A red-faced young man strode over from the sweet potato patch and stopped behind the old man. ‘Hey!’ he said abruptly. ‘Did you say we had a thief last night, old man?’
The old man scrambled to his feet and stood with his hands at his sides. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘he stole six radishes and left the tassels behind, plus eight sweet potatoes, but he didn’t take the vines.’
‘Probably one of those assholes working on the floodgate. Keep an eye out. Wait a while before coming in for lunch.’
‘That’s what I’ll do, brigade commander,’ the old man said.
Hei-hai and the old man watched the red-faced man climb the levee. The old man sat down in the radish field, directly facing a panicky Hei-hai, who backed up some more. Now the dense jute plants blocked his view.
‘Hei-hai!’
‘Hei-hai!’
Juzi and the mason were on the crest of the levee calling to him in the jute field. The sun was behind them, shining on workers leaving the site.
‘I saw him slip into the jute,’ she said. ‘I think he went in to piss.’
‘I wonder if the one-eyed ogre was abusing him again,’ he said.
‘Hei-hai!’
‘Hei-hai!’
Two voices, one female, the other male, swept over the tips of jute plants like gliding swallows; the house swallows skimming after grey moths flew off in fright, and did not land for a long while. The blacksmith stood in front of the bridge opening, his good eye on the man and woman standing shoulder to shoulder; he felt his stomach begin to swell. Moments earlier, when the woman and the mason had come looking for Hei-hai, the way they talked and acted, a stranger would have thought they were looking for their own child. ‘Just wait,’ he fumed under his breath, ‘you damned lowlifes!’
‘Hei-hai! Hei-hai!’ Juzi called out. ‘He probably crawled into the jute field and fell asleep.’
‘We should go look for him, don’t you think?’
‘I don’t know, should we? Yes, let’s do.’
They walked hand in hand into the jute field. The blacksmith ran up the levee and watched the wave-like motion of jute leaves as the stalks rustled, hearing one male and one female voice calling out ‘Hei-hai’, the sound seeming to come from underwater.
Tired of crawling, Hei-hai sighed and rolled over, looking up at the sun. He lay on a bed of dry sand, thinly covered with jute leaves, pillowing his head on his hands, his belly seeming to cave in; a yellow leaf with red spots floated down and covered the coal dust in his navel. He looked up at the sky and saw blue sunbeams of varying widths filtering down through the leafy canopy. The jute leaves were like a flock of golden sparrows in an aerial dance. At other times the golden sparrows seemed like moths, the spots on their wings dancing happily, like the brown film over the young blacksmith’s eye.
‘Hei-hai!’
‘Hei-hai!’
The familiar sounds brought him out of his dream state. He sat up and bumped a thick jute stalk with his arm.
‘That boy, he must be asleep.’
‘I don’t think so, not the way we’ve been calling him. He probably slipped away home.’
‘The little imp…’
‘It’s really nice here…’
‘Yes, it is…’
Their voices grew softer, like fish blowing bubbles on the surface. Hei-hai felt a faint electrical current pass through him and became nervous. Up on his knees, he shifted his ears and adjusted his sight until his gaze slipped past all obstructions and he saw his friends, their bodies split and sectioned by the jute stalks. A breeze set the leaves of stilled jute plants in motion, but not the stalks. A few more leaves fell to the ground, and Hei-hai heard them stir the air. He was surprised and puzzled to see a crimson bandana float down onto the jute plants, where it was caught on thorns, a silent banner. Then the red checked jacket was on the ground. The jute plants rushed toward him like surging waves. Slowly he got to his feet, turned his back, and started walking, a strange feeling crashing over him.
Chapter Five
Juzi and the mason appeared to forget about Hei-hai over the next couple of weeks, and even stopped going to the bridge to see him. At noon and night, he heard meadowlark songs in the jute field, which always brought a cold grin to his face, as if he knew what the bird was saying. The blacksmith did not notice the meadowlark’s call until several days after Hei-hai. From his place under the bridge he discovered the woman and the mason’s secret by careful observation. Whenever the meadowlark call sounded, the mason was absent from the worksite. The young woman, beset with anxiety, would look around before laying down her hammer and walking off. Not long after she left, the meadowlark stopped singing. Then an awful look would disfigure the blacksmith’s face, and he would be spoiling for a fight. He began drinking. Hei-hai bought him a bottle of potato spirits every day from the little shop across the bridge.
On this night, waves of moonlight cascaded down like water as the meadowlark sang. A warm and tender southerly breeze wafted from the jute field to the worksite. The blacksmith grabbed a liquor bottle and downed half of it in one go, drawing tears from his good eye. Deputy Director Liu Taiyang had gone home for his son’s wedding, and the workers were slacking off. Masons scheduled to work at night lay under the bridge and smoked, and with no chisels to repair, the forge fires all but died out.
‘Hei-hai, go get me some radishes…’ The alcohol burned in the blacksmith’s stomach; he was nearly breathing fire.
Hei-hai stood by the bellows, stiff as a post, staring at him.
‘Are you waiting for me to give you a beating?’
Hei-hai walked into the moonlight, skirted the jute field with its many mysteries, and walked through the multi-hued sweet potato field to reach the radish field, which teemed with mirages. By the time he returned with a radish, the blacksmith was snoring loudly in bed. Hei-hai laid the radish on the anvil and stirred the fire with tremulous hands, but was unable to make those blue and yellow flames dance again. He changed angles, glancing at the radish on the anvil. It seemed wrapped in a dark red cloth, tattered and ugly. He hung his head in dejection.
Hei-hai slept badly that night, tossing and turning under the bridge. Now that Director Liu was gone, all the workers went home to sleep, leaving nothing but a thin layer of straw under the bridge. Moonbeams slanted into the openings, filling them with a cold glint that was accompanied by the sounds of flowing water, rustling jute plants and the snores of the blacksmith, who slept under the westernmost arch. There were other, more puzzling sounds as well, all of which found their way into his ears. He was mesmerised by the shimmering straw spread on the stone floor, so he stacked it and burrowed in. When the wind still found its way into the pile, he curled up and stopped moving. He wanted to sleep, but sleep eluded him. He could not stop thinking about that radish. What kind was it? Golden, yet transparent. One moment he was standing in the middle of the river, and the next in the radish field. He was searching, searching everywhere.