Old Zhou's Plasters

Old Zhou had kept his plaster stall at the old city gate for thirty years. One worn table, half a length of blue cloth, and on the cloth a few stacks of cut plasters — for sprains, for rheumatism, for weary sinews — each wrapped in oil paper. A thread of medicine, mixed with the smoke of the street, drifted halfway down the lane.

The craft he learned from his father-in-law, who told him one thing he never forgot: a plaster shares a person's pain, it does not trade on it. So there was never a banner over Zhou's stall promising to cure all ills. He felt a wrist, read a complexion, treated what he could, and sent the rest to the hospital.

The people of the gate trusted him. A thrown back, a child's skinned knee — they came to Zhou. His hands were steady, his plasters even, and they never itched or burned.

It began that autumn.

The first time he saw Axiang, it was a drizzling dusk. She held an old umbrella, barely past twenty, in a blue cotton tunic worn pale at the cuffs, a thin callus on her fingers — the hands of someone who sewed. She stood at the stall without a word and laid both hands on the edge of the table. "One plaster," she said softly, "for a sore wrist."

Zhou took her pulse; the beat was calm, the wrist unmarked. He asked nothing, tore off a rheumatic plaster, wrapped it, and took the worn bills she offered.

Three days later she returned, this time for her lower back. Five days on, aching knees. A week, cold in the shoulder. Always a single small plaster, always cash, always gone the moment she had it, never letting him look at the place that ached, her eyes flicking to both ends of the lane.

Zhou grew suspicious.

He had sold plasters his whole life; no ache escaped his eye. The places Axiang named were scattered, as if piecing together one body's worth of pain. And the amount — what young wife needed plasters for an entire body? Her callused fingers were a seamstress's, yet she never said the medicine was for herself. It was for someone else.

The telling detail: the bills she paid with were old, their corners softened round, as if saved coin by coin. A young wife so careful with money, yet buying plasters every few days — there was a person at home who could not do without them.

Zhou did not corner her. From then on, each time she came, besides the one plaster he added another. "On the house," he said. "Keep it if you don't use it." Axiang would hesitate, take it without a word, and turn away.

Once she left her change on the table in her hurry. Zhou grabbed the coins and followed, and around the bend of the lane he saw her steering a man deeper inward. The man hunched, stopped every few steps with a hand to his back, as if every part of him hurt. Axiang caught sight of Zhou, paused, shielded the man against the wall, took the money, and hurried off.

Zhou stood there and did not follow. He understood: at home was a man, sick, who must not be seen, kept going on the plasters she fetched one trip at a time.

He thought of his father-in-law. Pain you can share; a life you cannot.

For half a month after, Axiang did not come. Zhou set out as usual, but kept two extra plasters at the corner of his table, saved for her.

Then word came from Aunt Wu, buying plasters one day: the small pit mine beyond the city had half collapsed. Among the temporary hands with no contract was a man named Chen, battered all over, who did not survive the hospital. Aunt Wu sighed; Zhou gave a small sound and did not break his rhythm.

He did not ask if Chen was Axiang's, nor did he ever speak of that glimpse at the lane's bend. Some things sit better in the chest than on the tongue.

The winter rain came sudden. Zhou pulled his stall under the blue awning; the two plasters, still wrapped in oil paper, sat where they always did. Rain struck the cloth, a steady pattering. He looked down the emptied lane and thought Axiang might come again, or she might not.

A plaster shares a person's pain. But some pains in this world no plaster will reach.