Sun Wukong

Part Five · The Two Documents

The filing

Forty days of evidence, two blank scrolls and one jade fragment. Wei writes the same facts twice, with opposite conclusions, and hands the case across the desk.

Ink painting from above: an open black lacquer case lined with gold holds two identical rolled scrolls with a jade fragment between them; beside it a lamp, an inkstone with a brush, and two tied bundles of transcripts on a dark table.
Plate VI The case: two scrolls with identical labels, the jade fragment between them.

Chapter 39 · the thirty-eighth morning

Forty days, in layers.

Everything the investigation produced has settled on his desk in the order he came to understand it. Read it from the bottom up. He annotated all of it in four inks, the last of them mixed by his own hand.

Four dishes of ink

  • The archive’s standard ink, for factual notation: sixty-three buildings, nine hundred sections, seventeen interviews.

  • For discrepancies: wherever one record of the event will not agree with another.

  • For cross-references: which document answers which. The damage reports are indexed against the timeline in red chalk.

  • A colour the archive had no name for, mixed by his own hand from what his archive room held. In his private notebook he called these notes registrations.

Amber is for what exceeded the record.

One piece of evidence stays on his person: the jade fragment from Guanyin’s seal, which has not cooled since Potalaka.

    1. The preliminary drafttwelve pages, notes three times longer than the text
    2. Damage reportssixty-three buildings, cross-indexed by the timeline
    3. Interview transcriptsseventeen scrolls; two of them tied with silk cord
    4. Decoded dispatchesseven, in their folder
    5. Two rubbingsthe handprint and the smooth circle, in tubes
    Ink painting, seen from above: the desk laid out with the evidence. Rows of scrolls tied with cord and a few loose rolls, a large sheet whose writing crowds its margins, two stacks of papers tied with cord, a long sheet marked along a line of red chalk, four dishes of ink (black, red, blue and amber) and a paper lamp.
    His desk, from above

    Chapter 40 · written first, in the formal register

    The official version.

    Written in the finest hand in the archive, it gives nothing away. Read the gaps: each marked phrase opens onto the evidence it leaves out.

    Comprehensive Account · filed copy · fourteen pages

    The Great Sage Equal to Heaven, having been accorded celestial status commensurate with his demonstrated capacities, engaged in acts of celestial disruption subsequently rebellion against the order of heaven.

    Celestial forces, having fully engaged the Great Sage, of the incident through the compassionate assistance of the Western Pure Land.

    The Great Sage, having been brought to , is contained under Five Elements Mountain by the Buddha’s seal, where he will remain until the celestial order requires his service.

    Wei chose classified as on purpose. It is a message for whoever reads the file closely one day.

    The door is two words wide. The door is cracked.

    The archive will find nothing wrong with it. Every fact in it is accurate, and it is a lie.

    Chapter 44 · the base of the mountain

    The true version.

    Fourteen pages again, in the same hand and the same format, written sitting against the mountain. The rock warmed his inkstone, and warm ink runs a little more freely.

    Ink painting: on a ledge of the grey mountain, threaded with red heat, an inkstone, a brush, an unrolled blank scroll and a small jade fragment.
    1. He wrote: He stopped himself.
    2. He wrote: He was eating.
    3. He wrote: He was laughing. Alone. Not performing. Laughing.
    4. He wrote: You might.

    Rolled and labelled, it is the official version’s twin in everything but what it says.

    Chapter 46 · Hong’s office, before the day is out

    Hand over the case.

    The jade fragment rides in the case too, between the scrolls, so that it stays with whichever one Hong leaves. Which scroll is which? The same label, the same hand. You cannot tell from here, and nobody will ask.

    Ink painting: an open black lacquer case lined with gold holds two identical rolled scrolls with a jade fragment between them; beside it a lamp, an inkstone with a brush, and two tied bundles of papers on a dark table.

    Not shuffled. Drag one scroll onto the other, or shuffle them.

    1. Senior Scrivener Hong“Is it complete? Does it reflect the Court’s position?”
    2. Wei“Both questions are answered the same way.”
    3. The stamp falls on the receipt log. The scroll is filed.
    4. Senior Scrivener Hong“Good work, Scribe Wei. The commission is fulfilled.”
    5. Wei“Thank you.”
    6. Wei, at the door“Senior Scrivener Hong. In four hundred years of service, I have never produced a document I was not satisfied with.”
    7. Wei“I am satisfied with this one.”

    Chapter 48 · the restored Court

    What the Court replaces.

    Ink painting: a new double door in red lacquer with a brass ring at its centre, fitted exactly into its frame in a pale, plain wall.
    The filing-room door A carpenter has replaced the cracked door. The new one fits its frame, and there is nothing left to look through.

    Rub charcoal over the paper with your pointer or finger.

    The side courtyard The courtyard wall has been mended. Where the hand pressed into the stone there is now a flat, pale patch.

    Your rubbing keeps every old stone and leaves a blank where the new one was set. Only Wei’s rubbing, in his satchel, still holds the hand.

    Chapter 49 · the outer edge of the Court

    The final threshold.

    All five palettes in balance. Gold and jade and cloud and ink and the warm red of something waiting.

    Whatever I kept — that is mine.

    Wei cleans his brush.

    The lamp is extinguished. The archive is dark.

    The mountain is warm. The mountain is still.

    Five hundred years remain.

    About a minute. With sound on, the score plays its five motifs together, then lets them go one by one.