She turned and walked over to the rock pile, sat in her place and stared at the endless ripples on the river. She didn’t break a single rock.
The women commenced whispering.
‘Look, another one’s turned dumb.’
‘I’ll bet Hei-hai knows black magic.’
‘Get your ass over here, Hei-hai, you little prick,’ the mason called out as he walked toward the bridge. ‘How could you bite a friendly hand?’
At that moment, a bucketful of hot, dirty water flew into the mason’s face. He was standing in the right spot, the aim was perfect, and not a drop of the water was wasted. His soft brown hair, his jacket and the upturned collar of his red athletic shirt were coated with iron filings and coal dust. The filthy water ran from his head in rivulets.
‘Are you fucking blind?’ he stormed into the opening. ‘Who did that? Speak up. Who was it?’
No response. The black smoke had dissipated; the fire in the forge was blazing. The old blacksmith, his skin crimson, was taking a white-hot chisel out of the forge with a set of tongs. Sparks of molten steel popped off the tip. He laid it on the anvil and tapped the edges with his hammer. The anvil answered crisply. With the tongs in his left hand, he turned and moved the chisel, hitting it with his ball-peen hammer. The one-eyed blacksmith’s sledge came down hard on each spot the older man’s hammer hit, moving like a chicken pecking at rice; the younger man’s sledge gave no ground.
Hot air swirled. Amid the frightful sound of steel being tempered, sparks sprayed from the chisel and landed on the oilskin aprons and foot protectors, where they sizzled and gave off white smoke. They also landed on Hei-hai’s bare skin. He grimaced, baring two rows of white wolf cub teeth. Blisters rose on his belly, but he gave no sign of feeling pain, and hypnotic flames danced in his eyes. His thin shoulders hunched, his neck tucked down between them, and with his arms folded in front, he cupped his hand over his mouth and chin so tightly his nose was a mass of wrinkles.
A point was pounded onto a blunt chisel as its colour cooled from dusky red to silver grey. The ground was covered with white slag, hot enough to ignite straw, which disgorged lazy threads of white smoke.
‘Who splashed me, damn it!’ the mason roared in the face of the young blacksmith.
‘It was me, so what!’ The blacksmith said, cocking his head elegantly; his body seemed to glow as he stood with his hands on his sledge handle.
‘Are you blind?’
‘Only the one eye. I flung the water, and you walked into it. Just your luck.’
‘That’s a ridiculous argument!’
‘These days the bigger fists win the argument.’ He clenched his fists, making his muscles bulge.
‘Come on, then, one-eyed ogre. I’ll put the light out of the other one,’ the mason said, drawing up threateningly. The old blacksmith approached innocently, and bumped into the mason, who sensed something radiating from the old man’s sunken eyes, a kind of sign, and his muscles went slack. The old man looked up and casually sang a line from either an opera or a popular song.
For love of your sword, your learning, your youthful virility
I followed you across the earth, wracked by storm and hunger, enduring countless hardships…
He sang only that much, then stopped, and it was clear that he had swallowed the melody’s last mournful strains. He glanced at the mason again, then lowered his head to quench the newly sharpened chisel in the bucket; but just before he did that, he rolled up his sleeve and thrust a hand into the water to test the temperature. A deep purple scar on his forearm, round with a raised centre, did not really resemble an eye, but it looked like one to the mason, who felt that the strange eye was watching him. Twisting his lip, he felt as if a spell had been cast. He emerged from under the bridge as if walking on air, and disappeared for the rest of the day.
The boy’s eyes ached, his sun-baked scalp burned. He stood up from her seat and strolled back to the forge. It was dark under the bridge, so he felt his way over to the old blacksmith’s folding stool. As he sat on it, his mind a blank, his hands abruptly began to burn, so he pressed them against the cold stone wall and directed his thoughts to the past.
Three days earlier, the old blacksmith had taken time off to return home and fetch padded clothes and bedding, saying that the older you got, the more you valued your legs, and that he didn’t feel like walking home after work each day. He would spread his bedding near the forge to stay warm at night. (Hei-hai eyed the blacksmith’s bedding. The northern edge of the bridge opening had been sealed by a flashboard, though sunlight shone through the gaps and fell on a greasy padded jacket and mangy dog-skin bed mat.) When his master left for home, the younger one became the ruler of the forge. He entered that morning, chest thrown out, belly protruding, and announced amiably, ‘Light off the forge, Hei-hai. The old guy’s gone home, so it’s just you and me.’
Hei-hai just stared.
‘What are you gawking at, you little prick? You think I’m not good enough? I’ve been with the old guy three years, I know all his tricks.’
Hei-hai lazily started a fire as the blacksmith smugly hummed a tune. He thrust several pieces of steel from the day before into the mouth of the forge. Hei-hai made the fire inside roar, adding red to the black of his face. The young blacksmith burst out laughing. ‘Hei-hai,’ he shouted, ‘anyone would think you were a Red Army soldier, with all those scars.’
The boy pumped the bellows even harder.
‘How come that foxy foster mother of yours hasn’t come to see you lately? She’s probably mad that you bit her. What does her arm taste like? Is it sour? Sweet? You sure know how to enjoy good food, you little fuck! Give me a chance to hold that tender arm of hers and I’d gnaw it like a cucumber.’
Hei-hai picked up the tongs, pulled a piece of white-hot steel out of the forge, and banged it down on the anvil.
‘That was fast, boy!’ The blacksmith picked up a medium-sized hammer, smaller than his sledge but bigger than the ball-peen, gripped the steel with his tongs, and pounded with all his might. Hei-hai stood watching. The blacksmith was strong, and his hammer seemed to have a life of its own. The pointed end of the chisel was perfectly tapered, like a newly sharpened pencil. Hei-hai looked sadly at the old blacksmith’s ball-peen hammer. The younger man carried the chisel over to the bucket and quenched it in the water, his actions a mirror image of those made by the older man. Hei-hai turned away and fixed his eyes once more on the hammer lying alongside the anvil. Its wooden handle was as shiny as the horns of an old bull.
The young blacksmith worked with quick precision, and in short order had tempered a dozen or more chisels. He sat proudly on the master’s stool and rolled a cigarette. After putting it between his lips, he told Hei-hai to bring him a live coal to light it. ‘You see, son? We did just fine without the old guy.’
At the height of his self-satisfaction, masons who had taken the new chisels to the worksite reappeared.
‘What kind of shitty work are you giving us, black-smith? The tips either break off or bend. We’re working with stone out there, not bean curd. Wait till your master returns, and don’t use our chisels for practice.’
They dumped the chisels on the ground and left. The blacksmith’s face darkened. He shouted for Hei-hai to get the fire going again and reheat the chisels. Soon after, when he’d hammered and quenched them a second time, he personally carried them to the worksite. But he’d no sooner returned to the bridge than the masons followed, dumping more ruined chisels on the ground and raining curses on his head. ‘You pathetic fuck, quit messing with us. Look at your work! Every fucking tip has broken off!’