The Sunless City

> *The following pages were recovered from the papers of Song Tao, licentiate of the county. From this page on, a corner of the paper is missing—a clean cut, as if pared away with a knife. A later hand has mended it with rice paste, and the old and new paper are plainly different shades. The missing characters number eleven or twelve. On the patch, a line in faint ink: "The two characters on the city gate appear in no gazetteer, no stele, no old archive. It was searched everywhere and not found." (A note by the Song descendants.)*

The yellow-paper road came to an end, and the wall stood there.

It was high—higher than the county town's. The bricks were grey, and the mortar between them was gone; brick lay on brick, close and level, so tight that not a blade of grass could grow out. I looked up and could not see the top. The daylight was too thin. At the foot of the wall, the bricks were scored with marks, some deep, some shallow, made by something I could not name. I put a finger into one. It was deep; my nail would not reach the bottom.

Daylight was the wrong word. The paper-white sun still hung in the sky, but the city had no light. Not darkness—the thing called "bright" simply did not exist in this city. The street was grey, the walls were grey, the people were grey.

I stood under the wall and looked up a long time. There were no battlements, no gate tower, no tablet—only grey brick. This city was not made to guard anything. It was made to wait for someone.

The gate stood open, with no guard. The gate tunnel was deep, running out of sight. The horse walked ahead of me; its hooves came down on the stone of the tunnel without sound.

Past the tunnel, the guide spoke: "Once you cross this mark, it will be hard to go back."

I asked him: "What mark?"

He did not answer. I looked down. Across the stone of the tunnel ran a wet mark, grey, a thin layer, like a shallow watermark. When I stepped over it, my soles felt nothing.

The long street opened out beyond the gate.

The flagstones were polished bright by ten thousand feet. The shopfronts were shuttered; the red paper pasted on the doors had faded until the characters were gone, leaving only a smear of red. On one door hung a wooden board; its characters had worn away entirely, leaving two nail-holes, dark and empty. Under the eaves hung paper lanterns with pale faces; none were lit.

There were people in the street. All of them walked with their heads down, quickly, meeting no one's eyes. I passed among them like a wisp of wind through dry reeds. A man carrying a pole went by me, a bucket hanging from each end; what the buckets held, I could not tell. As he passed, a bucket-rim brushed my sleeve. He did not lift his head, and went on.

I said "Forgive me" without thinking. By the time the words were out, he was far away.

At a street corner a door stood half open. Inside, a man was ladling water, the wooden dipper coming down one stroke after another, ringing against the jar's rim. I watched him longer than I meant to: he dipped up a ladle, poured it in, dipped up another, poured it in. The rim of the jar was clear to me; the water stayed below it. He had ladled this long, and the jar neither filled nor emptied.

In the shop beside it, an old man sat folding spirit-money, slowly, sheet by sheet, stacking each folded sheet neatly and beginning another. He did not look up either. Farther along, through a half-shut door, someone was wiping a counter, slowly, over and over, though there was no one to see it clean.

The guide walked ahead, unhurried, not waiting for me.

Two streets on, I saw a man I knew.

He walked ten paces ahead of me, head down, barefoot, trouser-legs dripping wet, leaving a trail of water at every step. The drops fell on the flagstones and lay there, black, not spreading, one drop at a time, holding their shape.

I knew him. Wang the Sixth, the peddler from the east end of the village. Last winter he drowned in the frozen river east of the village. When they pulled him out, his face still wore a smile; the village said it was the smile of the dead, and his family wept a long time over it. I had sent my gift and walked in his funeral. He was the most willing man in the village when someone died—always the first to arrive, helping set up the shed, burn paper, carry the coffin. In life he called his wares at the village gate—"Candies! Needles! Thimbles!"—and the children gathered round him. Now he walked barefoot through the dead city, trouser-legs dripping, and no one gathered.

I called to him: "Sixth!"

He stopped. His shoulder moved, as if he meant to turn, and did not. He stood there a long time, long enough that I thought he would turn around. People passed at his side; no one looked at him, no one paused. In life his voice carried half the street. Now I had called him, and he had not answered.

Then he lifted his foot and went on, faster than before, and in a few steps he was lost in the grey crowd ahead.

I started after him. The guide spoke behind me: "In this city, do not call to people."

I turned to look at him. He stood three steps away, holding the horse, his face as it had always been, without expression.

I said: "He is from my village."

The guide said nothing.

I asked him: "He does not know me?"

The guide said: "The people in this city do not lift their heads."

I stood a while. People came and went along the long street, all walking head-down; not one looked at me. I understood then: since I entered the city, no one on this street had looked at me once.

Not one.

I followed the guide on. When the long street ran out, the ground opened a little; this was the heart of the city. The office stood east of center, grey too, its gate-beam higher, a clean stone stair before it, not a single leaf lying on it. At the corner of the stair, a cat crouched. It was grey, eyes closed, and did not look at me. The guide stopped at the foot of the stair and put the reins into my hand.

He said: "I bring you only this far."

I took the reins and asked him: "What is your name?"

He looked at me a long time. I thought he would not answer; then he said: "When you go in, take the last seat."

I said: "I asked your name."

He said: "When you go in, you will know." He let go of the reins and turned away. Two steps on, he stopped, without turning.

"You will see me again," he said. "When you do, you will know me."

I did not understand. I stood at the foot of the stair, holding the horse. The horse stood quietly, its breathing silent too.

Then I wanted to look back at the road I had come by. I turned.

The gate stood at the far end of the long street, small as a grain of ash. Two characters were cut into the gate-beam. When I entered, I had been too far to read them. Now, across the street, I looked at them a long time: the strokes were strange—small-seal did not fit, clerical script did not fit, none of the scripts I knew matched them. I stared until, slowly, I made the two characters out.

They were not a place-name.

They read: "The Selection."

The office door stood open. I did not move. The two characters went round and round in my head, stroke by stroke, and at the end of it I remembered something: on my sickbed, I had asked the guide, "The examiner has not arrived—how can there be an examination?" He had not answered.

Now I stood at the foot of a city gate, and the gate said "The Selection."

In this city there was no examiner, no examination date, not a single notice posted. But the gate carried the two characters.

It had been waiting for me all along.