Chapter 57

By the time somebody knocked, the extraction was nearly done. The collecting vessel under the condenser was full of liquid, and it now needed standing overnight for the oil and the distillate to separate — the layer of oil on top being pure rose oil, and the water beneath rose hydrosol.

Two hundred and eighty kilos of fresh roses sounds a great deal. Rose oil is called liquid gold, and the yield is measured in ten-thousandths: one kilo of oil takes three to five thousand kilos of fresh petals. From under three hundred kilos she could expect somewhere around a hundred milligrams. About a syringeful.

An enormous loss.

Li Lan looked at the small quantity drawn up into the syringe, somewhere between laughing and not — and it was hers, extracted with her own hands, so she transferred it carefully into a brown glass bottle. Cap on, she scanned it.

[L1 rose oil. Completion: 60%] [Value: 60 L1 points. Sell back?] [Yes] [No]

Sixty per cent was a surprise, far better than the calendula toner a few months earlier — though on reflection it made sense. Rose oil is expensive because of the tiny yield; the process itself isn't difficult, being repeated distillation and separation.

And rose oil should be made the day the flowers are picked. The May holiday had been short and her equipment hadn't arrived, so she'd had to preserve them by the shop's method. Picked and distilled the same day, she suspected, the completion would have been higher still.

The oil came to one small bottle. The hydrosol did not — there was a great deal of it. Less precious than the oil, but as a rose extract it has plenty to recommend it: no chemicals whatever, and usable internally or externally.

The single problem was quantity. She'd distilled with a kilo of water to a kilo of flowers, and water is barely lost in distillation, so the hydrosol came to over two hundred and fifty kilos.

Fortunately she'd done the arithmetic in advance and bought a hundred-odd one-litre bottles online, which ought to be enough. Hydrosol needs cool storage, so all that remained was to decant and store it. Not difficult. Simply a great deal of work.

---

"Li Jingyu. Give me a hand."

"I've got homework. No time."

Practising his guitar, he refused instantly. It was barely a month since she'd said that last, and he remembered perfectly well: she'd said exactly that at the May holiday and then conned two days' labour out of him. Whatever she said, he was not agreeing.

"You won't? I'd better return that Yamaha, then." Li Lan glanced at him and affected regret.

His hand stopped. The Yamaha? The guitar of his dreams. He put the one the tutoring school had thrown in aside and shuffled over. "Sister. What do you need? Say the word."

The guitar lessons had come out a month ago, so this time he'd brought it home. What he practised on was the hundred-yuan instrument that came with the course. At first he couldn't tell good from bad; a few months in, the tone was poor, it felt wrong under the hand, and it needed retuning after a few minutes. He'd have replaced it long ago if he'd had the money.

"A very small favour. Not tiring at all." She led him to the storeroom.

It was his first time inside. Carrying stock up and down being awkward, the third floor held nothing now but a few battered shelves, and the laboratory that had occupied one corner had more than doubled.

He looked round it. Supermarket shelving against the wall, loaded with beakers and test tubes; larger glassware on the table and the floor, and apparatus he couldn't name.

"Li Lan, what is all this?" He walked carefully, afraid of knocking something.

"Good things." She brought him to the drum of hydrosol in the middle. "That's our job today. Put this water into those small bottles." She pointed at the drum, then at the cardboard boxes.

He opened a box, saw the bottles, saw several more boxes beside it, and felt his will to live depart. Quite so: a small job she'd have done herself. For the guitar of his dreams he gritted his teeth. A hundred-odd bottles. Hardly a catastrophe.

---

Coming up and finding nobody in, Chen Ying was puzzled. She'd come from the old courtyard, so they hadn't gone there. She headed for the storeroom, where Li Lan presumably was, and found the laboratory door open for once, with rows of bottled water outside it.

She was about to close it when Li Jingyu came out dragging a box, and she jumped, went over and smacked him lightly. "What are you doing in Lanlan's laboratory? She'll hit you when she gets back."

Li Lan had told them all seriously when it was built not to walk in, and to knock first. They'd been curious about what went on in there and had long since got used to it. Li Cheng and Li Jingyu were obedient about it — though at Spring Festival a child had insisted on going in, and the whole family had discovered for the first time that Li Lan angry was rather frightening.

So finding him coming out, she assumed he'd slipped in while Li Lan forgot to lock it, and was warning him quickly; the worst she'd do was scold, whereas Li Lan finding out meant violence.

An hour of ladling had left his arms aching, and the smack startled him into dropping the box with a bang — fortunately the bottles were plastic.

He shook his arms out. "It's fine, Mum. She told me to."

Li Lan came out at the noise, which reassured her. "Oh, you're in here too. What are the two of you doing with all these bottles?"

Li Lan shook out her own arms; between them they'd bottled a third of it, and both had aching arms and backs. "I processed the roses. He's helping me finish."

Watching them both rubbing at themselves, plainly worn out, Chen Ying couldn't help offering. "Shall your father and I help? Look at the state of you."

"No need. There's not much left." She waved it off.

Li Jingyu watched this warm exchange and felt a pang. He had fallen out of favour. When they were small and Li Lan fought him for the remote and hit him, their mother took his side. Now she didn't care, took Li Lan's side, and accused him of sneaking into the laboratory.

"That's it. I'll do the rest this afternoon, I can't lift my arms." Feeling overlooked, he decided the remainder could wait.

Li Lan was about to say something when their father came in, having come up behind, and spotted the three of them. "What are you all doing in here? Lanlan, I've collected your parcel. What have you bought now? It's a big one."

There was no delivery service in the town yet, so parcels were collected from the county town when he had business there. One had arrived that morning and he'd brought it up.

Li Lan smiled. "That was quick. Where did you put it?"

"Front room. It's large, but it isn't heavy."

"Good. And it's about time we ate — the rest can wait till this afternoon." She bent and picked up several bottles of hydrosol.

On the way out her mother asked about them, having noticed the bottles by the door. "What is all this?"

In the front room Li Lan handed her one. "Rose hydrosol." And explained what it was for and how to use it.

Chen Ying believed every word. The liquid was clear and bright, and unscrewing it released a complicated natural rose scent, different again from the smell drifting through the flat.

"If I use this every day my skin will genuinely improve?" She was interested.

Li Lan nodded, and then looked troubled. "It will. The trouble is there's far too much of it and I don't know what to do with it."

"Give it all to me. I'll use it every day, I'll get through it."

Li Lan laughed. "There's two hundred and fifty kilos. It would go off before you finished."

She hadn't realised the scale. "Two hundred and fifty? That is rather a lot. Give some to your aunts and your cousins."

"All right." There was no alternative; the family could never use it. Though divided among other people, how many kilos each would that be?

Rose oil had not been an enjoyable experiment: far too much of one thing and far too little of the other. Li Lan doubted she'd repeat it soon. She hadn't thought it through, and would be more careful in future.

While the two of them discussed cosmetics, Li Jingyu, ahead of them, spotted the addition to the front room. Li Lan's parcels generally needing careful handling, his father had put the box on the sofa.

He recognised the shape, hurried over disbelieving, and found a brand name in the corner of the box. His English was poor; those letters, being the make of the guitar of his dreams, he could have recited backwards.

He came back to where Li Lan was talking to their mother. "Li Lan, is that parcel — is it—"

"It's a guitar. For you." She finished it for him. He'd been a considerable help over the May holiday, up at dawn picking flowers and then packing them; some reward was owed.

He made a noise of pure delight, went back to the sofa and tore into it, and at the sight of the instrument in its foam he felt he might faint from happiness. Never mind a hundred kilos of water; he could have done another two hundred.

Startled by the noise, his parents watched him fall on the parcel, and seeing the guitar, his mother looked at Li Lan disapprovingly. "He's already got one. Why buy him another? What a waste of money."

"They're not the same." He lifted it out tenderly. That finish, that feel, those lines. His dream instrument. Perfect.

His mother looked sideways at this display. "How are they different? You play both with your hands. Lanlan, how much was it?"

"Not much. Three hundred and something." Li Lan removed a nought without blinking. He swallowed the five hundred that had nearly escaped him and blinked at her. Evidently he was still young.

"Three hundred? That's dear. I've seen plenty of shops selling them for two hundred, and you could haggle one down to a hundred and something." Outside education, on which she spent without flinching, Chen Ying was thrifty.

His father had seen the shape his son's mouth made and didn't give him away. He liked buying the better thing himself — you get what you pay for — and passed the boy a look: don't worry, I shan't tell your mother. Then, aloud, "A hundred-yuan one is hardly comparable. Look how much better this is than that other one. Play us something, son."

They exchanged a glance. He tuned it and played the first piece he'd learned, which he could now manage without the music in front of him.

His mother listened for a bit and could hear a difference. "It does sound better than the other one, doesn't it?"

He wiped nonexistent dust off it, fondly. "Obviously. Right, Li Lan, let's get back to work." With the guitar of his dreams behind him, he felt equal to anything.