30: The Hut at the Eastern Pine

The hut, in the morning of the next day, was not what they had expected.

Heizi had risen at the first cock — earlier than the second cock he had told Wang Er, because the lip of the wider valley was a place from which a watching man could be seen at first light if his shape went above the brush. He had moved, slowly, on his stomach to the edge of the thicker stand of pine. He had lain there for the long quarter hour while the dim grey of false dawn became the proper grey of morning.

He had looked.

The hut, from the lip, was perhaps a *li* below them, on the eastern side of the wider valley, in a small flat place at the foot of an old eastern stand of pine. It was small. It was perhaps eight paces square. It had a roof of pine bark, mended in places with new shingles cut from a recent felling. It had a door — a hide flap, like Cao Ergou's — and a single small window in the western wall. The thin column of smoke that they had seen from the upper slope rose, this morning, from a small clay-pot chimney at the back of the southern wall.

Beside the hut, on a small flat stone slab, an old man was washing his hands.

The man was perhaps seventy. He was small. He was thin. He had on a coarse hempen robe that had been, in some long-past year, dyed a dark grey-brown — the kind of dye that the country gave its old robes after enough seasons of wear. He had no hair on his head; the head was shaved smooth, in the way of a Buddhist monk; the shaving was old enough that the small surface of the scalp had acquired the particular weathered look of a head that had been shaved every fortnight for a great many years.

A monk.

A monk in a hut at the foot of the eastern pine, alone, in the upper hills.

Heizi watched him for a long moment.

The old man, at the slab, washed his hands slowly and carefully, in the small attentive ritual of a man for whom the washing of hands was not only a practical morning act but a small ordered observance. He used a single small wooden dipper to take cold water from a small clay pot at his foot. He poured the water over each finger in turn — beginning with the smallest of the right hand, ending with the thumb of the left. He did not, in the washing, hurry. He did not, in the washing, look up.

After the washing he sat down on a small low stone bench beside the slab. He drew up, from inside the front of his robe, a small string of dark wooden prayer beads — perhaps a hundred and eight; Heizi could not, at this distance, count exactly — and began, in the same slow deliberate way, to tell them. His lips did not, at any time, move. The telling of the beads was — by what Heizi could see — a silent practice.

He did the telling for a quarter hour.

When he had finished, he rose — slowly, with the small careful set of an old man's bad knees — and turned and went into the hut through the hide flap.

Heizi came back from the lip.

He sat down beside Wang Er and Tie-zhu in the small dry place at the back of the thicker stand of pine.

"Brothers."

"Yes."

"It is a hut. There is one man. The man is — the man is a Buddhist monk. He is old. He is alone. He prays at the slab beside the hut at first cock. He does not speak; the practice is silent."

Wang Er thought.

"It is not the old scholar, then."

"It is not. The man with the lame mule said the old scholar at the three streams answers to *grandfather* and to nothing else, and he gave us no sign that the old scholar was a monk. This is a different man. There is — there is one stream visible from the lip. There is no pine grove that I can see; only the eastern stand of pine; the grove the man with the lame mule drew was a circular grove, not a stand. This is not the place."

He paused.

"But it is a place. And the man is alone, and old, and at his prayer. We will — I will — go down and ask him for one night. We have walked for seven weeks. The lame brother's foot wants a roof. We have not slept under a roof since the hamlet of two wells. I will go alone. The old man with the beads will not, by the look of him, be afraid of one young man at his door. Two would be more careful for me; three would be too many. I will go."

Wang Er nodded.

"How long do we wait."

"If I do not come back by the second hour after noon, you will go on. The path north along the lip continues. You will see the second stream further east, perhaps two days' walk. Continue along the lip. Do not come down."

"Brother."

"Yes."

"You have been saying *if I do not come back by the second hour, go.* For some weeks. We have not been needing to use it. I want you to know — Tie-zhu and I have spoken; we will, if it ever comes to using it, use it. The lame brother understands. We will not — we will not be foolish."

Heizi looked at him.

He nodded.

"Thank you, brother."

He went down.

He went down the slope through the upper pines slowly, in the broadening morning. He came out at the foot of the slope into the small flat place beside the eastern pine. He stopped at the edge of the small clear ground perhaps ten paces from the hut. He bowed.

He called, low: *grandfather, we are travelers.*

The hide flap lifted.

The old man came out. He came out at the small unhurried pace of a man who had heard the address called at his door perhaps several times in his years here, and who had decided, long ago, that the only honest answer was to come out into the morning at his own pace and look.

He looked at Heizi for a long moment.

"Lad."

"Grandfather. I — we — we are three. Two are above on the lip. We are going north. We have been on the upper hills for seven weeks. The lame brother's foot — we ask for one night, grandfather. We have a small portion of millet to share for the meal. We will work for what is given."

The old man looked at him.

"Why three."

"Grandfather?"

"Why three. Why not two, four, five."

Heizi paused.

"We — we were four, grandfather. The fourth died in the burning of the hamlet of two wells, three weeks ago. He was twelve. He killed for a girl and was killed by an arrow at her doorstone. We buried him there. We are three since."

The old man nodded slowly. He did not, at the door, speak again for a long beat.

"The hamlet of two wells," he said. "Wei Lao-han's hamlet."

"Yes, grandfather."

"He is alive?"

"He is alive."

"His daughter Lan-gu?"

"She is alive."

"His wife Da-niang?"

"She is alive."

The old man closed his eyes for the space of one breath. He opened them.

"Bring your brothers, lad. Bring them down. There is room. There is millet. There is hot water. The slab outside is mine; the hut inside is for a guest's hour or a night. Bring them."

Heizi bowed.

He went up. He brought Wang Er and Tie-zhu down. They stopped at the small clear ground. The old man looked at the three of them. He laid one hand once on Heizi's head — light, gone — and then on Wang Er's, and then briefly on Tie-zhu's. He did not say a word in the laying.

They went into the hut.

The hut inside was the small economy of an old monk's life. There was a low cot at the eastern wall, with a single coarse hempen blanket folded at one end. There was a small wooden table at the center, with a single wooden bowl and a single pair of plain wooden chopsticks. There was a small low altar at the back, no taller than a man's knee, with a small carved wooden figure at the center — the same patient Buddhist figure as the small old shrine in the narrow draw of two days ago, but a fuller carving, more recent, with the features still clear.

In front of the figure stood a small clay cup of fresh water and a single thin stick of incense, not yet lit.

The old man went to the small fire at the back. He poured them each a small cup of hot water from a small clay pot. He laid out, on the table, a small piece of dried bean curd from a small jar, cut into three small even portions. He laid the portions on a small wooden plate. He did not, in any of the laying, speak.

They drank their hot water.

After the small cups were empty, the old man sat down at his stool. He looked at the three of them.

"My name," he said, "is no longer my name. I gave it back to the temple in some year I no longer count. The temple does not have the use of it now. I do not have the use of it. You will call me *grandfather*, like the lad said in his calling at the door. Or you will call me *master*, if you cannot help it. You will not call me by any name, because there is no name."

He paused.

"I have been at this hut for nineteen winters. I came here in Wen-di's eighteenth year. I have been a man of the small flat place beside the eastern pine for as long as some of you, lads, have been on the earth."

He looked at Tie-zhu.

"Lame brother."

"Yes, grandfather."

"Show me the foot."

Tie-zhu, with the careful patience he had brought from Wei Da-niang's bench three weeks ago, unbound the foot. He held it out. The skin was healthy. The crack on the inner ridge had long since closed. The new broad-heeled sandal had taken the upper hills' work without asking the foot for more than the foot could give.

The old man looked at it.

"It is a good foot. It is healing. The work the woman of two wells did — yes, I have lived in this country thirty years, lad, I know who lays an ash-water bath; I know the small green poultice she made; the work she did is good — it has held. The foot will, in another two weeks of slow walking, be the foot it was at fourteen, lame brother. You will not, in this life, walk without the lameness. You will walk, however, well enough."

"Yes, grandfather."

The old man turned to Heizi.

"Lad. The man with the lame mule sent you?"

"Yes, grandfather. Lu Wen-han."

"He gave you a small dark jade?"

Heizi paused. He had not, in the small careful way he had been carrying it, mentioned the jade. He looked at the old man.

He reached into the inner pocket of his shirt. He took out the small piece of plain dark jade. He held it out on his palm.

The old man looked at it for one beat.

"That is his jade. He has been carrying it for forty years. He has given it to two other lads I know of, in the past five seasons. They went on. They did not come back this way. Some of them, perhaps, did not need a roof. Some of them, perhaps, did not live to need one. The jade is yours now. Carry it. Show it where it is needed. I am not where it is needed, lad — the jade is for the old scholar at the three streams, not for me. He and I are not the same man. We do not — we do not even like each other much. But we know each other, by the small unwilling kindness of two old men who have been in the same upper hills for too long together."

He paused.

"He is — by what I have heard from a peddler who came this way in the second moon — alive. He is at the three streams still. The three streams are perhaps four days' walk north of here. The peddler said: *three streams come down off the small western face of the higher hill that the locals call the bear-back. Where the three meet, in a flat place, there is a small grove of old pines — twelve trees, set in a rough circle, the way a hand of pines grows when it has been laid down by a lightning strike a hundred years ago and has come back together. The hut is at the eastern edge of the grove. The old man is in it.*"

He paused again.

"Lads. I will give you the route in chalk. I will give you a small extra portion of bean curd and a small jar of pickled fern shoots — you will not have eaten ferns yet, but you will eat them; they are good after a long winter — and I will give the lame brother a small bottle of a salve that is the way I have been keeping my own knees from giving out for nineteen winters."

He paused once more.

"And lads. There is one more thing. There is — I have been told, by another peddler not the same as the first, the past month — there is a young monk who has run, perhaps three weeks ago, from a small monastery in southern Henan. The young monk is — by what the peddler said — perhaps nineteen. Tall. Very thin. Ugly, the peddler said, in the small specific way the country uses the word — large-jawed, small-eyed, asymmetrical of feature. The young monk would not falsify a land registry for the abbot, and the abbot reported him to the magistracy as a thief, and the magistracy is now hunting him under his temple name, which I will not tell you because to know it is to be in danger of saying it. The young monk has gone — by the peddler's word — north into the upper hills. He may come this way. He may not. I am telling you, lads, in case you meet him on the path. He will be — he will be the kind who, in his country and his order, has had to learn to be useful. If you meet him, lads, and he is alive, take him. He will know more than the three of you about characters and about medicine and about the small things a young man needs to know to walk the next year of this country."

Heizi listened.

He filed.

He filed the description: *tall, very thin, large-jawed, small-eyed.* He filed: *would not falsify a land registry for the abbot.* He filed: *temple name not given.* He filed: *gone north into the upper hills, perhaps three weeks ago.*

"Yes, grandfather. We will look."

"Look, lad. But not too hard. The country is large. The young monk will find his own road. If you cross, you cross."

That afternoon Heizi worked at the back of the hut, with Wang Er, splitting kindling for the old man. The old man worked at the small slab beside the door, sharpening the small whittling-grade knife the brothers had each been given by Lu Wen-han at his hamlet — the old man took each knife in turn and put a fresh edge on it with a small flat stone he kept at the back of the hut. He did the sharpening slowly. He did each knife in roughly the same time as the previous, with the same number of strokes per side; the sharpening was, by the look of it, a small ordered observance for him also.

Tie-zhu sat on the cot inside, with the foot in a basin of warm water the old man had drawn from a small clay pot at the fire. The lame boy did not, in the late afternoon, sleep; he sat with the small unfinished elm-wood bird in his palm, looking at it, with the new edge of the small whittling knife — the old man had sharpened it first — now in a small straw loop at his belt.

That night they ate. The old man cooked a small clear soup with the dried bean curd and the small jar of pickled fern shoots and a small handful of millet. The soup was, in its small clear way, very good — the sharp fresh acid of the ferns, the clean mineral note of the spring water, the small thin sweetness of the bean curd cooked just to softening. They drank the soup slowly.

After the meal, the old man sat at his stool and looked at the three of them.

"Lads."

"Yes, grandfather."

"You will not come this way again. I am old. The next winter or the one after that may take me. If you come back this way in some other year and find no smoke — do not stop. Walk on. The country will, in its long way, take care of the small clearing. Do not — do not bury me. The country will bury me, if there is anything left to bury."

He paused.

"That is the small one thing I ask of any traveler I receive at this hut. They have all said yes."

"Yes, grandfather," Heizi said.

"Yes," said Wang Er.

"Yes," said Tie-zhu.

"Good."

He drew, then, on the small stone slab outside the hut in the long late evening, in chalk, the route to the three streams. He drew the small old herder's path north from his hut. He drew the second stream where it crossed the path two days north. He drew the third stream where it crossed at four days. He drew the small western face of the bear-back. He drew the small grove of twelve old pines in a rough circle. He drew the hut at the eastern edge of the grove. He drew, beyond it, a single small dotted line going further north, into a country he had not been to, with the small careful word *unknown* in his thin handwriting beside it.

Heizi memorized it.

In the morning, before the second cock, the old man laid one hand once on each of their heads — light, gone — and pressed into Tie-zhu's palm a small clay bottle of the salve, and into Heizi's palm a small twist of paper containing a single thin stick of incense.

"Lad."

"Yes, grandfather."

"The incense is for the small old shrine in the narrow draw two days back of you. You laid something there, the lad with the lame foot tells me — he heard it in the night, the country is small in the upper hills — that the woman of the unfound house has not been laying. Lay the incense, on your way back, when you come this way again, against my account. I do not — I do not see the woman either. But she is on my road also."

Heizi looked at the small twist of paper.

He did not, on the slab, say anything about the fact that the old man had said *when you come back*; that the old man had said it as an instruction, not a wish; that the old man had — by the small steady voice of an old monk for whom the future was a thing held loosely — given Heizi an errand for some unknown later year that would, in being given, become an expectation he would need to honor.

He bowed.

He put the small twist of paper into the inner pocket of his shirt, against his ribs, beside the indigo pouch and the second wooden bead and the wrapped jade with his foster mother's hair and the small dark jade from the man with the lame mule.

The three of them stepped back out into the small clear ground.

The old man stood at the door of his hut with the morning light beginning to come down through the eastern pine. He raised one hand — once, light — and let it fall.

They turned.

They walked north along the small old herder's path.

Behind them, at the small flat place beside the eastern pine, the old man turned and went back into his hut, and the morning's small thin column of smoke kept rising, in its old steady patient way, from the small clay-pot chimney at the back of the southern wall.

By the second hour after the first noon, the small flat place was no longer in sight. The three of them walked on, in the bright clear early-summer light of the upper hills, with the small twist of paper in Heizi's pocket and the small clay bottle of the salve in Tie-zhu's, and a small added portion of pickled fern shoots and the dried bean curd in the bundle, and a small new careful instruction in their heads about a young monk — tall, thin, large-jawed, small-eyed — who had, perhaps three weeks ago, gone north into the upper hills.

Heizi listened on the path more carefully than he had listened in the past four weeks.

He listened, in the way Wang Er had taught him, for the shape of the silence.

He did not, on this morning, hear any tall thin step behind them, or any small careful breath of a young man going through brush above them.

But he listened.