I Cried at the Chairman's Funeral for Money novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: The Terms
Shen Ke moves into the east room, writes two terms into the contract, meets the secretary-widow and the lawyer, and picks up a card the Second Uncle's coach dropped, with stage directions for tomorrow's tears.
The east room was small, with one bed, one desk, and a window onto a ginkgo tree gone yellow.
Shen Ke slept four hours in it, and woke to find a single typed page on the desk.
Hanzhou stood in the doorway in yesterday's suit, shaved, upright, and very tired.
"Terms," he said. "I wrote them at five."
"You sleep at five?" asked Shen Ke.
"No."
Shen Ke read the page sitting on the edge of the bed.
It said that he would cry at every rite, morning and evening, in the hall, for forty-nine days.
It said that he would live in the east room and eat in the house.
It said that the fee was four hundred ninety thousand yuan, paid in full on the forty-ninth night only if all seven rites were done.
"Why the last part?" asked Shen Ke.
"Because you named the price, and I'm buying forty-nine days," said Hanzhou. "I don't pay for forty-eight."
"I'll finish," said Shen Ke. "Add two lines."
"Say them."
"One. In the hall, the mourner's word on ritual is final. If I say the lamp goes out, it goes out, even if you're the heir."
Hanzhou looked at him for a moment.
"Granted," he said. "The other?"
"Two. No joy under a mourning roof." Shen Ke counted it on his fingers. "No wine, no laughing in the hall wing, no music except laments. No touching for pleasure, until the forty-ninth night."
"Who would I touch?" asked Hanzhou.
"I'm told it's a custom, not a forecast."
Hanzhou's mouth did something small and brief, and Shen Ke could not tell what it was.
"Add them," said Hanzhou. "The lawyer will type it."
He went out, and Shen Ke sat looking at the open door for longer than the page deserved.
The family lawyer came at nine, a stooped, courteous man of sixty-three with a briefcase older than Shen Ke.
He typed the two new lines on a small printer in the study and had both of them sign.
"You cried properly last night," said the lawyer, squaring the pages. "I was in the corridor. The old man would have liked it."
"Thank you, sir."
"Don't call me sir. I am only the old lawyer." He tucked the pages away. "Be careful in this house, Mourner Shen. It has more doors than people."
In the main corridor, a woman in a long white coat stood at the window with a paper cup of tea.
She was forty-four, slim and composed, with grey under her eyes and no jewelry at all.
"You're the boy from the back row," she said.
"Shen Ke."
"Qin Wanyi. I was your employer's father's secretary for twenty years." She paused. "And his wife for six, if the family can be made to say it."
"I'm sorry for your loss," said Shen Ke.
"Thank you. Nobody has said it to me yet." She looked into the tea. "Hanzhou calls me Secretary Qin. He means well."
Before Shen Ke could answer, a crash of voices came up the corridor.
Two maids were carrying a huge camphor-wood trunk, black and carved, with brass corners, toward the guest rooms.
Behind them walked the plump woman from the hall, with the pearls and the ring of keys.
"Left," she said. "Left. If you scratch it, you pay for it."
"Second Madam, shall I help?" said Shen Ke, stepping forward.
"Do not touch that, back-row boy."
She said it so sharply that the maids stopped.
This was the Second Aunt, the Second Uncle's wife, who ran the household and held the purse for the funeral.
A small brass key hung at her belt among the others, and Shen Ke saw her touch it twice before the trunk moved on.
"That's her wedding trunk," whispered Qin Wanyi, when the woman had gone. "She brought it to a funeral. Don't ask me why."
"What's the little brass key?" asked Shen Ke.
"The condolence cash box. Every guest brings a white envelope. She counts them herself." Qin Wanyi smiled thinly. "She doesn't trust a bank, or a maid."
At noon the Lu Family Mourning Troupe arrived to rehearse for the farewell ceremony.
Madam Lu Meiying led them in, a tall, handsome woman of forty-six with a famous voice and a very straight back.
She passed Shen Ke without a word and gave him one cold look.
Behind her hurried a young assistant with her arms full of folders and a phone clamped to her ear.
One card slid from the pile and landed face up by Shen Ke's foot.
"Miss," he said. "You dropped something."
The girl did not hear him.
She was already through the gate, shouting at someone about the car.
Shen Ke picked up the card, meaning only to hand it back.
It was typed, with a heading: Second Master, farewell ceremony, tomorrow, 10:40.
Under it ran a eulogy, three paragraphs long, and between the lines someone had written in red ink, in a firm slanting hand.
Shen Ke knew the hand.
It belonged to Lu Meiying, who had taught half the mourners in Jiangsu how to pause.
He read the first red note, then the second, then the third.
The last one sat under the final sentence, where the Second Uncle would say goodbye to his brother.
It said: "[sob] [pause] [look at nephew]."
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