Agarwood Six Records · Volume Six: Scattering and Gathering

Agarwood Six Records · Volume Six: Scattering and Gathering

One · [Modern · the Capital]

The rain of the critical night began to fall at dusk; by nine in the evening it had soaked the whole hutong until it shone. Liu Zhiqiang stood in the back hall of the old Agarwood & Sandalwood shop. Before him was a square table for eight, its lacquer worn away, and on it six pewter boxes laid out in a row, like six silent chessmen.

The lids half open, each scent was different: the sweet coolness of the Ranjatai, the raw breath of green grass from the Green Ranjatai, the powdery richness of the Purple Ranjatai, the scorched bitterness of the Black Ranjatai, the earthy rankness of the Yellow Ranjatai, the honeyed sweetness of the White Ranjatai. The six smells pressed against one another in the damp air, yet were held apart by some invisible order—the order Liu Zhiqiang had guarded with his life these years.

"They're all here." Wen Ye pushed the door open and came in, shaking the droplets from his raincoat all over the floor. "Liu Shengjingma's people make their move tonight. We cut off three of his routes, but the fourth—he has sent the Yellow Ranjatai in from Hong Kong, just now, and Customs failed to stop it." Liu Zhiqiang did not speak; he only nudged the sixth box a little forward. The earthy rankness of the Yellow Ranjatai drifted out, and the moment it touched the other five fragrances, every scent on the table faltered at the same instant, as if something had seized their throats.

"You felt it?" Wen Ye asked.

"Mm." Liu Zhiqiang looked up. "Six fragrances in one city—it has already begun."

Two · [Modern · the Capital] · Wang Wanshu's Choice

Wang Wanshu came out of the inner room carrying a brocade case; inside it lay the Purple Ranjatai. She wore an indigo cloth jacket washed pale, her hair pinned with a wooden hairpin, and the alum powder she used in restoring paintings still lodged beneath her fingernails.

"What Liu Shengjingma wants is the 'Great Unity.'" She set the brocade case on the table; she did not look at Liu Zhiqiang, her eyes fixed only on the Purple Ranjatai. "He believes that once the six fragrances are gathered, the world can return to that 'undivided' age of Shennong. He argues it plausibly—every historical source points to 'gathering' as the ultimate; even Huang Tingjian, in the surviving fragment of *The Manual of the Six Incenses*, wrote, 'Six incenses joined, and the world is one.'" "But Huang Tingjian never wrote on." Liu Zhiqiang said. "He wrote half a sentence; the second half was torn away." "I know." Wang Wanshu finally raised her head. "My father died for that half sentence. He investigated for half his life, and in the end discovered that what the Liu family guards is not 'gathering'—it is 'division.' But he would not believe it. He insisted on hunting down that half sentence, and in the end..." She stopped. Her voice did not tremble, but her hand pressed down on the brocade case, her knuckles white.

"I have studied dead things all my life," she said, "old paintings, surviving scrolls, incense manuals, tomb inscriptions—I always felt that living people could not be relied upon; only dead things never deceive me. But my father died, the incense hall was nearly burned down, and you—" She looked at Liu Zhiqiang. "You nearly died too." Wen Ye leaned against the doorframe and said nothing.

"The Purple Ranjatai I will not hand over." Wang Wanshu drew the brocade case toward herself. "Liu Shengjingma wants to gather; I will not stop him from gathering the others—but this piece I keep. I am one who restores paintings; the things I guard do not run away." Liu Zhiqiang looked at her; after a long moment he gave a single nod.

Three · [Modern · the Capital] · Liu Shengjingma's Logic

At ten o'clock sharp, Liu Shengjingma came alone.

He brought no one with him, dressed in a dark gray kimono with an old overcoat over it, rainwater dripping from the hem. Entering the back hall, he bowed first, the movement so correct it was almost rigid.

"Liu-san, all six fragrances are here." He straightened up, his gaze sweeping over the table and pausing for an instant on the Purple Ranjatai's brocade case. "All that is missing is Wang-san's piece." "What is missing is missing," Liu Zhiqiang said.

"It is not missing." From within his robe Liu Shengjingma produced a small porcelain vial and set it on the table. "Powder of the Ranjatai—it leaked out at a Shosoin auction. I spent seven years looking for it. Without the mother incense, the six can still be gathered; it is only gathered more slowly, more roughly." Wen Ye took a step forward, but Liu Zhiqiang raised a hand to stop him.

"Your sister died in Kosovo," Liu Zhiqiang said. "What you hate is 'division'—national borders, ethnic borders, religious borders, walls that keep people apart. You believe that once the incense is gathered, human hearts will be as one." "Are they not?" Liu Shengjingma's voice dropped. "When my sister died, the people in the next village did not even ask her name. 'Division' is what turns people into nobodies. Shennong separated the six incenses because he feared people would fight over them—but when people do not fight over incense, they fight over other things. Land, grain, water, gods. Divided for ten thousand years, dead for ten thousand years." "So that is why you would gather?" Liu Zhiqiang picked up the vial, pulled the stopper, and smelled it—it was indeed the Ranjatai: sweet coolness bearing the deep, aged breath of the old wooden cabinets of the Shosoin. "Do you know what comes after the gathering?" "The Great Unity." "Namelessness." Liu Zhiqiang set the vial down. "Once the six incenses are gathered, the incense seals are useless. When the two halves of 'Guard' and 'Record' close together, that little bit of 'difference' which the Liu and Wang families have guarded for generations is gone. Your sister's name, my father's name, the name of your Liu family as guardians of incense—all dissolve into the single word 'same.' What would you use to remember her?" Liu Shengjingma said nothing.

Four · [Modern · the Capital] · The Blood Ledger

Liu Zhiqiang took the blood ledger from within his robe.

The ledger's cover was cowhide; its pages held the handwritten notes of the Liu family's incense guardians down the generations, the characters written in blood—not a figure of speech, but real blood. Before each guardian died, he would prick a finger and let the blood fall, writing on the ledger the one sentence that mattered most.

He turned to the last page, in his father's hand: "Gatherers of incense die; scatterers of incense live. Shennong's testament lies not in 'gathering,' but in 'division.' The separation of the six incenses was not a mistake; it was the intent—that they need never come together again." "My father investigated for half his life, and in the end found this in the underground incense hall in Kaifeng." Liu Zhiqiang pushed the ledger over to Liu Shengjingma. "Believe it or not—Shennong separated the six incenses deliberately. Gather them, and the price of the Great Unity is that the world of men will know no differences, and keep no memories." Liu Shengjingma lowered his head and looked at the line for a long time.

"How did your father... die?" "The incense hall collapsed while he was searching for that line." Liu Zhiqiang's voice was very level. "He protected the ledger; he did not protect himself." The sound of the rain suddenly grew louder.

Five · [Modern · the Capital] · Qu Huaisha's Anchor

Qu Huaisha arrived at eleven, holding a black umbrella, one of its ribs broken; he closed it and leaned it crookedly against the door.

"There is a line on the Chu bamboo slips that I searched three years for." Without exchanging pleasantries, he drew a rubbing from his bag. "A fragment of the *Chu Silk Manuscript*, on Shennong's dividing of the incenses—'divide it and reverence it; each guards its own name.' When Qu Yuan wrote the *Li Sao*—'Richly endowed am I with inner beauty, and to it I have added cultivated powers'—the word 'richly' (纷) is not disorder; it is division that yet preserves difference. The people of Chu honored the orchid; the Ranjatai is the mother incense. Yet the people of Chu never offered the orchid gathered in one place; they planted it in separate rooms, because 'gathered, they share one name; divided, each gives forth its own fragrance.'" He set the rubbing on the table, directly facing Liu Shengjingma.

"Mr. Liu, your 'Great Unity' is gathering; the Chu people's 'Great Unity' is division—division is not shattering; it is letting every piece of incense, every person, still keep his own name. This is precisely the shared legacy of Shennong and Master Qu." Liu Shengjingma stared at the faint Chu seal script on the rubbing, his finger stopping on the four characters "each guards its own name."

"My sister's name," he said suddenly, "was Liu Shengjingxiang." No one responded.

Six · [Modern · the Capital] · Scatter

At twelve o'clock sharp, Liu Zhiqiang began to divide the incenses.

He closed the lids of the six pewter boxes again and packed them one by one into different parcels. The vial of Ranjatai was wrapped separately and tucked into Wen Ye's backpack—Wen Ye would fly to Xi'an tomorrow, then transfer to Nara, to return the mother-incense powder to the Shosoin.

"The Green Ranjatai goes to Yunnan; the Purple Ranjatai stays in the Capital; the Black Ranjatai goes to Guangzhou; the Yellow Ranjatai returns to Hong Kong; the White Ranjatai goes to Taipei." As he packed he spoke as if reciting the most ordinary of cargo lists. "Each on its own road, each to find its own guardian." Liu Shengjingma stood in the doorway and did not move.

"You won't stop me?" Liu Zhiqiang asked.

"That line of your father's," Liu Shengjingma said. "I believe it." He turned and walked into the rain, the hem of his overcoat brushing the threshold; he did not look back.

Wang Wanshu held the Purple Ranjatai's brocade case to her chest, standing at the door of the back hall watching Liu Zhiqiang pack the incense. The rain blew in at a slant; she shifted aside, not letting it splash onto the case.

"Will you still restore paintings from now on?" Liu Zhiqiang asked.

"I will." She said. "And I will guard this piece of incense too. You scatter yours, I guard mine—in the end, we are all in the Capital." Wen Ye slung his pack over his shoulder and clapped Liu Zhiqiang on the shoulder. "Nine hundred years, and the Liu family has finally done the word 'scatter' in full." "Not yet in full." Liu Zhiqiang tied off the last parcel. "It will only be complete when it has been scattered to the point that no one remembers the six incenses can be gathered."

Seven · [Northern Song · Bianliang] · The Night of Jingkang

In the winter of the seventh year of the Xuanhe era, the Jin troops pushed south. On the eve of the fall of Bianliang, Liu Cheng divided the six incenses into six bags and handed them to the shopkeeper of the Wen Family Incense & Medicine Shop, Wen Nuan.

"Where the incense stays, the family stays," Liu Cheng said. "While the family lives, the incense must be kept scattered. Gather it, and nothing remains." Wen Nuan stuffed the six bags into six different carts, which left the city in six directions. She stood at the city gate, watching the last cart disappear into the snow, and turned back to Liu Cheng's son: "Remember—what your father scattered was not incense, but names. Every piece of incense must have its own name; only then can people remember who they are."

Eight · [Modern · the Capital] · Closing the Loop

At two in the morning, the rain lessened.

Liu Zhiqiang, Wang Wanshu, and Wen Ye stood at the door of the old Agarwood & Sandalwood shop. In Wen Ye's backpack was the Ranjatai; in Wang Wanshu's arms, the Purple Ranjatai; in Liu Zhiqiang's hand, the last delivery slip—the White Ranjatai, to Taipei.

"Nine hundred years ago, my ancestors scattered the incense in the snow." Liu Zhiqiang folded the delivery slip and tucked it into his pocket. "Nine hundred years later, we scatter it in the rain." "Rain is better than snow." Wang Wanshu said. "The rain can soak into the earth." Wen Ye laughed once and opened the black umbrella with its broken rib. "I'm off. When I return from Nara, I'll bring you incense ash from the Shosoin." He walked into the rain, his steps quick, his backpack bobbing.

Wang Wanshu turned her head to look at Liu Zhiqiang. "In your father's blood ledger, are there any words after the last page?" "There are." Liu Zhiqiang said. "Just three words—'Scatter it clean.'" Wang Wanshu looked down at the brocade case in her arms; the powdery richness of the Purple Ranjatai seeped from the seams of the case, mingled with the earthy rankness of the rain.

"Then let's scatter it clean." She said.

Liu Zhiqiang reached out and closed the shop door; the brass ring knocked against the door panel with a single clatter.

The rain still fell; the puddles in the hutong reflected the streetlamps, shattered piece by piece, and in every piece there was one whole lamp.

— *Agarwood Six Records* · The End

> This is an original serialized story from *Agarwood Six Records*; characters and plot are fictional. Common knowledge of agarwood and aromatics herein is compiled from public materials and does not constitute investment or medical advice.