Once again he breaks the silence.
‘Twenty yuan.’
‘Twenty yuan for what? The ticket home?’
‘Sometimes a little more than 20. But less than 30.’
‘Oh, that’s what you get for your work?’
‘For one day.’
‘Have to go up twice. I carry it with chinga wood.’
That’s bamboo rod, the interpreter explains. The porters carry the goods with it. The bundles are hung from the two ends of the bamboo, the bamboo is flexible and, as it sways with every step, there is a tiny pause, smaller than an intake of breath, but of vital importance, when the weight is not pressed down upon the shoulders. That is when he takes a step.
So he’s a porter, Stein looks at the interpreter. Yes, the interpreter confirms, and he believes that they are called mountain coolies.
My God, on these steps, with heavy packages, twice a day! For 20 yuan!
‘Have you had dinner yet?’
‘I don’t live here.’
‘But it’s really time for dinner already.’
‘First I’ll go home. Then I’ll have dinner.’
It’s as if the stairs would never end. They have been going downward for at least 10 or 15 minutes. The visitors are ill at ease, because they are afraid that this person will be insulted at how they are walking exactly like him. They don’t want him to think that they are mocking him.
Stein looks back at the interpreter, like someone trying to indicate that he has something important to say, and he waves at him to not walk behind their backs but beside the man, on the other side.
‘It’s good to go like this.’
‘Yes, I understand.’
‘Four steps here, four steps there.’
‘So that by the fourth step you have to reach one side of the stairs, and then by the fourth step reach the other side?’
‘It’s good to go like this.’
‘Why? Is it easier this way? You don’t get as tired?’
The porter does not answer for a long time. It seems like he isn’t going to when he looks at the interpreter again. Then he stops. Now he doesn’t seem impassive at all. He looks with unmistakable concern at the two foreigners. Then he points to Stein, and motions to the interpreter to translate what he is saying.
‘It’s good to go like this.’
And he motions for them to wait. Much more slowly, he goes with four steps to one railing, he looks at Stein, then he takes four steps to the other, and he looks at Stein again. He doesn’t move; the two of them slowly go down to where he is, and stand by his side. He no longer breathes a word, just looks at Stein, nodding, this is important. Stein nods too, he understands. Then he sets off again, the two following him. Suddenly a temple emerges from the fog. It stands in utter muteness, without a single trace of life, clearly long since closed. The carrier leads them up to the gate, points at it, and says: ‘Huacheng Si.’
And in the next moment he is lost in the fog.
The End, but of What? Tang Xiaodu
Zeng Laide, the calligrapher from Sichuan Province, lives in his own glass-palace museum in a northern district of Beijing. He is wealthy, influential and celebrated; all day long, assistants and students hand him whatever he needs, and, having won the unconditional respect of some of the most prominent members of the literary and artistic circles of the capital, now, on the occasion of his 47th birthday, they — these eminent literati — sit around the table next to relatives and friends from Sichuan. Undefined women standing close by serve magnificent, special, as-yet-untasted dishes from Sichuan, and the company, after a certain self-consciousness, quickly recovers; gay and ever-higher spirits dominate the gathering in which Zeng Laide himself — this pot-bellied, energetic person with serious, elegant eyeglasses (not really suitable for his round face) perched on his nose — is the most elated of alclass="underline" he takes up the thread of conversation ever-more frequently, and tells stories and anecdotes in a loud voice, spouting the punchline to his audience who listen in grateful silence, until finally, when the dinner comes to an end, most of the guests respectfully take their leave and only a few remain.
Zeng Laide leads this small group into a large atelier where he uses one empty wall to put up — as one of his friends now explains to Stein in subdued tones — his calligraphic works, painted on finely grained, thick, snow-white paper: he puts them up here as soon as they are finished, so that he can examine them from an appropriate distance, but, really, all of them, both the large ones and the small ones, he completes them on a large table in the middle of the room, he keeps his brushes here too, it is said — Stein hears the account, he keeps the inks here, the jars, the basins, the cleaning tools, smaller pieces of paper, the plastic buckets containing prepared ink, the table is also big enough to hold quite a few books and the daily post’s most urgent missives along its edge. During the short introductory talk the guests become silent, the master himself speaks to no one, he picks up things and puts them down, walks around the table, choosing between the various pieces of paper, looking into the biggest pails like someone who must ascertain that the ink is sufficient and adequately thickened; indeed, even his countenance, which only minutes ago was so full of amusement, is serious now, concentrated, almost morose, as if something were disturbing him, the two guests are thinking that maybe it is they, the European visitors, László Stein and the interpreter from Shanghai, who, having turned up so unexpectedly, are disturbing him, although it soon emerges that exactly the opposite is the case: it is for them, the two Hungarians come from afar, that the master of the house, warmed up by the hot plum wine, is preparing to do something.
The silence is now complete, but the master still walks up and down and to and fro in the atelier, placing something a little closer here, a little further away there, scraping into a jar on the table, moodily pursing his lips, like someone displeased with what he has found, then he suddenly whirls round and runs to a corner of the workshop and, with one movement, pulls out an enormous roll of white paper, dashes with it to the table and spreads it out with lightning speed, then runs back and takes a giant brush from one of the plates at the same time as he picks up from the floor a red pail half filled with ink and jumps back to where the paper is, then — continuously stirring the ink in the pail with the brush — steps back, eyes the paper, pushes his funny glasses further up his nose, bends his head forward, looks up, steps closer, steps back again, mixes the ink and eyes the paper — in short, there is something in him which makes it hard to take him completely seriously, something which makes it seem as if the entire scene is a joke, just another roguish Sichuan prank, and that the laughter will break out again in a moment, just as it has until now, over there by the dinner table, because these preparations, as he takes the slow measure of this enormous piece of paper on the table, as he vehemently scratches away at the ink in the pail, are somehow exaggerated and theatricaclass="underline" it is too amusing for anyone to think that this master, now, with all this aromatic plum wine in that notable belly, and with that huge pail and that huge brush in his hand, is going to paint something amazing for his illustrious company.