不徇

Tenth of July, 2038, a Saturday, ten in the morning, Dunhuang. City hospital, orthopaedics, third floor, the bed by the window: low rooftops, and far off a ridge of sand, yellow going white in the sun, its crest as sharp as a carved line. Forty degrees outside; even the air-conditioning blew dry. Chang Yushan lay with his left leg bandaged on a pillow, thinner, his face dark with a lifetime's sun, his lips pale; a new hip four days ago, "seventy-one and the bones still fairly hard." His son Chang Bin peeling an apple slowly in one unbroken strip; Lu Xiao at the window, dust on her rucksack from a night on the bus from Shanshan. I'd flown in from Chengdu that morning. He was holding a sheaf of photocopies: my Dunhuang envelope, arrived two days before. "You've come just in time. I'm reading about myself." Forty-odd pages over ten years: thirty-one years of strings inside the doorframe; choose the middling, choose the best and next year you can't reach it; the ruler must live where the goods live; at three in the morning the hand lies too. Each with his name after it.

He turned to the last page and back to the first twice and laid it on the quilt. "Well written. All the times I was right. The times I was wrong, you didn't write once. You know them; I told you; you left them out." Chang Bin's knife stopped. "Master Chang, I thought…" "You thought they'd look bad." The door opened on a square-faced man of forty with heavy brows, his dark robe pressed flat, an old letter in his hand. "Zeng Gong, of Nanfeng, a reader. I wrote this when young, to an elder who had written my grandfather's epitaph, to thank him." For writing well? "For writing true." An epitaph is close to history and differs from it: history records good and bad; an epitaph only the good, because the ancients feared a good man's goodness would be forgotten. Then descendants wanted only praise and even wicked men got stones full of fine words. So the writer matters: "Neither fooled nor partial: not deceived by those who ask, not writing to please them. Then it's fair, and true. Writing the living is harder than the dead. The dead don't tell you you've got it wrong. This one is telling you."

He had Lu Xiao take the pen. "I'll talk, you write: the times I was wrong. Marco listens, and says where his notes differ." 1993, his first year in charge, a wet summer: "afraid of rain I hung three days early; the grapes were still damp; half a house rotted. My father stood at the door looking at the rotten half and said nothing. I never hung a day early again." I had copied only the last sentence. 2012, a village lad of twenty: "Uncle Chang, the south wall gets the fierce sun, that row dries first, take it down first." "What do you know? I've hung twenty years." The row dried past its point, the sugar scorched, hard as gravel, sold at half; next year the lad went to Urumqi and never came back. "If he'd stayed he'd have been better than Chang Bin." 2028, the fall from the rack, two ribs: I wrote "he didn't tell his son, so as not to worry him." "Wrong. I was proud. A man who's hung strings thirty years falling off his own rack; I didn't want it known. Write it as worry and you gild me, and later people think hiding it was right. It wasn't." 2038: "Seventy-one and still up the racks. Write: wouldn't accept I was old." Signed: "Chang Yushan, in his own words. 10 July 2038, Dunhuang, hospital." — M.

Memo to file. Dunhuang, 10 July 2038. The epitaph and the account.

1. What I sent. Forty-odd pages of ten years' notes on Chang Yushan: every rule with his name after it. "Well written. All the times I was right. The times I was wrong, you left out." "You thought they'd look bad."

2. The precedent. Zeng Gong thanked an elder for his grandfather's epitaph, "for writing it true." History records good and bad; an epitaph records the good, lest a good man be forgotten; later, descendants wanted only praise and even wicked men had stones of fine words. The writer must be neither fooled nor partial. "Writing the living is harder; the dead don't tell you you've got it wrong."

3. Error one, 1993. First year in charge, wet summer, hung three days early from fear of rain; half a house rotted; his father at the door said nothing. Never a day early again. I had copied only the last line.

4. Error two, 2012. A village lad: the south wall dries first, take it down first. "What do you know?" The row scorched, sold at half. The lad left for Urumqi the next year and never came back. "If he'd stayed he'd have been better than Chang Bin." Chang Bin: "You've told me." "I told you. Not anyone else. Today I'm telling." Lu Xiao, twenty-seven, three years in Shanshan, was once looked at the same way: a city girl, what does she know.

5. Error three, 2028. The fall, two ribs, kept from his son. I'd written "so as not to worry him." "Wrong. I was proud. Write it as worry and you gild me, and later people think hiding it was right. It wasn't. I hid it three months; his mother let it slip; that's why he came home."

6. Error four, 2038. "Seventy-one, still up the racks; Chang Bin said leave the racks to me and watch from below. I didn't listen. Write: wouldn't accept I was old." Read back; signed "in his own words."

7. Why errors teach. Lu Xiao: "The things you got right, I've learned half of in three years. These four, I learned in one hearing." Chang: "What I got right is mine alone. What I got wrong anyone can get wrong. That's why it's easy to learn. When you teach, tell them your mistakes first, then what you got right. If someone had told me about my father's rotten half-house, maybe I'd have listened to that lad."

8. The Wall Street version. Client meetings carried a booklet of our funds' records, every line rising. My first year I asked where the closed funds were, the ones that lost and shut. "Closed ones don't count." Every fund in the booklet won because the losers had been removed; clients concluded the firm had never lost. I thought it was standard practice. That booklet was a gravestone.

9. Good intentions. "Whoever writes a stone means well. Meaning well is what makes it hardest not to be partial." His elder omitted his grandfather's faults, but every good word was a true event, none invented; "that is what I thanked him for. This man is alive and asks you to add his wrongs himself. Then it isn't a stone; it's history."

10. The line. "To write only a man's rights is to raise him a stone. To write his wrongs with them is to leave those after him an account. The stone is for him; the account is for those who come after." On the first photocopied page, in pencil: "These pages copy only Master Chang's rights. His four wrongs are in Lu Xiao's notebook, 10 July 2038, in his own words. Read both together."

11. For the next edition. "Deleting a man's errors for him is kindness; kindness is also partiality." The fifth edition puts a name after every method, and after every name only what went right. The next edition must have room for the wrongs.

12. Chang Bin, and next. At the gate: the 2012 lad was his primary-school classmate; "I've heard 'better than me' for twenty-odd years. Today he said it in front of you and wrote it down, and I feel lighter. It used to be something in my father's head. Now it's something in a notebook." Near eleven, Alim: the envelope came; his father had him read the English page and translate it, "your father's knowledge can't be spoken, I need a number in its place"; he laughed, the left corner high, and wrote: watch. "Hanging is 20 August. Come. You're not to go up a rack or touch a thing. Sit at the door and watch our family, each doing their own part."

"History records good and bad alike; an epitaph is carved because the ancients feared that later generations would not know a good man's merit."
Zeng Gong, the Song prose master, once wrote to Ouyang Xiu to thank him for an epitaph on his grandfather. In the letter he distinguished the epitaph from history: history records everything, an epitaph only virtues, and in declining ages families commissioned flattering inscriptions even for bad men. The remedy lay in the writer, who must be "neither fooled nor partial."
Track records suffer the same distortion. A booklet that shows only the funds still open is an epitaph: every line rises because the failures were removed. A practitioner's notebook that keeps only a master's correct rules does the same thing more gently, out of respect, and in doing so it deletes the most teachable part of the record.
Mistakes transfer more easily than successes. A success depends on one person's judgement in one situation; a mistake (hanging early out of fear, dismissing a junior's correct observation, hiding an injury out of pride) is one anyone can make. A record meant for successors should keep both, in the subject's own words.
"The stone is for him; the account is for those who come after."