I Cried at the Chairman's Funeral for Money novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: An Hour Docked

Hanzhou docks the mourner for crying eleven minutes instead of an hour, they argue, and the heir learns the answer to the eulogy from the man he insulted; the lawyer warns that the Second Uncle keeps asking about a sealed envelope.

The evening rite was scheduled for seven o'clock, and it was scheduled for one hour.

Shen Ke knelt at the coffin when the bell rang and began the lament, low at first, then rising.

He sang the old Suzhou verses for a father who had gone ahead and left the lamp.

The tears came by the third verse, because they always did, and the hall went quiet around him.

An old clan aunt in the second row began to sob.

Then a driver at the back, and then one of Madam Lu's own women, who had not meant to.

Shen Ke finished the last line on a long falling note, bowed three times, and sat back on his heels.

He was shaking a little and his face was wet.

The hall clock said ten minutes past seven.

Hanzhou stood by the pillar with his arms at his sides, in front of the whole troupe.

"Mourner Shen," he said, in his level voice. "Come here."

Shen Ke went.

"I paid for an hour," said Hanzhou. "You gave me ten minutes."

Somebody in the Lu troupe laughed behind her hand.

"The lament is ten minutes long," said Shen Ke.

"Then lengthen it."

"I don't cry by the clock, Mr. Gu."

"Then I will dock you by it," said Hanzhou. "Fifty minutes of ten thousand a day. Madam Lu's women cry for the full hour."

"Madam Lu's women cry for the full hour because they take a break at minute thirty," said Shen Ke.

His voice shook, and he hated that it did.

"Your point?"

"None," said Shen Ke. "I'll lengthen it."

He turned and walked out of the hall with his back straight and his eyes burning.

An hour docked was only eight hundred yuan, he told himself in the corridor.

It was not the eight hundred.

It was that the man had stood there with dry eyes and priced the one honest thing in the building.

He was sitting on the steps of the east wing when Hanzhou found him.

"The card," said Hanzhou, with no greeting. "The lawyer says you have something to show me."

"The lawyer talks too much."

"The lawyer talks exactly enough. Show me."

Shen Ke pulled the typed card from his tunic and held it out without looking up.

Hanzhou read it standing under the lamp, once, slowly, and then again.

"Red ink," he said. "The handwriting is Madam Lu's."

"Yes."

"Why show me, when I just docked you?"

"Because I'm not paid to be petty," said Shen Ke. "And because it's an insult to the dead."

Hanzhou folded the card along its crease.

"He plans to weep for my father in front of three hundred guests," he said, "while a hired woman tells him when to look at me."

"At the end, he will look at me, and the room will look at me, and I will be a nephew who does not cry."

"Yes," said Shen Ke.

"I'll answer him."

"How?"

"I don't know yet." Hanzhou sat down on the step beside him, a hand's width away.

He put the card on his knee.

"I'm told the heir has some part to play at the farewell ceremony. What is it?"

Shen Ke turned and looked at him.

"You don't know your own father's funeral rites?"

"I have not been to a funeral since I was nine," said Hanzhou. "My father did the ones after."

Shen Ke heard it and decided not to ask.

"There is an answer," he said. "Every time the eulogist finishes a paragraph, the eldest son kneels and answers him. 'Father hears you.' It is meant to be wailed."

"I can't wail."

"Say it."

"Father hears you," said Hanzhou.

He said it in the same flat, exact voice that had docked an hour, with no tremor in it at all.

In the quiet dark, with the yellow leaves coming down, it was so level and cold that Shen Ke sat very still.

"Again," he said.

"Father hears you."

"That's it," said Shen Ke slowly. "Flat is fine. In a silent hall, flat is worse than a scream."

"Then I will answer his first two paragraphs as the rite says," said Hanzhou. "And on the third, I will answer with something else."

"What?"

"The stage directions."

Shen Ke stared at him, and a strange, warm, appalled laugh came up in his chest.

"No joy under a mourning roof," said Hanzhou. "You said so yourself."

"That wasn't joy. That was a reflex."

"Then your reflexes are in order."

He stood and held out the card, and Shen Ke took it.

Their fingers did not touch, and Shen Ke noticed that neither of them quite allowed it.

A step sounded in the corridor.

The old lawyer came toward them, bent, holding a lantern lamp he had no need of, and his eyes went from one man to the other.

"Mr. Gu," he said. "May I speak in front of the mourner?"

"He's under contract. Yes."

"Then I'll be quick." The old lawyer lowered his voice. "Your father left a sealed envelope in my firm's vault. It is to be opened at the thanksgiving banquet and nowhere else."

"I know the instruction," said Hanzhou.

"Your uncle has asked me twice whether that envelope exists," said the lawyer. "Once yesterday, and once an hour ago, with a very warm smile."

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