The Teahouse

By the ferry landing stood an old teahouse, its plank door of fir gone grey in the river wind. Zhong took it over at forty. He had kept accounts at the town's grain station until it closed; with his severance he bought this waterside room. He never expected fortune — only a place to sit, to listen to the water, to brew tea.

The room was small: three low tables, a little red-clay stove, and a long-spouted copper kettle that hissed when he poured. By day trade was thin — ferry porters, basket carriers stopping to rest, a bowl of coarse tea, two words, then gone. Zhong spoke little but his hands were busy; the kettle always boiled, the cups always clean.

When winter came the river fogged and night fell early. Zhong closed at dusk as usual — wiping tables, sweeping, emptying the kettle, bolting the door.

The first time he heard it was a damp, overcast night in the twelfth month. He had just bolted the door and bent to tidy the stove when a light, crisp tap sounded in the main room — a porcelain cup set upon wood — followed by the thin thread of water, that hissing pour of the copper kettle. He straightened, holding his rag, and stood still.

No lamp burned; only the stove's dying embers lit the walls a dim red. The three tables stood empty, the cups on the rack upturned — yet at the little square table by the wall sat a celadon cup he did not remember placing, steam rising from its rim.

Zhong was no coward. He had seen enough muddled accounts at the grain station to treat the uncanny first as a mistake of the eye. But this he saw plainly: he knew that cup. It was one of the old celadon set, the one missing a piece from its lip, mended with glaze two years before — the repair still showed.

He went over and touched the wall of the cup. Hot. Yet when he leaned close, the tea smelled cold — that green, bitter breath of shaded hills after rain, nothing like the dark, aged leaf simmering on his stove. He lifted it, swirled it; the liquor was pale jade, and at the bottom rested two unfamiliar buds, fine as eyebrows.

"Who's there?" he called into the dark. The sound came back off the empty walls. No answer.

He lit no lamp, raised no cry. He set the cup down, fetched his own kettle, sat by the window, poured a bowl, and drank slowly. He had made up his mind: do not startle, do not disturb — see what it would do.

Perhaps half an incense-stick later the wall clock struck eleven. The celadon cup's steam thinned, yet its wall stayed hot. Zhong touched it again — and this time it was cold. Moments before it had burned his fingers; now it chilled them, like gripping a stone from the riverbed. He turned the cup to read its base: beneath the glaze, half hidden by the mend, two characters — something like 'ferry' and 'guest.'

His heart gave a small lurch. This room had not always been a teahouse. The old folk called it the Ferry Guest Pavilion, a place to rest while waiting for the boat, and to lay out the bodies of those the river had taken. When he bought it, the former owner's widow had spoken only of an old house, never of this.

That night he left the cup untouched, and before dawn dozed in his clothes on the counter. At first light his first act was to look at the little square table. The cup remained, perhaps half full, the liquor gone cloudy and cold through. He went to pour it out; at a touch, a thin skin of ice coated the base — no ice forms in a heated room in the twelfth month, with the stove burning all night.

He told no one. The next night he closed and bolted as before, but left a clean celadon cup on the wall table and filled the kettle with fresh water, leaving the fire unlit. Through the window he watched fog climb from the river and wrap the plank walls. Past midnight the tap sounded again in the room, then the thin hiss of water meeting porcelain. When he pushed the door open, both cups were full — one hot, one cold — and the seat across the table bore a slight hollow, as if someone sat there, only unseen.

Zhong stood a moment at the threshold. He could have lit a lamp, could have sold the place, could have told himself his old eyes deceived him. But he thought of the day the grain station closed, colleagues scattering, none looking back. The living are seldom seen off; that the dead should come to sit a while need not be a bad thing.

He drew the door gently shut, left it unbolted, and lay down inside. From then on, each night before sleeping, he left a cup on that little square table and half a kettle of cool water. At dawn he would collect it, the cup always empty, yet often carrying a coldness at its base — as if someone had truly drunk, or as if it were only the dew the river fog had left in the night.

Townsfolk said his teahouse thrived, never empty by night. Zhong only smiled and said nothing. He still brewed tea by day, listened to the water, watched the ferry come and go. He simply never touched the table by the wall — for the tea upon it was never set out for the living.