吾以老布衣，孤筇双屐

Twenty-seventh of August, Kucha, eight in the morning. Luo arrived forty minutes early, by long-distance bus, two hours and more from Aksu. Forty-seven days after the operation. Getting down from the bus he steadied himself on the doorframe for about two seconds. A small cloth bundle in one hand — two changes of clothes and an enamel mug. I offered to take it; he didn't hand it over. Not heavy. The old dark blue jacket I have seen three times, all three at a buying. Cloth shoes. He looked once toward the yard and said: what time do they open the scale?

Kucha's buying point is Ali's family yard. Tursun has been dead forty-seven days. The six houses were hung as usual this year, by Ali and two uncles. A table in the middle of the yard, a steelyard, a small blackboard with the day's price. Luo did not sit. He stood four or five paces from the table — and I noticed where. Not by the scale. Just inside the gate. From there you can see who comes in and you can see the board. He stood, and said nothing. Alim and Ali stood half a pace behind him, which is where he had put them the night before, with his only instruction: stand behind me, not beside me.*

Xu Hongzu came that first morning. Fifties; very dark, the darkness of decades outdoors. Cloth clothes washed past any colour. Wooden clogs worn down to a thin layer. A bamboo staff with an iron ferrule half worn away. He walked over quietly, looked at where Luo was standing, and said: he's standing in the right place.

Day one, Luo stood forty minutes and sat down. Twenty minutes, then up again. Three stints in the morning, two in the afternoon. Under three hours in total. In those three hours he said two things: asked Ali who set this year's price (his uncle), and, at lunch, this yard is cleaner than I expected. Nothing else.

By the afternoon I was impatient and pulled Xu Hongzu to the wall. He hasn't said one serious thing all day. — What do you want him to say? His thirty years. — His thirty years are not in his mouth. He set the staff down on the ground. I walked for thirty years. Ask me what I learned in those thirty years and I cannot get out a single sentence. And: but I wrote every night. What did you write? How many li I covered. How many streams I crossed and which way they ran. What the mountains were like and what the stones were like. Where I slept and what I ate. — That's a running account. It is. And: thirty years of running accounts came to six hundred thousand-odd characters. And: there is not one piece of reasoning in it. And, and I picked up the pen: the reasoning is what later readers see for themselves. And: if I had written the reasoning at the time I'd never have got to six hundred thousand — because reasoning runs dry after three sentences.

Then his own last journey. I went out for the last time at fifty. Where? Yunnan. Four years. And: by the time I reached Lijiang neither foot would carry me. How did you get home? They carried me back in a sedan chair. It took over half a year. And: the first month of the next year I was gone. Somebody asked him during that illness whether it had been worth it, and he answered with a comparison: Zhang Qian opened the western road and never saw the Kunlun. Xuanzang and Yelü Chucai went west carrying a sovereign's commission — seals, post-stations, people to receive them. I am an old commoner. And, six times into the book: one bamboo staff and two clogs. And: having finished it that way, I have no regret.

Day three he stood five times instead of three, and at about ten he said one thing, to Ali. Go and look at that man's hands. A man in his fifties had just come in with two sacks on his shoulder. Ali went and came back. What did you see? A cut. Where? The web of the thumb. New or old? Scabbed. A nod. Then he carried those two sacks down himself. The cut from cutting the stems is in the web of the thumb. A man with help at home gets cut somewhere else. And: write that one down today. And: don't write what you think it proves. And: just write: fifties, two sacks, scabbed cut in the web of the thumb. — M.

Memo to file. Kucha, 27–30 August 2032. Three days of a man standing, and two records that do not agree.

1. Physical facts, because they are the constraint everything else was built around. Sixty-two, forty-seven days post-operation, two hours by bus each way. Forty minutes standing, then twenty sitting. Day one: three stints. Day three: five. Under three hours a day of actual standing, and the two hundred metres to the bus stop took six minutes with one stop in it.

2. His two instructions, both given the first night, both about position. — Stand behind me, not beside me. (Beside is a colleague; behind is a view of what he is looking at.) — Write separately, don't confer, don't show each other, hand them to Marco. Three nights, two people, six sheets.

*3. The six sheets, and this is the finding. Ali (15) wrote almost entirely goods: which household, how many catties, colour, dryness, the scale reading. Rows of figures. Alim (20) wrote almost no figures at all: who came first and who came last; who looked at the board before the scale and who looked at the scale first; whose hand let go of the sack quickly and whose let go slowly. On day two: a man today didn't leave after the price was said — he stood in the gateway a while, then went back and re-tied the mouth of his sack. Same three days, same yard, the same several dozen people, and almost nothing overlaps.

4. Luo's verdict, and it is the reason the trip was worth making. He read all six and pushed them back. They're both right. I said they hadn't recorded the same thing. They recorded one thing. The thing I see. And: standing there, those two go into my eyes together. I can't separate them. Those two boys took half each. How do we combine them? — You don't. Put the two sheets side by side and they're combined. And: don't knead them into one. And, written down that day: knead them into one and it becomes something one person wrote.

5. Against 208's rule, this is the case it did not cover. Independent measurements combine because their moduli share no factor. These two records share no factor either — and they do not resolve to a single number. There is nothing to compute. The correct operation is keep both, adjacent, unreconciled. A record can be a pair.

6. What he gave Ali on the morning of the 30th, and I did not see it coming. An old steel tape measure, twenty-odd years old, paint chipped off one edge. It isn't worth anything. Not for daily use — measure once a year. Measure what? Your six houses, from the door to the far wall. That doesn't change. — The house doesn't change. You will. And: you're fifteen. Write down what you get now. And: measure again in thirty years. If the number is different, it's your method that changed — and then you'll know how much you changed in those thirty years. He gave a fifteen-year-old an instrument whose only purpose is to measure the drift of the person holding it.

7. And the last thing, from the bus window. I didn't teach anything in three days. I know. I couldn't have. My twelve clauses were stood for, and a thing you stood for can only be given standing up. Then, as the bus started: send the notebook back whenever. No hurry now. In July the parcel was posted in a hurry. In the book: he handed it over, and what he handed over was not the notebook. It was the way he stands, recorded separately by two people for three days — and the two records don't match, and that is what makes them real.

8. What I made in Chengdu on 1 September, and what I deliberately did not make. I thought about compiling the six sheets into a single document and did not. They are photocopied as they are and bound into a small booklet. Cover, four lines: Kucha, 27–29 August 2032. One man stood for three days. Two people recorded it separately. Their records do not agree; the booklet has not been corrected. And underneath, small: anyone who kneads these two into one has destroyed this booklet.

"I am an old commoner, with one bamboo staff and two clogs."
He said it during the illness that killed him, to somebody who had asked whether thirty years of walking had been worth it, and the answer is built as a comparison rather than a defence. Zhang Qian opened the road west and never saw the Kunlun. The famous westward travellers who came after him went carrying a sovereign's commission — with seals, post-stations, and people obliged to receive them.
He had none of that. He had a stick and a pair of wooden shoes, and by the end of the last journey neither foot would carry him and he had to be brought home over half a year in a sedan chair, and he died the following spring.
What survives is six hundred thousand-odd characters of diary, and the striking thing about it is how little of it is insight. It is distances, river directions, the shape of hills, the kind of stone, where he slept, what he ate. Written at night, after the walking, whatever the weather.
Asked what thirty years had taught him, by his own account he could not produce a sentence. But he could produce the notebooks.
The reasoning is what later readers see for themselves.
And the working reason, which anyone who has tried to keep a long record will recognize: if I had written the reasoning at the time I'd never have got to six hundred thousand characters — because reasoning runs dry after three sentences.
Observation does not run dry. A conclusion is finished the moment it is written; an observation stays available to be re-read by someone with a question its author never had. The discipline that produced the book was not insight but the refusal to stop recording on the days when nothing seemed to be happening — and the willingness to write down the ordinary fact without the interpretation attached to it.
Just write: fifties, two sacks, scabbed cut in the web of the thumb.