Chapter 21: The Guild Hall

The Bankers' Guild hall stood behind a carved stone gate, and by nine o'clock the gate could not close.

Eighty-seven families had come to the gallery in their best clothes.

The widow from the incense shop sat in the front row on a cushion the printer had brought.

Below them, in the long hall, forty bankers in silk gowns took their seats around a table of black wood.

The station head set the iron box in the middle of it, broke the red seal in front of everyone, and stepped aside.

Qiao stood at one end of the table with Jinyu on her left and Ruolan on her right.

She wore her blue student gown, her steel glasses, and a clean white collar Auntie Hu had starched in the night.

Her hands were quite still.

"Miss Lin," said the chairman, an old man with a face like a closed fist.

"The Guild opens the books of the Hengtai Bank today."

"Your book has been put before us."

"Explain it."

"I will read it," said Qiao.

She untied the red string, and she began.

"Page one."

"I will read each sum, and the family who gave it may stand."

Up in the gallery, a teahouse keeper rose to his feet, and then a boatman's widow beside him.

"Signed, Pei Mingshan, for the bank."

A rustle ran round the gallery.

She turned the leaf.

"Page one, line two. A boatman's widow. Sixty yuan."

She read every line.

It took an hour.

She read the rickshaw pullers and the silk winders, the three sisters who stitched shoes, and the printer.

She read the widow behind the incense shop and her husband's coffin money.

After every sum she said the same words, plain and steady.

"Signed, Pei Mingshan, for the bank."

By the fortieth line, the bankers had stopped whispering.

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