除夜

Fourteenth of February, 2037, a Saturday, New Year's Eve, New Jersey. Six in the morning, another thin fall of snow. My father's shovel: push, push it to the side, pile it, lift and throw. The steps clean, not a strip left along the edge. My mother already at the kitchen table: she can sit now, week five, a plaster on her back, sitting very straight, not daring to lean. A big bowl of dough made last night under a damp cloth; a small bowl of filling, pork and cabbage, the cabbage chopped by me and wrung out three times. "Forty this year. Thirty tonight. Ten frozen for tomorrow." She said it without looking up, pinching off pieces of dough, each the same size, as if weighed.

Mine came out lopsided. She looked, handed it back: no need to undo it, it's edible. Then hers, slowly: fold the wrapper, and with thumb and forefinger push from one end to the other; push, pleat; push, pleat. Twelve pleats, even. I thought of Yiming's three fingers, Martin's left hand, Rose's handful squeezed and opened. These two fingers have pushed and pinched for decades. My tenth had even pleats. She said nothing and put it in the middle of the plate.

From 8:05, Beijing evening, messages. Alim: the doorframe, a string on the left, a string on the right; "Dad asks whether your mother's back is better. He wrote one character with his left hand: back." Eli: has she walked yet, and when are you coming back? Chang Bin: the five-line sheet, the fifth line still blank; his father asks after her. Guli: does she like raisins; her mother will send a box. Kamil: how old is your mother; the cells are waiting. Luo, by voice, slowly: wish the old lady a happy New Year from me. Nurlan: "My father asks: does your mother know what you do over here?" Not one asked about me. Every one asked about her. On the last night of 2035, seven messages came and not one asked about me either.

She didn't know. Eight years of two calls a month: is the food all right, is it cold, do you cook. It's fine, don't worry. So I showed her the photographs: the drying houses and their holed walls; the two nails; Abdurehman in the wheelchair holding a pen in his left hand; Yiming's fifty-two cells; Luo's twenty-six ledgers; Barat in the sun in Hami; the first page of the Essentials. She went slowly, enlarging the pictures to look at people's hands. At Aynur crouching at night among the mats, feeling the bunches with the back of her hand, she stopped. What is she doing? Checking at night whether they sweat; her mother taught her. My mother looked at that hand a long time. "Someone who works at night." — M.

Memo to file. New Jersey, 14–15 February 2037. The year closed twice.

1. Forty dumplings. Thirty for tonight, ten for tomorrow. Her pleat: fold, push with thumb and forefinger, pinch; twelve even pleats. My tenth was even; she put it in the middle of the plate.

2. Seven messages. Alim (his father wrote "back" with his left hand), Eli, Chang Bin, Guli, Kamil, Luo, Nurlan. None asked about me; every one asked about my mother. Nurlan's father's question: does your mother know what you do over there? She didn't. Eight years of "it's fine, don't worry". I showed her the photographs. She enlarged every one to look at the hands.

3. Midnight in Beijing, eleven in the morning here. Alim's whole house on the screen, firecrackers drowning everything. Aynur, in a red headscarf at the edge of the picture: is your mother's back from work? Shovelling snow, my mother said; then, from sewing at night all those years. Aynur held up the back of her hand to the screen: that's how she checks the bunches at night. My mother held up her right hand: two calluses on the pads of her forefinger and middle finger from thirteen years of the thimble, never faded. Two hands, one screen, ten thousand kilometres, held up a while. Nobody spoke.

4. Fresno. Nora's photo: the bare vines, and on the trunk of the vine in row five a strip of red cloth in the wind. "Grandma says happy New Year to your mother. She says the ribbon is still there." Going in August? Yes. "Go."

5. Four o'clock. She walked to the switch, raised her hand, stopped, turned: "You do it today." The wall around the switch worn paler than the rest, like a patch. I pressed it. "On New Year's Eve the door must be lit. From four until daylight."

6. The couplet. My father's every year: Heaven adds years and people add longevity; spring fills the world and fortune fills the house; across the top, peace in all four seasons. The first stroke shook like an earthworm. "Slowly. Your father spoiled three sheets his first year." Finished: "Better than your father's first year. Not as good as his last. Next year it'll be better." Paste boiled from flour, steaming in the cold; the neighbour called happy New Year and my mother waved back and said it in Chinese.

7. The cold lamp. Midnight here, the second midnight. On the step, a thin stooped man, snow on his robe and hat, looking up at the porch light: "This lamp is warm." Dai Shulun, who ran salt and transport under Liu Yan and spent the year on the road, and one New Year's Eve alone at a posthouse wrote: at the inn who asks after me; only the cold lamp is close. "That lamp was lit by the post master, not for me, for anyone on the road; whoever got there in the dark saw it and knew there was a place to rest. I got there in heavy snow. When I saw it I wasn't so cold."

8. The line. "Your mother lit this lamp for eight years for you alone. Now that you're back, it's lit for everyone on the road." The first person on the road it lit tonight was him. Two of tomorrow's ten dumplings, reheated; "Hot." The last line of his poem: tomorrow, spring again. "However long New Year's Eve is, it ends." Footprints from the bottom of the steps to the corner.

9. One in the morning. She woke; I was in my father's chair. Eight dumplings left. "Weren't there ten?" A guest came and ate two. She didn't ask who. "Same as before; the rest for tomorrow." Not the same. "How?" Before, one person ate them. She held her chopsticks still a moment, then laughed, pressing the plaster on her back with her other hand.

10. Year-end. Eight years south of the Tianshan learning how to say a batch is good; two months in New Jersey learning that you know whether a thing is good only when you know what it's for. My father's column, my mother's thirteen notebooks, Rose's seventy-one, Eddie's fifteen cards: all written line by line when nobody was watching. This New Year's Eve the porch light was switched on by me.

11. Before. Their first New Year's Eve in America: my father on nights, home at one; no Chinese cabbage to be had, so ordinary cabbage in the filling; twenty dumplings, ten each, at this table. I wasn't born. He finished and said: next year there'll be three. Two days before, she could ride in a car, and we took Eddie a box of frozen dumplings. In English: "Han's dumplings." His eyes went red. Then, one word at a time: "He did good." He nodded many times.

12. Same as your father. What do you actually do over there, sell raisins? Some. In the end: I keep the books. I write down how they dry grapes, how they say a batch is good, whose hands pinch true, and give it to people elsewhere to read. "Same as your father." I had never thought of it. He looked at boxes and I look at raisins; he asked what they'd carry and I ask who eats them. Why the same couplet every year? "He said: write the same two lines every year and you can see whether your hand is getting better or worse. Change the lines and you can't compare."

13. Dai Shulun's footnotes. On the couplet: "That's a ruler." I've been making rulers for eight years. Can they be posted? They went. The hands that hold them can't be. "Then your hands are here this year." On the posthouse the morning after: the post master put a bowl of hot soup at his door and said, "Guest, happy New Year." "The only New Year I remember is that bowl of soup." He never learned the man's name; he lit lamps all his life for people he didn't know. And after I leave? "She'll still switch it on at four. But then you'll know it isn't lighting only you." On the way down the steps: thank your mother for me. For what? For this lamp.

14. Next year. After the dumplings: and next year? Next New Year's Eve I'll be home. "Don't say next year maybe." It isn't next year maybe. It's next year. She didn't answer; she took another dumpling. At four she had said: from now on, when you're home, switch it on when it's dark; when you're not, I'll still switch it on at four.

15. Next. From the sofa: "On the eighteenth I'll see you off." Your back. "To the corner. Eight years ago I stood inside the door. This time I'll walk you to the corner."

"Your mother lit this lamp for eight years for you alone. Now that you're back, it's lit for everyone on the road."
Dai Shulun was an eighth-century Tang poet and official who spent much of his career administering salt and grain transport, travelling constantly. His short poem written on New Year's Eve at a posthouse is one of the best known in Chinese about being away from home at the year's end: no one at the inn asks after him; only the lamp feels close; he is ten thousand li from home on the night the year runs out; yet the last line turns toward morning, when spring begins again.
The Chinese New Year is above all a festival of return, and the image of a light left on for someone still travelling runs deep in the culture. In this chapter the light has been switched on every afternoon for eight years by a mother waiting for one son. When he is home at last, it stops being a sign of waiting and becomes a sign of welcome, the host's lamp that tells anyone passing in the dark that there is a door here.
For people who work across time zones, the year closes more than once. On this New Year's Eve it closed first at Beijing's midnight, at eleven in the morning in New Jersey, among firecrackers on a phone screen; and again at New Jersey's own midnight, under a porch light, in the snow.
"However long New Year's Eve is, it ends."