Someone Beneath the Umbrella

In the south, it rains without end. The town of Qingshi rests in a bend of the Huan River, wrapped on three sides by water, its back against Silkworm Hill. The eaves of every house lean far out and the tiles lie thick, yet the Jiangnan rain comes slantwise; a gust of wind and the eaves cannot hold it, and half a street is soaked regardless. So no one in town goes without an umbrella — one in hand, one hung beneath the eaves, and when it opens, a small patch of dry sky is made.

Zhou Shouzhuo was the last umbrella-maker in town.

In his grandfather's day there were three umbrella shops along the river, strung out in a row; during the plum rains the street filled with opened oil-paper umbrellas, and from afar they looked like a river of duckweed. Decades on, the other two lines died out, and only his 'Shouzhuo Umbrella Workshop' remains, tucked deep in an alley by the Huan Bridge. The storefront is small, but the interior runs deep; finished umbrellas stand in racks against both walls, tips up, like a stand of furled bamboo, the smell of tung oil never leaving, mingled with the clean scent of bamboo until it turns the nose bitter.

Zhou's craft is hereditary. The bamboo must be cut after the winter solstice and before the spring beginning, from three-year bitter bamboo, split while the morning dew still clings — this is called 'marking the bamboo.' It is shade-dried through one winter to leach out its restlessness before the bones can be cut. An umbrella begins with ribs of the right length, from twenty-four to thirty-two, all by feel; then two layers of bark paper are pasted on, three coats of tung oil brushed, each coat waiting to be fully drunk before the next; last, mineral pigments paint landscapes, plum blossoms, or the Two Immortals of Harmony upon the canopy, and it is shade-dried seven days before it is done.

He often told people: a good umbrella must open round and close straight, and the number of ribs must be odd — an old rule, never broken. The townsfolk believed him. Asked why, he would lower his voice: an even number is the eave of the dead; open it, and what stands beneath is more than a man.

The children took it for a story. The adults remembered. Whenever a family bought a new umbrella, they would ask Zhou to paint the face and brush the final coat himself, saying only then would the umbrella know its master, and shelter you from more than rain — from the unclean things besides.

Yet Zhou had another craft, unwritten in the family record, which most in town sensed but dared not name.

That year the old lady of the He family in the west of town fell gravely ill. A forever-light was lit at her bedside; sons and grandsons summoned physicians, prayed to the bodhisattva, and had two groups of Taoist priests perform rites, all to no avail. The eldest young master, a filial man driven frantic, slipped into the workshop after dark and pressed a silver ingot from his sleeve into Zhou's hand. His grandmother would not survive the plum rains, he said, and he begged Master Zhou to make a 'life-borrowing umbrella.' Zhou at first refused flatly — an accursed thing, forbidden by the ancestors. The young master's eyes reddened; he added another ingot, saying only that it was for peace of mind, that one cannot borrow life from outside anyway, merely a thought, a last resort.

The method of the life-borrowing umbrella was indeed an ancestral taboo, pressed to the bottom of a chest. An ordinary umbrella gathers rain; the life-borrowing umbrella gathers a person's breath. Opened on a rainy night, face down, what drips from the rim is not water but the 'surplus breath' of passing living men, drawn strand by strand into the bamboo ribs. Gather enough breath for three years of life and give it to the dying, and their color returns, a few more breaths drawn. The cost falls on whoever was drained: in the years after, they feel hollow, as if they stood in a rain that left no trace, unable to name what ails them, only slowly, slowly, failing — and when they understand, it is usually too late.

That night Zhou would not yield. But the silver was heavy, and the He family sent the village head to plead, saying Master Zhou, earn some merit. In the end he took it. The first time, his hands shook; cutting the bamboo he nicked a finger, and blood fell on a rib. He wiped it with cloth and oiled it all the same. The night the umbrella was done, it rained as foretold. Following the teaching, he opened the black umbrella in the He family's back court, then stepped onto the veranda and turned his back. The old lady indeed drew three more years of breath, and when she finally went, there was a smile on her face, as if she had said all she had left unsaid.

After that, people came to him one by one. Not all believed, but all feared death, especially an undignified one. Zhou's life-borrowing umbrellas gained a quiet fame, and gradually no one called him 'Master Zhou' to his face; behind his back they named him 'the breath-gatherer.' He did not care. Ingots came in, umbrellas went out, and each time he finished one he would dot a small cinnabar mole on the inside of a rib — a mark, and a word to himself: remember.

What he remembered was, for every umbrella, which night's rain, which stretch of roadside breath it had taken.

It sounds strange, yet it was real. On a rainy night the umbrella opens and the rim drips; if a late traveler stands just there, his surplus breath is drawn away on the rain-threads and he never knows. Zhou never chose, could not choose — the umbrella opens, and whoever passes is taken, like a gutter catching rain without asking its source. So he kept a muddled account: of those whose life he borrowed, he knew not one, knew only the sound of rain on the canopy that night, sparse then dense, as if someone were counting.

Year on year, the rain over Qingshi did not lessen. Zhou's hair turned white through, his back bent, yet his hands stayed strangely steady. His umbrellas were bought not only by townsfolk now but by fastidious households in the county downstream, who rowed up to say the oil-paper umbrellas of Qingshi held against wind and would not leak. Yet the life-borrowing trade weighed heavier on his heart the longer he plied it. Not fear of retribution — at his age he had long stopped believing in that — but fear of memory. His memory was too good; he recalled every umbrella, which rainy night it opened, how much breath it held, like keeping a warehouse of rain that pressed on his chest until it ached.

There were also a few strange happenings. One year the owner of a cloth shop in the south of town came to him, not to borrow life for someone dying but for himself — he had too many rivals in trade, he said, and wished to live a few more years to see his grandchildren settled. Zhou would not at first; the shopkeeper said, just open the umbrella, it gathers the breath of passers-by, not of my own family, known to heaven and to you alone. That time he relented, and on a rainy night opened a gold-painted umbrella, drawing the surplus breath of countless travelers and pouring it into the one man. The shopkeeper did live a few years longer, yet in town a few more people fell mysteriously weak. Another time a family's umbrella opened by itself in the main room at midnight, face down, and frightened a sleeping child into three days of fever. Zhou went to take it back; when he took it apart a small wisp of grey-white breath clung in the rib, as if reluctant to leave. He took it then for the bamboo's nature playing tricks, shook his head, and did not think deeper.

The turning came in his sixty-third year. That year the plum rains ran strangely long, forty days without cease; the Huan rose over the bridge piers and the stone lanes soaked green. And in those forty days a strange sickness rose in town. Those taken neither coughed nor burned with fever, only grew spiritless day by day, short of breath after a few steps, drenched in night sweats, and upon closing their eyes they dreamed of water dripping from the eaves, dripping all night, waking to a soaked pillow, unable to tell sweat from the rain in the dream. The physician felt a vacant pulse but named no root. The village head came to Zhou: had some fengshui in town been offended, and ought it be suppressed?

Zhou said nothing. He went alone to the bridge at night and watched the water for half a night, and saw another matter.

Those whose breath had been borrowed over the years were scattered through the town; when their breath was taken they had thought themselves merely frail, and as years passed no one thought of it. Yet when the sickness came all at once, he understood: the 'surplus breath' taken by the life-borrowing umbrella had not vanished into air. Bamboo ribs know breath; once breath enters the umbrella it stays, and is kept. The umbrellas he had made — sold, given, lost — had long since scattered into countless homes, hung by eaves, set in corners. Within them lay the life borrowed quietly over decades, like little cisterns brimming with others' living breath, waiting only for a reason to overflow.

And this year's forty days of rain was precisely the reason that opened the cisterns.

In the first nights of the sickness Zhou dreamed that every umbrella in his shop was moving. Not wind — the umbrellas themselves, one by one, slowly opening, faces down, hanging in midair, with clumps of shadow beneath, faces unseen, only pairs of cloth shoes, wet, treading the brick floor. He woke drenched in sweat and heard, beyond the window, a soft 'snap, snap' — rain on someone's eave, or something else; he dared not look closely.

He meant to rot the secret in his belly. But townsfolk fell one after another, and the village head, frantic, would summon an outsider. Zhou knew that once an outsider came, the life-borrowing trade could not be hidden, and his old bones would face the yamen. He did not sleep that night, and at near dawn made a decision: gather the few 'sample umbrellas' he had kept — life-borrowing umbrellas he had never sold — into an old camphor chest, lock it with a brass lock, and carry it to the cellar behind the house.

He thought that locking it would hold it down.

The cellar was damp, yet the camphor chest was strangely dry. Within lay his finest life-borrowing umbrellas, their faces painted not with landscapes but with the same thing: beneath an umbrella stood a figure with no discernible features, ink so pale it looked from afar like the umbrella had grown its own shadow. This was a habit formed without thinking, when making a life-borrowing umbrella: on the inconspicuous inside of a rib he would trace in pale ink the outline of 'the one borrowed from,' as a conscience kept for himself — he would not say it aloud, yet in his heart he remembered after all.

The sickness did not pause for the camphor chest. On the seventh day, the daughter-in-law of Old Song at the east end fell into a faint; the physician said the pulse was nearly gone and they should prepare. Old Song wept and beat open the workshop door, kneeling in the rain, begging Zhou to save her once more, saying he would give his all. Zhou would not answer — this time he truly dared not. Yet Old Song would not rise, rain running down his white hair, mingled with tears. Zhou's heart softened in the end, or perhaps it was fear. He went to the cellar, opened the chest, and took out the oldest black umbrella. The cinnabar mole on the inside of the rib was still there, and the pale ink figure too, only deeper than he remembered, as if soaked through with water. He closed his eyes and recalled the last line of the ancestral teaching: life lent out cannot be recalled; it can only be returned.

He did not open that umbrella. He took it apart.

Taking an umbrella apart is slow work — ribs drawn one by one, bark paper peeled layer by layer, the smell of tung oil spreading until it stings the eyes. At the third rib his fingers turned suddenly cold: that rib was wet, not damp, but as if just lifted from rain, water beading and running down the seam — yet there was no rain in the cellar. He stopped and, by the oil lamp, saw the bead fall to the ground and not spread, but gather into a small wisp of grey-white breath that crept along the brick, like a fish out of water, twisting shyly.

Zhou knew that thing. It was surplus breath — the living breath of someone he had never known, taken on some rainy night decades ago by this umbrella, kept in the bamboo rib all these years, never dispersed, but grown solid, taken form.

His hands shaking, he took the whole umbrella apart. The grey-white breath on the ground gathered more and more, circling his ankles, cold to the bone. He suddenly understood the meaning of 'can only be returned' — this breath ought to go back to the living. But it had been kept in the umbrella too long, until it no longer knew who it was, and knew only the hands that took it, this workshop, this maker of umbrellas. They had come to collect a debt, and what they collected was not breath but the life the maker owed, reckoned stroke by stroke.

The cellar door creaked open on the wind. Zhou turned; the oil lamp flickered, and beyond the door, in the rain, beneath the broken street-lamp at the bridge — a lamp dark for half a month — stood many figures, motionless, each holding an umbrella. He rubbed his eyes; the figures remained, faces down, dripping not water from the rim but grey-white breath, strand by strand, connecting to the thing on the ground, like countless invisible threads tying him to what stood outside.

He shut the cellar door and leaned against it, catching his breath, his heart beating like a war drum.

The sickness could not in the end be hidden. The outsider was an itinerant physician named Mo, who carried a medicine box, saw a few patients, then walked once around the workshop and said nothing, only leaving as he left: 'Master Zhou, there are more umbrellas in your shop than living men.' Zhou did not answer, only saw him to the door. Three days after Mo left, most of the town's sick suddenly recovered, said to be from a talisman-water he prescribed. Zhou did not believe in talisman-water; he guessed the forty days of rain had at last stopped, the sun dried the cisterns and the breath dispersed — yet his own matter did not disperse.

After autumn Zhou's body failed day by day. Not the hollowness of the sickness, but a real emptiness — as if someone, while he slept, drew something out from between his bones, so that by day he walked as if floating. He knew he had spent a life gathering breath, and now it was his own being drawn away. Yet he did not know by whom, or with what. Until one moonless night he rose, and on the paper of the rear window saw the shadow of a figure holding an umbrella, face down, grey-white breath dripping from the rim, standing opposite his bed, motionless.

He threw on his clothes and chased out; the yard was empty, only a patch of wet on the ground, shaped exactly like an opened umbrella, the watermark not yet dry.

After that he saw it every night. Sometimes at the bridge, sometimes at the alley mouth, sometimes pressed right against the workshop door. The umbrella-bearing figures did not enter, did not leave, only stood, faces down, as if waiting for something, or counting something. Zhou counted them: at first one, then two, three... by deep autumn he reckoned perhaps twenty or thirty, standing in rain, in fog, even on clear nights with nothing to shelter from, only holding umbrellas, watching his window.

At last he went to ask Physician Mo. This time Mo did not speak in riddles; he sighed and said: 'Master Zhou, you gathered breath all your life, and that breath knows its master. Now it has taken form and come to collect. Every life-borrowing umbrella you made is a contract — you took another's surplus breath and owed another's life. While the contract stands and the debt unpaid, they stand outside your door, waiting for the day you open an umbrella yourself, walk into the rain, and repay what you owe.'

'How to repay?' Zhou asked, voice rusted.

'The umbrellas you sold and gave away are still in others' hands. The breath you gathered lies in their ribs. To repay you must call them back one by one, take them apart, release the breath, return it to its owner. But the owners are mostly long gone from this world — the breath cannot return, and can only come back to you.' Mo looked at him, his gaze so level it unnerved. 'The life you borrowed, the years of your own yang-life spent, were reckoned on the account. Now the account has reached its end, and must be settled.'

Zhou went home and hauled the camphor chest from the cellar, taking it apart umbrella by umbrella. With each one taken apart, another wisp of grey-white breath gathered on the ground, circling his feet, cold. He took them apart for seven days and nights, until his hands split and his eyes blurred, and at last he had taken apart the dozen-odd life-borrowing umbrellas kept in the chest, even the old He-family black umbrella; the pale ink figure dissolved in the oil and could not be found again. The breaths gathered on the ground into a thin mist that hugged the floor and followed him, never leaving, like a pack of cats that had chosen a home and would not be driven off.

Yet it was not enough. There were the umbrellas long since scattered, which he could neither recall nor take apart. He could only wait — wait for the umbrella-bearing figures to come themselves.

On the night before the winter solstice the rain fell again. It was the last rain of the year, fine and dense as needles, falling on the canopies in a low murmur. Zhou carried every finished, unsold umbrella from the shop into the main room and set them against the wall like soldiers in line, tips up, awaiting a command. For himself he made a new umbrella, its face painted with nothing, only a cinnabar mole on the inside and, in pale ink, a figure — himself, back bent, still gripping the bamboo-cutting knife.

At midnight, amid the rain, came another sound: the 'snap, snap' of umbrellas opening, from the row in the corner, one after another, opening themselves, faces down, hanging in midair. Grey-white breath dripped from the rims to the ground, gathering into thin streams that flowed toward the door, as if welcoming something.

The doorway filled with people. Not shadows, but people real — no, too real, their flesh carrying a greenness from the rain. They held their own umbrellas, and beneath each was a face Zhou did not know, yet every face wore an expression he knew well: the look of one whose living breath had been quietly borrowed and who failed slowly, never knowing at the end what had been taken from them — bewildered, and stubborn.

Zhou recognized them. These were the ones whose breath his life-borrowing umbrellas had taken over the decades. Most had long since died, yet their breath remained in the umbrellas, and now the umbrellas knew their master and had pulled them back, along the rain-threads, one by one, from some far, dark place.

At the front, holding the He-family black umbrella, he knew the outline — the unknown one taken by the very first life-borrowing umbrella on that rainy night by the He back court. The figure stepped into the main room, face down, grey-white breath wrapping him like a thin mist. He stopped before Zhou, said nothing, and simply lifted the umbrella, gently, over Zhou's head.

Zhou felt a cold at the crown. Decades of surplus breath, along the ribs, returned to him strand by strand — no, not returned, but pressed down. However many he had borrowed from, now repaid one by one, pressing his knees soft, his sight dark, his ears full of rain on canopy, sparse then dense, as if someone were counting how much he still owed. He heard his own bones creak, like ribs closing, like an old umbrella at last being furled.

He remembered Mo's words: the debt repaid, the man emptied.

Every umbrella in the room closed, one by one, and fell with a dull soft sound. The umbrella-bearing figures, one after another, withdrew face-down into the rain, like a tide receding, and were gone. The grey-white breath on the ground dispersed with them, like mist dried by wind, leaving not even a watermark.

Near dawn the rain stopped. The village head came knocking, saying the town's sickness was wholly cured, come to thank Master Zhou's umbrellas for warding the disaster and suppressing the evil. The door opened; the main room was quiet, the row of umbrellas standing properly as if nothing had happened. Only at the very end stood a new umbrella, its face painted with nothing, inside a cinnabar mole and a pale ink figure, back bent, gripping a knife.

Zhou Shouzhuo was gone.

Someone fished an opened oil-paper umbrella from beneath the Huan Bridge, drifting with the current, empty beneath, a few wisps of grey-white breath on the water that scattered in an instant, like a sigh. The townsfolk said the old umbrella-maker had probably gone downstream to relatives, leaving without even locking the door. Only Physician Mo came once to collect umbrellas; he stood at the bridge watching the rain for half a night, and as he left shook his head and said to the apprentice at his heel: 'Beneath an even eave stood a man; within an odd umbrella dwelt a soul. Remember it.'

After that no one in town made life-borrowing umbrellas. Yet on nights of endless rain, someone always hears from the direction of the workshop a soft 'snap' — very soft, as if someone had opened an umbrella, or as if someone, beneath the eaves, were waiting for a rain that would never stop.