Old Gou's Bell

The rust-red tricycle rolled into Locust Lane before dawn, creaking on its axles. A copper bell hung from the handlebar, and whenever Old Gou pushed, the bell rang — not bright, but dull, as if it held a mouthful of water. The lane's people never had to look; they knew by the sound that the scavenger Old Gou had come. Every other rag-and-bone man hawked his trade through a loudspeaker, shouting "Old goods! Old TV sets!" — only Old Gou trusted his bell.

Old Gou's surname was Gou, and his given name, a single character, meant "whole." Yet no one in the lane ever called him Gou the Whole; they called him Old Gou. He had worked this trade twenty-three years, steadier than the chess game played beneath the old locust at the lane's mouth. Most collectors eyed a thing first for what it might fetch; Old Gou weighed it first. He pinched the corner of a cardboard box and knew by the crackle how many plies of corrugation it held. He lifted a piece of iron to his ear and shook it twice, and no rust, no hollow, could hide from his hand. A thing, he said, is like a person: its weight tells a story. What is heavy need not be precious; what is light need not be cheap.

Once a secondhand antique dealer moved in at the lane's end and tried to pass off a chipped blue-and-white bowl as broken porcelain, mixed in with the paper scrap. Old Gou never looked at the pattern. He took the bowl in his palm, ran a finger once around its foot, and named a price: "This bowl is half a year's rent for you." The dealer took him for a fool and gladly let it go — then resold it for eight thousand. After that, the lane stopped underestimating Old Gou's hands. Yet there were those who could not tell value when they held it: two years back, the wife of Old Zhao at the west end sold a silver cradle-lock, part of her dowry, as scrap copper. Old Gou hefted it, slipped her thirty extra yuan without a word, and said only, "Fine silver, keep it for the child." She understood later that the thirty was his own money, quietly made up.

Old Gou was generous to the lane and miserly with himself. Two meals a day of cornmeal porridge; one grey jacket washed pale, patched upon patch. And yet three things he would not take, for any price. First, a child's first pair of tiger-head shoes. Second, a wedding portrait still in its frame. Third, a pill bottle with medicine still left inside. The lane laughed at his superstition, said Old Gou had collected so long he'd grown taboos of his own. Old Gou never explained. He only shook his bell and pushed on. He kept a ledger in his head — which household had gained a child, which had lost one, which old soul could not bear to finish her medicine — but that ledger he never read aloud.

At the lane's east end lived Granny Wu, the one Old Gou helped most. Widowed ten years, she raised a grandson in middle school on mending and washing for others. Each time she saved a bundle of old newspapers, a few empty bottles, she waited for Old Gou's bell. Others paid forty cents a catty for paper; Old Gou always added twenty, saying the paper was damp, he'd allow for it. Granny Wu never let on she knew. She only pasted her grandson's certificates of merit to his handlebar. In time the handlebar wore a patchwork of bright awards, and Old Gou wheeled down the lane like a man carrying a small banner.

Last autumn the old Qian house, long empty, was made new. Qian Gui came back from the provincial city, said to have built a real business there. He arrived in a gleaming black car, set off a string of firecrackers at the gate, tore out the old threshold for marble. His mother, Old Mrs. Qian, had never left the lane in her life; now her son settled her in a back room behind the main hall where the sun never reached, and even her meals were carried in to her. Behind her back the lane clicked their tongues: a son grows up, and the mother becomes an old piece of furniture in the way.

Qian Gui meant to "sweep away the bad luck" and clear out decades of old things. He stood at the gate and called Old Gou, said a cartload of rubbish, boxes and chests, two hundred yuan, take it all. Old Gou went in and saw first a paulownia-wood chest by the wall, its hasp rusted shut; beside it a blue-bordered jar stopped with old newspaper; and further in, by the door of the back room, a pill bottle with a little more than half its white tablets still inside.

Old Gou crouched, picked up the bottle, turned it in his hand, said nothing, and set it gently back where it was. Qian Gui urged him: "The chest too, all yours, a bargain." Old Gou straightened. "The chest I cannot take." Qian Gui laughed. "Aren't you the one who takes anything?" Old Gou said, "Your mother still lives in this room. The chest is hers. You'd clear her out like rubbish, but what's inside is her whole life. That I cannot carry."

Qian Gui's face darkened. "I've found her a nursing home in the city. They take her tomorrow. I'm emptying this house — take it or leave it." Old Gou shook his head, loaded only the empty cartons and the pile of old newspapers, and before he left set the pill bottle where Old Mrs. Qian could reach it. The bell rang once, and he rolled out of the lane.

Less than half a month later, Old Mrs. Qian was indeed taken away. Qian Gui hired workers, painted the old house white inside and out, and threw the wooden chest out as garbage, beside the bin at the lane's mouth.

That evening, coming home from his rounds, Old Gou found the chest lying alone on the rubbish heap, its hasp kicked open a crack, one corner of a blue cloth showing through. He asked no one, lifted the chest onto his cart, and pushed it to the nursing home west of the city.

Old Mrs. Qian sat in a rattan chair in the corridor, still wearing the washed-pale blue cloth jacket. Old Gou set the chest at her feet and said, "Your things. I've brought them." With trembling hands she opened it. Inside the blue cloth was wrapped a tiny pair of tiger-head shoes, the uppers faded but the soles stitched dense and tight — the shoes she had made stitch by stitch for Qian Gui's first month. At the chest's bottom lay a wedding portrait, its corners curled, showing a young Qian Gui's father with the bride he'd just taken, both laughing toothless.

Old Mrs. Qian pressed the tiger-head shoes to her chest, and the tears fell without a sound. Old Gou did not comfort her, did not linger. He turned and pushed his cart. The copper bell rang once at the nursing home gate, dull and hushed, like a sigh — or like nothing at all.

After that, when the people of Locust Lane spoke of Old Gou, they no longer said he'd collected himself a set of taboos. But each time they heard that creaking bell pass the lane's mouth, they would, without thinking, turn over the things they meant to throw away — afraid that somewhere among them might be a kinsman they dared not recognize.