物常聚于所好

Twenty-eighth of December, night, and the year closed out. Three thousand and twenty bags sold, against two thousand four hundred and ten last year: six hundred and ten more. Net still negative: minus thirty-one thousand four hundred, against minus fifty-eight thousand last year and minus seventy thousand the year before. The line is climbing. On this slope 2033 might break even. And then beside it the second line: twenty days a year. With both on the page the first one stops looking good, because what lifts the first line is the second, and the second cannot go any higher. Twenty-two days on the road this year; more than that and the Chengdu work goes, and Qiao's twenty-two thousand is the cash floor under the whole thing. In the book: this line of mine is not climbing. It is pressing up against something. It stops at twenty days.

Then a second reckoning, and it was worse. Of the twenty-two days — Turpan eight, Chang four, Kucha five, Rehmanjan two, three on the road — the hours actually spent sitting in somebody's yard talking come to about thirty. Thirty hours a year. My two hundred-odd findings came out of ninety hours. Against which: Luo stood in purchasing stations for thirty years — call it two hundred days a year and ten hours a day — sixty thousand hours. Sixty thousand against ninety. In the book: for three years I have been standing beside a river bailing with a bowl. And: however fast you bail, it is one bowl.

Ouyang Xiu came on the twenty-ninth. Sixty or so, gone a little heavy, in a plain house robe with nothing official about it, and his eyes are poor — he has to bring things close to look at them. He carried a roll of rubbings: old paper, black ground, white characters. He did not open it. He looked at my sheet first, face close to the page, and said: twenty days a year.

He asked whether the twenty days was money. No — the money is all right now. It is that I am one man. He nodded. I thought the same when I was young. I wanted to collect the old inscriptions. Where are they? Everywhere under heaven. Zhou, Qin, Han, Tang. In the hills, in temples, in front of graves, and out on the field-banks where people prop their feet on them. And: walking to them myself, in a whole lifetime I would not reach a tenth.

How many did you get? A thousand scrolls. In how long? Twenty years. And how many places did you go? He pushed the roll forward. This one is Mount Hua. I have never been to Mount Hua. And: there is Mount Tai in here, and Kuaiji, and Qiyang. Most of them I never reached. Then how? — They were sent. And: I had friends holding office in various places and students teaching in various places, and I told them: if there is a stele where you are, take me a rubbing. And, and I picked up the pen: I could not get out of my own door, but there were people at those doors.

I asked the practical question — why would they bother? A rubbing takes work. It takes work. Paper and ink cost money, and labour costs money. So what were they getting out of it? He did not answer at once. He opened the roll a little, showed a few characters, and ran a finger along them. A very old stele, the strokes worn away by wind and broken in places. The man who took this was a student of mine, a registrar in that county. The stele was on the bank of a ditch, half buried. He dug for two days. And: he wrote me a letter saying: nobody in this county knows what this stone is. And, five times into the book: what he was after was not me. And: what he was after was that stone.

Then the line from the preface. Things gather where they are loved, and are got by the one with strength. And the second half: strength without love, or love without strength — even what is near and easy will not be brought in. Which am I? The second. Love without strength. Yes. And then: but I will tell you something. Of the two, yours is the good one to be. Why? — Strength can be borrowed. Love cannot. And: there is no shortage in the world of men with strength and no love. They get the thing and it sits there. Two years and it is scattered again.

How is strength borrowed? From other people who love it. One man's strength is limited. Ten men, a tenth each, is ten. I said ten such people are hard to find. You don't have to find them. They are already there. And then he did it to me with three questions. That old man in your three houses bit for forty years — did forty years of it make him anything? No. Then why did he bite? — Your old buying agent wrote a notebook at fifty-nine. Who was he writing it for? Nobody read it at the time. Then why did he write it? And, six times into the book: these people do the one thing all their lives, and it is not for money. And: the money is incidental. And: they are your ten. And: they have been there the whole time. Nobody has ever put them on one sheet of paper.

Last question: what was the thousand scrolls finally for? He laughed — somebody asked me that at the time too, and I put the answer in the preface. And: some of what is cut on those stones does not match what the histories say. The histories were written afterwards. The stele was set up at the time. And when a stone's office titles, dates and place names contradict the record: I believe the stone. And: so the book is not a curio. The book is there to be held against the histories. Rolling the rubbing up, at the door, turning: your two hundred-odd cards are not curios either. And: the books written about this trade from outside it are all hearsay. And: your two hundred-odd were set up at the time. — M.

Memo to file. Chengdu, 28 December 2031 – 1 January 2032. Year-end, and the ceiling.

1. The numbers, which look like progress and are not. 3,020 bags against 2,410; net −31,400 against −58,092 and −70,525. Three points, one slope, break-even plausible in 2033. The slope is produced entirely by days on the ground, and days on the ground are capped at about twenty by the Chengdu consulting work that pays for everything. So the line is not rising; it is pressing against a ceiling and will flatten there.*

2. The arithmetic that made it concrete. Of twenty-two days, perhaps thirty hours are actually spent sitting in a yard talking. Ninety hours over three years, against Luo's sixty thousand. In the book: a bowl beside a river.

3. The precedent, and it is the exact shape of my problem. A thousand scrolls of inscriptions in twenty years, gathered from all over the empire, and he went to almost none of the places. Friends in office, students teaching — if there is a stele where you are, take me a rubbing. And: I could not get out of my own door, but there were people at those doors. My ceiling is not twenty days. My ceiling is that I have been treating myself as the only person who goes anywhere.

4. Why the rubbings came, which is the part I would have got wrong. A registrar dug a half-buried stele out of a ditch bank over two days and wrote: nobody in this county knows what this stone is. And: what he was after was not me. What he was after was that stone. I have spent three years assuming that what these households give me, they give me because of the relationship or the price. Some of it they give because the thing itself is worth knowing and nobody else has ever asked.

5. The diagnosis, in four clauses. Things gather where they are loved, and are got by the one with strength. Strength without love, or love without strength — even what is near and easy will not be brought in. I am the second: love without strength. And the correction I did not expect: of the two, that is the good one to be, because strength can be borrowed and love cannot. And: men with strength and no love are everywhere; they get the thing and it sits, and in two years it has scattered.

6. Where the borrowed strength is, which he made me answer myself. A man bit fruit for forty years and it made him nothing — so why did he bite? A man wrote a notebook at fifty-nine that nobody read — so why did he write it? These people do the one thing all their lives and it is not for money; the money is incidental. They are the ten. They have been there the whole time, and nobody has ever put them on one sheet of paper.

7. And the defence of the whole exercise, which I needed and had not found for myself. The stones matter because the histories were written afterwards and the stele was set up at the time — where they disagree, believe the stone. And: the books written about this trade from outside it are all hearsay. Your two hundred-odd were set up at the time.

8. The 2032 plan, one page, 30 December. First line is not money: exchange partners from two households to five — Chang's six houses, Turpan's three, Rehmanjan's one, and the two in Kucha. Five households, four strings each, twenty strings a year moving between them. Second line, written and struck out and rewritten: I go twenty days a year, and in those twenty days I do not look at goods. Third line: those twenty days do one thing only — and the blank under it took three days to fill. What went in: handovers, and nothing else. With three dates: March, Turpan, three vertical lines. May, Chang's, Chang Bin re-ranks his father's string with his father watching. August, Kucha, get Luo to come out. The last one I wrote down knowing he is sixty-one and it is two hours by car from Aksu, and I do not know whether he will go. At the foot of the page: this year I don't go looking for new ones. I go and connect the ones I already have.

*9. Luo's second parcel, 31 December, and it broke his own book. Nine of ten answered; question three still don't know. And loose in the envelope, a question of his own, numbered thirteen — in a notebook whose twelfth clause reads: there is no thirteenth clause in this trade. "At what age should a man in this trade hand over the little he has?" Under it, small: I wrote that there was no thirteenth clause at fifty-nine, because that year I wasn't planning to hand anything over. And: I'm sixty-one now. And, smaller than the rest: I can't answer this one either.

10. Three sheets of paper, and I sat in the dark with them. Luo's, at sixty-one: it's time to hand over and I don't know how. The rehab squared paper, one character: wait. And 14 July's six characters. Two men, sixty-one and sixty-nine, thirteen hundred kilometres apart, who have never met, saying the same thing from two ends.

11. What I sent at midnight, after four rewrites, to Chang Bin, Alim and Luo. Five households, four extra strings each, slips carry a number and no words, numbers anchored to this year's five bags from house two. And: I don't run this. You five post to each other, hang them, pinch them yourselves. I come twenty days a year and I don't look at goods. Alim: all right. Two words, immediately. Chang Bin: I'll ask my father — then, ten minutes later, he says he thought of this when he was young, and then, he says nobody was willing then. Luo, next morning, did not say yes or no. He asked: how many of the five still have an old man who can bite? Chang 64, yes. Abdul Rahman 69, no. Rehmanjan 47, yes. Kucha: one in his fifties, one in his thirties. Four. And: then hurry up. And, and then he stopped: it won't be four for long.

"Things gather where they are loved, and are got by the one with strength. Strength without love, or love without strength — even what is near and easy will not be brought in."
The passage that follows is a catalogue of costs, and it is worth reading before the moral. Jade comes from beyond the shifting sands, passing through ten and more interpreters before it reaches the middle land. Pearls grow in deep water, and the diver goes down with a rope at his waist, his face and colour no longer a man's, and often he does not come up. Gold is cut out of long tunnels lit by torches, and when the cliff falls and the shaft closes, men are buried there by tens and by hundreds.
So far, so hard, so full of deaths — and yet gold and jade and pearls are gathered and held in the world all the same.
That is the argument. Difficulty explains nothing. What is desired arrives across any distance and any death toll; what is not desired stays where it is, however close. The old inscriptions he spent twenty years collecting were mostly lying in ditches and field-banks within a day's walk of somebody — near, and easy, and going to pieces, because nobody wanted them.
The other half of it is the quiet fact that the collection was not gathered by the collector. A thousand scrolls, and he had never been to most of the places. Friends in office, students teaching in the provinces: if there is a stele where you are, take me a rubbing. I could not get out of my own door, but there were people at those doors.
And they were not doing it for him. One of them dug a half-buried stone out of a ditch bank over two days and sent it with a note: nobody in this county knows what this stone is.
What he was after was not me. What he was after was that stone.
Which leaves the useful half of the diagnosis. If you have the strength and not the love, the thing comes to you and then scatters. If you have the love and not the strength, you are stuck — but only until you notice the others.
Strength can be borrowed. Love cannot.
And, against the charge that any of it was a hobby: the histories were written afterwards; the stele was set up at the time. Where they disagree, believe the stone.