Six Agarwood Records · Tale Two: The Beginning of Autumn

Six Agarwood Records · Tale Two: The Beginning of Autumn

One: A Bead in the Ash

The third rain after the Beginning of Autumn; the edge of the old shop's roof was still dripping. Liu Zhiqiang tipped the ash from the six incense burners, collected on the day of the distribution incense-burning festival, onto coarse paper and gently spread it with a bamboo splinter. The ash was white, fine as flour; and in the ash of the third burner, the tip of the splinter touched something hard.

He leaned in to look. A bead of agarwood, the size of a grain of rice, its shell burned black, and inside it a yellow core still remained. It had not burned through.

Wang Wanshu came out from the back room, paste on her hands, lining a decaying board. She glanced at the bead and set down the palm brush.

"The burners of the distribution incense-burning festival are all newly built; there shouldn't be anything old in their ash." "Then this bead is not from that day." Liu Zhiqiang lifted the bead with tweezers and brought it close to his nose. After the heat of the fire, only a very faint sweetness remained, like sun-dried orange peel mixed with the pages of an old book. He closed his eyes and identified it, then shook his head.

"This is the Wen family formula. A method from the late Northern Song, with a tail of frankincense from India that came through the port of Quanzhou." "The Wen family?" Wang Wanshu took the tweezers. "Wen Yi's family?" "Wen An's sister, Wen Nuan, keeper of the Wen perfume shop for wounds in Bianliang. The Wen clan protected the Liu clan, and the hidden channel ran with wounds, not blades." Liu Zhiqiang placed the bead in a white porcelain dish. "That this bead survives to today means someone deliberately mixed it into the ash of the distribution incense-burning festival. The burner ash was sealed that same night; only the five of us could have touched it." "Or six," said Wang Wanshu. "Before Liu Shengjingma left, he stood by the burners for a long time."

Two: Half a Sentence Inside the Bead

Wen Yi came quickly. He entered and sat down, and first went to the bead in the dish.

"My family did not pass down beads like this." He raised it toward the window light. "Wen An was a minor clerk in the Wen perfume shop in Bianliang during the Northern Song; I have checked the genealogy — he held only the post of 'keeper of the perfume register,' and mixing was not his work. The mixer was his sister, Wen Nuan." "That fits." Liu Zhiqiang dropped the bead into warm water; the burned shell slowly dissolved, revealing a very thin roll of mulberry paper. The roll was thinner than a toothpick; unrolled, it was only the length of a finger joint, and on it was a line of fine regular script, its ink yellowed to the color of pine-soot ink of the Northern Song.

"If divided, it lives; if gathered..."

Its second half dissolved in the water, leaving only a dot of ink.

"Gathered what?" Wen Yi frowned.

"I don't know. The paper is cut, and the cut is uneven, as if torn from a whole sheet." Liu Zhiqiang spread the mulberry paper on dry paper. "But the characters 'if divided, it lives' agree with 'we keep the share and do not gather it.' What Wen An handed down may be more than this one sentence." Wang Wanshu turned over the burned shell of the bead; inside, a very small character was carved: "Wen," and in the mouth of the character a trace of cinnabar still remained.

"The Wen family mark. This bead was mixed by Wen Nuan's own hand."

Three: The Old Register in Quanzhou

Wen Yi asked for three days' leave and ran to Quanzhou. A branch of Wen Nuan's descendants had moved there for the re-export trade in aromatics; the shop was long gone, but the clan still kept a decaying register, its cover inscribed: "Wen Register of Wounds · Volume Seven."

He found the register at the bottom of a camphor chest in the old house in Quanzhou, photographed it, and sent the images to Bianliang. Liu Zhiqiang and Wang Wanshu turned the pages one by one under the lamp. The register recorded the Wen family's dealings in wounds during the Shaoxing era of the Southern Song; and on a pasted-in page was a line of small characters, in a hand matching that of the mulberry paper inside the bead.

"Uncle An sent beads from Bian, instructing that the beads hide messages; when the messages arrive, burn them. The beads are of five colors, each taking its own road; and if gathered..."

And the rest was torn away once more.

Wen Yi said on the phone: "I asked the clan elders; they said the ancestors had one rule: when a bead message arrives, its holder does only one thing — pass its words to the next station, and burn it after passing. No one is allowed to gather the messages of several roads and read them together." Liu Zhiqiang put the phone on speaker and set it on the incense table. The bead on the table had already dissolved; only half a sentence remained on the mulberry paper.

"So what follows 'and if gathered,' Wen An did not let the followers know either," said Wang Wanshu. "What he guarded against was precisely someone gathering the messages." "The Qiaojike group gathered for decades," came Wen Yi's voice from the phone. "Otherwise, in Liu Shengjingma's generation, they would not have understood that they had gathered wrongly."

Four: The Sentence That Is Not Completed

Zhu Huaisha came to the shop the next day to look at the mulberry paper. He brought a magnifying glass and looked for a long time.

"In Zhu's slices too there is this way of writing — the last stroke of the character 'divide' extends downward, breaks in the middle, deliberately left incomplete." He straightened up. "The ancients, when writing letters, would deliberately leave half a sentence for the recipient to complete. Different completers, different meanings." "Then whom did Wen An want to complete it?" asked Liu Zhiqiang.

"The reader of the message." Zhu Huaisha set the magnifying glass aside. "The one he trusted." Wang Wanshu was silent for a moment, then rolled the mulberry paper once more and returned it to the white porcelain dish.

"Then let it not be completed," she said. "Wen An left it incomplete because he did not want a single sentence to become a key. 'If divided, it lives' is enough for use." Liu Zhiqiang nodded. He covered the porcelain dish and wrote a label, pasting it on the bottom: "Bead message of the Wen family of the Northern Song, a broken sentence, not to be completed. Kept in the old shop in Bianliang." Wen Yi heard this on the other end of the phone and did not speak. After a few seconds, he said: "I return tomorrow. In Quanzhou there are several more boxes of old registers; I will examine them once more. If I find anything I will photograph it for you; if not, so be it." "If you don't find it, so be it," said Liu Zhiqiang.

Five: A Letter from Nara

On the tenth day after the Beginning of Autumn, a letter arrived at the shop. Unsigned; on the envelope only: "To Liu's wound shop, Bianliang — private." The postmark was from Nara.

Liu Zhiqiang opened it. Inside there was no letter paper, only half a shard of agarwood, the size of a fingernail, pale white, its grain fine and dense. He brought it close and smelled it; his hand stopped.

Nha Trang. A remnant from the corner of a piece of Shosoin, and the cut was still fresh.

Beneath the agarwood shard was a pressed heated leaf; held to the light, the Shosoin pattern appeared within — a deer, with a vine climbing its antlers. On the back of the leaf were two characters in pencil, in a strange hand: "The measure remains."

Wang Wanshu took the leaf and turned it twice. "'Measure' is the old name of Nha Trang. Who sent it?" "I don't know. But those who know that Nha Trang is the measure are not many." Liu Zhiqiang placed the agarwood shard in the porcelain dish, beside the paper remaining from Wen's bead.

Outside the window the rain began to fall again. The rain after the Beginning of Autumn is colder than the rain of Grain in Ear; on the bricks it made a brittle sound.

"The next Grain in Ear rain is still far off," Wang Wanshu folded the heated leaf and put it into an old book. "Let us first understand this character 'measure.'" Liu Zhiqiang closed the shop door; before the two panels met, he cast a glance at the alley entrance in the rain. No one. But the cut face of the half agarwood shard was too fresh, as if just rubbed from the whole piece.

Whoever rubbed the agarwood is still here.

— To be continued · Tale Three

> This is a serialized fictional work of "Six Agarwood Records"; the characters and plot are fictional. The knowledge of agarwood and aromatics herein is drawn from public sources and does not constitute investment or medical advice.