Chapter 7: The First Seventh

On the seventh night the dead come home, and the house must let them in.

Shen Ke had asked the old lawyer, and the hall attendant, and the white-bearded monk who had come from the temple at dusk.

Then he had understood why Hanzhou had told him not to sing first.

At nightfall every lamp in Gu Garden went out except the two candles before the tablet.

A thin line of grey ash had been laid across the floor of the late chairman's study, from the door to his chair.

At dawn the family would read the soul's footsteps in it.

The clan knelt in the dark hall in rows, forty of them, with five white-haired elders at the front.

The Second Uncle knelt among them, and the Second Aunt, and Lu Meiying in her mourning black at the back.

Hanzhou knelt beside the urn, and Shen Ke knelt at his left.

The rule was simple, and the monk had said it three times.

Until the candle flame bowed, the sign that the soul had arrived, nobody in the house might raise a voice.

Only then did the house mourner sing the welcome.

Whoever cried out before the sign had shut the door on the dead, and the dead did not return a second time.

The clan elders watched Shen Ke, because he was the one who was supposed to sing.

Shen Ke kept his hands on his knees and his mouth shut.

Under the edge of his sleeve, where no elder could see, Hanzhou's smallest finger hooked into his.

He was the only person in the hall who knew what Shen Ke was holding back, and he did not let go.

Shen Ke let him.

Late in the night an elder cleared his throat, and Shen Ke did not move.

Closer to midnight the Second Uncle shifted, and sent him a look of pure encouragement.

Shen Ke gave him an open, innocent look in return.

At midnight a gong sounded from the lane outside.

The great hall doors crashed open, and six women in white poured into the room with their sleeves raised to their faces.

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