This Morning

I handle the Chinese. You follow the story.

Shi Jianqiao woke at four twenty-six on the morning of November 13, 1935, four minutes before her body 的de usual 时候shíhou. The lane outside was cold 和hé quiet.

和hé. And. 冷和hé quiet means cold and quiet. 和hé connects two words the way "and" does in English.

时候shíhou. Time, or the moment when something happens. Her body 的de usual 时候shíhou means her body's usual time.

She lay still for a minute and listened to the lane outside. A single cart, slow, headed east. The bean-curd shop downstairs was not yet open. The widow next door was not yet awake.

She got up.

She lit the small oil lamp on the table by the window. The air outside the window was cold. The breath she let out was visible in the lamp light. She washed her face in the basin on the dresser.The water was colder than her face.

She put on the third coat over the cotton 衣服yīfu she had laid out the night before. She buttoned it from the bottom up, the way her 妈妈māma had taught her.

She felt the weight of the Browning shift in the inside right pocket as the third button closed.

She did not check the safety. She had checked the safety three times the night before.

She walked to the foot of the bed. She lifted the wooden box of pamphlets and put it inside a cloth shopping bag she was going to carry on her left arm.She tied the handles of the bag with a length of cotton string she had cut for the purpose two days earlier.

She put on her shoes. She put on a wool hat that covered her hair completely. She walked to the door.

At the door she stopped.

She turned and 看kàn the room one time. The lamp on the table. The made bed. The clothes chest with its lid closed. The basin on the dresser. The window. The lane below the window.

She did not 看kàn anything else of hers because there was nothing else of hers in the room. The two notebooks were in the inside left pocket of the third coat.

The cash she had left, four 北京Běijīng silver dollars and seventeen smaller coins, was in a small purse next to the notebooks. The Browning model 1900 was in the inside right pocket.The pamphlets were in the cloth bag.

She put out the lamp.

She walked down the stairs in the dark. She unbolted the door at the bottom. She stepped out into the lane.

The air outside was colder than inside. The lane was empty. The bean-curd shop's wooden shutters were still closed.

She walked east one block, south two blocks, west one block, then south one final block. Six minutes and forty seconds, the way she had timed it. She did not slow. She did not speed up.

She passed three other early walkers.

None of them 看kàn her face.

At the corner of the eastern lane she turned south and 看kàn the front gate of the TianjinJushilin from a distance of about a hundred paces. The gate was open. The groundskeeper was sweeping the front step.

She did not stop walking.

She had thought, when she first imagined this morning, that there would be a 时候shíhou of hesitation. A moment at the corner. A pause at the threshold. The body asking the mind whether the mind was sure.

There was no such 时候shíhou on this morning.

What there was, instead, was a single thought, in Shi Jianqiao的de own voice, at about the seventy-paces mark, that surprised her with how quietly it arrived.

If I 回huí home from this morning, I will not know how to be a 妈妈māma to my 儿子érzi again. I will know how to live as the woman who did not do it.

回huí. To return, or to go back. 回huí home means return home. Put 回huí in front of any place to mean returning there.

The thought was not a hesitation. The thought was a registration.

At fifty paces, she felt her hands shake. The shake lasted about three seconds. She closed her left hand on the strap of the cloth bag and her right hand into a fist inside the right coat pocket above the Browning.

By the time she was at thirty paces, the shake had stopped.

At twenty paces she walked past the groundskeeper, who nodded at her in the dim light because he had nodded at her every morning for eight months. She nodded back.The nod was the same nod she had given him every morning. Nothing in her face was different.

At ten paces she 看kàn through the open gate into the courtyard. The two pomegranate trees. The pond. The chanting hall beyond the courtyard, lit by the candles inside.

At five paces she stepped under the stone arch.

At one pace she crossed the threshold of the courtyard.

At zero paces she was inside the TianjinJushilin for the one hundred and ninety-eighth and final 时候shíhou.

She walked across the courtyard. She walked to the threshold of the chanting hall. She removed her shoes. She put them on the rack with the other shoes. She picked up the cloth bag. She 看kàn once into the hall.

Sun Chuanfang的de cushion was in the second row, center-left. The cushion was not empty. Sun Chuanfang, in the padded robe, in the same posture he had held for the past five months, was already there.

He had arrived early.

Shi Jianqiao took her usual cushion in the back. She put the cloth bag down to her right. She unfolded the cloth. She put the wooden box of pamphlets within reach of her right hand.

The chanting began at six.

This morning, she chanted with the rest of them.

In Episode Seventeen, the chant reaches the line she had picked.

That is where we start Episode Seventeen.