32: The Three Streams

The bear-back hill, when they came in sight of it on the afternoon of the fifth day past the second stream, was not a hill that announced itself.

It was, by the small ordinary geometry of the upper hills, only one rise among many. It was perhaps half a *li* taller than the slopes around it. It had on its eastern face a small bald stretch of grey rock — the bear-back proper, the country's small naming — and along its western face a long slow slope of pine that came down through a mixed brush of low oak and small leaning birch into a small flat hollow at its foot. The three streams, as the man with the lame mule and the old monk at the eastern pine had both said, came down off the western face: one from the upper notch, one from a saddle on the southern shoulder, one from a fold higher on the northern.

They met, by the look of the descent through the low wooded country, in the small flat hollow.

Heizi stopped them at the lip of the descent at the third hour of the noon.

He looked.

The small flat hollow was perhaps the size of an old man's threshing floor — perhaps fifty paces across, perhaps a little more, with the three streams coming in from three directions and joining in a small clear pool at the center, from which a single wider stream ran east, down through a gap in the brush, toward the lower country. At the eastern edge of the hollow, the gap of the wider stream was narrow and low and overhung with the small heavy growth of late summer brush.

There was no smoke.

The hollow itself was empty of any obvious human work. There was no path beaten down across its center. There was no fire ring in the small flat. There was no garden. There was no shed, no hut, no woodpile.

Heizi watched.

He watched for a long quarter hour.

"Wang Er."

"Yes."

"There is no smoke."

"No."

"And the grove."

"The grove is — "

The grove of twelve pines, as the old monk's chalk had drawn it, was not in the small flat hollow. It was higher up, on a small terrace at the foot of the bear-back's western face. Heizi could see it, faintly, from the lip of the descent — a small cluster of dark green pines, rounder than the surrounding scrub, the pines themselves clearly older than the brush that had grown up around them. They sat in a small rough circle, or what might once have been a rough circle; the pines were so old that even their surviving members had begun to lean inward, in the slow patient way old pines lean, and from this distance the circle was as much a memory as a fact.

The terrace with the grove was perhaps three hundred paces above the small flat hollow.

There was no smoke from the grove either.

There was, however, between the small flat hollow and the grove of twelve pines, a small old herder's path.

The path went up the western slope at a long slow angle. It was visible, from the lip, as a small thin line through the brush. Heizi could see — by the small attentive looking he had, in the past two months, learned to do at this kind of distance — that the path had been used recently. The brush at the path's edges, in two places, had been gently bent in a way that fresh brush does not bend without the periodic pressure of a hand or a foot or a small load coming through. The bending was old enough that it had begun, in the upper places, to spring back; and new enough that it had not yet sprung back fully.

Someone walked the path.

Someone walked it not often — perhaps every several days; perhaps once or twice a week. The bending was not the bending of a daily run. It was the bending of an old man's small careful weekly going.

Heizi watched.

He watched the path. He watched the grove. He watched the small flat hollow. He watched the bear-back. He watched the three streams.

He saw no movement at any quadrant.

He understood, at the lip — slowly, in the small unhurried way the upper hills had been teaching him — that the absence of smoke was the small first piece of information the country was giving him. The absence of smoke at the noon hour did not mean there was no man. It meant the man — if there was one — had banked his fire by the second cock of the morning and would not lay another until the late afternoon. Old Zhang had banked the brazier, in the village, in the same way through the long summer days, when the heat made cooking at noon unbearable and an old man preferred a small clear cup of water.

He understood that the absence of human work — the absence of garden, of woodpile, of shed — in the small flat hollow was the small second piece. The hollow itself was not the place. The hollow was a small open meeting of three streams; it was visible from any of three directions; a man who lived in this country and wished not to be seen would not put his hut in the hollow. He would put it on the terrace, in the grove, where the pines hid the hut from the lower country, where the bear-back's western face hid it from the eastern, and where the small old herder's path — visible from the hollow only because he, Heizi, had been looking for it deliberately — connected the hut to the small flat hollow at his own pace and no one else's.

The hut, he understood, was in the grove.

"Wang Er."

"Yes."

"The grove."

"Yes."

"It is up the slope above the hollow. The path that goes there is being walked, every several days, by an old man at his own pace. The hut is in the grove. The smoke is banked. The man is — the man is in the hut, perhaps, at the noon hour, and is not, on this afternoon, building any fire that we will see."

"All right."

Heizi paused. He thought.

He thought of how to approach.

He thought of the hamlet of two wells, where they had walked into the open ground in the sight of a watching headman and had been received. He thought of the hut at the eastern pine, where the old monk had received them at the door without any warning. He thought of the small flat place at Cao Ergou's, where the old burner had said, *you have been standing in my pine long enough, lads.*

He understood, on the lip, that those receivings had been the receivings of old men who lived where they could be approached. The old men of the upper-hills network — Cao Ergou, the eastern-pine hermit, even Wei Lao-han at the elm bench — were old men whose business was, in part, the receiving of walkers. They sat where walkers came; they laid their watch at first cock; they let themselves be found.

The old scholar at the three streams was, by everything he had been told, not such an old man.

The old monk at the eastern pine had said: *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.* The old monk had not said *go in welcome*. The old monk had not pressed the small dark jade from Lu Wen-han back into Heizi's palm with the small ordinary expectation of *this will open the door*. The old monk had said *the jade is for the old scholar at the three streams, not for me*; and he had said the old scholar *answers to nothing else* — implying, by the small careful quiet, that the old scholar might also not answer to anything else, the door included.

Heizi stood at the lip and watched the small thin line of the path winding up to the grove.

He understood, slowly, that he was about to make a small mistake if he was not careful. The mistake would be to approach the grove the way he had approached every other door in two months. The mistake would be to call out, at the edge of the small terrace, *grandfather, we are travelers*, and to wait for the door to open, and to find — perhaps — that the door did not open; or, worse, that it opened and the man in the door looked at the three of them and shut it.

The old scholar, by what he was beginning to gather, was not a man who would refuse three boys. The old scholar was a man who had reasons of his own to be in this hut, and whose reasons would not be served by the casual receiving of three boys at the door at the noon hour of a hot summer day. The old scholar would, if he were the kind of man Lu Wen-han and the eastern-pine hermit had described, want the choosing of his receiving.

Heizi thought.

"Wang Er."

"Yes."

"We will not go up the path today."

The smith's son looked at him.

"Brother?"

"We will go down into the small flat hollow. We will set our camp at the eastern edge of the hollow, where the wider stream goes out through the gap. We will lay a small fire — small, low, only at the late afternoon, only enough for a handful of cooking — and we will sleep one night there, where we can be seen from the path above. We will let ourselves be seen. We will not call out toward the grove. We will let the old man see, at his own pace, that there are three boys in the hollow who are not approaching, and who are willing to wait."

Wang Er thought.

"And if he does not come."

"If he does not come, we will, in the morning, go up the path slowly, with our hands at our sides, and we will stop two thirds of the way up — there is a small flat place, by the look of the slope — and we will sit. We will sit there for a quarter of the day. If he does not come down, we will go back to the hollow. If he still does not come — if by the third day he has not — we will leave the small dark jade Lu Wen-han gave us, with a small mark of our identity, in the small flat place on the path; and we will go on."

"On to where."

"On into the upper hills. We will find a place. We will camp. We will wait. The old monk at the eastern pine said the country is large and the young monk would find his own road; the old monk said the same about the old scholar without saying it. We will, perhaps, find that the old scholar does not, on this afternoon, need three boys at his door, and we will need to find some other way of living through the next year."

He paused.

"That is the plan."

Wang Er nodded slowly.

"You have been thinking about this since the lip."

"Yes."

"All right, brother. The hollow."

They went down into the small flat hollow.

They went down slowly, without trying to be hidden. They came into the small flat at the second hour after the noon. They walked, not at the run, to the eastern edge, where the wider stream ran out through the gap. They set their bundles down on a flat patch of dry grass beside the small clear pool where the three streams joined. They sat, all three of them, in the open, where they would be visible from the slope above.

Heizi did not look up at the grove.

He laid out, slowly, the small portions of their afternoon meal — a small piece of dried bean curd from the eastern-pine hermit's bundle, a small handful of pickled fern shoots, a small portion of the millet — and they ate in the small open way of three young men taking a meal at a stream's bank in the heat of a late summer afternoon, with no haste and no concealment and no looking up.

Wang Er, eating, said: *the water in the pool is cold.*

"It is."

"There is shade under the small leaning oak at the southern edge."

"Yes."

"The lame brother could rest under the oak."

"Yes."

Tie-zhu went to the oak. He sat down with the bad foot up on a root. He took out the small unfinished elm-wood bird from his coat — Lan-gu's gift, with the small charcoal-streak wing — and the small whittling knife now sharpened by the eastern-pine hermit, and he began, in the small still afternoon, to put a small careful additional cut on the bird's lower belly; not the eye, which Lan-gu had said she would finish; only a small clean shaping at the breast that the original carving had left rough.

Heizi watched him. He filed it: *Tie-zhu has begun, in the past four weeks, to whittle.* He had not, at the village, whittled anything beyond the small joints he had been apprenticed to. The carving of small wooden objects for their own sake had not been his work. Heizi understood, watching the lame boy under the oak, that the small whittling was the lame boy's small new way of holding the small carved horse he had buried under perhaps four hands of earth at the third row, with the dark ribbon, beside the small charcoal-burner's knife and the small dark date in the third row's small low mound. Tie-zhu would, by some small private discipline, carve other small things; not the horse, which was buried; only the bird, which was promised; and, after the bird was finished, perhaps a small other thing.

Heizi let the lame boy carve.

He himself laid out, on a flat stone beside the pool, the small charcoal-burner's knife — no, not that knife, that knife was buried; he had Old Zhang's old militia knife, which he laid out; he had also the small whittling knife the eastern-pine hermit had sharpened for him — and he began, slowly, to wash the small thin streaks of dried sweat out of his shirt at the pool's edge. The water was cold. It took the sweat out cleanly. He hung the shirt on a low branch of the oak. He sat, in the small open afternoon, in his trousers and the light of the third hour, and he did not look up at the grove.

He did not look up the rest of the afternoon.

He let, by the small unhurried discipline he was teaching himself, the slope above know that there were three boys in the hollow who would not look up.

The afternoon went on.

A small bird — a yellow-eyed one of the kind Heizi had begun, in the upper hills, to recognize — came down to the small clear pool at the third hour to drink, and stayed for a long minute, and flew away. A small water creature — a small frog of the kind that lived in such pools — came up out of the water to sun itself on a flat stone for a quarter hour and went back. The three streams ran. The upper-hills wind moved in the brush.

By dusk, no one had come down the path.

Heizi laid the small low fire at the eastern edge of the hollow, in a small rough ring of stones he gathered from the bank. He banked it carefully. They cooked, very simply, a small portion of millet and a small piece of dried hare he had taken on a stone two mornings ago. They ate slowly, in the small fading light, with the small clear pool turning silver at the center.

Heizi did not, in the cooking, turn his back to the slope.

He took the first watch.

The slope, at night, was a slope he could not see clearly. The small thin moon was, on this night, at its third quarter, and would not be up until the second hour of the watch. He listened.

He listened for the shape of the silence.

The silence, on this night, had a particular shape. It was wider than the silence of the cold-spring camp had been; it was deeper than the silence of the upper-pine first night; it was, in some specific way, *attended*. Heizi understood, sitting at the small banked fire ring with his back against a flat stone, that he was being watched.

He did not, at any time in the watch, hear a footstep.

He did not, at any time, see any movement at the edge of his small thin firelight.

But he understood — by a small inward register that he had not, until tonight, fully known he had — that someone was watching the small flat hollow from somewhere on the slope above. The watching had begun, perhaps, in the late afternoon; it had not ended at dusk; it had continued through the small banked fire and the small portions of dinner and the small banked-down ash; it was continuing now.

He sat at his watch.

He did not signal the watching back. He did not, in the small unhurried way Old Zhang had taught him to handle the small things one knew without confirmation, look up at any quadrant. He let the watcher know — by his own steady sitting — that he, Heizi, knew he was being watched; and that he, Heizi, was not going to look up; and that, by the small unforced choosing of not-looking, he was offering the watcher — whoever the watcher was — the small unforced choice of approaching, or not approaching, in his own time.

The watcher did not approach.

The watching, at some hour of the late watch, eased — without ending. It became, by a small change Heizi could not have named in language but felt in his shoulders, a less attentive watching. The watcher had, perhaps, gone home. The watcher had, perhaps, sat at the door of his hut and done his small old work — the laying of his evening bowl on a small altar, the sitting on a stool with a small clay pipe, the going at last to his small low cot — and the watching had continued through the small old work as a kind of background presence, not an active one.

Heizi let it be.

He passed the watch to Wang Er at the second hour of the rat. He did not, in the passing, tell Wang Er that they had been watched. He understood — without being able to fully articulate it — that the watching had been an old man's small private kindness, and that to speak of it would be to spoil it.

He slept.

He slept the small thin sleep of a young man who was being watched from a slope above by an old man whose work he had not yet earned the door of.

In the morning, before the second cock, he did not wake the brothers.

He let them sleep.

He himself, in the dim grey, sat at the small stone-ringed fire. He banked the embers. He stirred, with a single thin stick, a small fresh layer of pine needles into the ash. He laid one finger, briefly, into the warm. He stood up.

He walked, very slowly, in the early grey, to the foot of the small old herder's path that went up the slope toward the grove of twelve pines.

He did not start up the path.

He stopped at the foot.

He took, from the inner pocket of his shirt, the small piece of plain dark jade that Lu Wen-han had pressed into his palm at the four-house hamlet at the dawn of his departure. He held it for a moment in his palm. He looked at it.

He laid it, very carefully, on a small flat stone at the foot of the path.

He bowed once toward the grove.

He turned and walked back to the camp.

By the second cock, when he woke the brothers, the small piece of jade was still on the small flat stone at the foot of the path. The grove was still hidden on the terrace above. The morning was still without smoke.

But Heizi had, by the small unhurried act of laying the jade at the foot, said the only thing he had been able to think of saying:

*Grandfather. We are here. We are not approaching. We are willing to wait. We are showing, at the foot of your path, the small piece of jade Lu Wen-han carried for forty years and gave to me at his door. We will be in the hollow. We will be in the country. If you do not come down — we will go on, in two days. If you come down — we will not be hard to find.*

He woke Wang Er and Tie-zhu.

He did not tell them, this morning, about the jade.

The day's work began.