Six Agarwood Records · Tale Five: Grain Rain

Six Agarwood Records · Tale Five: Grain Rain

Grain Rain: the rain sprouts a hundred grains, and sprouts a hundred perplexities.

West of Bianliang city, in the Liu family's agarwood and sandalwood shop, the boards were half pried loose, and threads of rain slipped in at a slant, leaving dark stains on the blue tile floor. Liu Chixiang was bent behind the counter, placing the last piece of incense charcoal into the bronze censer. Wang Wanshu stood on a ladder, taking down from between the ceiling beams a bundle of oiled paper, the paper brown and yellowed, the knot tied in the Northern Song manner as it had always been. Wen Yi reached out to take and weigh it, and frowned: "And this?" "A wisp of each of the five incense — less than three qian in all." Wang Wanshu jumped down from the ladder, her sleeve flicking up sprays of rain. "Kiyoko hid eight qian, and this is all that was gathered."

Zhu Huaisha sat by the window, a traced copy spread before him — a detail of the small shop at the tail of "Along the River During the Qingming Festival" kept in the Palace Museum. He pointed at the blurry figure behind the counter in the painting. "Look — this man's left hand is pressed on empty space, his right holds incense, and on the counter are six censers in a half-circle arc. The ancients all thought it was incense lighting; in truth it is incense distribution." He raised his eyes to Liu Shengjingma. "Master Liu Shengjingma, that page of the 'Incense Code' your father left — is there a diagram there too?"

Liu Shengjingma was kneeling on a cushion, a lacquered box on his knees. He opened the lid: inside were five small porcelain vials, each marked with a dot of glazed color — white, green, purple, black, and yellow. "When my father recovered my sister's belongings in Kosovo, this paper was pressed at the bottom of the box." He took out a thin yellowed sheet; on it six censers were drawn in ink lines, with a note in small characters: "The gathering is not a collection; it is a distribution at one time."

"Then the seventh note…" Wen Yi said half a sentence, then fell silent of his own accord.

Liu Chixiang stood and took from his breast an incense ring — the half bearing the character "Keep," its corners smoothed by use. "The seventh note is not an incense." He placed the ring on the counter and fitted it to Wang Wanshu's half bearing the character "Wen"; they matched exactly, without a crack. "It is this ritual itself. Nha Trang is the mother incense, verifying the other five; but the six incenses do not appear in the world at one time — unless they are burned at one time, and scattered at one time." "And the fingerprints in Shosui?" Wen Yi pressed.

Zhu Huaisha spread another image: the cross-section of the Nha Trang kept in Shosui, three shallow fingerprints between the wood grains. "I compared the seals on the remaining pages of the 'Record.' One is the Liu family's 'Keep' seal; another is the 'Wen' character mark of the Wen incense shop; the third—" he paused. "Huang Tingjian's personal seal." "Huang Tingjian?" Wang Wanshu trembled. "When did he go to Japan?" "He never went." Liu Chixiang took up the words. "But in the Yuanyou era of Northern Song, a group of incense envoys crossed east with merchant ships, carrying incense distributed from the Liu family's Nha Trang to Shosui for verification. The leader was of the Liu family, the deputy of the Wen family, and the one who recorded the incense along the way was a disciple of Huang Tingjian. The fingerprints were pressed then, and their meaning — this incense was divided, this covenant was kept."

Liu Shengjingma looked at the five colored vials in the lacquered box and suddenly laughed, a very soft laugh. "My sister always said the great agreement must not remain scattered in ordinary hands. But she did not realize that what is scattered is not the incense — it is the people." He raised his head, rain light in his eyes. "Incense gathered in one place is burned once; people scattered across the four quarters keep watch for a lifetime."

The rain suddenly intensified. Liu Chixiang arranged the six bronze censers on the counter in a half-circle arc, and threw into them one after another the crumbs of the five incenses and a small handful of Nha Trang crumbs — the tiny sample Wang Wanshu's father, Wang Shuchu, had scraped in his lifetime from the Shosui copy, kept since then in a wax ball. The six censers burned at once; six-colored flames rose — white, green, purple, black, yellow, and the white of Nha Trang — embracing for a moment in the damp air, then separating and burning steadily, each on its own.

"Gathering is a ritual, not a possession," Zhu Huaisha murmured toward the flames. "The people of Chu honored the orchid and used division to revere the gods. Division is not dispersal — it is each keeping its place." Liu Shengjingma took from his breast a silk embroidered pouch and emptied the last crumbs of what Kiyoko had hidden, throwing them into the yellow censer. The flame leaped, then quieted. He put his palms together in salute, stepped back, and left his place to Wen Yi. Wen Yi stepped forward and threw into the censer the preface of the record he had copied from the police archive for artifact restoration; the paper ash flew, spinning upward with the incense smoke.

Wang Wanshu came forward last, and threw into the white censer the half pen her father had left when he restored "Along the River During the Qingming Festival." The pen body burned with a faint hum, exactly like the sound of rain on window paper.

When the six censers died down, the ash was still warm. Liu Chixiang gathered the ash of the six censers with a bronze spoon into six coarse paper bags, one for each. And when Liu Shengjingma received the ash of the yellow censer, his fingers trembled slightly, but he said nothing; he only bowed deeply, then turned and walked into the rain.

Wen Yi put the bag into the inner pocket of his official uniform and patted Liu Chixiang's shoulder. "Next time Kiyoko comes, I will tell them — the incense is gone; the people remain." Zhu Huaisha folded the traced copy and laughed. "I must go back to the museum to revise the research paper. These five words, 'keep the portion, not the gathering,' are enough for thirty thousand characters."

The people dispersed. Liu Chixiang and Wang Wanshu closed the door last. The rain had lightened; water dripped from the eaves onto the stone steps, one long, one short. Wang Wanshu suddenly said: "Smell." Liu Chixiang turned his head. There was no incense in the air at all, only the smell of rain and earth. But he knew what she meant — eight hundred years ago, Su Dongpo had smelled a Grain Rain like this in this shop; and when Zhang Zeduan painted the small shop at the tail of the scroll, the same rain was falling outside the window.

"Keep the portion, not the gathering." Liu Chixiang separated the two incense rings again, one to his breast, one extended to Wang Wanshu. "Then scatter." Wang Wanshu took the ring, turned toward the alley entrance, and after a few steps turned back, shaking the coarse paper bag in her hand at him: "Next Grain Rain, don't forget to come to the Wen incense shop for new tea." Liu Chixiang waved and closed the shop door. And before the two boards met, he cast a last look at Bianliang in the rain — the towers of the modern age blurred in the rain and became flying eaves of Northern Song, and that small shop at the tail of "Along the River During the Qingming Festival" glowed with a lamp that never goes out.

The incense scattered. And those who discern incense are scattered across the land, each keeping a quarter — and this is the true keeping.

— "Six Agarwood Records · Side Tales": full text, end

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