The Shared Room

> Yangqu County Court, Taiyuan Prefecture > Case: The Violent Death of Wang Sheng of Taiyuan

> Docket No. 17, Criminal Division, Year of Guihai, Kangxi

> The following are statements in the same case. The reader will note that they contradict each other, and that they contradict the record made in the first volume. The court records all of them.

> — Signed, Clerk Liu

**STATEMENT OF AFU — Servant of the Wang Household**

I have served the Wang household since I was fourteen. My master Wang Sheng was always good to me. From the first days of the ninth month he was strange, but I did not speak of it at first, for a servant must not speak of his master's affairs.

That morning he went to the western market to buy paper. I know it because he asked me the day before where Qingcheng paper was sold, and I told him, "The shop with the green plaque by the west gate of the market." He said, "Good." But that morning he did not go out the front gate. I saw him go out the side gate of the back garden, and he went alone and empty-handed. When he returned, he did not come back alone.

There was a woman with him. I was sweeping the courtyard when they came in through the garden gate. I saw her clearly. A red dress, hair in a loose bun, a white velvet flower at her temple with frayed edges. But she walked with her head down, half her face hidden, so I did not see her eyes. I heard her steps—no sound at all, like bare feet on cotton.

That night the master slept in the main room and sent me to the front yard, saying, "Afu, no one in the household is to go near the back garden from now on." I asked why. He said, "A guest is staying in the study, and it is not convenient." A guest in the study? In our household, the study in the back garden has been unoccupied for three years, since the old master died, and even the mice have moved out. I wanted to ask, but the master's face was not the face of a man entertaining a guest.

I left. But that night I could not sleep, and I sat in the front yard with my back to the wall, and I heard sounds from the back garden—not footsteps, not voices, not the sounds people make in a room. A scraping sound, very light, as if someone were brushing something over and over. And a sound like... I am ashamed to say... like the sound of a dog licking a bowl. It went on all night.

I did not sleep that night. I told no one, for the master's sake.

The second night, the master called me and said, "Afu, from tonight I will sleep in the study." I was startled and said, "Master, there is a guest..." He said, "The guest has gone."

He had gone pale. As if he had been sick a long time. That night I sat in the front yard again. I swear to you, I did not sleep. At midnight, I heard the master in the study speak aloud, and he has never spoken in his sleep. He said, "... do not turn around." Then, after a while, "... where is the shoe?"

I heard it with my own ears. **CLERK'S NOTE** — The servant's testimony does not agree with the master's first statement on three points: first, the master said he went to the market and "did not buy the paper"; second, the master said the woman was settled in the study and he slept in the main room for many days; third, the servant says the master himself slept in the study on the second night. Which of the two speaks truth the court cannot yet determine. Moreover, the servant says the woman wore a "white velvet flower," which agrees with no other record except the master's second statement. This detail appears in two mouths alone. The rest is silence.

**STATEMENT OF MRS. WANG — Wife of the Deponent** (In the margin, in the clerk's hand: the wife was examined separately, in a closed room, with two female attendants in attendance. She was calm throughout, and wept only twice.)

My husband has always been a man of propriety. You may ask the neighbors; they will tell you. He reads by the lamp at night, he does not visit the quarter of pleasure-houses, and when he passes a woman in the street he looks the other way. But in the first days of this month he was not himself. He ate less, lost weight, and he looked at me sometimes as if he did not know me.

I asked him, "Are you unwell?" He said, "I am well." But he was not well. And he began to avoid my eyes.

I did not think he had taken a concubine. I am not jealous. If he wished to take a woman, there was no need to hide it from me; he had only to say so, and I would have made the arrangements myself. But he hid it, and I knew it, and I said nothing. I thought: if he wants to keep it secret, let him keep it secret. I will do my duty and wait for him to come back.

I saw the woman once. From the back window of the main room, across the garden, I saw her in the window of the study, cutting shoe patterns with scissors. I could not see her face clearly, only her hands—white, not the white of a young lady kept indoors, but a dead white, like a sheet after washing.

I said to myself: this woman is not right.

I said nothing to my husband. I am his wife; it was not my place to speak first. I only stopped sleeping well. At night I lay awake and heard a sound from across the garden, like someone brushing something, again and again, until the rooster crowed.

**CLERK'S NOTE** — The wife is a woman of even temperament, but it must be recorded that she spoke these words with great deliberation: "A wife knows her husband's body. He had changed by half. The man who slept beside me in that house was no longer the man I married." The court has not yet asked what she meant, and has not yet dared to.

**STATEMENT OF THE PAPER SHOPKEEPER — Western Market**

I keep a paper shop under the green plaque at the west gate of the market. Scholar Wang comes to my shop often, every month or two, to buy Qingcheng paper. On the third day of the ninth month, just past the mao hour, he came to my shop. I remember it because it was so early, and the shop was not yet open, and he knocked at the board.

I opened up and asked him, "Two sheets of Qingcheng paper, Scholar Wang?" He said, "Yes." Then he stood and looked at the paper in his hand, and turned it over, and looked at the other side, and after a while he said, "This paper is good." He paid, took the paper, and went out the door.

But just after he went out I looked up, and Scholar Wang was walking back past my door with his head down. He had no paper in his hands. The shopkeeper who succeeded me saw it too. We both saw it: he walked past with empty hands. I do not know what became of the paper. It is not my business.

**CLERK'S NOTE** — The paper shopkeeper's testimony has been recorded. It agrees with the servant's, and contradicts the master's.

**STATEMENT OF WANG SHENG — Second Recorded Statement** (Taken on the fourth day. The deponent was pale, sweating; he asked for water three times. The deponent's words were, at times, not entirely coherent, and he twice looked toward the door as if expecting someone.) Your honor... forgive me. I said before that I slept in the main room. That is true. But on the second night I did not sleep in the main room. I slept in the study. Forgive me, I said the first night I slept in the main room. On the first night I did not sleep either. I lay in the main room, and all night I heard sounds from the study: a woman weeping, very soft, as if she were crying into a quilt; and the sound of something brushing, over and over.

In the morning I went to the study. The woman was sitting by the window, cutting shoe patterns, as before. She smiled and said, "Did the gentleman sleep well?" I did not answer. I stood in the doorway, and I saw on the table a pair of shoes, new-cut, vermilion silk, lotus pattern. New-made, not yet stitched.

I said, "Who taught you to cut these?" She said, "I learned in the Zhu household." I said, "The Zhu household is south of the city. I know the steward there. Which house is it?" She said, "It is behind the grain market." I said, "There is no grain market south of the city."

She did not answer. She only raised her head, looked at me, and smiled—a smile like a crack in paper—and said: "You ask a great many questions, sir. Why not sleep here tonight, and ask them all at once?" Your honor... I know it was wrong. I knew it then. But the woman was standing by the window with the sun on her, and I could not remember, at that moment, what was wrong.

That night I slept in the study.

The lamp was lit. The woman sat by the lamp, and I lay on the bed across the room. She said, "Why does the gentleman not look at me?" I said, "The light is dim." She said, "The light is bright." I lay still and did not answer.

After a long while she said, softly, as if to herself: "The lamp can see me." I did not understand. I sat up. The lamp was bright, the room was bright, and the woman was sitting with her back to me, sewing a shoe. I could see the soles, the uppers, the vermilion silk, the white-stitched edge—and I saw, through the window behind her, a pale light, like moonlight, shining into the study from the back of the bookcase, where no window is.

The woman put down her sewing. She did not turn. She said:

"Sir. Where is the shoe you picked up that morning?" I said, "It is in the study." She said, "No. Where is it now?" I looked. The table was bare. The shoes she had cut were gone. The new-made pair was gone. Only the lamp burned, and the white light from behind the bookcase shone steady as a painted moon.

Then the woman turned.

... Your honor, I ask that the following be recorded in a sealed volume, and that no one but the magistrate open it.