31: Northward in the Heat

The country, in the second moon of summer, was hot.

The hot was a different hot than the village's hot had been. The village had been a country of long flat fields under a long flat sun, where the heat sat on a man's shoulders all afternoon and was lifted, at the second hour after dusk, by the small even wind off the Yellow River. The upper hills had no Yellow River. The heat in the upper hills was a hot of stone and pine and small dry wind, and the wind, when it came, was the wind off the western face of the higher hill, not a cooler air but only the same air moving.

By the third day north of the old monk's hut, the three of them had begun to do their walking before dawn and after dusk.

They walked from the second hour of the rat to the second hour after the cock — five hours of cool dim morning. They rested through the day in whatever small flat place they could find on the lee side of a slope, in the shade of a stand of pine, beside a small spring if they could find one. They walked again from the second hour after the noon — only a small portion of the afternoon, when the heat had begun to thin — until the dim grey of true dusk. They camped in the early dark.

The pace was slower than the spring's pace had been. They covered, perhaps, four *li* in the morning and another three in the afternoon. The lame boy's foot, in the new salve from the old monk's small clay bottle, had begun, slowly, to take longer days.

By the fifth day they were in the country the old monk had drawn at the lower edge of his chalk: the country of the second stream.

The second stream came down from the eastern slope of a long low ridge — a stream perhaps half the width of the cold spring's trickle at the small flat place, but with a steady flow, falling in a small thin white over a flat rock at one place that the old monk's chalk had marked with a small cross. They came to the cross at the second hour of the noon. They drank. They washed their faces and their forearms in the cool fast water. They sat for a long quarter hour, in the shade of a small leaning pine, and let the sweat dry off their backs.

It was Wang Er, beside them on the bank, who saw the mark on the pine.

"Brother."

"Yes."

"On the trunk."

Heizi looked.

The pine — the small leaning one in whose shade they were resting — had on its eastern side, perhaps the height of a man's shoulder, a small fresh cut. The cut had been made with a small blade — not a big blade; a paring knife or a small whittling knife. The cut was perhaps three days old; the bark at the cut had begun to bead with a small drop of resin, but the resin had not yet darkened. The shape of the cut was not random. It was a small character.

It was the character *人*.

*Man.*

Heizi looked at it for a long moment.

"Wang Er."

"Yes."

"Who would carve a *人* on a pine at the second stream."

"A man. A young one. Three days ago. With a small knife."

"Yes."

They thought.

"A monk would not carve that," Tie-zhu said, slowly. He had come up at his pace and was looking at the cut. "A monk — even a young one — would not carve any character on a tree. The trees, by the small old teaching, are not paper. A monk would draw, in dust, with a stick, if he had to. He would not cut bark."

Heizi nodded.

"It is not the runaway monk, then."

"It is — it is somebody else."

Wang Er thought.

"A peddler? Peddlers mark trees on roads. They mark the way back to a place they have been. They use *人* sometimes — to mean *here is a man, this is the way to a man*. Or *西*, west. Or *井*, well."

Heizi looked at him.

"Wang Er. How do you know this."

"My father. My father had a peddler come to the smithy three times a year. The peddler walked a route from the south of our valley to the next-but-one valley west. He marked trees on his road. He showed my father the small marks, once, when I was perhaps ten — *if you are ever lost, lad, look for the small cut of an old peddler. Each mark is a sentence. The sentence is short.*"

Heizi nodded slowly.

"The mark says — the mark says *here is a man*."

"Yes. *Here is a man.* Or *a man is here.* The mark does not say *go here* or *stay away*. It only — it only says *here.* A peddler mark is not an invitation; it is a statement of position."

"And the position?"

"The position is upstream of the cross on the chalk. We are at the cross. The mark is on the trunk above the cross. So — so a man is somewhere upstream of the second stream's crossing, perhaps a *li* up. The peddler who marked it three days ago wanted himself or another peddler to remember that there was a man there to be — to be sold to, or talked to, or asked the way of."

Heizi thought.

He looked, slowly, up the second stream. The bed of the stream went up the long low ridge through brush that thickened in places. He could not see, by eye, anything that marked a man's living. There was no smoke. There was no sound of a man's work.

"Wang Er."

"Yes."

"Could the peddler mean — could the peddler mean a hut. An old man's hut, hidden in the brush, that the peddler visits because the old man is willing to buy a small bag of salt or a small bolt of cloth."

"It could."

"Could the peddler mean the old scholar at the three streams."

"The mark is not at the third stream. The mark is at the second."

"But — if the peddler comes north along this route, he marks the second stream first. He may mark the position of the third stream's man at the second stream, as a forward note. The mark says *upstream*, not *here*. Upstream of the second stream is — is northwest. Upstream of the second stream is the country of the third stream."

Wang Er thought.

"It could be that, brother. Or it could be a different man. The mark is small. The peddler does not often write a long note on a tree."

"All right."

Heizi sat against the pine for a long beat. He looked at the small character.

He understood, looking at it, that the mark was the first written sign of human writing he had seen on this road in seven weeks — since the burned paper of Old Zhang's list at the flat rock by the small stream of the third valley, since the small chalk that Wei Lao-han had washed off his doorstone, since the small chalk of Lu Wen-han on the floor of the four-house hamlet's small house, since the last chalk the old monk had drawn on the slab in the long late evening at the eastern pine. The chalk had all been washed off in the morning. The hempen cord paper had been burned. The road had not had a single stable written sign on it in seven weeks.

Until now.

He understood, sitting against the pine, that this small fresh peddler-cut on a tree was the small old country's small old way of leaving a record that did not belong to the magistracy. The magistracy could not, in any practical way, follow this kind of record. The magistracy worked with paper, with slips, with chalked ledgers in upstairs rooms of upstairs offices. The country had — under the magistracy's paper — its own small old running ledger, written in cuts on bark, in stones piled in threes at a roadside, in offerings on plates at the foot of small old shrines, in the small even way an old monk laid his slab beside his hut. The country's ledger ran on a different time than the magistracy's. It did not, by any small mathematics, hurry.

He filed it.

"Brothers," he said. "We will go up the second stream. Slowly. We will not call out. If we find the man, we will look at him before we approach. If he is a peddler — if he is the kind of man who marks trees — he will not be afraid of three young men on a slope. If he is not a peddler — if he is a different man — we will see what he is, and we will decide."

They went up the second stream.

It took them perhaps an hour. The brush thickened, then thinned, then thickened again. The stream ran in a small steep bed. The country was, in the noon heat, almost still — only the small running of the water, only the small intermittent call of a higher-branch bird, only the small dry shifting of leaves under their own sandals.

At a small flat place perhaps a *li* up, the brush opened.

In the small flat place stood a small lean-to of pine bark and split wood, perhaps three paces square, with a single low stone hearth at one wall. The hearth was cold. The lean-to was empty. There was, on a low wooden plank inside the lean-to, a small folded piece of unbleached hemp — a piece that had perhaps once been a robe, now folded and laid out to be slept on — and a small empty wooden bowl, and a small straw cushion, and a small bundle wrapped in brown cloth.

The bundle was, by the look of it, perhaps the same age as the cut on the pine. Three days.

Heizi stopped at the edge of the small flat place. He raised his hand. Wang Er stopped behind him. Tie-zhu, third, stopped.

"Wait."

He went forward alone.

He came up to the lean-to. He looked into it. Nothing moved. There was no one inside. The hearth's ashes, when he put one finger to them, were cold — perhaps a day old, no more.

He looked at the bundle.

The bundle was small. It was wrapped in coarse brown cloth, tied with a small twist of straw. He did not, on the floor of the lean-to, untie the bundle; the bundle was someone's. He looked at it. He looked, beside it, at the small wooden bowl. The bowl had — at the rim — a small carved character.

The character was not *人.*

It was *無.*

*Without.*

Heizi looked at the character for a long beat.

The character — *無* — was, by the small unfortunate fact of his having been raised by a foster father who had laid out three of the basic characters on a flat stone by the brazier of his ninth winter — one of the perhaps thirty characters Heizi could read. *无, 無.* The character of *not having; the absence; emptiness*. The character a Buddhist monk would carve on the rim of his bowl — the character that meant the bowl belonged to no man, that the bowl was held in trust against the day of its loss, that the bowl could be set down at any hour and would be set down, at last, finally, when the man who held it stopped.

Heizi understood — slowly, kneeling at the lean-to with the small empty bowl in front of him — that the lean-to was the resting place of a Buddhist monk.

A monk.

Three days ago.

Tall.

Thin.

Large-jawed.

Small-eyed.

The young monk, gone north into the upper hills three weeks ago by the old monk's reckoning, but reaching this lean-to on the second stream three days ago. The lean-to was empty now. The young monk had moved on. He was further north — further along the path Heizi himself was about to walk.

Heizi sat back on his heels for a long beat.

He thought: *I should not — I should not unwrap the bundle. The bundle is his. He may come back for it. He may not. If he is alive, he will come back; if he is not, no one should unwrap it.*

He looked once more around the lean-to. He stood up.

He went back to the brothers at the edge of the small flat place.

"Brothers."

"Yes."

"There is a lean-to. There is a small bowl with the character *無* on the rim. The hearth's ashes are perhaps a day old. The young monk slept here three days ago. He has moved on."

Wang Er thought.

"He left a bundle?"

"A small bundle. I did not open it. We will not — we will not open it."

"All right."

"He may come back for it."

"Yes."

"If he comes back for it — if we are still in this country when he does — he will find the bundle as he left it. He will know that whoever passed here did not take from him."

Wang Er nodded slowly.

"And the *人* on the pine."

Heizi paused.

"It was not the monk. The monk would not have carved it. It was a peddler — perhaps the peddler the old monk spoke of, who is the way news comes through these hills. The peddler has noted the lean-to."

He looked at the small brown bundle through the open side of the lean-to.

He thought.

He took, from the inner pocket of his shirt, the small twist of paper from the old monk — the one containing the single thin stick of incense. He held it for a moment in his palm. He thought of the old monk's instruction: *for the small old shrine in the narrow draw, when you come back this way.* He thought of the small old shrine, two weeks back, where the small lock of dark hair lay on the offering plate. He thought of the woman of the unfound house who came to the shrine every few months.

He could not, in any honest way, give the incense to the lean-to. The incense was for the shrine.

He had nothing to give the lean-to.

He looked at the small bundle on the plank.

He had — he thought, in the small unhurried way the upper hills had been teaching him — at his belt, the small charcoal-burner's knife that had been Ah Si's, the small blade Cao Ergou had braided onto a small straw loop for the smallest of them at the last morning at the burner's hut, the knife that had — in some other life — been laid into the small right palm of Ah Si under the third row of the burying ground at the hamlet of two wells.

No. That knife was buried.

He had Old Zhang's old militia knife. That was his.

He had — in the inner pocket of his shirt — the small twist of paper and the old monk's incense, the small piece of plain dark jade from Lu Wen-han, the wrapped jade with his foster mother's hair from Old Zhang, the indigo pouch with the silk square and the millet grain (the lock of hair was now at the upper-hills shrine), and the second wooden bead from Mei-er.

The second bead.

He thought.

He took out the second bead.

It was the bead Mei-er had given back to him at her last morning, in the small careful laying-out on the chest at the foot of her mat, beside the indigo pouch and the small wooden comb. *Now we each have one. We are even.* The bead — the second bead — was, by the small accounting of the years, the half of the pair.

He had carried both since the dawn after the persimmon tree.

He looked at the small empty bowl on the plank inside the lean-to.

He went forward, slowly. He stepped into the lean-to. He laid the second bead, very gently, in the small empty wooden bowl at the rim where the *無* had been carved. He did not close his hand over the bead. He did not say anything. He stepped back.

The bead sat in the bowl. It was perhaps the size of a thumbnail. It was dark wooden. It was the bead his sister had given back to him at the dawn of the dawn she had walked out, with the small folded indigo pouch beside it on the chest.

He understood — kneeling at the edge of the lean-to with the bead in the bowl — that he was leaving, on a young monk's empty bowl in a lean-to in the upper hills three days after the young monk had moved on, the small private second half of a thing that had been a pair.

He was — by the small unintentional symmetry of two beads — bequeathing his sister, in some small portion, to a stranger.

He thought of the small lock of dark hair on the offering plate at the small old shrine in the narrow draw two weeks back.

He thought: *the ledger is the country's. The country is keeping. The bead is — the bead is for the young monk, if he comes back for it. The bead is for the country, if he does not.*

He stood up.

He left the lean-to.

The brothers were waiting at the edge of the small flat place. He did not, at first, tell them what he had laid in the bowl. He did not tell them for many seasons, although Wang Er — by the small unspoken way the smith's son understood things — understood at the time, and Tie-zhu understood, perhaps, in the year after the funeral.

He did not need to tell them.

"Brothers. We go on."

They went on.

They went up the second stream, past the lean-to, in the direction the small flat place suggested the young monk had gone. They walked at the slow even pace of three young men in the heat of a second-moon noon. They did not, on this afternoon, find any further sign of the young monk. They did not find a fresh footprint. They did not find a fresh broken twig. The country had taken him in, in the way it had taken the small wooden tiger from the stone above Yan Liu-er's grave, in the way it had taken the small fingernail-square of red cloth from the offering plate at the small old shrine.

The country was keeping him.

That night, they camped in a small dry place above the second stream's upper bend, where the country began its long climb toward the third stream. Heizi took the first watch. The night was warm. The owls of the upper hills were out. The pines were full of their year's growth. The wind was small and steady from the south.

He listened.

He listened, on the watch, for the shape of the silence.

The shape of the silence, on this night, was wide. He listened a long time. He did not, at any quadrant, hear the small breath of a tall thin young man with a large jaw and small eyes moving through brush.

But he listened.

In the morning, before the second cock, when he passed the watch to Wang Er and lay down on the dry needles to sleep, he reached briefly into the inner pocket of his shirt — the small unconscious gesture of a young man checking, in the dim light, that the small things were in the small order — and felt the small absence where the second bead had been.

The absence was the size of a thumbnail.

He slept.

He dreamed, very faintly — at the last quarter of the watch, perhaps — of his sister. She was, in the dream, at the brazier, lifting the lid. She did not, in this dream, say anything about the long day. She held up, in her small thin fingers, the small carved persimmon-tree branch she had once whittled for him in his sixth year and that he had lost in the village's lower field by his eighth year and had never found.

She gave him the branch.

He took it.

He woke with the small inward sense of a thing returned.