The News Came Home

I handle the Chinese. You follow the story.

Shi Gulan read the clipping standing at the front gate of the 家jiā.

She read it twice. She read it the way her 爸爸bàba had taught her to read official documents. First pass for the facts. Second pass for what was missing.

The facts on the first pass were short. Shi Congbin captured at Guzhen on the second day of the engagement. Executed by order of Sun Chuanfang. Head displayed on a railway platform at Bengbu for seven days.

Body left in an unmarked field.

What was missing on the second pass was specific. The clipping did not say which end of the platform. It did not say which courier carried the head north.It did not say what was done with the head when it was taken down.

It did not say whether the family could recover the body.

Shi Gulan folded the clipping back into thirds. She folded it the way her 爸爸bàba had folded the telegrams that arrived at this same gate for the first nineteen 年nián of her life.

She walked into the 家jiā.

The household was already moving. The boy on the bicycle had said something to the cook on his way back down the lane, and the cook had said something to Shi Gulan的de mother before Shi Gulan reached the door.

So when Shi Gulan walked in with the clipping in her hand, her 妈妈māma was already on her feet in the courtyard, and her two brothers were already coming in from the back of the 家jiā,and the question on every face was the same.

妈妈māma. Mom. The pair to 爸爸bàba from earlier episodes. 爸爸bàba is dad, 妈妈māma is mom.

Shi Gulan did not say anything. She handed her 妈妈māma the clipping.

Her 妈妈māma read it standing in the middle of the courtyard. Her 妈妈māma was forty-six years old. She had married Shi Congbin when she was eighteen.She had borne him five children, of whom three had survived to that morning.

She had received every telegram he ever sent and had folded each of them with her own hands before Shi Gulan was old enough to take over the filing.

Her 妈妈māma read the clipping once and sat down on the stone step in the middle of the courtyard. She did not finish a second pass.

Shi Gulan的de elder brother took the clipping from her 妈妈māma的de hand. He read it standing. He went pale. He said something quiet that Shi Gulan did not catch.Her younger brother read it next, and he did not stand.

He sat in the dust of the courtyard with the clipping flat on his knee.

Shi Gulan的de妈妈māma began, very quietly, to make a sound that was not a word.

Shi Gulan stood. She watched her 妈妈māma. She watched her brothers. She did not sit down. She did not make a sound.

The household staff had gathered in the doorways of the side rooms by then. The cook stood in the kitchen door, weeping into a cloth.

The gatekeeper stood just inside the front gate, holding the bridle of the boy's bicycle that had not yet been led away.

The two house women all stood in the doorway of the women's quarters, hands at their sides.

None of them spoke. They 听tīng.

听tīng. To listen, or to hear. They 听tīng means they listened.

Shi Gulan的de妈妈māma made the sound again. Then again. Eventually it became a word, and the word was the kind of sound a woman makes when she is asking a husband to come back, knowing he will not.

Shi Gulan的de elder brother went to his 妈妈māma and put a hand on her shoulder. The younger brother stayed in the dust.

Shi Gulan was the only 人rén in the courtyard who did not weep.

What she did instead was think.

She 想xiǎng about the second day of the battle. Which hour had her 爸爸bàba been captured. The clipping did not say.

想xiǎng. To think about. She 想xiǎng about it means she thought about it. 想xiǎng also means to want, or to miss someone. Same character, both meanings.

She 想xiǎng about the railway platform at Bengbu. Which end of the platform had the pole been at. North end, the clipping said. North end, facing the southbound trains.

She had passed through Bengbu once, as a girl, on a trip with her 爸爸bàba to visit a cousin. She remembered the north end. She tried to remember the angle of the morning light on it.

She 想xiǎng about the seven days. Who had supervised, on each of those mornings. Whose order had been followed when the head was taken down on the seventh day. The clipping did not say.

The clipping said "the local commander deemed seven days sufficient."

She 想xiǎng about the body in the field. Whose authorization would be required for a recovery. How long bodies last in the late autumn ground of Guzhen.

Whether her family had the standing in the new political situation to ask Sun Chuanfang的de staff for the location of the field.

She 想xiǎng about Sun Chuanfang.

She 想xiǎng about Sun Chuanfang for a long time, standing in the courtyard while her 妈妈māma wept on the stone step and her brothers stayed where they were.

What she had on the second pass that her 妈妈māma and her brothers did not yet have was a name. The clipping had named the man who gave the order.

Sun Chuanfang, Commander of the Five-Province Allied Armies, in the autumn of 1925 the most powerful warlord in eastern China.

Shi Gulan was nineteen years old. She had filed thirty-eight telegrams from her 爸爸bàba in chronological order. She had read classical commentaries on the Analects out loud to her 爸爸bàba while he drank his morning tea.

She had been raised by him to read between characters and to ask what was missing.

She had three questions. She did not voice them out loud yet.

Which station. Which day. Which pole.

The household in the courtyard would weep for the rest of that 上午shàngwǔ, and into the afternoon, and through the night that followed. Shi Gulan would not weep with them.

She would help her 妈妈māma to her feet, eventually, and into the back room, and onto the bed. She would sit in the courtyard alone after dark and re-read the clipping by lamplight.

By the morning of the second day, she was already a different 人rén.

In Episode Eight, she stops calling herself Shi Gulan.

That is where we start Episode Eight.