Hei-hai looked at the blacksmith, wrinkles appearing at the corners of his mouth, though it was impossible to tell if he was happy or sad. The blacksmith flung his tools away, crouched down and sulked. As he smoked a cigarette, his good eye rolled in its socket, resulting in a puzzled, angry stare, his eyebrows wriggling like tadpoles. He flicked his cigarette butt away and stood up.
‘Shit!’ he said. ‘Light a fire, Hei-hai, and let’s get back at it.’
Hei-hai pumped the bellows lethargically. The blacksmith exhorted and cursed him, but he didn’t look up. The steel was hot. The blacksmith struck it a couple of times and then carried it over to the water bucket. But this time, instead of quenching the steel gradually, like the old master did, he dunked it all the way in; the water sizzled and released a twisting cloud of steam. He lifted the chisel out of the water, held it up and cocked his head to examine the pattern and colour. He then laid it on the anvil and rapped it lightly with his hammer, splitting the steel in half. Dejected, he threw his hammer to the ground and flung one half of the steel as far as he could outside the bridge opening, where it landed on a rock. It looked ugly.
‘Go pick that up,’ he barked at Hei-hai. The boy’s ears twitched, but his legs stayed put. For this he received a kick in the pants, a bang on the shoulder with a pair of tongs and a deafening shout in the ear: ‘Go bring that thing back to me!’
Head down, Hei-hai walked over to the chisel, bent over slowly and picked it up. It sizzled in his hand. There was a smell of fried pork. The chisel thudded to the ground.
The blacksmith could hardly believe his eyes. He burst out laughing. ‘I forgot it was still hot, you little prick. Your trotter is cooked. Let’s eat!’
Hei-hai walked back to the bridge opening, ignoring the blacksmith as he thrust his scalded hand into the bucket of water. Then he walked slowly out from under the bridge and bent over to examine the broken chisel. It was silvery with a rough, pitted surface. The muddy ground on which it lay was steaming: a thin, almost invisible whiteness. He bent lower until his rear end was sticking up in the air; his shorts hiked up to expose thighs that were much lighter in colour than his calves. One of his hands rested on his back, the other hung straight down and swung closer to the chisel, water dripping onto it from his fingertips. Each drop hissed and bounced noisily as it shrank to form a pattern, smaller and smaller until it disappeared. He felt the heat on the tips of his fingers, heat that made its way through his chest and into his heart.
‘What the hell are you doing there, bent double with your ass in the air like a pilloried capitalist roader?’ the blacksmith yelled at him.
Hei-hai’s hand shook as he picked up the chisel; then, grabbing his behind with his left hand, he sauntered back. When the blacksmith saw yellow smoke rising from Hei-hai’s hand, his eye seemed riveted. ‘Let go of it!’ the blacksmith shouted. ‘Drop it!’ His voice now sounded like the screech of a cat. ‘Drop it, you little prick!’
Hei-hai crouched down in front of the blacksmith, opened his hand and shook it a couple of times. The chisel rolled twice and stopped at the blacksmith’s feet. He stayed on his haunches as he looked up into the blacksmith’s face.
‘Stop looking at me, you son of a bitch, stop it!’ The blacksmith was trembling. He looked away. Hei-hai stood up and walked out from under the bridge.
He recalled looking into the cloudless western sky after he emerged. A white half-moon hung in the sky like a tiny cloud.
He was worn out from thinking. There was a buzzing in his ears. He got up from the old blacksmith’s stool, and went over and lay down on the man’s bedding. He pillowed his head on the jacket, and his eyes drifted closed. He felt someone caressing his face and his hands. It hurt, but he bore it. Two drops of water fell heavily, one onto his lips, which he swallowed, the other onto his nose, which stung.
‘Wake up, Hei-hai, have something to eat.’
His nose ached terribly. He clambered to his feet and saw her. Tears threatened to spill from his eyes, but he forced them back down.
‘Here,’ she said as she untied her crimson bandana. It held two corn buns, one with a piece of pickled cucumber folded into it, the other a leek. A long strand of her bleach-tipped black hair lay across the buns. She picked it up with two fingers and flicked it away, where it landed with a sound that reverberated in Hei-hai’s ears.
‘Eat up, you little mutt,’ she said as she rubbed his neck.
The boy kept his eyes on her as he bit into the buns and chewed.
‘How did you burn your hand? Did that one-eyed dragon do that to you? Are you going to bite me again? You’ve got sharp fangs.’
The boy’s ears flapped like fans. He raised a bun in his left hand and the leek and the cucumber in his right, and covered his face.
Chapter Three
A thundershower struck that night. When the workers showed up the next morning, they saw that the rocks had been washed clean and the sandy ground levelled. Water in the trough was twice as high as the day before; the few remaining clouds were reflected in the brilliant blue water. There was a sudden chill in the air; the autumn wind bored through the bridge openings and, together with the rustling of the sea of jute plants, chilled people from the inside out. The old blacksmith’s padded jacket, shiny as armour, was missing its buttons, and he could only close it by drawing together the lapels and securing them with a red plastic-wrapped electric cord. Hei-hai, still wearing only a pair of shorts, was bare-chested and barefoot, but he didn’t seem to suffer from the cold. A red plastic-wrapped electric cord also held up his shorts, in place of the cloth sash he’d either lost or put away. His hair had grown wild and was now two inches long, every strand standing up like the spines of a hedgehog. The workers looked at him with pity and admiration as he walked over the rocky ground, with its pooled rainwater, in bare feet.
‘Aren’t you cold?’ the old blacksmith asked.
Hei-hai gave a confused look, as if he hadn’t understood the question.
‘I asked you if you’re cold,’ the blacksmith repeated, raising his voice a bit. The look of confusion disappeared as Hei-hai lowered his head and began lighting the forge. He lightly pumped the bellows with his left hand, holding the coal shovel in his right, and stared at the burning stalks of wheat. The old blacksmith took his greasy jacket off the bed and draped it over Hei-hai’s back. The boy squirmed with obvious discomfort. As soon as the blacksmith walked off, Hei-hai took off the jacket and laid it back on the bed. With a shake of his head, the old man crouched down to smoke.
‘No wonder you like to stay close to the forge,’ the young blacksmith said with a bored yawn. ‘That’s how you keep warm. Shit, you might be little, but you’re cunning as hell.’
A whistle sounded at the worksite. Deputy Director Liu called everyone together. The workers gathered in front of the floodgate, facing the sun, the men standing with their arms folded, the women stitching shoe soles. Hei-hai stole an uneasy look at the seam above the seventh bridge pylon. The weather’s turning cold, Director Liu said, so we’re going to have to put in overtime and pour concrete for the foundation before the freeze sets in. Starting today, overtime will be from seven to ten at night. You’ll earn half a jin of grain and twenty cents each day. No one complained, though there were as many different expressions as there were faces — more than two hundred of them. Hei-hai watched the mason’s pale face turn red and then purple, while the woman’s ruddy face blanched, first grey, then white.
That night three gas lamps illuminated the worksite. One lit the areas where the masons worked, a second the area where the women broke rocks. Most of them had children and plenty of housework at home, so they gave up the half a jin of grain and twenty cents. No more than a dozen young women stayed to work under the artificial light. Since their homes were far from the worksite, they gathered their courage and slept squeezed together under one of the arched openings, after sealing both ends with flashboards, leaving a narrow opening in front through which they climbed in and out. Juzi sometimes slept with the other women, at other times she went to the village (a cousin whose husband had a temporary job in the county town and didn’t always come home at night had invited her to sleep there).