They come upon the workshop exactly at that moment when, wandering through the fog at a certain point, they decide to entrust themselves to fate: they will not search for the monasteries they had decided upon, that is hopeless, they will, rather, be content with whatever turns up in their path, and exactly when they are resting underneath the roof of another empty pavilion it’s as if Stein hears something, some kind of hammering, in the distance, he holds up his finger, indicating to his companion to be quiet for a moment, and so they listen to the silence, and then it can be clearly heard, just not continuously, that certain hammering, and they start off immediately, because they can find it! The workshop! Stein enthusiastically shakes the frozen interpreter, it would be so fantastic, just imagine, he tries to breathe some life into the interpreter, the workshop of a Buddha-carver! And here, in Jiuhuashan! Where a workshop like that is exactly the same as it was hundreds and hundreds of years ago, because this is not a place where anything can change, he says, thank God, everything here is so far away from the world, it has remained intact and unspoilt; in a word, he tries to distract the interpreter’s attention from the cold for, really, he is filled with enthusiasm at the thought that this hammering means that they can find the place where that wondrous Shakyamuni was made, so they go on, along the steps, like two drenched chimeras in their rain ponchos, they take a few steps in the direction of the sounds, then they come to a halt because the sound stops, then it starts again, then they hear it again, Stein says it’s from this direction, the interpreter says it’s from the other direction, so that they keep orienting each other among the sounds until, after about half an hour of this ghostly searching, the interpreter, frozen to the bone, runs out of patience, and says, this is exactly the point from where we started off before, and he hears the hammering sound from the same distance as before, and so there is no point to this, he can’t go on, although he is not able to say exactly what his plan would be if he wouldn’t go on, in any event, they sit down beneath the first pavilion they come across a few metres away, they drink some hot tea from the portable tea flasks, they gaze into that great, wondrous, dazzling nothingness all around them, and as they stare into the fog fixedly, well, they see — at a distance still visible from the pavilion, namely, no more than 10 metres to the left, on the side — the entrance of a gate looming in the fog: a gate, says Stein; and that’s it, the entrance to the workshop, the place they had been searching for so much until now in vain, the hammering sound was coming from here, the hammering sound breaking off with those little pauses — the workshop in which someone created that wondrous Buddha underneath the canvas.
To their greatest surprise, the master is a very young and diminutive person, he cannot be more than 30 or 32, and when the interpreter relates who they are and why they have come, and they exchange business cards, he immediately and warmly invites them into his office which is, in reality, more like a little hut attached to the workshop, and he sits each of them down in an ornate armchair clearly kept there only for significant visitors, more precisely, he invites Stein to sit in one while he sits in the other one and the interpreter finds a place on a low kitchen stool next to the mouldy wall, and he offers them tea, and they have to relate in great detail where they have come from, what they want, how much it costs to live in Hungary, the name of which the master is decisively familiar with, indeed, he is already saying that the lifework of Sándor Petőfi[8] is known to every older Chinese, because the great figure of modern Chinese culture, Lu Xun,[9] translated the poem ‘Freedom, Love’, after which others, and with more frequency, tried their luck, so that the result was an apparently complete edition of Petőfi’s works from which every Chinese above the age of 30 can, even today, recite Lu Xun’s translation of ‘Freedom, Love’; as he himself, the master, can too; after which they go on, and they have to say what the population is in Hungary, and they have to disregard the fact that neither he, nor any other Chinese, can believe that altogether it has a population of 10 million, as 10 million is nothing, let alone a people, and no kind of tiny 10 million could have ever produced such a great figure as Sándor Petőfi — or Stein, our host adds appreciatively, Stein, who honours Jiuhuashan with his visit from such a distance, of which, however, the master does have a very vague idea, he says and then he interrogates the interpreter, what is his profession, and after a while he suddenly starts to hem and haw when he hears that László Stein is a poet, and he eyes this László Stein with ever-more respect but also with a kind of searching gaze, he squints, he scratches his beard, then suddenly he is possessed by a kind of cloudless gaiety, like someone overcome by impishness, that all the same — what do centuries and geographical distance mean to him — not only is it the colleague of Petőfi but also Petőfi himself, or as he pronounces it, ‘Peiduofei’, who has popped out of the fog — so that, like a kind of Taoist God, it is Petőfi himself that he greets in the modest person of Stein, who no longer tries to attempt to explain that not only is he not Petőfi but he is also not even a poet — for it is clear from the master’s beautiful, intelligent gaze that he wouldn’t believe him, he would merely attribute it to obligatory modesty and obligatory courtesy, as well as to the high level of secret protection of the visit, mandated from above, so that no more is said about this topic but, rather, to the greatest joy of the guests, the conversation turns to what takes place in this workshop, how long has it been here, whom did the master learn from, and whether he was the creator of that colossal Buddha which the guests now enthusiastically describe. In the meantime, they are thoroughly warmed up by the tea and the lightly heated office, so that it is not too difficult for the interpreter to leave it and go into the workshop, where however it is exactly as cold as it is outside, because there is no heating there, and they don’t even close the door, because the workers are constantly coming and going, so obviously there is no point, yet they have to go into the workshop right away and stay there for a while, because when the master hears their words of praise for his magnificent Buddha, he immediately wants to show his guests, so they can be persuaded with their own eyes that what has pleased them so much was definitely created in this workshop and by his own hands, at which point Stein says to him that it’s not just only the statue pleases them but also that there is a kind of extraordinary strength within it, a kind of radiant power which can only come from the Buddha; the master’s beautiful eyes become veiled, he embraces Stein around the shoulders, he leads him to his own table among the workers and has Stein sit down next to him on a three-legged chair.
This part of the atelier is like a kind of diamond-polisher’s workshop, where young boys sit in a row behind small tables, each bent over a piece of wood in the pale light pouring in through the tiny windows, and with the small chisel and small light hammers in their hands they try to complete — from the piece that has been given to them — a certain phase of the work until, relates the master, they can do it perfectly; but the workshop does not only consist of this room, he says, there are also huge hangars, but there’s no hurry for that, now they should watch him, he motions for Stein to come closer, and from the table he pulls onto his lap, from a huge disorderly pile, a Guanyin statue, roughly half a metre in height, seemingly nearly ready, and with a colour, more than anything else, reminiscent of the light of the full moon — he pulls it onto his lap, and with a hammer and a fine-pointed chisel in his hand, he bends over it, and from this point on does not talk, does not utter a single word, does not explain, but begins, with the chisel and hammer to form the countenance of the statue, for the most part otherwise largely finished, and for a while the guest has the feeling that he wants to show him that he’s doing it for him, that he wants to initiate him into the secrets of the creation of a Guanyin head, but as time passes this feeling fades away, and finally vanishes, because after about half an hour, during which the master is completely bent above the face of the Guanyin, Stein edges up to him from one side, so that he can watch even the smallest movements, he observes as one eye comes to life, then the other, as these two eyes now see, as the living forehead of the Guanyin slowly emerges from the bare wood, its nose, lips, chin, gaze, by that time it is completely obvious that the master has ceased doing this for him, to be completely accurate: Stein has stopped existing as far as the master is concerned, he has forgotten him, he looks up at Stein, surprised, and Stein is certain that this is the case, because when, after about an hour’s worth of work, he leans back for the first time, holding the statue away from himself and looking at it, examining it, turning it a little to the right and a little to the left, in order to determine, to measure in the incidentally falling light what the countenance of the statue now shows, he sees that the master needs time to apprehend that Stein is there beside him, for his consciousness to awaken to the fact that someone — Petőfi himself! — has been watching him the whole time, he needs just as much time as he needed an hour ago for all this to leave his head, to become immersed in his work of meticulous, breath-fine chiselling, the results of which he now displays proudly, a beautiful, otherworldly, godly gaze; it is not possible to know how he did it even though Stein was standing next him the whole time, he did not stop observing the point of the chisel, the edge of the hammer or the surface of the fragrant wood sanded down in advance, even for a moment, but he does not know how that sacrosanct, mournful beauty was conjured out of that wood, and he almost starts to cry because he does not know—until he observes, in the meantime, another reality, that of the interpreter who is suffering greatly, who in no way has spent this short hour in feverish immersion but paced up and down among the young workers of the workshop, because he has really begun to freeze again in the penetrating cold, as he now reveals, he must get out of this murderous, this bone-penetrating cold — endured until now so as not to be a disturbance — but right now, immediately, he is shivering desperately, he must get out, he cannot stand it any more, he looks at Stein in torment, so that, with the master at their side — who seems to be teasing them — they go back into the office, he seems to find it amusing that the interpreter is so cold, certainly, he nods roguishly, it is fairly cold considering that it’s May, as if the whole thing were just a good little joke, then everything is solved, because from somewhere in one of the little rooms behind the office a real huo tong — a local variation of the renowned bath heated with embers — turns up, and you can sit in it, then you can wrap yourself up while you sit in it, it’s as if the interpreter has ended up in the redeeming vaults of heaven, with indescribable happiness on his face, he allows himself to be sat down in the warm cauldron, to be wrapped in blankets up to the waist, and then a woman and two tiny waifs bring fresh tea, and everyone is filled with great cheerfulness: the interpreter is sitting in the huo tong, and nearly fainting from the beneficial effects of the heat, he closes his eyes, so the matter of the interpreter has had a happy end; as for Stein, however, who perhaps due to the spirit of the place is this time better able to withstand the difficulties, the master once again motions for him to follow, and then leads him across into two gigantic workrooms adjacent to the workshop, partially dug into the earth and connected to each other: because standing here are enormous blocks of wood, arranged next to one another according to the various phases of work: here looking like wood sawed down for sale, piled up, there already joined into one piece; or freed from the most important surpluses, so that from the rough contours showing the enormous form of a Buddha or bodhisattva[10] the workers, who seem to be older and more experienced than the ones in the workshop, peel away, with astoundingly skilful and confident blows of their hatchets, any unnecessary remaining material; the wood shavings fly in the wake of their movements, the master is very pleased that his guest is able to delight in their work with such passion, he stands behind him proudly, at times patting him on the shoulder and motioning for him to observe how things operate in his workshop, to study as much as he wishes what is going on with these amazing materials — then he tries to ask him, does he understand that the workers here are joining and pressing together and planing these huge blocks of wood, then they’ll saw them down, and finally they’ll carve off whatever is not necessary, all right, fine, Stein tries to convey his words with vigorous gesticulations, but how does a Buddha emerge from this? — at which point the master, as if he has deduced this time what Stein wants to know, stands in front of the framework of a gigantic statue, he doesn’t even reach up to its knee, and with his tiny hands this tiny person points at the roughly carved head up there in the heights and, as if it were a question of some impish trick, winks at the guest and, with an indescribably expressive movement, signifies that, well, it’s like this, if everything is ready, then he comes along, he climbs up there and he just carves nicely with his chisel until, well. . there is a Buddha.