The female replied, Right, right, that damned sheldrake is always following me around, saying filthy things. Too bad it didn’t kill him…
Hei-hai paced slowly along the riverbank, trying to see through the mist. He could hear ducks quack-quacking noisily on the opposite bank. He crouched down, rested his large head on his knees and wrapped his arms around chilled calves. The rising sun burned his back as if it were a forge.
He’d spent the night under the bridge instead of going home. When the cock crowed he heard the old blacksmith speaking loudly in the bridge opening. Then quiet had returned. Unable to go back to sleep, he’d gotten up and walked across the chilled sand to the river’s edge. Seeing the old blacksmith’s hunched back, he’d started walking toward him but slipped in the sand and fell on his rear. By the time he was back on his feet, the old man had disappeared in the mist.
Now he was on his haunches, watching the sun cleave the mist like a knife through bean curd. Across the river, ducks cast superior looks his way. The water came into view as a bright, silvery expanse, but to his disappointment, he could not see the bottom. There was a commotion at the worksite — Director Liu was fuming: ‘Shit, something crazy happened at the forge. The old bastard rolled up his bedding and took off without a word to anyone. The little bastard is gone too. What happened to organisational discipline?’
‘Hei-hai!’
‘Hei-hai!’
‘Isn’t that him crouching by the water?’
Juzi and the mason ran over and picked him up by the arms.
‘Why are you crouching here, you poor thing?’ she asked as she picked straw from his scalp. ‘It’s too cold to be doing that.’
‘There are sweet potatoes left over from last night. Get old one-eye to bake them for you.’
‘The old blacksmith’s gone,’ Juzi said sombrely.
‘He is gone.’
‘Now what? Should we let him stay with the other one? What if he mistreats him?’
‘Don’t worry about that, the boy can take anything. Besides, we’re here, so he won’t do anything stupid.’
They dragged Hei-hai over to the worksite. At each step he turned to look back.
‘Walk properly, you little dope,’ the mason said. ‘What’s there to see in the river?’ He squeezed Hei-hai’s arm.
‘I thought the old guy kidnapped you, you little shit,’ Liu Taiyang said before turning to the young blacksmith.
‘And you, since you squeezed the old guy out, make sure you keep up the work. If you don’t fix the chisels for us, I’ll gouge out your good eye.’
The young man smiled arrogantly. ‘Wait and see, old Liu,’ he said. ‘But I get his wages and grain rations, or you can look for someone else.’
‘We’ll wait and see. If you do good work, fine. If not, you can fuck off.’
‘Light a fire, son,’ the blacksmith ordered Hei-hai.
Hei-hai was like a zombie all morning. His actions were erratic, his work sloppy. Sometimes he shovelled in too much coal, filling the opening with black smoke, other times he laid the chisels back end first, heating the wrong end.
‘Where the fuck is your head?’ the blacksmith cursed angrily. He was working up a sweat, excitement over his own skills seeping out through his pores. Hei-hai watched as he stuck his hand into the water bucket before quenching the steel. A rag covered the burn on his upper arm, which gave off a rank fishy odour. A pale cloud seemed to obscure Hei-hai’s vision; he was downcast.
After nine o’clock the sunlight was beautiful; a single ray lit up the western wall of the dark bridge opening, filling the space with light. The blacksmith took the tempered chisels and personally delivered them to the masons for inspection. Hei-hai tossed away the tool in his hand and tiptoed out of the opening. The sudden brightness was just as dizzying as sudden darkness. He froze for a moment before breaking into a run, and was standing at the river’s edge within seconds. The ridged dog-turd grass eyed him curiously. Purple water lilies and the brown caps of nut grass greedily sniffed the smell of coal dust on his body. The subtle aroma of water plants and the light stink of silver carp floated over from the river. His nose twitched, his lungs expanded like a turtledove’s wings. The river was white, shot with black and purple. His eyes stung, but he kept staring, as if to penetrate the quicksilver sheen on the surface. Then he hiked up his shorts, tested the water and sort of danced in. At first the water came up only to his knees, but it quickly reached his thighs. He hiked his shorts all the way up, exposing his grape-coloured buttocks. He was now standing in the middle of the river. Sunlight from all directions rained down on him, painted his body, bored into his black eyes and turned them the colour of green bananas at the dam. The river flowed swiftly, each wave striking him in the legs. He was on hard sand, but soon the water washed it out from under his feet and he was standing in a hollow, his shorts soaked, half stuck to his legs and half floating behind him, dyeing the water around him black from coal dust. Sand churning at his feet caressed his calves. Two amber-coloured drops of water hung on his cheeks, and the corners of his mouth twitched. He walked around in the water, feeling the bottom with his feet, seeking, searching.
‘Hei-hai! Hei-hai!’ The mason was calling him from the bridge opening. ‘You’ll drown out there, Hei-hai.’
He heard the blacksmith come up to the riverbank, but didn’t turn to look. All the man could see was the boy’s green back.
‘Come out of there!’ the blacksmith said, picking up a dirt clod and throwing it; it sailed over Hei-hai’s head, brushing the tips of his hair before falling into the water to create oval ripples. A second clod hit him in the back. He fell forward, his lips touching the water. He spun around and, huffing and wheezing, waded fitfully toward the river’s edge. He stood in front of the blacksmith, dripping wet. His shorts stuck to his skin, his little pecker sticking up like a silkworm chrysalis. The blacksmith raised his bear-like paw to slap him, but suddenly felt as if a cat’s claw had scored his heart. The boy’s eyes never left his face.
‘Go stoke the fire. My chisels are as good as the old guy’s,’ he said proudly, patting Hei-hai on the nape of his neck.
During an idle moment at the forge, the blacksmith put the sweet potatoes from the night before into the forge to bake. A light wind blew in from the jute fields. Sunlight shone straight into the arched openings. The blacksmith singing as he turned the sticky potatoes over with his tongs.
From Beijing to Nanjing, I’ve never seen anyone string up an electric light in their pants.
‘Have you ever seen that, Hei-hai? How about your adopted mother’s pants?’ That reminded him. ‘Run over and pick some radishes,’ he said. ‘When you bring them back, I’ll give you a couple of potatoes.’
Hei-hai’s eyes lit up, and the blacksmith saw his heart leap in the space between his ribs. The boy took off like a jackrabbit before the man could say another word. As he clambered up the levee, Hei-hai heard Juzi call his name in the distance. He turned to look, but was blinded by the sun. He ran down the other side and into the jute field. The plants were scattered across the field, no columns or rows. Where more seeds had landed, the stalks were thin, like fingers or pencils; where there were fewer plants, they were as thick as sickle handles or arms. But they were all the same height. Looking out from atop the levee, it was like gazing at a gently rippling lake. Now he parted the plants as he moved, suffering the onslaught of thorns and sending mature leaves to the ground. Quickly arriving at a spot parallel to the radish field, he turned and headed west. When he neared the field, he fell to his hands and knees and began to crawl; in no time, he spotted dark green radish tassels. Sunlight shone through the tassels upon an expanse of red radish tops. He was about to emerge from the jute field when he quietly shrank back after seeing an old man crawling along a ridge in the radish field, taking wheat seeds from a sack and planting them one at a time in the furrows between the ridges. The autumn sun proudly shone down on his back. A light wind stirred up dust that landed on his sweat-soaked white jacket and turned it brown along the wet spots. Hei-hai crawled backwards a few metres and flattened out, resting his chin in his hands so he could see the radishes through the jute stalks. Great numbers of red eyes looked back at him from the field, and the tassels were transformed into black hair that fluttered like bird feathers.