‘Hei-hai!’
‘Hei-hai!’
He snapped out of his reverie and opened his eyes. The fish vanished. The hammer slipped out of his hands and dropped into the green water below the gate, spraying a watery chrysanthemum into the air.
‘That little monkey’s not all there,’ Director Liu said as he climbed onto the gate and grabbed the boy by the ear. ‘Go on, go break rocks with the women and see if you can find a mother who’ll take you in.’
The mason also came up onto the gate and rubbed the boy’s cold scalp. ‘Go on,’ he said, ‘go find your hammer. Break as much rock as you can. Then you can go play.’
‘If I catch you loafing on the job, I’ll cut your ear off as a snack to go with my drink,’ Director Liu thundered.
Hei-hai trembled. He slipped through the handrail, grabbed the base of a pillar with both hands and hung there.
‘You’ll kill yourself doing that!’ the mason shouted in alarm as he reached down to grab the boy’s hand. But Hei-hai pulled away, clung to a bulge in one of the bridge pylons and slid down nimbly. Pressing up against the stone like a wall lizard, he let himself down into the trough, scooped up his hammer, climbed out and disappeared under a bridge opening.
‘That damned little monkey!’ Director Liu said, stroking his chin. ‘He’s just a goddamned little monkey!’
Hei-hai emerged from under the bridge and timidly made his way to the women, who were talking and laughing. The young women blushed red as coxcombs, wanting to listen to the dirty talk, but afraid to hear it. When the boy appeared darkly in their midst, the women’s mouths clamped shut. A moment later, there was a bit of whispering, and when they saw that he did not react, their voices grew louder.
‘Would you look at that sorry little kid! They let him go half naked in this weather!’
‘You can’t love a kid that doesn’t come out of you.’
‘I hear she does you-know-what at home . . .’
Hei-hai turned away from the women and gazed at the river. The surface was red in places, green in others. Willow trees on the southern bank fluttered like dragonflies.
A young woman in a crimson bandana walked up behind Hei-hai and said softly, ‘Where’s your village, boy?’
He cocked his head and glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. He spotted a fine dusting of yellow fuzz on her upper lip. She had big eyes, but dense, fuzzy lashes gave her a sleepy look.
‘What’s your name, boy?’
Hei-hai was fighting with the star thistles in the sand, pinching off six-and eight-thorned thistles with his toes. Then he stepped on them, snapping off all the thorns and crushing them with feet as hard as a mule’s hooves.
She laughed gaily. ‘That’s quite a talent, dark little boy. You have feet like horseshoes. Why don’t you say something?’ She poked him on the shoulder with two fingers. ‘Didn’t you hear me? I asked you a question.’
Hei-hai felt the two warm fingers trail down from his shoulder and stop at one of the scars on his back.
‘Oh my, where did you get these?’
His ears twitched. That caught her attention, such incredibly long ears.
‘So, you can wiggle your ears,’ she said. ‘Just like a bunny rabbit.’
Now the hand had moved up to Hei-hai’s ear, and he felt the two fingers pinch his delicate lobe.
‘Tell me about these scars.’ She gently tugged his ear until he was facing her, level with her chest. Rather than look up, he stared straight ahead, at red-checked fabric across which lay the tip of a yellowed braid. ‘Dog bites? Boils? Climbing trees? You poor thing.’
Moved, he gazed up at her smooth, round chin. He sniffled.
‘Looking to adopt, Juzi?’ a large, round-faced woman shouted.
Hei-hai’s eyes rolled in their sockets, the whites fluttered like moths.
‘That’s right, my name’s Juzi,’ she told him. ‘I’m from a village up ahead about ten li. If you feel like talking, just call me “big sister Juzi”.’
‘Looking for a husband, Juzi? Have you found the one you want? How many years will you have to hold out till this duckling is ready to mount?’
‘Stinking old crone!’ Juzi cursed the fat woman. ‘Nothing but shit comes out of that mouth.’ She led Hei-hai over to the mountain of broken rock and dug around to find one with a flat surface. ‘Sit on this,’ she said, ‘and stay close to me. Start breaking rocks, but take it easy.’ She found a smooth rock for herself and placed it near his. In a matter of moments, the sandy area in front of the floodgate was ringing with the sound of metal on stone. With Hei-hai as their topic, the women exchanged views on a hard life and the reasons behind it. In this ‘women’s philosophy’ eternal truths were mixed with plenty of nonsense. Juzi paid no attention to it – she was focused on the boy. At first he acknowledged her attention with an occasional glance, but before long he looked to be in a trance, eyes wide, gazing into space, while she looked on anxiously. He grasped a rock with his left hand and raised the hammer with his right. The effort seemed to exhaust him, and the hammer dropped like a heavy object in free fall. She nearly cried out every time she saw the hammer descending toward his hand, but nothing happened – the hammer traced a wobbly arc in the air, but always landed on the rock.
Hei-hai’s eyes were fixed on the rocks at first, but a strange sound drifted over from the river, thin and faint, like nibbling fishes, now near, now far. Straining to capture it with both eyes and ears, he saw a bright gassy cloud rising over the river, which seemed to capture the oscillating hum within. His cheeks grew ruddy and an affecting smile gathered at the corners of his mouth. He had long forgotten where he was sitting and what he was doing, as if the arm that moved up and down belonged to someone else. Then the index finger of his left hand went numb, and the arm jerked. A sound emerged from his mouth, something between a moan and a sigh. He looked down and saw that the nail on that finger was cracked in several places, and that blood was oozing from the cracks.
‘Have you smashed your finger?’ the woman asked as she jumped up and stepped over to crouch by him. ‘Oh no, look what you’ve done! Who works like that, letting his thoughts fly off to who knows where?’
Hei-hai scooped up a handful of dirt while she was scolding him and pressed it on the injured finger.
‘Have you lost your mind, Hei-hai?’ She dragged him down to the river. ‘There’s filthy stuff in that dirt.’ The soles of his feet slapped loudly on the gleaming banks. He crouched down at the river’s edge, where the woman stuck his finger into the water. A trickle of dirty yellow formed in front of his finger. Once the dirt had washed away, red threads of blood quivered in the water. The boy’s fingernail looked like cracked jade.
‘Does it hurt?’
He didn’t make a sound. His eyes were fixed on river shrimp at the bottom. The transparent crustaceans’ feelers fluttered slowly, exquisitely.
She took out a handkerchief embroidered with a China rose and wrapped it around the finger, then led him back to the rock pile. ‘Sit here and relax,’ she said. ‘No one will bother you, you poor little devil.’
The other women stopped what they were doing to cast misty looks their way. Silence lay over the rock pile. Patches of cloud floated through the bright blue sky like lambs, casting fleeting shadows that enshrouded the pale riverbank and the stoic water. The women’s faces wore dreary looks, like barren soil in which nothing grew. After a long moment of indecision they went back to work, as if waking from a dream, the monotonous sound of metal on stone creating an aura of resignation.
Hei-hai sat silently, staring at the red flower embroidered on the handkerchief. Another red flower adorned the edge, this one created by blood from under his fingernail. The women quickly put him out of their minds and went back to laughing and talking. Hei-hai brought his injured finger to his mouth and untied the knot in the handkerchief with his teeth, then packed the finger in another handful of dirt. Juzi was about to say something, but stopped when she saw him retie the handkerchief aro
und the finger using his teeth and free hand. She sighed, raised her hammer and brought it down hard on a dark red rock. Its knife-like edges emitted enormous sparks when they came in contact with the hammer, visible even in the bright sunlight.
At noon, Liu Taiyang rode out from Hei-hai and the mason’s village on a black bicycle. Standing in front of the floodgate, he blew his whistle to stop work and announced that the field kitchen was up, but only available to those who lived farther than five li. Everyone hurriedly gathered up their tools. The young woman stood up. So did the boy.
‘How far away do you live, Hei-hai?’
Hei-hai ignored her, turning his head this way and that, as if searching for something. Juzi’s head followed, and when his stopped swivelling, so did hers. Looking straight ahead, her eyes met the lively eyes of the mason, and they held the look for nearly a minute.
‘Time to eat, Hei-hai,’ the mason said. ‘Let’s go home. Don’t give me that look, it won’t do you any good. We live a couple of li from here, and we’re not lucky enough to eat in the kitchen.’
‘You two are from the same village?’ she asked the mason.
Stuttering with excitement, he pointed toward his village, telling her that he and Hei-hai lived just across the bridge. They chatted cordially, about ordinary things. He knew she lived in the village up ahead, so she could eat in the kitchen and sleep under the bridge. She was willing to eat in the kitchen, but not to sleep under the bridge. The autumn winds were too cold. She lowered her voice and asked if Hei-hai was a mute. Absolutely not, he assured her, adding that he was very intelligent, and at the age of four or five had been a real chatterbox, his crisp voice, like a bean in a bamboo tube, hardly ever stopped. But over time he spoke less and less, and often froze like a statue; no one had any idea what he was thinking. Look at his eyes, so black you can’t see the bottom. The woman remarked that he did seem smart, and for some reason she’d taken a liking to him, almost like a kid brother. The mason said that’s because you’re a good person with a kind heart.
The three of them – mason, woman, Hei-hai – lagged behind, the man and woman talking fervently, as if hoping to drag out the walk. Hei-hai followed, lifting his legs high and stepping lightly, his expression and movements like those of a small tomcat patrolling the base of a wall. Liu Taiyang, who had been delayed in the grove of river locusts, caught up with them on his creaky bicycle when they reached the bridge, which was so narrow he had to get off and walk.
‘What are you hanging around here for? How’d you do this morning, you dark little monkey? Hey, what happened to your paw?’
‘Smashed his finger with the hammer.’
‘Shit! Mason, go see your team leader and have him send somebody else. I won’t be responsible if the kid kills himself.’
‘It’s a work injury,’ the woman complained. ‘You can’t do that.’
‘You and I have known each other for years, Director Liu,’ the mason said. ‘What’s one kid for a big project like this? And what can he do in the production team with that hand?’
‘Damn you, you skinny little monkey.’ Director Liu mulled it over. ‘I’ll give you a new job. You can pump a bellows for the blacksmiths, how’s that? Think you can handle it?’
The boy sent pleading looks to the mason and the woman.
‘You can do that, can’t you, Hei-hai?’ he asked.
She pitched in with an encouraging nod.
Chapter Two
By the fifth day of pumping bellows, Hei-hai’s skin had taken on the sheen and colour of fine coal. The only parts of his body that remained white were his teeth and eyes, which made his eyes more expressive than ever. When he looked at you, with his lips clamped shut, you felt as if your heart had been seared. Coal ash filled the creases next to his nose, and his hair, which had grown half an inch, was layered with the black stuff. By this time, everyone at the worksite was calling him Hei-hai – Dark Boy – and he ignored them all, and he ignored them all, wouldn’t even look them in the eye. Only when Juzi or the mason spoke to him would he respond with his eyes. Everyone had stopped for lunch the day before, when a blacksmith’s ball-peen hammer and a new bucket for quenching steel were stolen. Liu Taiyang stepped up onto the floodgate and railed at the people for half an hour, after which he gave Hei-hai a new job: each day at noon, when the others were eating, he was to remain at the worksite and keep watch over the tools. The blacksmith would bring him food. Director Liu said the little mutt was getting a free lunch out of it.
The crowd broke up, and the worksite that had been buzzing all morning fell eerily silent. Hei-hai walked out from under the bridge and slowly paced the sandy ground in front of the floodgate, arms behind his back, one hand on each buttock, his brows knitted beneath three creases in his forehead. Back and forth he walked, counting the bridge openings. Bubbles formed and popped in the space between his lips. He stopped at the seventh pylon, wrapped his legs around the diamond-shaped pylon rock and began shimmying up. About halfway to the top, he slid back down, raking a big patch of skin off his belly, from which beads of blood oozed. He reached down, scooped up a handful of dirt and rubbed it on the skin. Then he backed up a couple of steps, shaded his eyes with his hand and studied the seam where the pylon met the underside of the bridge. He relaxed.
He ran to where the women were breaking rocks. The one he’d sat on was no longer there. He went unerringly to the place where Juzi had been working, recognising it by the six-sided head of her hammer. He sat on her rock, constantly in motion, changing positions, until he had a direct line of sight to the seventh pylon. Having found the position he wanted, he fixed his stare on the object in the seam.
At noon Hei-hai ran over to the floodgate and hunkered down by the westernmost bridge opening. He let his eyes roam over the forge, the tongs, the sledge, the ball-peen hammer, the bucket, the shovel, every hunk of coal, even the coal chips. When it was time for the others to return to work, he picked up the coal shovel with his right hand, opened the door to the forge and started pumping the bellows with his left hand, sending a cloud of coal smoke into his eyes, which he rubbed hard, turning the blood-streaked sockets purple. The bellows, newly packed with chicken feathers, were heavy, almost too much for one hand. He banged his injured finger, and when he looked down, he was reminded of the handkerchief it was wrapped in. It was no longer white, though the embroidered China rose was still red. Visited by a new thought, he walked out from under the bridge and looked around. At the seventh pylon, he unwrapped the handkerchief, put it between his teeth and started climbing. When he’d struggled to the top, he stuck it into the seam . . .
He poked and jabbed, but the fire was out. Sweat dotted his forehead. Footsteps sounded beyond the opening, and he backed away, terrified, until he was up against the cold stone wall. He watched as a stumpy-legged young man entered the opening at a crouch, apparently intended to show that the archway was low and that he was tall. Hei-hai drew back his lips. The stumpy young man looked at the now cold forge, partially opened the bellows, then let his eyes fall on Hei-hai, up against the wall. ‘You little son of a bitch,’ he cursed. ‘What do you think you’re doing? The fire’s out and the bellows are crooked. You’re just looking for a beating, little bastard!’ Hei-hai heard the sound of wind overhead. He felt a hard-edged hand swish above him, followed by a crisp smack, like a frog being thrown against a wall.
‘Go back to breaking rocks, you little prick,’ he cursed.
Hei-hai knew that this was the blacksmith, a young man with a pimply face and a nose as flat as a calf ’s, covered with sweat. Hei-hai watched as he deftly put the forge back in order. Then he watched him gather up golden wheat stalks from the corner, stuff them into the forge, light them, and, by gently pumping the bellows, produce wispy white smoke, followed by flames. The blacksmith shovelled in a thin layer of wet coal without letting the bellows stop. Another layer of coal was followed by yet another. Now the choking smoke was burnt brown and reeked of coal. He poked at the coal with his shovel, creatin
g bright red flames. The coal was burning.
Hei-hai uttered an excited cry.
‘You still here, you little prick?’
A tall, slight old man ambled into the opening. ‘I thought the fire was banked,’ he said to the young blacksmith. ‘Why’d you bring it up again?’ The voice rumbled, the words sounding as if they emerged from somewhere below the old man’s diaphragm.
‘This little prick put it out.’ He pointed at Hei-hai with his shovel.
‘Let him pump the bellows,’ the old man said. He wrapped a yellow oilskin apron around his waist, then two more pieces around his ankles to protect his feet. All were covered with holes from hot sparks. Hei-hai knew this was the old blacksmith.
‘Let him pump the bellows, so you can concentrate on your hammer. That way you won’t have to work so hard.’
‘Let a little kid like him pump the bellows?’ the young blacksmith muttered unhappily. ‘He’s so monkey-skinny, the forge will bake him into kindling.’
Liu Taiyang burst in on them. ‘What’s the problem?’ he asked with a look of exasperation. ‘Didn’t you say you wanted someone for the bellows?’
‘Not this one! Just look at him, Director Liu, he’s so skinny I doubt he could lift a fucking coal shovel. Why’d you send him to me? That’s like adding rotten food to a plate just to make it look full.’
‘I know exactly what’s on your devious mind. You were hoping I’d send you a woman to do it, weren’t you? The prettiest one of the bunch, maybe? How about the one in the crimson bandana? Fat chance, you dog turd! Hei-hai, pump the bellows.’ He turned back to the blacksmith. ‘You can teach him, damn it!’
Hei-hai walked timidly over to the bellows, but his eyes were on the old blacksmith’s face, looking almost expectant. He noticed that the old man’s face was the colour of burnt wheat, and that the bulb of his nose looked like a ripe haw berry. He came up and began teaching Hei-hai the basics of pumping a bellows; the boy’s ears twitched as he took in every word.