The Thread of Incense · Chapter One: The Black Wood on the Old House Beam

The Thread of Incense · Chapter One: The Black Wood on the Old House Beam

Prologue

In Tanniu, Wenchang, Hainan, the rain that had fallen for seven days straight had stopped.

When Chen Yanqiu made his way back along the wet bluestone slabs to the old family house, half of the great old banyan at the village entrance had toppled. His purpose in this trip was a vulgar one: to sell the house. His parents had died early; the old house had stood empty for eleven years, and in those years he had been transferred from Guangzhou to Shenzhen and had risen from clerk to middle management, letting "going back for a look" slip from once a year to once every three.

The agent had told him that with a house this old, if nothing was done, it would collapse as soon as the rainy season passed.

One

The old house had been built in his grandfather's time: a compound of three courtyards, the beams said to be of local Potang timber. Chen Yanqiu's memory of his grandparents had shrunk to three fragments: his grandfather lying in bed smoking a water pipe; a celadon censer on the spirit altar with a chip out of its rim; and one sentence the village elders repeated again and again—"That beam of your grandfather's is a treasure." As a child he had taken it for an old man's boasting. Country folk saw treasure in everything.

Now he stood in the middle of the main hall. Above his head a corner of the fir-wood roof sheathing had caved in, exposing a pitch-black crossbeam. Rain dripped down through the breach onto the eight-immortals table, onto half an inch of settled dust. He stood there under his umbrella and suddenly caught a scent.

Very faint, but very strange—not the smell of mildew. An old house on rainy days should reek of nothing but mildew, yet the air held a thread of something cool and faintly sweet, medicinal—like mint leaves steeped in honey, like the smell that used to drift from the door of the herbal shop when he was small, only clearer, and colder.

He raised his flashlight and turned it on the beam.

The beam was black through and through—a black that ran deep and moist. In the cracks one could see oil-lines of varying depth, like congealed ink that someone had raked with a fingernail. He rose on tiptoe and touched it—cool, hard; yet where his nail passed, he could feel a strange glutinous softness.

Early the next morning Chen Yanqiu messaged the agent: "Let's hold off on selling the house."

Two

The man in the village who knew wood best was Uncle Fu, eighty years old, who had spent thirty years at the town's furniture factory. The old man squatted in the courtyard and smoked half a cigarette, studying the beam for a long time; then he said something that kept Chen Yanqiu awake half the night: "That beam of yours is no ordinary firewood. It's fragrant wood." "Agarwood?" "I wouldn't swear to it. But if it really is old material borne by an *Aquilaria sinensis* tree, and it sinks in water..." Uncle Fu ground out the cigarette butt. "Back in the nineties your grandfather was buying timber; a man settled a debt with a whole boatload of wood, and he used every piece of it for beams. The whole village laughed and called him mad. Go now and rummage in your grandfather's camphor-wood chest—there's an oil-paper packet in it, with the leftover scraps from that same shipment." The oil-paper packet was found. Inside were seven or eight slivers of wood the size of a finger, black-brown, their cut faces glossy. Chen Yanqiu lit one corner with a lighter—the instant the flame licked it, a coolness rushed out first; then came sweetness, and within the sweetness a wrap of milky fragrance, settling at last on a steady warmth like resin. The smoke did not catch the throat; the ash was white.

Uncle Fu took one sniff of the smoke, and his hand stopped in mid-air.

"Nha Trang... no, it's steadier than Nha Trang." The old man was silent for a long while. "Yanqiu, don't set a price on this material, and don't sell it. Your first move is to take that beam—engage professionals—and bring the whole thing down."

Three

Chen Yanqiu searched for three days and found in Haikou an old gentleman who specialized in the appraisal of aromatic materials. His surname was Liang; before retiring he had been with the Forestry Research Institute.

Wearing white gloves, Old Liang studied the sample cut from the beam with a magnifying glass for a full twenty minutes, then put three questions to Chen Yanqiu: Were there nail holes in the tree? How old was the house? Was this material taken from a wounded spot in the trunk?

"It was built in the forties. My grandfather said the beam was old material that formed its own resin after being wounded. I don't know the details." Old Liang took off his glasses and wiped them for a long time.

"Little Chen, let me say the harsh things first. In this trade, stories outnumber material—commit that sentence of mine to memory for the rest of your life." He put the sample back into its cotton paper. "But I can tell you two things for certain. First, this is genuine agarwood; its oil content is the highest I have seen in the beams of any dwelling in all these years. Second—" He paused.

"Second, the way this piece formed its resin is unusual: natural wounding, fungal infection, then aging for at least sixty years. Material like this cannot be bought on the market, because no one would have the heart to turn sixty-year-aged stock into a house beam." "Then what is it worth?" "If I gave you a figure, you ought to be the one doubting me." Old Liang smiled. "Very well—I'll introduce you to a man who can run instrumental tests and produce a composition report. Until that report comes out, believe no one who quotes you a price—including me."

Four

When he came out of Old Liang's studio it was already dusk. Standing on the pedestrian bridge on Haidian Island, Chen Yanqiu sent a long email to his company in Shenzhen. He thought for a long time about the subject line, and in the end wrote only four words: request annual leave.

On his phone, the agent was still asking whether the house was to be sold after all. Gazing at the sunset glow over Haikou, he suddenly remembered the celadon censer on the spirit altar when he was small, the little sliver of incense his grandfather lit every dawn—so it had not been the old man's superstition after all.

It was a family raising, in the quietest way of all, a piece of amber made of time.

(End of Chapter One; tomorrow's installment continues with Chapter Two, *The Test Report and the Uninvited Guest*)

> 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.