33: The Old Scholar Does Not Come Down

The second day in the small flat hollow was a day of waiting.

Heizi told the brothers, at the second cock, what he had laid at the foot of the path. He told them in three sentences. He told them what he expected — that the old scholar might come today, or tomorrow, or never; that they would, regardless, treat the small flat hollow as a place at which they were not in a hurry; that they would do, on this day, only the small ordinary work of a camp at a place where they were not going anywhere.

Wang Er nodded.

Tie-zhu nodded.

They began, slowly, to do the small ordinary work.

Wang Er gathered firewood from the brush at the eastern edge of the hollow. He gathered it slowly, as the eastern-pine hermit had washed his hands, with the small attentive set of a man for whom firewood-gathering was, on this day, not only the practical setting-aside of fuel for the evening but a small ordered observance. He laid the gathered wood in a small even pile beside the stone-ringed fire. The pile, by midmorning, had the small careful evenness of a smith's son's work.

Tie-zhu, under the small leaning oak, carved.

He carved on the small unfinished elm-wood bird — not the eye, which Lan-gu had said she would finish; only the small clean shaping of the breast he had begun yesterday, and a small additional smoothing of the underside of the wing, where the original carver had left a small rough ridge. He carved slowly, in the small careful way the carpenter Old Lu had taught him in the back of his uncle's shop in the village; the small whittling knife, freshly sharpened by the eastern-pine hermit's slab, took the wood off in small thin shavings the size of a fingernail. The shavings fell on the lame boy's lap. He gathered them, every quarter hour, into a small pile beside him on the dry grass.

Heizi, at the pool, did the small careful work of a young man who was not, on this day, hurrying.

He washed his hempen cord — the small length Wei Da-niang had given him at the door — in the cold pool. The cord had, by two months on the road, begun to pick up the small dirt and small oils of his pocket; the cold water took the dirt out, and Heizi laid the cord on a flat stone in the early sun to dry. He sharpened, with the small flat stone Wang Er had carried from Cao Ergou's hut, Old Zhang's old militia knife — slowly, in the small even strokes the eastern-pine hermit had used. He cleaned the small wooden bowl Wei Da-niang had given them at the morning of departure — three weeks ago, four weeks; he was beginning, in the upper hills' long unmarked time, to lose track. He gathered, from the brush at the edge of the hollow, a small handful of wild garlic for the evening's millet.

He did not look up at the grove.

He did not look up at the path.

He understood, without quite naming it, that he had been right last night about the watching; that the old scholar — if there was an old scholar; if the watcher of last night had been the old scholar and not some other watcher — was, today, again watching. The watching, on this morning, was in a different quadrant from last night's. Heizi could feel it on the back of his neck, the way one feels the small eye of an animal at the edge of a field. The watching was steady. The watching was not, this morning, imminent. The old man was, perhaps, at his door, with a clay pipe; the old man was, perhaps, on the path's lower bend; the old man might, in his own time, come down a little further and go back.

Heizi did not, at any quadrant, look.

At the third hour of the noon, he stood up, slowly. He brushed his hands on his trousers. He went, in the open, at a walking pace, to the foot of the small old herder's path.

The small piece of plain dark jade was where he had laid it on the small flat stone, at the dim grey of dawn.

He picked it up. He held it for one beat.

He laid it back down.

He turned. He went back to the camp.

He understood — by some small unspoken pact he had been making with himself across the morning — that he was offering, with the not-taking-it-back, a second day of the small unhurried statement. He was saying, to the watcher above: *I am not retracting. I am still waiting. The jade is still here. The choosing remains yours.*

He sat at the pool in the noon shade.

He took out, from his bundle, the small finished indigo pouch.

He had not, since the morning of the small old shrine in the narrow draw, opened the pouch. He had not, since the morning at the lean-to of the young monk, looked inside it. The pouch was lighter than it had been. Two of the three things were gone — the small lock of dark hair was at the upper-hills shrine; the second wooden bead was in the *無*-bowl at the lean-to. What was left in the pouch was the small folded square of pale yellow silk with the embroidered character he could not read, and the single dried millet grain.

He opened the pouch.

He took out the small folded square of silk.

He laid it on the flat stone in front of him.

He looked at it.

The character on the silk was — by the small careful work of his sister, in some hour of some afternoon in the back room of his foster father's house, by lamplight, with a single small needle and a single small length of thread of dark blue — perhaps the size of a man's thumbnail. The thread was the dark blue of indigo cloth dyed with two baths. The character was, in its small thread shape, careful. The strokes were even. The single small horizontal at the top was set above the rest in the way the formal characters required, although the formal requirement was something Mei-er would have known only by the small careful imitation of characters she had seen on village papers, not by any teaching.

He looked at the strokes.

He thought.

He had thirty characters. He had — by Old Zhang's small list, on a flat stone by the brazier, in his ninth winter — the simple characters of the household: *人, 大, 小, 父, 母, 子, 女, 兄, 弟, 姐, 妹*; the simple characters of the field: *田, 米, 禾, 木, 火, 土, 水*; the simple counting: *一, 二, 三, 四, 五, 六, 七, 八, 九, 十*; and a few others Old Zhang had thought it useful for a young man to know — *上, 下, 左, 右, 東, 西, 南, 北*. He had perhaps a few more by the small osmotic recognition of a young man living in a household: *日, 月, 山, 雨, 風*. *無.*

He had, perhaps, forty. He had — until ch.30 at the eastern-pine hermit's bowl on a plank — forgotten that he could even count to forty.

He looked at the character on the silk.

It was — by the small structure of strokes — something he had not been taught.

It was perhaps four strokes. It had a small horizontal at the top. It had a small vertical down the center. It had — at the bottom — a small flat horizontal that came across the full width and gave the character a small grounded base. It had — at the sides — two short marks that came down from the small upper horizontal to meet the lower.

He did not know it.

He laid the silk down.

He folded the pouch back over the small grain and the silk, and put the pouch back into the inner pocket of his shirt, against his ribs.

He thought, for the first time clearly, about what the character on the silk might be.

He did not know. He could not, by the small structure, eliminate possibilities. The character could be one of perhaps a hundred characters that had a top horizontal and a center vertical and a bottom base. He had no list to test it against. The most he could do, sitting at the pool, was to remember the shape — the four strokes and their small specific proportions — so that when he came, in some future month, to a man who could read characters, he could draw the shape in the dust and ask.

He committed the shape to memory.

He filed it.

He sat at the pool.

The afternoon went on.

By the third hour after noon, Heizi had not looked up. He had cleaned, and rewashed, and dried, and packed; he had banked the small fire; he had eaten, with the brothers, a small portion of the millet with the wild garlic he had gathered. The shadow of the small leaning oak had moved across the lame boy's small pile of pale shavings, and the lame boy had moved to keep the bird in the slow shifting of the noon light. The wind had stayed steady from the south.

The watching had not stopped.

It had become, perhaps, more distant; the watcher was, perhaps, no longer at the lower bend of the path but at the edge of the grove, or at the door of the hut, or at the small stool inside; but the small inward register at the back of Heizi's neck was still keeping the small steady note of *being watched.*

He waited.

By dusk, no one had come down.

He laid, at the small ring of stones, the second night's small low fire. He cooked the small portion of millet with the small remaining piece of dried bean curd from the eastern-pine hermit's gift. He ate slowly. He took the first watch.

The watching, on the second night, was thinner. The watcher had — perhaps — banked his own evening fire and gone to his small low cot. The small inward register at the back of Heizi's neck had loosened to a small intermittent presence; the small inward kind of attention an old man gave through the wall of his hut, to a fire he could not see, at the lower edge of his country.

Heizi sat his watch.

The third quarter moon came up over the eastern brush at the second hour. The hollow, in the moonlight, was the small flat hollow it had been at noon — the three streams' small steady running, the small clear pool at the center, the small ring of stones at the eastern edge. The path up the slope to the grove was visible as a small thin grey line in the moonlight, not different from the grey it had been by day.

The small piece of plain dark jade was visible on the small flat stone at the foot of the path.

Heizi watched it from his place at the fire.

It did not move. It was not taken.

He sat his watch through.

In the morning, before the second cock, he stood up. He went, slowly, through the dim grey, to the foot of the path.

The small piece of plain dark jade was where he had laid it at dawn yesterday.

He picked it up.

He held it for one beat.

He thought.

He thought about leaving it for a third day. He thought about laying it back. He thought: *the watcher will know I returned. The watcher will know the jade was offered, and was not taken, and is now being returned to my pocket. The watcher will know that I am, by my own small unhurried decision, going on. The watcher will, perhaps, in some other month or year, come down to the foot of his path and find — find that the country is not at his doorstep, and he is not closed in. The watcher will, perhaps, then come to find me. Or he will not.*

He put the small dark jade back in the inner pocket of his shirt.

He bent, on the flat stone where the jade had lain, and laid one small new mark.

He had no chalk. He had no ink. He had only the small charcoal-burner's knife — no, the militia knife, the militia knife — and a small thin scrap of old paper from the inner pocket, on which the eastern-pine hermit's incense had been wrapped. He took out the paper. He folded it small. He weighted it with a small flat pebble from the streamside.

On the paper, with a blackened tip of the militia knife in last night's ash, he had written — slowly, with the small unsteady hand of a young man writing one of his thirty characters — a single character.

*北.*

*North.*

The character was the small clear statement of the only thing the watcher needed to know, if the watcher came down: *we have gone on, north, into the upper hills. We are not far. We are not lost. We have — by your not coming — concluded that you do not yet receive us. We are letting you decide. We are leaving the small statement of where we are, for you, in case you change. We are not asking. We have done what we can do.*

He weighted the small folded paper with the small flat pebble.

He stood up.

He turned and walked back to the brothers.

He woke Wang Er.

"Brother. North."

Wang Er nodded.

He woke Tie-zhu.

The lame boy sat up slowly. The bad foot, in the new salve from the eastern-pine hermit's small clay bottle, took the morning's first weight without flinching. He gathered the small pile of pale shavings at the foot of the leaning oak — every shaving, even the smallest — and tied them into a small twist of his bandage cloth, and put the twist into the inner pocket of his coat. He had, in the past day, accumulated perhaps a thumb's-worth of shavings. He would, Heizi understood, use them — at some later camp, in some later week — for kindling at the start of a fire.

The lame boy filed his own small private things in his own small inner register.

The three of them packed.

They left the small flat hollow before the second cock. They walked east through the gap of the wider stream's outflow, and from there along the contour of the lower country for a *li*, until they came to a small old herder's path that went north up a long slow slope. They went up.

By the noon they had come up onto a higher line. They could no longer see, looking back, the small flat hollow; only the small upper face of the bear-back, with the grove of twelve pines as a small dark cluster on the western terrace, perhaps half-hidden by the brush of the lower country. The small thin column of smoke that they had not seen yesterday or this morning was, on this noon, beginning to rise — thin, careful, banked just enough to be a fire of a man who had laid breakfast at the noon hour of a hot day.

The smoke was the small first thing the old scholar had let them see.

It rose, perhaps for the half hour Heizi watched it, before easing down into the small thin trace of a banked fire and going out.

Heizi watched.

He understood — slowly, in the small unhurried way of the upper hills — that the smoke had been the old scholar's reply to the small folded paper at the foot of the path. The old scholar had read the character. He had taken the paper into his hut. He had laid the small banked fire of his late breakfast. He had, by laying the fire — late, careful, brief — let the smoke be visible, for the first time in three days, to the boys he was sending on. He had said, with the small thin smoke: *I have read your paper. I am still here. I am not yet ready. In some month — perhaps. Go on. I will know where you are. I will not, today, send you anything. But I am not closed.*

It was — by the small economy of an old scholar — a kind of receiving.

Heizi nodded.

He turned away from the bear-back.

He walked north.

Wang Er, beside him, had not — by the way he had not turned his head all morning — looked at the smoke. Heizi looked at him. Wang Er, on the small higher path, was looking ahead.

"Brother."

"Yes."

"You did right by him."

"By the old scholar?"

"By the old scholar. The not-pushing. The folded paper. The leaving."

"How do you know I did right."

"He does not know you, brother. You do not know him. He has reasons of his own for being where he is. You did not — you did not press him to be where you needed him to be. You let him be where he was. That is the right thing."

Heizi nodded.

He walked on.

The country, north of the bear-back, was a country he had not yet been in. It was — by the small careful reading of contours — a country of slow rises and slow falls, with thicker pine in the lower draws and thinner brush on the upper shoulders. There were, by the look of small old herders' paths visible at certain bends, no settlements; the country was, by the small unhurried geometry of these paths, country the shepherds came up to in the summer with small flocks and went back from in the winter.

It was a country in which they could, by the small accumulating skill of the past two months, make a small camp and live for the rest of the summer.

By dusk they had come, at the noon of the second day past the bear-back, to a small flat place at the lee of a long low ridge, with a small spring at the back of a rock face and a small open flat for a fire and a small thicker stand of pine for cover.

They camped.

Heizi, at the watch, listened.

He listened for the shape of the silence.

The silence here, at this small flat place, was the wide silence of the upper hills. It had no watcher. It had no fire-banker on a slope above. It had only the slow steady night sounds of an upper-hills country in late summer.

He filed it.

He understood — without quite naming it — that they had now found the place from which they would, for the rest of summer and through autumn, work the small business of staying alive in this country. The grove of twelve pines was perhaps two days back. The old scholar was at his hut, banking his fire late, reading the small folded papers of any young man who passed; in the slow way of the upper hills, he might in some month come down. He might not.

Heizi, at the watch, did not weep.

He did not, on this night, file any names. The names — Mei-er, Yan Liu-er, Ah Si — were filed already. The four-year-old's eyes; the fourteen-year-old's shoulder set against the middle one's shoulder for steadiness; the two old women dead by smoke — were filed.

He listened.

The country, at last, was very quiet.

In the small high pines, above the long low ridge, an upper-hills owl called once on a high branch.

Heizi listened to it.

He let the small flat place become, in the small interior register, a place: their camp.

He let himself think, once, of the small thin column of smoke from the bear-back at the noon, and of the small folded paper at the foot of the small old herder's path, and of the watching that had been, on the second day, more distant; and he set these in the small inner register also.

The old scholar would, in some month, perhaps come down.

In some month, perhaps, Heizi would come back.

In the meantime, there was the camp, and the wood, and the snares, and the slow careful living of a young man learning, by the small accumulating skill of his hands, how to stay alive in a country that — by the slow patient measure of the upper hills — was willing to keep them, at least for the season.

He sat his watch.