22: The Long Quiet

The first day at the hamlet of two wells was a day Heizi would, for the rest of his life, remember in detail.

It was not because anything happened. It was because nothing did. The woman of the house — her name, he learned in the morning over the second bowl of porridge, was Wei Da-niang; she was the old man's second wife, the first having died of the cough in Da-ye three — set him to small kitchen tasks. Pulling the early greens at the back of the small kitchen garden. Carrying a jar of millet from the inside shelf to the outside basin. Splitting kindling, by the small hatchet that hung at the door, in stacks she arranged in the lean-to beside the hearth.

He worked slowly. He worked, for the first time in twelve days, without watching the path.

Wang Er, beside him at the wood pile in the late morning, said only, after a while: *brother. The hands.* Heizi looked at his own hands. He had been splitting wood at the same pace he split it in the village — fast, for a man with little time. He slowed. He matched, by the second hour, the slower steady pace of the smith's son beside him. The pace was easier on the shoulders. The pace was, he understood, the right pace for this work in this kitchen for this morning, and he had not, for some time, allowed himself the kind of attention that asked what the right pace was.

He filed this also.

Ah Si, by the fire inside, was being kept by Wei Da-niang. The woman had not, after the noon, allowed him out of her sight. She had set him a small task — sorting a small mixed jar of beans into a pile of black and a pile of red — and she had set it in front of him on a wooden board, and he was working at it with the slow steady patience of a child who had not been given a small task to perform indoors, by an unrelated kindly woman, in four years. He did not look up when Heizi came in for water. He did not look up when Wang Er came in to refill the kettle. He sorted. He ate, every quarter hour, a small piece of dried date that the woman set down beside him on the board without comment.

Tie-zhu was on the bench, with the foot in the ash-water again, and Lan-gu was beside him. The girl had brought, this time, a small wooden carving — a half-finished horse, the size of a man's thumb — and a small whittling knife, and she was working on the carving while she watched the foot. She did not, Heizi noted, look at Tie-zhu's face. She did not look at his foot either. She kept her eyes on the small horse. The whittling was an honest small work. The girl was, in her own way, doing for the lame boy what the woman was doing for Ah Si: she was giving him the company of a person who did not need to keep looking at him.

Tie-zhu, on the bench, did not look at her either.

Heizi understood, watching the two of them not look at each other, that the lame boy and the headman's daughter had reached, in their first three hours together, a small private accommodation that neither of them was going to acknowledge for some time. He was — he understood with a small inward catch — going to need to keep his eye on it.

The day went on.

The afternoon was bright and cool. Heizi worked with the old man in the small back garden — pulling out the dried stalks of the autumn bean canes, turning the small earth around the roots of the early greens, carrying small bucketfuls of night soil from the small midden out to the rows. The old man worked slowly, in the old man's way. He stopped every quarter hour to lean on his hoe and look at the eastern slope of the hollow. Heizi, who had been watching the eastern slope himself for some days, did not, on this afternoon, watch it. He was watching the old man's face. The old man's face — at every stopping — went through a small private rearrangement that Heizi could not, at first, name. It took him most of the afternoon to understand what he was seeing.

The old man was checking. The old man was checking, with the small private rituals of a man who had checked this slope every quarter hour of every working day for a decade, whether the slope had given any new sign that he should worry. The checking was the long working habit of a headman of a hamlet in this country. The old man could not, in his own life, sit at the elm bench and look at the southern road; he did, at every quarter hour of every garden's work, the same checking by the eastern slope, where the only path of any consequence into this hamlet from the east had its small first ridge.

Heizi filed it.

By dusk the rows were turned. The old man came back into the house slowly. He sat on his stool by the hearth. He lit, from a small rush taper at the fire, the small clay pipe Heizi had now seen used for the second time in his life. He smoked.

The dinner that night was a small thick millet with a single small egg in it, broken across the pot — an egg from one of the hamlet's three hens, which the old man had set aside, that morning, *for the small one*. The egg was thin and stretched. It went mostly in Ah Si's bowl. The boy ate slowly. He looked, after a while, at the woman, and said: *Da-niang, thank you. I have not had an egg in two years.*

The woman did not answer. She turned her face away — only briefly — and refilled his cup of water.

That night Heizi slept on the floor of the main room with the small steady breathing of the household around him.

He slept well.

The second day was very like the first.

So was the third.

By the fourth, Heizi had begun to forget — for whole half-hours at a time — that he was on a road. He had not, in twelve days before this hamlet, gone half an hour without the small interior register being open in him; without the listening, the watching, the running calculation of distance and time. He found himself, on the fourth afternoon, in the small kitchen garden, kneeling at a row of early greens with Wei Da-niang beside him and small Ah Si in the doorway watching them — a half hour of the afternoon during which he had not, in any internal way, listened for anything beyond Wei Da-niang's small instructions about the pinching of the growing tip of a young mustard.

He realized, when he straightened up to ease his back, that he had stopped listening.

He stopped where he was.

He felt, in his chest, a small inward unease.

He understood — slowly, looking at the small mustard between his fingers — that Wei Lao-han had been right; that the foot had needed five nights, and the small one had needed five nights, and his own hands had needed five nights, and the small mathematics had been correct in the small way it asked them to take the rest. He understood — at the same moment — that the rest was a kind of softening. That if they stayed two more nights the softening would be six nights deep instead of four. That softening, on this road, was a thing a man could pay for.

He went into the house. He found the old man at the small table inside. The old man was unrolling, on the table, a small old hempen cloth on which a few small dried herb stalks had been laid for the evening's tea. He looked up.

"Lad."

"Grandfather, the foot is healing. The crack is closed. The redness is down. Tie-zhu walked to the western well this morning without setting the stick down. He walked back. He did not flinch."

"I saw."

"Grandfather, we should leave tomorrow morning. Not the seventh."

The old man looked at him for a long beat.

"Lad."

"Grandfather."

"You have done the thing the old man told you to do. You are not asking, this evening; you are deciding. I told you, the first morning, to ask. You are deciding."

Heizi held the old man's eye.

"Grandfather, I am asking. I am asking whether the fifth night and the sixth are necessary now that the foot is closed."

The old man was silent for a long beat.

He nodded, slowly.

"They are not necessary, lad. They are useful. They are not necessary. The mathematics still says: stay the seventh. The mathematics is not the only law. There is also the law of the lad's bones telling him the air has changed. I will not tell you to ignore your bones. Cao did not tell you to ignore your bones. The widow at the willow well did not. Listen to them."

He paused.

"What do they say."

"They say — they say five was correct. Six is too many. We should leave at first light tomorrow."

"Then leave."

Heizi nodded. He bowed his head. He went out to the back garden, where Wang Er was at the woodpile, and he told the smith's son. Wang Er nodded. He did not look surprised. He had, perhaps, been waiting for this conversation; he had, perhaps, been keeping his own small register of how soft Heizi had begun to look in the afternoons.

That evening at supper, Heizi told the household. He told the woman. He told Lan-gu. He told Tie-zhu. He told Ah Si.

The woman — Wei Da-niang — laid her hand once on Heizi's wrist, very briefly, at the table. She did not say anything. The hand was small and broad and warm. It rested for the space of two breaths and lifted.

Lan-gu, beside Tie-zhu, looked up — once, only — at the lame boy. The lame boy looked up — once, only — at her. The looks crossed at the table for the smallest possible interval.

Tie-zhu said, very low, after a moment: *I will be ready.*

Lan-gu said nothing.

Ah Si, at his end of the table, looked at the old man, and at the woman, and at Lan-gu, and at his three older brothers in turn, and he said: *Da-niang, I will not forget the eggs.*

The woman turned her face away.

That night Heizi slept badly.

He had thought, at the supper, that the deciding would relieve him. The deciding had not. He lay on the floor on the wadded blanket with the small steady breathing of the household around him, and he listened, for the first night since the second night, for the sound of a foot on the eastern slope. He listened. He did not hear it. He did not hear anything that was not the small expected sounds of a hamlet at night.

He told himself that this was the small return of the ordinary discipline of the road, the listening reasserting itself; that the listening had only been off for three days because the rest had been good for him, and was now coming back because tomorrow was the road again. He told himself this. The telling did not, in any part of his chest, ease the small inward unease.

He slept, finally, for some hours.

He dreamed — for the third time on the road — of his sister.

He dreamed of her, this time, not at the brazier but at the persimmon tree, in the rain, in the dawn of the third day. She was, in the dream, hanging from the lowest branch the way she had hung. Her face was still. He stood under the tree with his forehead against the smooth flat stone, and the rain came down on the back of his neck, and he heard, very faint, on the eastern slope of the lower field, the small dry sound of a footstep.

The footstep was a man's.

It was coming up out of the bean fields toward the persimmon tree.

He did not, in the dream, look up. He kept his forehead on the stone. He listened. The footstep came closer. The footstep came up to the tree. The footstep stopped behind him.

A voice — a man's voice, low, even, the voice of someone Heizi had never heard in his waking life — said, behind his shoulder:

*Lad, the path east of the hamlet, around the small ridge.*

He woke.

He woke into the dark of the headman's main room. He woke with the small running cold of a sweat at the small of his back. He woke listening.

The household was still asleep.

The wind was small in the elm tree at the back of the house.

There was, perhaps two *li* off, on the eastern slope of the hollow, the small intermittent cry of an owl on a low branch. The owl had been there three nights running. The owl was a creature of the slope.

He listened.

He heard nothing else.

He told himself: *the dream is the dream. The bones are the bones. The bones say leave at first light. We are leaving at first light. The dream is — the dream is only the bones speaking to themselves at the hour they cannot speak any other way. Sleep.*

He did not sleep.

He lay on the wadded blanket and listened, in the way Wang Er had taught him to listen, in the second hour under the rock — for the shape of the silence into which a sound might come.

The silence held.

The hour of the rat passed. The hour of the ox came. He listened. He listened until the small grey of false dawn began to come in around the chinks of the wall, and the household began, in the small ordinary way of households on country mornings, to rouse — Wei Da-niang first, slipping out to the western well for the morning's water; the old man at his cot, the small wooden creak of the cot as he sat up; Lan-gu in her alcove behind the curtain, the small turning of cloth as she dressed; Wang Er beside him on the floor, opening his eyes.

Heizi sat up.

"Brother," Wang Er said, very low.

"Yes."

"You did not sleep."

"No."

"Why not."

Heizi paused. He thought.

"I had a dream."

"A bad one?"

"I do not know yet."

Wang Er did not press. He sat up. He folded the wadded blanket. He stood.

The household moved, around them, in the small ordinary motions of a working morning.

Heizi went to the western door. He pushed open the small wooden door. The dawn outside was the dawn it was going to be — clear, cool, with a thin south wind. The eastern slope of the hollow stood bare and even in the grey light. The two wells made the small slow breath of stone-rimmed places at first cock. The small old elm tree at the western edge of the square was beginning to put out, on its lowest branches, the first small soft green of the year's leaves; he had not, in five days, noticed.

He went to the western well.

Wei Da-niang was there, with her wooden bucket on the lip of the stone, drawing.

She looked up at him. She did not say anything. She finished drawing. She set the bucket on the path. She stood at the well and looked at him for a long beat.

"Lad."

"Da-niang."

"You did not sleep."

"No."

"You had a dream."

"Yes."

"What of."

Heizi paused.

"My sister."

The woman closed her eyes for the space of one breath. She opened them.

"Lad, listen. I have lived sixty years in this country. I have had three sons. Two of them are buried. The third is twenty-five and lives in a town two valleys east. I have had, in my life, every kind of dream a woman has of her dead. I will tell you a thing. Sometimes the dead are saying *I am still here, do not forget me*. Sometimes they are saying *I am at peace, do not weep for me*. Sometimes they are saying *do not do the thing you are about to do; pay attention.* You will know which one this is by what the dream made of you when you woke."

She looked at him.

"What did it make of you."

Heizi thought.

"It made me — afraid."

"Then it was the third kind."

She turned. She walked back to the house with the bucket.

Heizi did not, on the path beside the western well, move at once.

He stood for a long moment looking at the eastern slope.

The eastern slope held nothing.

The eastern slope had not, in five mornings, held anything. The owl was on its low branch. The wind was small in the brush. The path that came over the ridge was empty.

He turned. He went into the house.

"Brothers."

They looked up — Wang Er at the door, Tie-zhu at the bench (already dressed, with the foot in its fresh bandage, ready to walk), Ah Si at the hearth (with the small wooden bowl of his last bowl of millet in his lap, half-eaten).

"We go now."

Wang Er said: "We were going at the second hour after dawn."

"Now. Not the second hour. Now."

He turned to Wei Lao-han, who was at his stool by the hearth, smoking.

"Grandfather. The dream said — the dream said go now. I am asking you to honor it. We will go by the upper pasture path. We will not have eaten the noon meal you had planned. Da-niang has packed our bundle; I saw it last night by the door. We will take the bundle and we will go."

The old man looked at him.

He did not, on his stool, ask why.

He nodded.

He stood — slowly. He went to the door. He looked out, briefly, at the eastern slope. He looked back at Heizi.

"Lad."

"Grandfather."

"Five minutes. Bundle the small one. Bandage the foot. Drink. Go."

He paused.

"Lad. Do not look back from the upper pasture path. Whatever you hear on the wind. Do not look back."

The four of them moved.

They moved fast — the small efficient movements of four boys who had, in the last quarter hour, been told that the dream was the third kind. Wang Er took the bundle by the door. Tie-zhu took his small carving — the half-finished horse Lan-gu had given him, last evening, with the small dark ribbon from her braid wound around its body as a wrapping. Ah Si took his small bundle, and the small charcoal-burner's knife at his belt, and a single small dried date Wei Da-niang pressed into his palm at the door, which the boy did not eat but tucked carefully into his coat against his chest.

They went out into the dawn.

At the small marker stone where the upper pasture path left the southern road behind the western well, Heizi paused — in spite of the old man's instruction, in spite of his own promise to himself — and turned, very briefly, to look back at the hamlet.

The hamlet stood in the grey morning light with the two wells and the small open square and the old elm tree and the small low houses with their pine-bark roofs and the smoke of three of the morning fires rising thin and even. Wei Lao-han stood at his door. Wei Da-niang stood beside him. Lan-gu stood at the edge of the open ground near the eastern well, with her hand at the dark ribbon at her braid as if she had not yet noticed the small small space at the end where the ribbon used to be.

Heizi raised his hand. The old man raised his.

He turned away.

The four of them began, at the fast steady pace of the road's discipline, to climb the upper pasture path north.

Behind them, a quarter hour later, on the eastern slope of the hollow — at the place where the small first ridge of the eastern path came over — the small intermittent cry of the owl on the low branch stopped.

The owl had heard, before any human ear in the hamlet, what the wind was bringing in over the ridge.

The riders did not, at the first hour of the second cock, yet show on the ridge.

They were on it.