Ren brought in baskets of leaf from his beds. He carried them in from the yard, basket by basket. He spread the autumn cut thin on the racks to dry.
The autumn making began with the leaf coming down.
The leaf had dried on the racks all week. It broke clean between Ren's fingers. It did not bend soft. It did not fall to dust. He took the racks down in order. The first rack went to the bench. Then the second rack followed it. The back room filled with the dry smell. It was a clean smell, sharp and green.
The making drew leaf from two sources. One was the autumn cut of Ren's beds, dried here. The other was the bought leaf's second part. That part had waited in the store for makings to come. Ren chalked each tally on the store post. Two sources, two tallies, stood chalked there. Both leaves went to the bench for the one making.
The jars were ready on the bench. They had been washed and dried. They had been counted before the leaf moved. Ren filled them to the standard. Each jar rose to the mark, and no higher. None fell short of the mark either. A full jar and a light jar were both wrong. The standard was the standard, for every jar.
The labels went on as the jars were filled. The name went on each label. The drying week went on each label. The mark went on each label. No jar waited unlabelled for its turn. That was the first condition of the line. It was also the rule of the shop. The two had always agreed.
Then came the wax, and the wax was new.
The new wax had come in flat cakes. The cakes were wrapped in oiled cloth. They were paler than the shop's old wax. They smelled faintly of smoke, not of resin. Ren had bought them as a new lot. A lot means the whole batch, from one making. He set one cake by the stove to soften. The rest stayed wrapped, in their pile.
He cut the softened cake into pieces. The pieces went into the small iron pot. The pot hung over a low fire. The wax melted slow and clear. It poured without strings, off the ladle. Ren sealed the first jars with care. Each seal was poured in one turn. Each seal was pressed while it was warm. Each seal was left alone to harden.
The filled jars went onto the racks. They went up in rows, to cool. Their labels faced out, all one way. Ren worked through the morning at this pace. The stove ticked as it cooled between batches. Outside, the street went on with its autumn. Carts passed. Doors shut against the cool air.
By the second day, the racks held rows. More jars waited on the bench, filled. The making was a large one, by design. The winter plan stood written at one hundred and thirty-two. The shelf would need every jar it could hold. Ren sealed on, row by row.
The street took its share while the sealing went on.
The street's asking did not wait for the sealing to end. Five times, a caller took a jar away. Each jar came from the oldest month on the shelf. That month went out first, by the rule. No jar of the new making was touched. The new making was not yet counted. It was not yet ready to be counted.
A call from the well house took the first jar. The woman there kept her door half open. She listened to the course at the step. The whole course, three days. Morning and evening, the cup hot. She nodded slowly at each part of it. Then she took the jar in, with both hands.
Two jars went on the third morning. A messenger came from the dyers' end for one. A boy came from the rope walk for the other. He held his house's jar against his chest. He walked slow with it, and did not run. Once his feet hurried, then they slowed.
The last two jars went at dusk. The lamps were lit along the street. Jinsuke the lamplighter passed with his pole. He nodded at the shop door, and went on. Ren told each course plain, at the counter. He told it the same way, each time. The fever would do what fevers did. The course would do its work in its days.
The coin for the street jars went the counter's way. It was street coin, counted at the shutter. It did not enter the strongbox sums. The book named no money for those days. It named only the jars, and their month.
At the week's turning, the year's first month held thirteen. Eighteen had stood there, at the sealing's start. Five had gone to the street, in order. The count was plain, and Ren wrote it plain. Then he turned back to the racks. The control of the first racks came next. A making was not finished when it was sealed. It was finished when it was checked.
The checking was done rack by rack.
Ren took the first rack down to the bench. He set it under the window's light. He went along the row with his eyes first. Then he went along it with his thumb. Each seal should have been smooth. Each seal should have been whole, edge to edge. A good seal gave a little, and sprang back. A good seal had no line across it.
On the third jar, his thumb found a line.
The line ran across the seal's face. It was thin, like a hair laid in wax. The wax had split as it cooled. Ren pressed at the crack's edge, gently. The edge lifted, just a breath. Air could pass under a seal like that. Damp could pass under it too. The jar under it could not be trusted.
He set that jar apart, on the bench's end.
He went on along the row, slower now. A second jar had the same thin line. It ran from the rim toward the middle. A third jar's seal had split at its edge. The split showed dark against the pale wax. Ren set each jar apart as he found it. His face did not change as he worked. His hands slowed, and that was all.
The second rack came down to the bench. Two more jars carried split seals. One had cracked in a small star shape. One had a crack you could catch a nail in. Ren counted the set-apart jars twice. Five jars. Five split seals, on the first racks checked.
He checked the rest of the racks after that. He checked them jar by jar, with his thumb. No more cracks showed on the later rows. But the later rows told him nothing sure. The five had come from the same wax. The same wax had sealed the racks behind them. A crack that had not shown yet could still come. Wax that split in cooling split by its nature. It did not split by chance, jar by jar.
Ren looked at the pale cakes by the wall. The fault was in the wax itself. Not in the leaf, which had dried clean. Not in the jars, which were the shop's jars. Not in the week's air, which was dry. The new wax had been made wrong, somewhere. Too much of one thing, too little of another. It hardened brittle, and brittle wax cracked.
The five jars could not be sold. They could not be given away either. A doubtful jar was a doubtful jar. It did not matter who asked for it. It did not matter what they would pay. The shop had one answer for doubtful jars. It had always had one answer.
The five jars were burned that same day.
Ren carried them out to the yard himself. He set them in a row on the stones. He read their labels once more, aloud. The name, the drying week, the mark. Then he wrote the count in the day book first. The writing came before the fire, as always. A thing was counted before it was ended.
The fire was made in the yard's iron brazier. The brazier was a wide bowl on three legs. Ren fed it with offcuts and dry shavings. The flames came up clean and hot. He set the five jars in, one by one. The wax of their seals ran first. Then the leaf inside them caught and darkened. The smell was sharp, and then it was only smoke.
He watched until the jars held nothing whole. Nothing that could be scraped out and used. Nothing that could be sold by another hand. What the fire left was ash and blackened glass. He raked the ash flat when it cooled. The yard smelled of smoke into the evening.
That night Ren wrote the loss into the book, with its cause.
Five jars of the autumn making, set apart at the checking. Their seals split in the cooling: lines across the face, a split at the edge, a small star. The fault is in the new wax, and the book names it so. Not the leaf. Not the jars. Not the week's air. The five are burned, with their cause written. No doubtful jar is sold.
Below that entry, he wrote the second part.
The rest of the new wax lot is set aside. Its cakes stay wrapped, marked, and apart. It seals nothing more in this shop. The sealing of the autumn making goes on with the old wax.
The marked cakes went into the store's far corner. Ren tied a cord around the pile. He hung a scrap of label on the cord. The scrap named the fault, in his hand. Anyone reaching for that wax would read it first. The lot would not wander back to the bench. It would not be used in a hurried week. It was finished, as wax, in this shop.
The sealing began again the next morning.
The old wax came out of its box. It was darker, and it smelled of resin. It melted thicker, and poured slower. Ren knew its ways from long use. He cut smaller pieces, and waited longer. The seals set smooth under his thumb. They gave a little, and sprang back. No line showed across their faces.
The work went slower with the old wax. That was accepted, without argument. A slow seal that held was worth more. A fast seal that cracked was worth nothing. The racks filled again, row by row. Each jar was labelled, as before. Each seal was checked, as before. The checking now came jar by jar, not rack by rack. Ren's thumb passed over every seal he made. The five burned jars had bought that care. It was a fair price, and he paid it.
Autumn light lay thin across the back room. The stove kept its low fire all day. Ren sealed, and checked, and racked the jars. The making stayed on its racks at the week's end. It was not counted into the shelf yet. Its count would come when its time came. A count made early was a count made twice. That night, Ren wrote the rule in the day book. This making would be checked a second time, each seal. It would wait until the wax had had its days to declare itself. It would be counted only after that checking, whole or not at all.
The shelf stood at fifty-seven that night. Thirteen jars of the year's first month. Forty-four jars of the second month of summer. The new making waited behind the counter's racks. It waited in rows, sealed under new wax and old. The book shut on the counts that were true. The rest would be counted when they were true too.