I Cried at the Chairman's Funeral for Money novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Back Row
At a famous chairman's wake, a back-row mourner sings an honest lament at three in the morning, and the dry-eyed heir hires him for forty-nine days at a price meant to scare him off; at dawn the Old Madam rules that the heir must light the last lamp with his own tears or lose the seal.
Shen Ke cried at strangers' funerals for eight hundred yuan a day, and he was good at it.
Tonight the stranger was the chairman of Gu Silk, dead since yesterday evening of his heart.
The wake filled the front hall of the Gu family house in Suzhou with white chrysanthemums and three hundred mourners in black.
Twelve women of the Lu Family Mourning Troupe knelt at the front, and their wailing carried to the street.
Shen Ke knelt in the back row with five other day hires.
The back row got the cheap rate, and nobody listened to it.
At one in the morning the guests went home, the troupe went to drink tea, and the hall emptied.
"Go home, boy," said the troupe's manager, passing him. "Madam Lu says the back row is finished."
"I'll finish this lament first," said Shen Ke.
"Nobody is paying for it."
"I know," said Shen Ke, and he stayed on his knees.
He looked at the portrait of the old man in a grey suit, a square, tired face with a good mouth.
His old master, who had raised him in the mourning trade, had taught him that every man deserves one honest cry at his funeral.
So he gave this man his, in the old Suzhou way, a low sung lament with the tears coming on their own.
He sang that the road was long and the lamp was lit and the son was waiting at the gate.
He did not notice the man kneeling at the front of the hall until the man stood up.
"Come here," said the man.
He was tall, in a black suit with a white band on the arm, and his face was severe and very pale.
This was Gu Hanzhou, thirty, the chairman's only son.
Shen Ke had watched him kneel at the coffin since noon without moving.
He had not cried once, and he had not eaten, and three hundred guests had counted.
Shen Ke wiped his face on his sleeve and walked up the aisle.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I was told to go. I'll go."
"What is your name?" asked Hanzhou.
"Shen Ke," said Shen Ke.
"What do you charge, Shen Ke?"
"Eight hundred a day. It's the back row's rate."
"Not for tonight," said Hanzhou. "For forty-nine days."
Shen Ke stared at him.
"That is every rite from now to the last lamp," said Hanzhou. "Morning and night at the coffin, and then at the tablet. You would live in this house."
"That's not a job," said Shen Ke. "That's a lease."
"I need a mourner," said Hanzhou flatly. "I can't do it myself."
Shen Ke looked at his dry eyes, which were black and steady and did not blink enough.
He understood something about the man then, and he did not like how much he understood.
"Mr. Gu, I don't think you want a mourner," he said. "You want a son who can cry. I can't sell you that."
"I am not asking you to be my son," said Hanzhou. "I am asking you to cry so loudly in this house that I have somewhere to stand."
The old master's dialysis was twelve thousand a month, and the rent on the courtyard was four months late.
He took a breath, and he named the stupidest number he could think of.
"Ten thousand a day," he said. "Four hundred ninety thousand, and I get the money whether you like my crying or not."
He expected the man to laugh, or to call a servant, and he was ready to walk home in the dark.
"Done," said Hanzhou.
"I said ten thousand."
"I heard you."
Hanzhou took out his phone, tapped it twice, and Shen Ke's own phone buzzed in his pocket.
On the screen was a transfer of forty-nine thousand yuan, marked as a deposit.
Shen Ke looked at it for a long time.
It was more money than he had held at once in his life, and it came from a man who had not said please.
"You'll sleep in the east room," said Hanzhou. "I will have it made up."
"Mr. Gu," said Shen Ke, "is there a reason you're hiring someone to cry for you in front of your own father?"
"Yes," said Hanzhou. "I'll tell you when I need you to know."
At dawn the family came down for the morning rite.
Shen Ke stood in the aisle in his black tunic, with his deposit still in his pocket, and the whole hall looked at him.
A man of about sixty came up the aisle with a warm, wet-eyed face and both hands held out.
This was Gu Mingli, the Second Uncle, the dead man's younger brother and the acting head of Gu Silk.
"Nephew," he said gently. "I hear you have kept the back-row boy. The troupe is already paid, you know. Madam Lu is very upset."
"He's mine," said Hanzhou. "He cries for my father until the forty-ninth day."
Behind the Second Uncle, a plump woman with a pearl necklace and a ring of keys at her belt pressed her lips thin.
A small old woman had come in on a black cane, with a jade pin in her white hair and an old, level gaze.
The room made way for her without being asked.
This was Old Madam Gu, who was eighty-six, and who had buried a husband and now a son.
She looked at Shen Ke once, from his shoes to his wet face, and then at her grandson.
"Hanzhou," she said. "You have hired a stranger to weep so the clan will stop counting."
"Yes, Nainai."
"Then hear me, and so will he," said the Old Madam. "On the forty-ninth day the heir lights the last lamp before the whole clan, and he lights it with his own tears."
She tapped the cane on the stone floor, once.
"Not the boy's. Yours. If your eyes are dry on that night, the family seal goes to your uncle."
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