begun to take from the old skull the small softness that had once let it lie flat. He breathed, in his sleep, with a small intermittent whistle — not a snore; nothing as easy as a snore; only a small breath like wind through a cracked reed that he had carried since the year of the bad water, when he had nearly died of the cough and had not, but had been left, ever after, with that one small noise.

He was not making the noise tonight.

He was breathing. Heizi could hear the breath. But the breath was the breath of a man lying on his back, deliberately, with his eyes open. It was the careful even breathing of a man who has decided to spend the night that way.

Heizi did not turn his head.

If he turned his head, he would see, by the faint grey of the smoke-hole, the long shape of the old man on his mat with his arms folded across his chest the way a man folds his arms when he is laying himself out the way a corpse will be laid. He did not want to see that. He did not want, on this night, to know that the old man had begun, already, to practice the position in which he would, in some year not far off, be laid out by other hands.

He did not turn his head.

The wind moved in the persimmon tree at the edge of the lower field. He could hear it from inside the house. The persimmon tree had a particular voice. The branches were old and bare, and they spoke against each other when the wind came — a small dry scraping like the legs of a thin insect on a stone — and he had known the voice of the persimmon tree as long as he had known the voice of his sister, because he had heard them for the same number of years from the same place on the same kang. On warm summer nights the tree's voice was muffled by leaves. On winter nights, when the leaves were gone, the voice came in thin and clear and unmuffled, and it was the voice of the year remembering that it had been winter and the leaves were not yet back.

The wind tonight was not winter wind. It was the soft south wind that had been pushing the rain off all afternoon and that had now turned, by some quiet hour after midnight, into a slower northward turn. He could tell by the angle at which the branches were speaking. The wind had backed. The rain that had been deferred would no longer be deferred.

The first drop on the oiled paper of the small high window came at what he guessed, by the depth of the dark, was the second hour of the watch — perhaps the hour of the rat; perhaps a little later. It made a small flat sound, the way a single drop makes against oiled paper, like a finger laid lightly. Then another. Then another. The rain was beginning slowly. It was the kind of rain that began slowly because it had a long way to come and was not in a hurry.

In the back room, his sister did not move.

He did not hear her move.

He listened. The wadded coat lay across him; the kang under him was warm; the wind in the persimmon tree spoke; the rain began on the window. He listened for her breath the way one listens for a sound at the edge of one's hearing — not turning toward it, not straining, only opening the inside of the ear and waiting to see whether the sound was there.

He could not tell.

Several times in the night he believed he heard it, and then he was not sure he had heard it, and then he was sure he had only constructed it out of his own want, the way a man in a dark wood believes he sees a path because the path is the thing he wants to see. He drifted. He came back.

At some point — he would not, afterwards, be able to place it; the night was unmarked by hours; the dark was absolute — he became aware of a small change in the room beyond the curtain.

It was the change a room makes when a person who has been sitting up has lain down, or when a person who has been lying down has sat up. The air shifts. A piece of cloth resettles. A wooden bench takes a different weight or releases a weight it has been holding.

He did not know which it was.

He thought, with the part of his mind that was awake: *She has lain down. She is sleeping now. The night will pass. I will rise at the hour of the boar. Old Zhang will wake me. We will gather at the gate. I will say her name. She will come from the doorway in her night-robe with her hair loose, or she will not come; either way, she will be alive at the gate; either way, this night will end and tomorrow will begin and I will know whether she has come or not come.*

He thought, with the other part of his mind: *She has sat up. She has been sitting all this time. She has not slept.*

He could not tell which it was.

He listened. The persimmon tree spoke against itself. The rain had thickened by a small degree on the window — not yet a true rain, only the kind of rain that announces itself before it begins in earnest.

Old Zhang, in the corner, breathed his careful even breath.

Heizi closed his eyes.

He thought of the hour of the boar.

He thought: *I will not sleep. I will only rest. I will keep my eyes closed. When the hour comes, Old Zhang will rise from his mat and put his hand on my shoulder once, and I will rise. The dog will lift its head and lower it. The lamp will not be lit. We will go to the gate without speaking. I will speak only at the gate. Only there.*

He thought it.

He drifted.

In the drift, the things he had been carrying for two days began to soften their edges. The riders' faces, which had been sharp at the well, grew indistinct. The white cord on the second slip went grey. The persimmon tree, in the drift, was not bare; it was in summer leaf, and the children of the village were sitting beneath it eating fruit until they were sick, and Mei-er at nine was laughing at him for crying when she pulled the thorn from his foot. Her laugh in the drift was the same laugh; the laugh had not aged, even though she had aged, and he had aged, and the world had aged.

He did not realize he was drifting.

He came back at some point because the rain had picked up on the window. He did not know how long he had been gone. The dark had a different quality. There was, in the small high window, a thinning — not of grey, not yet; only the absence of the absolute black that had been there an hour before. The hour was past the rat. The hour was the ox, perhaps, or the tiger; he could not tell.

In the back room, the bench creaked.

He did not move.

It was a small sound, not louder than a small sound made by a small movement. It could have been a girl shifting in her sleep; it could have been a girl rising from a mat and putting her bare feet onto the cold floor.

He did not move.

He listened.

The bench did not creak again.

In the room beyond, very faint, came the sound of something being lifted from a peg.

He knew, without knowing how he knew, that it was the good robe.

He knew, with the other part of himself, that he could rise. He could rise from the kang now. He could be in the doorway of the back room before she had finished putting on the robe. He could say her name. He could say anything. The hour of the boar had not yet been called, but the hour of the boar was a thing Old Zhang would call by the dog and the wind and the lightening of the smoke-hole, and Old Zhang had not yet called it, and so by the household's reckoning the night was not yet ended. He could rise outside the household's reckoning. He could go to her in his own time.

He did not move.

He told himself, in the silence of the kang under the wadded coat, that he was not moving because to move now was to break Old Zhang's instruction — *tell her at the gate, not in the back room* — and Old Zhang knew the night and the village and the door through which a girl might come or not come, and Old Zhang's instruction was the only hope of her coming. He told himself this. He told himself this with the small voice of the part of him that wanted to be a son who did as his father said.

He told himself, with the other part of himself, that he was not moving because he was afraid.

The two voices spoke at the same time, and he could not tell, lying still on the kang, which voice had moved his body to the not-moving and which voice was only watching the not-moving and naming it after the fact.

In the room beyond, very faint, came the sound of cloth being smoothed against itself. It was the sound a girl made when she put on a robe and pulled the front straight and tied the inner sash.

Then nothing.

Then, after a long pause, the small unmistakable sound of bare feet on the earthen floor.

Then nothing.

Then the wooden lid of the chest at the foot of her mat lifted, and was set back down very gently, and he understood — without seeing — that she had taken something out of the chest. He could not tell what. He hoped, with the unreasonable hope of a boy who has begun to understand more than he wants to, that she had taken out a clean cloth and was wrapping a small bundle in it, and that the bundle would have in it a hempen sandal and a comb and the bead her foster mother had given her, and that she was packing for a road. He hoped this. He knew, with the part of himself that did not hope, that she was not packing for a road.

She was taking out the dried sweet flag.

He understood it because he understood her. The dried sweet flag was the thing one took out of a chest of folded cloth on the morning of going somewhere; it was the small fragrant farewell of a folded thing, the kindness laid between the folds for the long absence; she had laid it between the folds of the good robe each spring of her keeping the household, and tonight she had taken it back out, and she was — he understood — laying it between the folds of the robe one more time, perhaps with the small dried sprig moved a finger's breadth toward the collar, where the white knot-work was.

She was preparing the robe to be folded again, by other hands, after she was done with it.

He did not move.

The bench creaked once more. The sound of cloth shifted. Then a long silence in which he could not tell whether she was sitting on the bench or standing in the middle of the room or kneeling on her mat. The silence went on for the space of perhaps a hundred breaths. He counted the first ten and lost count.

In the corner, Old Zhang's careful even breathing did not change.

Heizi, on the kang, kept his eyes closed.

He told himself: *She is preparing. She is preparing carefully. She has not yet gone. I will rise when she goes; I will rise when I hear the back door of the kitchen open; I will rise when I hear her step in the courtyard; I will rise then, and I will go out, and I will catch her at the gate, and I will say her name once, and either she will turn back or she will not turn back, but I will have said her name, and the saying will have been done, and the night will at least have that one small thing in it that I did not fail to do.*

He told himself this.

He listened for the back door of the kitchen.

He listened for a long time.

He drifted.

He did not realize he was drifting. He drifted slowly, the way the wind in the persimmon tree drifted from south to north, the way the rain on the oiled paper had drifted from a single drop to a small steady soft sound, the way the dark in the smoke-hole had drifted from the absolute black of the rat hour to the slight thinning of the hour after the tiger. He drifted in the warmth of the kang, in the safety of the wadded coat, in the small constant company of the dog at the doorway who did not stir, in the careful even breathing of the old man in the corner, in the voice of the persimmon tree and the voice of the rain.

He did not hear the back door of the kitchen open.

If he had heard it — and afterwards he would tell himself, many times in the years to come, that he had not heard it, that he could not have heard it, that the door had been opened by a hand that had been opening that door for four years and that could open it without sound — he would not, perhaps, have known what he heard. The door made the small dry click of a wooden latch lifted with care. The latch was an ordinary latch. It had clicked four times a day for as long as he had been alive in this house. It was, on this night, only the latch.

The latch clicked.

Heizi, on the kang, did not stir.

Old Zhang, in the corner, did not stir.

The dog at the doorway, which had, at the click, lifted its head a finger's breadth above its paws — its old eyes, accustomed in the dark, taking in the small movement of cloth and of bare feet through the kitchen, the small even motion of a girl walking out of her own back door into the rain — set its head back down.

The dog had known her since she was twelve. The dog had taken food from her hand more times than from any other hand in the household. The dog did not bark at her on any night she walked through any door. It had not occurred to the dog, on this night, to bark. Animals do not have the imagination to suspect the people who feed them; this is one of the small mercies of the world, and one of its small cruelties.

The latch clicked back, very softly, into place.

The kitchen was empty.

In the courtyard, in the soft slow rain, a small figure in a dark indigo robe walked across the stones to the gate, and the gate did not creak, because Old Zhang had oiled it last week, against this very moment perhaps, against any moment in which a member of his household needed to go out without waking the others.

The dog watched her go.

The figure, at the gate, paused and turned for a moment back toward the house. The pause was short. Whatever she said in her own mind, in that pause, she said in silence; she did not look up at the small high window of the back room, where the rain was beginning to come in faintly through the oiled paper that needed mending; she looked at the door of the main room, where her foster brother slept, and at the door of the corner where her foster father did not sleep, and at the doorway where the dog lay watching her, and she nodded, very slightly, the small nod of a girl thanking a household.

She turned.

She went out into the lane.

The dog, at the doorway, lowered its head onto its paws and watched the empty courtyard until it was sure she would not come back, and then it closed its old eyes, and the rain, which had been promised for three weeks, fell more heavily.

In the corner of the main room, Old Zhang opened his eyes.

He had heard.

He had heard the latch. He had heard the bare feet on the kitchen stones. He had heard the gate that did not creak, because he had oiled it. He had heard the small definite step of his daughter, who had not chosen to use the door he had told her to use, or the gate she had told him she would use, or any of the things they had agreed on by the small silent agreement of an old man and the daughter who had kept his house since she was twelve. She had used her own door. She had used her own gate. She had decided, alone, the time and the manner of her going.

He listened for her step in the lane. He could not hear it through the rain. He listened anyway. He was sixty years old. He had buried two infants and a wife and a brother and he had buried, today, in his own chest, the daughter he was now listening to walk away from him.

He did not move.

He thought: *Heizi. Heizi, do not wake. Do not wake yet. There is nothing for you to do at this hour. There is no man's hour at this hour. There is only my hour.*

The old man, in the corner, lay on his back with his arms folded across his chest, the way a man folds his arms when he is laying himself out the way a corpse will be laid, and he watched the smoke-hole begin its slow grey thinning, and the rain came down on the village, and the wind moved in the persimmon tree.

The persimmon tree, at the edge of the lower field, stood in the wet dark with all its bare branches lifted, and the rain ran down them in small slow channels, and the lowest branch — the one the village's children climbed in summer for the late fruit — bent only a little under the rain.

The lowest branch was still empty.

For now.