24: The First Weeping

He did not weep at the doorstone. He did not weep when they carried Ah Si into the back room of Wei Lao-han's house — the only one of the eight houses, with the southern and the eastern still burning down to embers, that had a back room left to lay a body in. He did not weep when Wei Da-niang washed the boy. He did not weep when the woman dressed him, in the way of the village's old women, in a piece of clean unbleached hempen cloth she had been keeping, in a small chest at the foot of her cot, against the day when one of her own would be laid out and there would be no time to weave.

She brought out the cloth without speaking. She used scissors that had been, by the look of the handle, her mother's. She cut the cloth to fit the small body. The cloth was wide for the small shoulders; she folded it carefully along the edge; she did not — Heizi noticed, watching from the doorway — leave a single seam visible.

He did not weep when she folded the small charcoal-burner's knife into the boy's right palm. He did not weep when she folded the small dark date — the one Lan-gu had handed back to him at the doorstone, the one Ah Si had said *for Da-niang* — back into the boy's left palm. Heizi had brought the date in to her, very quietly, while she was still washing the body. He had said: *Da-niang, he meant this for you.* The woman had taken the date in her broad warm hand and had looked at it for a long moment. Then she had laid it back into the small left palm, and she had said, *no, lad, it was for him. Send him on with it.*

He did not weep when, in the late afternoon, the hamlet's thin neighbor — alive, with the burn down his arm bound in a strip of cloth Wei Da-niang had cut from the same bolt — came over with a small fired-clay jar containing a quarter-cup of grain wine, the only wine left in the hamlet. He set the jar at the head of the boy's pallet without speaking, and he bowed once, very slowly, and went out.

He did not weep when, at dusk, Wang Er came into the back room with Tie-zhu under his arm — the lame boy walking with the new bad walk of someone whose foot had begun, in the late morning, to fail him again, perhaps from the running he had done with Wang Er down the upper pasture path when he should not have been running — and the two of them stood at the foot of the small body, and Tie-zhu, with the small whittling knife Lan-gu had loaned him days ago, set on the small chest of Ah Si the half-finished carved horse with the dark ribbon. He did not weep when Tie-zhu, after a moment, said: *little brother. We will finish him.*

He did not weep when Lan-gu came into the back room very late, at the second hour of the night, in a coarse hempen robe that had been her mother's, and knelt at the head of the pallet, and laid one of her hands very lightly on the small forehead of the boy who had killed for her. She did not say anything. She knelt for a quarter hour. Then she stood, slowly, and bowed once to Wei Da-niang, and bowed once to Heizi, and went out of the back room.

He did not weep when Wei Lao-han, at the second cock, came out into the open ground in front of the elm tree to look, in the small returning quiet of a hamlet that had stopped burning, at the eastern slope of the hollow. Heizi was at the western well, drawing water for the body. The old man did not say anything. He stood at the elm with his hands inside his sleeves and looked at the eastern ridge for a long time. After a while he came over to the well. He laid one hand briefly, the way the old people had, on the top of Heizi's head — once, light, gone — and turned and went back into the house.

He did not weep at the grave.

The grave was dug at the second hour of the morning. Wei Lao-han had said, the previous evening, that the boy would be buried in the small flat place at the back of the hamlet where the hamlet's own dead had been buried for four generations. He had said: *the small one is one of us now. He died on the doorstone of one of us. He killed for one of us. He is not going into the brush for some other party to find him in some other year. He is going under, here, in our ground.* Wei Da-niang had nodded.

Heizi had said: *grandfather, we must be away. The patrol —*

The old man had said: *the patrol will not be back tonight. The patrol will be back in two weeks, with a slip to write up the burning. They will not look at one new grave in a hamlet's old burying ground. They will look at five black roofs and a dead member of their own party in a back room and they will write what they will write. The small one is going under here, lad.*

Heizi had not pressed it.

The burying ground was a small flat place behind the eastern well, marked by a low old wall. The wall had been built, the old man said, in his great-grandfather's year. It was made of round field stones laid without mortar. Inside it, in long even rows, were perhaps thirty mounds of various ages, the oldest sunk almost level with the ground, the newest — Wei Lao-han's first wife, the old man said, a thin small mound from Da-ye three — still raised. Most of the mounds had no markers. A few had small flat field stones, with no inscriptions, set at the head.

They dug at the eastern end of the third row.

Heizi dug with Wang Er. The earth was loose. The grave was shallow but not so shallow as the bank-grave of Yan Liu-er. They had a spade now — Wei Lao-han's own — and the morning was clear and cold and there was no rain. They worked for half an hour. Tie-zhu sat on the wall, with the bad foot held off the ground, and watched. He did not weep either. He had wept inside the back room at the second hour of the watch, in the small dark, beside the body, with the carved horse on the chest of his small brother and his own small whittling knife in his hand — the old kind of weeping that uses water; Heizi had heard it through the curtain and had not gone in. There were kinds of weeping that were a man's own.

When the grave was ready, they brought the body out.

Wei Lao-han carried the head. Wei Da-niang carried the small light feet. Heizi walked beside, with one hand at the boy's shoulder, not quite carrying any weight but not quite letting go either. Lan-gu and Wang Er walked behind. Tie-zhu came last, slowly, with the spade he had taken from Wang Er to give himself a thing to hold.

They laid the boy in the trench.

The wadded coat that had been Heizi's at twelve, that Mei-er had repatched two winters ago, was on the boy still — Wei Da-niang had not, in the dressing, taken it off; she had said, *let him have his big brother's coat under the cloth; the cloth is for the village's seeing, the coat is for the long sleep* — and the coat lay folded around the small body like the small returning of a thing the household had loaned out and was getting back.

The small carved horse with the dark ribbon was on the boy's chest.

The small charcoal-burner's knife was in the right palm.

The small dark date was in the left.

Wei Lao-han said, in the small clear voice of a hamlet headman speaking the last ordinary word over a body that had been laid in his ground:

"Sleep."

He turned and walked, slowly, back to his house. He did not stay for the filling.

Wei Da-niang stood for a moment longer. She did not say anything. She bent — the broad warm hand reaching down — and laid one finger, very lightly, on the small forehead. She straightened. She walked, at her own pace, after her husband.

Lan-gu lifted the spade from Tie-zhu's hand. The lame boy did not protest. The girl began to fill the grave from the eastern side. Wang Er took up Wei Lao-han's spade and began from the western. Heizi stood at the foot. He did not have a spade. He understood, at this grave as at his sister's, that he was not the one who would fill.

The earth went down on the boy.

It went down on the wadded coat and on the carved horse and on the small charcoal-burner's knife and on the small dark date. The first turning of earth was, again, the hardest. Lan-gu, with the first spadeful suspended, paused for one beat and tipped it; the earth came down on the cloth at the small thin chest and on the carved horse and on the small still face in the wrappings; and after the first spadeful the second was easier, and the third, and the small low mound was made by the noon hour.

Lan-gu set down her spade. She knelt at the head of the mound and laid one of her broad — broader than Heizi had thought, on a girl of sixteen — palms flat on the wet earth. She kept her hand there for the space of perhaps a hundred breaths. She stood, finally. She picked up the spade. She walked back across the burying ground to the gate of the low wall.

"Heizi."

It was Wang Er.

"Yes."

"Walk with me."

The smith's son took him by the elbow. He walked Heizi out of the burying ground, around the low wall, to the back of the hamlet's burnt eastern row, where the smell of wet ash was strong but where there were no longer any people, where there was no one to see and no one to hear.

Wang Er stopped him at a low rock at the back of one of the ruined houses.

"Brother. Sit down."

Heizi sat down.

"Wang Er — "

"Sit. Sit, brother. The grave is filled. The household is in the house. Tie-zhu is in the back room. Lan-gu is at the well. The patrol is not coming today. There is no longer any work for an hour. Sit."

Heizi sat with his back against the low rock. He looked at his hands. His hands were black with soot. His left wrist had a small swollen burn along the back of it. He had not, since the doorstone, looked at his hands.

He thought, looking at them: *these were the hands that did not lift the hammer to the courier in the gully.*

He thought: *these were the hands that took the small carving off the neck of Yan Liu-er at the second bend of the second valley.*

He thought: *these were the hands that, an hour ago, set the small dark date back into the small left palm.*

He thought: *these were the hands that came across the open ground at the run, and were not fast enough.*

He thought: *these were the hands that did not, at the persimmon tree, on the third morning of a year in another life, go through the curtain to the back room when there was still time.*

The list of what these hands had done — and not done — sat in his chest. He looked at his hands.

The first sob came out of him very small.

It was not, at first, a sob — only a small catch at the top of his throat, the kind of sound a man makes when he has been holding a breath too long. Wang Er, beside him on the low rock, did not move. Wang Er did not touch him. Wang Er had been beside Heizi enough now, for fifteen days, to understand that the touching, on this morning, would have stopped what had begun, and what had begun was a thing that had been waiting since the third dawn of a year in another life and was now coming up of its own accord.

The second was larger.

The third was a sob.

Heizi put his face in his hands. The hands were black. The black went onto his face. He did not, in the first minute, weep words. He wept only the small old catching sound of a young man whose chest had been a closed jar for some weeks, whose lid had at last come off, whose contents had begun to pour. He wept for Mei-er. He wept for the persimmon tree. He wept for the rain on the third morning. He wept for the bowl of millet on the head of his sister's mound. He wept for the wadded coat across his foster father's shoulders in the empty house. He wept for Yan Liu-er at the second bend with the small wooden tiger at his neck. He wept for the courier in the gully with the small white-cloth bundle on the flat stone. He wept for the family on the log with the four-year-old's flat eyes. He wept for the small mathematics of an old man at an elm tree that had been the wrong mathematics. He wept for the small body in the wrappings under the small low mound at the eastern end of the third row of the hamlet's old burying ground.

He wept for the part of himself that had — without his having wished it — been chosen, on the road, against his will, by the small accumulating events of fifteen days, to be a leader.

He wept for the part of himself that had not, on the first night under the persimmon tree, been a leader, and had been only a fifteen-year-old boy on a kang turning a bead between his fingers.

He wept for the lost ordinary boy.

He wept until the weeping became dry — not stopped, only no longer wet, the body running out of water for the work — and then he wept the dry kind a while longer. The dry kind was harder than the wet. He did not, on the low rock, know that there was a dry kind; he had never wept anything before this morning; he had — until this morning — never wept anything at all in his life on-page or off, not at the persimmon tree, not at the lower field, not at the doorstone of Wei Da-niang's house. He had carried the not-weeping all the way here. The carrying had been heavier than he had known.

He wept for what the carrying had cost.

When the dry kind, finally, slowed — when the small thin shoulders of the boy on the low rock were no longer moving as they had been — Wang Er, beside him, said, very low:

"Brother."

"Yes."

"It is all right."

"I know."

"You did right by him."

"I do not know."

"You did right by him. By the small one. By him at the doorstone. He could not have walked that road another month, brother. The cough was already in his chest at Cao Ergou's, although he hid it. I heard it twice in the night under the rock. He hid it from you. He did not want to slow us. He died of an arrow, not of the cough. The arrow was a death he would have chosen. The cough — the cough was the death he was going to die anyway. He spared himself the cough. He spared us the carrying. He chose. That was a small one's choosing. Honor it."

Heizi did not answer at once.

"He killed a man," he said, finally.

"Yes."

"He killed a man before I did."

"Yes."

"I am the older. I should have been the one."

"Brother. Hush. The killing was not yours to do that morning. You were on the upper pasture path. You ran. You came as fast as the path let you. The killing belonged to the small one because the small one had run faster, and because the man was at Lan-gu, and because Ah Si had a knife in his hand at the right moment. The killing was his. The choosing was his. Do not — do not, brother, take that from him."

Heizi nodded.

"Wang Er."

"Yes."

"At the gully."

"Yes."

"If I had — if I had killed the courier — the patrol would not have come. The slip would not have been written. The hamlet would not have been burned. The small one would not be under the mound. The two old women would be alive. Lan-gu would not have a line at her temple. The thin neighbor would not have a burn down his arm. The mathematics — Wei Lao-han's mathematics — would have had a different number to count from."

Wang Er was silent for a long time.

He said, finally: "Brother."

"Yes."

"You could not have killed him. Not at the gully. Not that morning. Not at fifteen. We have spoken of this. I could not have either. We are who we are. The man at the gully is alive somewhere now writing his slips for someone else. The man at the gully is going home tonight to a wife. You did not give the man a death. You gave him another year of the small things. He will, for the rest of his life, never know how much that other year cost in another country he has never seen. He will not know about Ah Si. He will not know about the two old women. He will not know about the line at Lan-gu's temple. He will live in the small unaware peace of a working man."

He paused.

"That is a kind of crime, brother. The not-knowing of the cost. But it is not — listen to me, brother — it is not your crime that he does not know. It is his crime, if it is anyone's. You were fifteen at the gully, and you could not. The not-killing was not the wrong thing. The wrong thing was the world that put you on the gully bottom in front of him. Old Zhang told you. *The world will require killing of you. You will fail it sometimes. The failing will cost you. Live anyway.*"

He paused again.

"Live anyway, brother. Live anyway. Carry the small one. Carry the two old women. Carry the line at Lan-gu's temple. Carry the thin neighbor's burn. Carry them. Live anyway."

Heizi looked at his hands.

The black on them, with the wet of the weeping, had begun to streak. The streaks were the small thin lines of a young man's tears, drawn down the back of the wrist and across the burn and down the line of the thumb and into the palm. The lines, in the noon light, made a small careful pattern that he would not, for the rest of his life, ever quite forget.

He nodded.

"Yes," he said.

Wang Er did not say anything more.

They sat on the low rock for a long time. The smith's son did not, at any point, touch him. The smith's son had decided — Heizi understood, slowly, in the time of the long sitting — that the not-touching was the thing the small one had needed; that there were, in this life, kinds of presence that did the work of touch better than touch did; that Wang Er had, at fifteen days on the road, become a brother whose company had a shape Heizi had not, in the village, fully understood.

He filed this also.

By the second hour after noon they got up. They walked back into the hamlet. They went into the back room where Tie-zhu was. The lame boy was lying on his side on the bench with his face toward the wall. He had, by the small unevenness of his breath, been weeping his own kind for some time. He had stopped now. Heizi sat down on the bench beside him. He laid one hand once on the lame boy's shoulder. He did not say anything. After a while Tie-zhu turned, very slowly, and looked at him.

"Big brother."

"Yes."

"He gave me the horse."

"He did."

"I did not — I did not know how to take it from him."

"He gave it. The taking was his giving. Take it."

Tie-zhu nodded.

"Big brother."

"Yes."

"We will not get there with all of us."

"No. We will not."

"We are three now."

"Three."

"Will the three of us — "

"Yes."

The lame boy closed his eyes.

In the main room of the house, Wei Lao-han was at his stool with the clay pipe. Wei Da-niang was at the hearth. Lan-gu was at the back basin washing the small whittling knife in cold water.

The hamlet, beyond the door, lay quiet in the noon light. Three of its eight houses still stood. Five were black. The two wells were the two wells. The elm at the western edge of the square was beginning, on its lowest branches, to put out its first soft green.

Tomorrow morning the three of them would go on north.

The road would, for the remaining three brothers, be a road of three.

Heizi sat on the bench beside Tie-zhu, with Wang Er at the door, and the small carved horse with the dark ribbon was, very small, on the small low mound at the eastern end of the third row in the burying ground beyond the eastern well, under perhaps four hands of earth, in a hempen wrapping that had been folded along its single seam by hands that had not, for the cutting and folding, allowed any seam to show.