Chapter 5: One Candle

Shuyi did not sleep.

She lay in the narrow bed in the next room and listened to the wind scrape the plum branches against the wall.

Every time she closed her eyes she felt the thumb along her jaw.

At the third watch she gave up, pulled her robe over her nightclothes, and went to the study for a drink of water.

There was a light under the door.

She pushed it open as quietly as she could.

Lanxin sat at the long table with one candle, the cedar box open before her, and a letter in her hands.

She had taken the iron pin out of her hair.

It hung to her shoulders, black and straight, and without the pin she looked ten years younger and very tired.

Her face was wet.

She was not making any sound.

Tears ran down her cheeks and dropped on the sleeve of her robe, and she let them.

"I'm sorry," Shuyi whispered.

"I'll go."

"Stay."

Lanxin did not look up.

"You couldn't sleep either."

Shuyi came in and shut the door.

She stood by the table with her bare feet cold on the boards.

"May I?" she said, and pointed at the second chair.

Lanxin nodded.

They sat across the candle from each other, and for a while neither one spoke.

The letter in Lanxin's hands was number forty.

She was not reading it, because her eyes were fixed on the wall above Shuyi's head.

"Tell me about your father," Lanxin said.

"He failed the provincial exams four times."

"He was a very good scholar and a very bad test-taker, and he taught children to read for rice."

"He died when I was seventeen."

"I took his copybooks and opened a stall."

"That's all there is."

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