不取一钱

Eleventh of October, 2038, a Monday, ten past four in the morning, Tarim township, Kuqa. One small lamp at the bedhead; the oxygen machine humming; Yiming under the window, eyes closed, mouth a little open, each breath slow and far from the next. Kamil kneeling at the bedhead, one hand holding his father's, one ear at his mouth; Eli in from next door with his shoes half on; I beside him. The window open a crack on the dark, a cool October wind smelling of the vine leaves. The eyes opened and turned slowly to Eli; the lips moved; Kamil, barely audible: "He says: 18 November, 1986, you open it." "I'll open it," said Eli, in Uyghur, then again in Chinese. The eyes turned to me; Kamil listened a long time, his face strange, between tears and laughter: "He asks you: those three fingers, have you felt it yet?" Seven years ago under the apricot, a raisin pinched and handed to me, "what do you feel?" Nothing. Another. Three days, hundreds. I knelt and took his other hand: "I've felt it." The corner of his mouth rose, halfway, and stayed. His eyes went back to his son and rested there a long time; this time he said nothing. At ten to seven a grey light at the window; the breath went out and did not come back. After a long time Kamil reached over and switched off the oxygen machine; in the silence a leaf fell from the apricot onto the yard table.

By the old custom, burial was the next day: on the slope east of the village among yellowing poplars. Many came: the village, the next village, everyone who had dealt with him in drying houses all his life. Luo Jianguo overnight from Aksu with Patigül, who as a girl new at the sorting table had sorted Yiming's deliveries: "a whole basket and hardly a bad one." Alim ten hours through the night from Turpan with a paper from his father, one shaking left-handed character: farewell. Kamil folded it into his coat. That afternoon, alone at the yard table by the bare white cloth, I saw a short, plain man of fifty with a flat nose and a wide mouth, a medicine chest on his back worn to bare wood: "Has this house lost someone?" in the Sichuan speech of Chengdu. Tang Shenwei, of Huayang in Chengdu, a doctor. "All my life whoever sent for me, I went, rain or snow or midnight. Scholars I treated for nothing." What did he take? "Prescriptions. When you're well, don't pay me; when you find a drug or a formula in your books, copy it and send it. They were glad: it cost nothing and they felt they'd helped me. In decades it piled higher than a man; I sorted it into a book. That book isn't mine; hundreds of people copied one entry each."

That night, round the lamp: Kamil, Eli, Luo, Patigül, Alim and I. Eli set the recorder on the cloth at minute eleven: the hum of the machine, then Yiming's voice, slow, breathless; nobody moved; Kamil gripped the table edge. Patigül, eyes shut: "Again." Then quickly, and Luo's face changed as he translated: "She heard her grandfather in Awat use it as a child: a long pole with a forked head; for the top rows, too high to reach, you lift the string on the fork and send it up to the topmost nails. The thing is still in drying houses; nobody calls it that now; now it's just 'the pole.' In Chinese, roughly: the fork that sends up." Eli read the May line aloud: "The second year, move it up a little with the fork that sends up." Alim sat bolt upright: "My father's rule. The morning before taking down, feel the topmost string on the east wall first; the top dries first. Higher means more wind, more sun, more even. His father in 1984 and my father with his left hand these last years: one meaning." Two old men seven hundred kilometres apart, one on paper walled up fifty-four years ago, one gesturing from a wheelchair, saying the same thing. Eli left "one word not understood" untouched and wrote beside it: "That word: the fork that sends up. Night of 12 October 2038, heard by Patigül, translated by Luo Jianguo." The insect hole after "the sun": "Enough," she guessed. He didn't write it in. In pencil in the margin: "Patigül guesses 'enough'. Not written in." Tang Shenwei: "That's a prescription. What one man couldn't say and another couldn't translate, five months later an old woman who's sorted raisins thirty years heard. And took not a coin for it." — M.

Memo to file. Kuqa and Chengdu, 11–20 October 2038. Paid in knowledge.

1. The last words. To Eli: "18 November, 1986, you open it." To me: "Those three fingers, have you felt it yet?" "I've felt it." To his son, only a long look. 6:50, first light; the breath didn't return. Kamil switched off the oxygen machine; a leaf fell onto the yard table.

2. The burial. Next day, by custom, on the poplar slope east of the village. Luo Jianguo overnight with Patigül, who sorted Yiming's deliveries as a girl: "a basketful and hardly a bad one." Alim from Turpan with one left-handed character from his father: farewell.

3. The precedent. Tang Shenwei, a plain, awkward, sharp doctor from Chengdu, went to anyone who sent for him, in any weather, and from scholars took not a coin, asking only that they copy out any drug or formula they found in their books and send it. "It cost them nothing and they felt they'd helped. In decades it piled higher than a man; I sorted it into a book. Hundreds of people copied one entry each."

4. The word. That night, minute eleven of the May recording: Yiming's voice, the machine's hum behind it. Patigül, eyes shut: "Again." Her grandfather in Awat used it: a long forked pole to lift strings to the topmost nails, out of reach by hand; the tool remains, the word is gone; "now it's just 'the pole.'" Luo: "roughly, the fork that sends up."

5. Two old men, one meaning. The 1984 line now reads: "The second year, move it up a little with the fork that sends up." Alim: "My father's rule: feel the topmost string on the east wall first; the top dries first; higher means more wind and sun." His father on paper in a wall in 1984, Abdurehman with his left hand these last years, seven hundred kilometres apart.

6. How it was recorded. "One word not understood" left as it was; beside it in blue: "That word: the fork that sends up. Night of 12 October 2038, heard by Patigül, translated by Luo Jianguo." The insect hole: she guessed "enough"; in pencil in the margin: "Patigül guesses 'enough'. Not written in."

7. Tang Shenwei's reading. "That's a prescription. What one man couldn't say and another couldn't translate, an old sorter heard five months later, and took not a coin."

8. The box. At Zhong's in Chengdu, thirty-one letters sent to the printer for me in a month: Nora's last page (two awake, three percent mouldy on the trellis); from Ziyang, the copy-shop lad's grandfather, Old Chen: sweet potatoes left a fortnight in the cellar to make their own sugar, then sliced and dried till soft and not sticky; "written by Xiao Liu of the copy shop"; Kurban: three nights watching the canal in August, no breach, not one glossy crack this year; Xiao Xu: 87% upstairs with nose and ear, Xiao Zhou learned fastest, "I opened that letter myself and tore it up"; Guli: the bakery wants all of Mawlan's small raisins; Lu Xiao: Chang's four errors plus her own, and he walks three hundred steps a day; Nurlan's Hami calendar; Mr Liang: blind-tasted, the soft box is better, soft hang from now on; He Yuan's "Cracks" page, its half line of pencil traced over in blue: in August he saw a leaking field with Luo, and the vine cracks opening on the vine.

9. The Wall Street version. A tiny firm that did free financial health checks for small factories, on one condition: a true copy of their numbers. Others laughed. Seven or eight years on its data was fuller than the expensive firms'. I thought it a business trick. It was what a book looks like when it grows.

10. The line. "A book written by one man stops when he dies. A man who takes no money and lets those who use it pay with what they know, his book won't stop. He dies, and it keeps growing."

11. The sixth edition. To Guli: the thirty-one letters go to you; the sixth edition is yours, He Yuan's and Eli's to edit. And me? "The last page: where I was wrong." The cover? "The thirty-one who wrote in. And Grandpa Yiming."

12. These ten, and next. The quilt with my father's cotton; forty-three letters and ten years of waiting; "not understood" and the minute; twenty-seven notebooks home; his four errors in his own words; no pen, both eyes; the ribbon to my pocket; two awake, "Good"; the tug and the grip; "I've felt it." Night of 17 November, Kuqa's first snow. Kamil's photograph: at the door of the cells room a figure in an old padded coat, snow on his head, back to the camera, standing straight: Eli. "He says he'll stand at the door all night and open at first light. He says my father always opened on 18 November as soon as it was light."

"When he treated a scholar he took not a coin, asking only for a good prescription or a secret formula in return."
Tang Shenwei, an eleventh-century doctor from Chengdu, was plain in looks and awkward in speech but went to anyone who called, in any weather. From the educated patients he treated he asked no fee, only that they copy out any medicine or remedy they came across in their reading and send it to him. Over decades the contributions accumulated into one of the great pharmacopoeias of the Song, a book he said was written by hundreds of people, one entry each.
Knowledge built this way behaves differently from knowledge that is sold. Contributors are glad to give because it costs them nothing and makes them part of the work; the collection keeps growing after its compiler is gone; and the people closest to the practice, the ones who would never be paid as experts, are often the ones who supply what is missing.
In this chapter an old sorter at a buying station identifies a lost word from a dead man's recording, and a box of thirty-one letters arrives from users of a free manual: a rain log, a grandfather's method for drying sweet potatoes, three nights of watching a canal. The editor's job becomes handing the next edition to the people who wrote in.
"A man who takes no money and lets those who use the book pay with what they know: his book won't stop when he dies."