An autumn morning, the air thickly humid, a layer of transparent dewdrops clung to blades of grass and roof tiles. Leaves on the scholar tree had begun to turn yellow; a rusty iron bell hanging from a branch was also dew laden. The production team leader, a padded jacket draped over his shoulders, ambled toward the bell, carrying a sorghum flatbread in one hand and clutching a thick-peeled leek in the other. By the time he reached the bell, his hands were empty, but his cheeks were puffed out like a field mouse scurrying away with autumn provisions. He yanked the clapper against the side of the bell, which rang out loudly — clang, clang, clang. People young and old streamed out of the lanes to converge beneath the bell, eyes fixed on the team leader, like a crowd of marionettes. He swallowed hard, and wiped his stubble-ringed mouth on his sleeve. All eyes watched that mouth as it opened — to spit out a stream of curses: ‘I’ll be fucked if those stupid commune pricks aren’t taking two of our stonemasons one day and two carpenters the next. He turned to a tall, broad-shouldered young man. ‘They’re breaking up our workforce. The commune plans to widen the floodgate behind the village, mason,’ he said to him. ‘Every team has to send them a mason and an unskilled labourer. It might as well be you.’

The handsome young mason had black eyebrows and white teeth, the contrast lending him a heroic bearing. A gentle shake of his head sent back a lock of hair that had fallen over his forehead. Speaking with a slight stammer, he asked who the unskilled labourer would be.

The team leader folded his arms, as if to fight off the cold, and rolled his eyes like pinwheels. ‘A woman makes the most sense,’ he rasped, ‘but we need them for picking cotton, and sending a man would be a waste of manpower.’ He looked around and his gaze fell on the wall. A boy of ten or so stood in a corner. He was barefoot and stripped to the waist, wearing only a pair of long, baggy, green-striped white shorts that were stained by grass and dried blood. The shorts ended at his knees, above calves shiny with scars.

‘I see you’re still with us, Hei-hai, you little shit!’ the team leader said as he studied the boy’s jutting breast-bone. ‘I thought you’d gone down to meet the King of Hell. Are you over the shakes?’

The boy didn’t respond, just kept his bright black eyes fixed on the team leader. He had a big head and a skinny neck that seemed in danger of snapping from the load it carried.

‘Feel like earning a few work points? Though I don’t know what a pitiful little thing like you could possibly do. A fart would knock you off your feet. Go with the mason to the floodgate, how’s that? But first run home and get a hammer, then you can sit up there and smash rocks, as many as you feel like, or as few. If history’s any judge, these commune jobs are just busy work meant to fool the foreign devils.’

The boy shuffled up to the mason and tugged at his jacket. He was rewarded with a friendly pat on his shaved gourd of a head. ‘Go home and ask your stepmother for a hammer, and I’ll meet you at the bridgehead.’

The boy took off. He had all the appearance of running, his rail-thin arms flailing like a scarecrow in the wind, but none of the speed. All eyes were on him, and as they looked at his bare back, they suddenly felt the cold. The team leader tugged at his jacket. ‘When you get home,’ he shouted, ‘tell your stepmother to give you a shirt, you poor little beggar!’

He stole in quietly through the gate. A snot-nosed little boy with a pushed-in face was sitting in the yard, playing in the urine-wetted mud. He looked up and threw open his arms: ‘Bro… bro… pick up…’ Hei-hai bent down, picked up a light red apricot leaf to wipe his stepbrother’s nose, then slapped the snotty leaf onto the wall like a leaflet. He waved the boy off and slipped into the house, where he picked up a claw hammer from a corner and slipped back outside. The little boy called out again, so Hei-hai snatched up a fallen branch, drew a wide circle around his stepbrother on the ground, then tossed the branch away and sped to the rear of the village, where a medium-sized river flowed, spanned by a stone bridge with nine arched openings. Owing to summer floods, the trunks of weeping willows growing in profusion on the levee were covered with red fibrous roots. Now that the water had receded, the roots had dried out. The willow leaves had yellowed and fallen into the river, to be carried slowly downstream. Ducks gliding near the riverbank quacked as they dug their red beaks into aquatic grasses in search of food, though who knew if they found any.

The boy was wheezing by the time he reached the levee. His jutting breastbone seemed to contain a clucking hen.

‘Hurry up, Hei-hai!’ the mason shouted from the bridgehead.

Hei-hai, still appearing to be running, made his way over to the mason. ‘Aren’t you cold?’ the mason asked as he looked him over.

Hei-hai just gaped at him. The mason was in work clothes — pants and jacket over a red athletic shirt, its dazzling collar turned up flamboyantly. The boy stared at that collar as if it were a bonfire.

‘What are you looking at?’ the mason asked, rubbing the boy’s head, which rocked back and forth like a drum rattle. ‘You,’ he said, ‘your stepmother has knocked the sense right out of you.’

The mason whistled a tune, rapping his fingers on the boy’s head as they walked onto the bridge. The boy stepped carefully to keep his head where the mason could rap it with thick knuckles that were hard as little clubs. It hurt, but he bore it silently, with only a slight wince. The mason could whistle just about anything with his moist, red lips. Puckering them up and spreading them a bit, he mimicked the crisp, melodic notes of a meadowlark and sent them soaring into the sky.

They crossed the bridge, climbed the levee and headed west to the floodgate, about half a li away. The floodgate was also a bridge of sorts, the difference being a flashboard that held back the water when it was down and released it when it was raised. The levee’s gentle slope, densely covered with feathery river locusts, gave out onto a wide, spongy sandbank where wild grass was already taking root in the wake of the summer flood. Rich open country spread out beyond the levee as far as the eye could see, saturated from the annual floods with silt deposits that turned once hard black earth into fertile soil. The most recent flood had been light enough to spare the levee, so the gate had remained shut. The floodplain was so densely planted with Bengalese jute it was like a virgin forest. A light mist shrouded the field on that early morning, lending it an oceanic quality.

The mason and Hei-hai strolled up to the floodgate, where two teams waited on the sandy ground. Men made up one team, women the other, like a pair of rival camps. A commune cadre, notebook in hand, stood between the teams and gestured as he spoke to them, raising and lowering his arms. The mason led Hei-hai along the floodgate’s concrete steps and walked up to the man. ‘Reporting in from our village, Deputy Director Liu,’ he said. He had often been temporarily assigned to the commune, where Director Liu was frequently in charge of projects, so they already knew each other.

Hei-hai was staring at Director Liu’s broad mouth. When the purple lips that formed that mouth came together they produced a string of sounds: ‘You again, you slippery devil. That damned village of yours sure knows how to meet quotas. They’ve sent me a man who could slip through the holes of any strainer. Just my luck. Where’s your helper?’

Hei-hai felt the mason’s knuckles on his head.

‘Him?’ Director Liu wrapped his hand around the boy’s neck and wobbled his head back and forth. Hei-hai’s heels nearly left the ground. ‘Why send me this skinny little monkey?’ he snarled. ‘Can he even lift a hammer?’

‘All right now, Director Liu Taiyang,’ the mason said as he pried the man’s hand from Hei-hai’s neck. ‘The glory of socialism is that everyone eats. Hei-hai comes from three generations of poor peasants. If socialism won’t take care of him, who will? Besides, his mother’s gone, and he lives with a stepmother. His daddy went off to the north-east like a man possessed and hasn’t been home for three years. He might be bear food by now or lying in the bellies of wolves. Where’s your class sentiment, Director Liu Taiyang?’ This he said partly in jest.

Hei-hai was lightheaded from the shaking. He’d been close enough to the director to smell the alcohol on his breath, and it made him sick. It was what his stepmother smelled like much of the time. After his father left, she often sent him to the canteen to barter dried yams for alcohol, and she didn’t stop drinking till she was drunk. That was when the beating and the pinching and the biting started.

‘A skinny little monkey!’ Director Liu spat out, then turned and continued lecturing the others.

By the fifth day of pumping bellows, Hei-hai’s skin had taken on the sheen and colour of fine coal. The only parts of his body that remained white were his teeth and eyes, which made his eyes more expressive than ever. When he looked at you, with his lips clamped shut, you felt as if your heart had been seared. Coal ash filled the creases next to his nose, and his hair, which had grown half an inch, was layered with the black stuff. By this time, everyone at the worksite was calling him Hei-hai — Dark Boy — and he ignored them all, and he ignored them all, wouldn’t even look them in the eye. Only when Juzi or the mason spoke to him would he respond with his eyes. Everyone had stopped for lunch the day before, when a blacksmith’s ball-peen hammer and a new bucket for quenching steel were stolen. Liu Taiyang stepped up onto the floodgate and railed at the people for half an hour, after which he gave Hei-hai a new job: each day at noon, when the others were eating, he was to remain at the worksite and keep watch over the tools. The blacksmith would bring him food. Director Liu said the little mutt was getting a free lunch out of it.

A thundershower struck that night. When the workers showed up the next morning, they saw that the rocks had been washed clean and the sandy ground levelled. Water in the trough was twice as high as the day before; the few remaining clouds were reflected in the brilliant blue water. There was a sudden chill in the air; the autumn wind bored through the bridge openings and, together with the rustling of the sea of jute plants, chilled people from the inside out. The old blacksmith’s padded jacket, shiny as armour, was missing its buttons, and he could only close it by drawing together the lapels and securing them with a red plastic-wrapped electric cord. Hei-hai, still wearing only a pair of shorts, was bare-chested and barefoot, but he didn’t seem to suffer from the cold. A red plastic-wrapped electric cord also held up his shorts, in place of the cloth sash he’d either lost or put away. His hair had grown wild and was now two inches long, every strand standing up like the spines of a hedgehog. The workers looked at him with pity and admiration as he walked over the rocky ground, with its pooled rainwater, in bare feet.

‘Aren’t you cold?’ the old blacksmith asked.

Hei-hai gave a confused look, as if he hadn’t understood the question.

‘I asked you if you’re cold,’ the blacksmith repeated, raising his voice a bit. The look of confusion disappeared as Hei-hai lowered his head and began lighting the forge. He lightly pumped the bellows with his left hand, holding the coal shovel in his right, and stared at the burning stalks of wheat. The old blacksmith took his greasy jacket off the bed and draped it over Hei-hai’s back. The boy squirmed with obvious discomfort. As soon as the blacksmith walked off, Hei-hai took off the jacket and laid it back on the bed. With a shake of his head, the old man crouched down to smoke.

‘No wonder you like to stay close to the forge,’ the young blacksmith said with a bored yawn. ‘That’s how you keep warm. Shit, you might be little, but you’re cunning as hell.’

A whistle sounded at the worksite. Deputy Director Liu called everyone together. The workers gathered in front of the floodgate, facing the sun, the men standing with their arms folded, the women stitching shoe soles. Hei-hai stole an uneasy look at the seam above the seventh bridge pylon. The weather’s turning cold, Director Liu said, so we’re going to have to put in overtime and pour concrete for the foundation before the freeze sets in. Starting today, overtime will be from seven to ten at night. You’ll earn half a jin of grain and twenty cents each day. No one complained, though there were as many different expressions as there were faces — more than two hundred of them. Hei-hai watched the mason’s pale face turn red and then purple, while the woman’s ruddy face blanched, first grey, then white.

That night three gas lamps illuminated the worksite. One lit the areas where the masons worked, a second the area where the women broke rocks. Most of them had children and plenty of housework at home, so they gave up the half a jin of grain and twenty cents. No more than a dozen young women stayed to work under the artificial light. Since their homes were far from the worksite, they gathered their courage and slept squeezed together under one of the arched openings, after sealing both ends with flashboards, leaving a narrow opening in front through which they climbed in and out. Juzi sometimes slept with the other women, at other times she went to the village (a cousin whose husband had a temporary job in the county town and didn’t always come home at night had invited her to sleep there).

The third lamp threw its light on an old man, a young one, and a boy near the forge. The sound of steel on rock rang from the masons’ worksite, where chisels gave off sparks as they chewed up rock. The men worked hard. The mason took off his jacket; his red athletic shirt shone like a lit torch. The younger women sat around their gas lamp, their minds filled with pleasant fancies. At times they laughed out loud, and at times they whispered among themselves amid the intermittent cracks of breaking rock. The sound of the flowing river filled gaps between the noises they made. Juzi lay down her hammer, stood up, and stole toward the river. She cast a long shadow on the sandy ground. ‘Watch out some hot-blooded bachelor doesn’t grab you,’ a woman behind her called out. She walked quickly out of the circle of light. Each ray appeared to her as a bright white ball with thorns stretching toward her, but falling short. The tips of the thorns were red, and soft. Later she walked back toward the light; she had a sudden desire to see what Hei-hai was doing. Avoiding the lamplight, she stepped into the shadow of the first bridge pylon.

There she spotted him, moving like a little sprite, the radiant light spreading across his bare back like a coat of glaze. His skin resembled smooth rubber, elastic yet tough, durable and impenetrable. He appeared to have put on weight, for now there was something between his skin and his ribs. And no wonder, since she brought him lunch from the kitchen every day. He went home to sleep at night, but seldom to eat, and some nights he didn’t go back at all — one morning she saw him emerge from under the bridge with straw in his hair.

The golden radish splashed into the river, floating on the surface for a moment before settling to the riverbed, where it rolled around until it was buried in golden sand. A heavy mist rose above the spot where it had torn the surface of the river.

In the early morning hours, the mist covered the valley; the river sobbed beneath it. Early rising ducks on the riverbank stared mournfully at the rolling mist. One of the bold ones waddled impatiently toward the water, but the curtain of mist over reeds at the water’s edge blocked its way. Craning its neck left, right and straight ahead, it retreated from the spongy mist, quacking its displeasure. Eventually the sun rose and carved lanes and tunnels in the mist, through which the ducks saw an old man carrying his bedding and heavy tools over his shoulder, following the river westward. His back was badly bent, the load weighing down his shoulders and forcing his neck out ahead, swan-like. Once he was out of sight, a dark, bare-chested and barefoot boy came into view. A drake passed a meaningful look to the female next to it: Remember? It was him that time. The bucket bounced into a willow tree and rolled down to the river. He sprawled like a dog on the ground, and then went down to the river to get the nearly empty bucket; it could have killed that no-good sheldrake…

The female replied, Right, right, that damned sheldrake is always following me around, saying filthy things. Too bad it didn’t kill him…

Hei-hai paced slowly along the riverbank, trying to see through the mist. He could hear ducks quack-quacking noisily on the opposite bank. He crouched down, rested his large head on his knees and wrapped his arms around chilled calves. The rising sun burned his back as if it were a forge.

He’d spent the night under the bridge instead of going home. When the cock crowed he heard the old blacksmith speaking loudly in the bridge opening. Then quiet had returned. Unable to go back to sleep, he’d gotten up and walked across the chilled sand to the river’s edge. Seeing the old blacksmith’s hunched back, he’d started walking toward him but slipped in the sand and fell on his rear. By the time he was back on his feet, the old man had disappeared in the mist.

Now he was on his haunches, watching the sun cleave the mist like a knife through bean curd. Across the river, ducks cast superior looks his way. The water came into view as a bright, silvery expanse, but to his disappointment, he could not see the bottom. There was a commotion at the worksite — Director Liu was fuming: ‘Shit, something crazy happened at the forge. The old bastard rolled up his bedding and took off without a word to anyone. The little bastard is gone too. What happened to organisational discipline?’

‘Hei-hai!’

‘Hei-hai!’

‘Isn’t that him crouching by the water?’

Juzi and the mason ran over and picked him up by the arms.

‘Why are you crouching here, you poor thing?’ she asked as she picked straw from his scalp. ‘It’s too cold to be doing that.’

‘There are sweet potatoes left over from last night. Get old one-eye to bake them for you.’

‘The old blacksmith’s gone,’ Juzi said sombrely.

‘He is gone.’

‘Now what? Should we let him stay with the other one? What if he mistreats him?’

‘Don’t worry about that, the boy can take anything. Besides, we’re here, so he won’t do anything stupid.’

They dragged Hei-hai over to the worksite. At each step he turned to look back.

‘Walk properly, you little dope,’ the mason said. ‘What’s there to see in the river?’ He squeezed Hei-hai’s arm.

‘I thought the old guy kidnapped you, you little shit,’ Liu Taiyang said before turning to the young blacksmith.

‘And you, since you squeezed the old guy out, make sure you keep up the work. If you don’t fix the chisels for us, I’ll gouge out your good eye.’

The young man smiled arrogantly. ‘Wait and see, old Liu,’ he said. ‘But I get his wages and grain rations, or you can look for someone else.’

‘We’ll wait and see. If you do good work, fine. If not, you can fuck off.’

‘Light a fire, son,’ the blacksmith ordered Hei-hai.

Juzi and the mason appeared to forget about Hei-hai over the next couple of weeks, and even stopped going to the bridge to see him. At noon and night, he heard meadowlark songs in the jute field, which always brought a cold grin to his face, as if he knew what the bird was saying. The blacksmith did not notice the meadowlark’s call until several days after Hei-hai. From his place under the bridge he discovered the woman and the mason’s secret by careful observation. Whenever the meadowlark call sounded, the mason was absent from the worksite. The young woman, beset with anxiety, would look around before laying down her hammer and walking off. Not long after she left, the meadowlark stopped singing. Then an awful look would disfigure the blacksmith’s face, and he would be spoiling for a fight. He began drinking. Hei-hai bought him a bottle of potato spirits every day from the little shop across the bridge.

On this night, waves of moonlight cascaded down like water as the meadowlark sang. A warm and tender southerly breeze wafted from the jute field to the worksite. The blacksmith grabbed a liquor bottle and downed half of it in one go, drawing tears from his good eye. Deputy Director Liu Taiyang had gone home for his son’s wedding, and the workers were slacking off. Masons scheduled to work at night lay under the bridge and smoked, and with no chisels to repair, the forge fires all but died out.

‘Hei-hai, go get me some radishes…’ The alcohol burned in the blacksmith’s stomach; he was nearly breathing fire.

Hei-hai stood by the bellows, stiff as a post, staring at him.

‘Are you waiting for me to give you a beating?’

Hei-hai walked into the moonlight, skirted the jute field with its many mysteries, and walked through the multi-hued sweet potato field to reach the radish field, which teemed with mirages. By the time he returned with a radish, the blacksmith was snoring loudly in bed. Hei-hai laid the radish on the anvil and stirred the fire with tremulous hands, but was unable to make those blue and yellow flames dance again. He changed angles, glancing at the radish on the anvil. It seemed wrapped in a dark red cloth, tattered and ugly. He hung his head in dejection.

Hei-hai slept badly that night, tossing and turning under the bridge. Now that Director Liu was gone, all the workers went home to sleep, leaving nothing but a thin layer of straw under the bridge. Moonbeams slanted into the openings, filling them with a cold glint that was accompanied by the sounds of flowing water, rustling jute plants and the snores of the blacksmith, who slept under the westernmost arch. There were other, more puzzling sounds as well, all of which found their way into his ears. He was mesmerised by the shimmering straw spread on the stone floor, so he stacked it and burrowed in. When the wind still found its way into the pile, he curled up and stopped moving. He wanted to sleep, but sleep eluded him. He could not stop thinking about that radish. What kind was it? Golden, yet transparent. One moment he was standing in the middle of the river, and the next in the radish field. He was searching, searching everywhere.

The next morning, before the sun was up and when the moon still showed weakly in the sky, a panicky flock of crows flew over from the worksite, cawing loudly. Their dirty feathers dotted the floodgate. A dozen grey clouds stood on the eastern horizon like tall trees, tattered streamers dangling from their branches.

When he crawled out from under the bridge, Hei-hai was freezing, shivering as he had a few days earlier during an attack of the shakes. Director Liu had returned the day before, and was furious with what he found. He’d fulminated against the workers, who had showed up early on this day to work extra hard. The constant sound of hammering was like the croaking of pond frogs. There were many chisels to repair, and the blacksmith attacked them with great industry, turning out beautiful work. The masons who came to exchange the worn chisels praised his work, saying he’d surpassed the old blacksmith; the chisels tore through the rocks.

As the sun climbed into the sky, the mason came with two chisels to be repaired. Newly purchased, they were worth four or five yuan apiece. As the blacksmith glanced at the spirited mason, a cold ray of light shot from his good eye. The mason was unmindful of the man’s expression — the eyes of the very happy only see happiness. Hei-hai knew that the blacksmith was going to try to make a fool out of the mason, and that frightened him. The blacksmith heated the two chisels until they were white as silver, laid them on the anvil and hammered the ends into points. Then he dunked them all at once in the bucket.

The mason walked off with the chisels. The grinning blacksmith eyed Hei-hai. ‘What makes that asshole think he’s good enough to use my chisels?’ he said. ‘What do you think, son?’

Hei-hai cowered in a corner. Before long, the mason returned with the chisels and flung them at the blacksmith’s feet. ‘One-eye,’ he growled, ‘what kind of work is this?’

‘What are you shouting about, asshole?’

‘Open that eye of yours and take a look.’

‘They must be flawed chisels.’

‘Bullshit! You did this to make me look bad.’

‘So what if I did? Just looking at you makes my blood boil!’

‘You, you…’ The mason was white with rage. ‘Come over here if you’ve got the balls!’

‘I’m not scared of you.’ The blacksmith untied his oilcloth apron, baring his back, and moved toward the mason like a brown bear.

After taking off his jacket and red athletic shirt, the mason stood on the sandy ground in front of the floodgate in his undershirt. He was tall and husky, with a student’s face, solid as a tree. The blacksmith’s feet, still covered with oilcloth to protect them from the hot metal, scraped noisily along the rocky ground. He had long arms, stumpy legs and a muscular chest.

‘Do we talk it out or fight it out?’ the blacksmith asked scornfully.

‘Up to you,’ the mason said in the same contemptuous tone.

‘Then you’d better go home and have your father sign a guarantee that he won’t come to me for a new son after I beat you to a pulp.’

‘And you’d better go home to prepare your coffin.’

After a spate of insults, the two men drew closer. Hei-hai remained cowering in the corner. He watched the first exchange, which was comical. The mason spat in the blacksmith’s face. Then the blacksmith swung at the mason, who stepped back, the fist missing its mark. More spit, more swings, another retreat, another miss. But before the mason could spit a third time, the blacksmith hit him on the shoulder, spinning him around.

A crowd gathered, amid startled cries. ‘Stop fighting,’ they shouted. ‘Stop it!’ But no one broke it up, and the shouts soon died out. Everyone held their breath and watched wide-eyed as the two combatants, utterly unlike in physique, pitted strength against strength. Juzi, her face white with fear, gripped the shoulders of the woman next to her. Each time her lover was hit, she moaned, the area around her eyes like dark chrysanthemums.

As they traded punch for punch, neither appeared to be winning. The mason’s height served him well, but his showy punches lacked steam, and he could not put his opponent down. The blacksmith’s movements were slow, but his powerful fists landed with authority, and spun the mason around. Then one of the mason’s punches connected, rocking the stunned blacksmith. Seeing an opening, the mason attacked, raining punches on the blacksmith, who hunched over, stuck his head under the mason’s arms and wound his arms around his waist. The mason held the blacksmith in a headlock, and they began wrestling, advancing and retreating, back and forth, ending with the mason flat on his back on the sandy ground.

Shouts erupted from the crowd.

The blacksmith stood up, spitting blood and tilting his head, like the winner at a cockfight.

The mason got up off the ground and charged. Two bodies, one light, the other dark, were once again entwined. This time the mason stayed low to protect his belly, crotch and thighs. Four arms grappled. The mason was sometimes able to pick the blacksmith up and whirl him around, but could not throw him down. He was panting heavily and sweating from head to toe; there was not a drop of sweat on the blacksmith. The mason’s strength was ebbing, his movements were erratic and he was seeing double. As he slackened, the blacksmith broke his hold and wrapped his arms around the man’s waist so tightly he couldn’t breathe. He was back on the ground again.

The mason lost the third round badly. The blacksmith crouched down, lifted him up on his shoulders and flung him at least two metres.

Juzi, weeping, rushed over to help the mason to his feet. The pleasure vanished from the blacksmith’s face as he heard her cry, replaced by a look of misery. As he stood there blankly, the mason got to his feet, pushed Juzi’s hands away, scooped up a handful of sand and flung it into the blacksmith’s face, temporarily blinding him. The blacksmith roared like a wild animal and frantically rubbed his good eye. The mason charged, throttling the blacksmith and forcing him to the ground, where he pummelled him as if he were beating a drum.

At that moment, a dark figure burrowed out from between the legs of the crowd. It was Hei-hai. He flew like a bird onto the back of the mason, grabbed his cheeks with hands like black claws and pulled with all his might. The man bared his teeth, parted his lips and screamed — ‘Ow, ow!’ — before thumping to the sandy ground again.

The blacksmith struggled to sit up and began feeling around on the ground for rocks, picking them up and flinging them in all directions. ‘Bastard! Lousy dog!’ Curses flew with the rocks, landing on the onlookers like a hailstorm. They scattered. Juzi screamed, and the blacksmith’s hand stopped dead. Tears had washed the sand out of his eye, which could now see, though not clearly. He saw a white sliver of stone lodged in Juzi’s right eye, as if she’d grown a fungus. With a screech, he covered his eye and fell to the ground, where he writhed in agony.

Hei-hai’s hands relaxed the moment he heard her scream. His fingers had dug two bloody, coal-smeared gouges in the mason’s cheeks. In the midst of chaos, he slinked over to a spot under the bridge and squatted down in the darkest corner he could find to watch the pandemonium at the worksite, his teeth chattering.

There was no sign of the mason or Juzi the next day at the worksite, which was shrouded in gloom. Overhead the sun seemed to be convulsing, while below a bleak autumn wind raised waves in the jute field, over which flocks of sparrows cried out fearfully. The wind raised dust as it passed under the bridge and coloured much of the sky yellow. It did not die down until after nine o’clock, when the sun returned to normal.

When Deputy Director Liu Taiyang, who had returned from his son’s wedding, learned what had happened, he seethed. Standing in front of the forge, he tore into the blacksmith, threatening to gouge out his good eye and give it to Juzi in exchange for the one she’d lost. The blacksmith said nothing in his defence. The pimples on his dark face had turned red. He took in big gulps of air and swallowed big gulps of alcohol.

The masons, driven by demonic energy, worked feverishly. Dull chisels piled up by the forge, waiting to be repaired. The blacksmith lay curled on his bed, swigging alcohol, the bridge opening reeking of it.

Director Liu kicked him furiously. ‘Scared? Or faking it? Do you think playing dead will solve your problem? Get your ass up and repair those chisels. Maybe that will make up for what you did.’

The blacksmith flung his bottle up onto the bridge, where it shattered and rained shards of glass and drops of alcohol onto Director Liu’s head. The blacksmith jumped up and ran out, listing sideways as he shouted, “What am I afraid of? The heavens don’t scare me, death doesn’t scare me either, so what’s there to be afraid of?’ He climbed up to the floodgate. ‘No man scares me!’ He banged into the stone railing and staggered.

‘Watch out, blacksmith,’ people below shouted. ‘You’ll fall.’

‘Me, fall?’ He laughed loud and hard as he climbed onto the railing. Then he let go and stood precariously. The people watching below were frozen, entranced, barely breathing.

He stretched out his arms, flapping them as if they were wings, and started walking along the narrow railing, swaying from side to side. A walk became a saunter, a saunter became a trot. Down below, the people covered their eyes with their hands, but only for a moment.

He wobbled as he ran across the railing. His distorted image was reflected on the surface of the blue water below. He ran from west to east and back, singing.

From Beijing to Nanjing I’ve never seen anyone string up an electric light in their pants, tada, tada, tadac, from Nanjing to Beijing I’ve never seen anyone pull a slingshot out of their pants…

Some intrepid masons ran up to bring the blacksmith down. He fought them. ‘Don’t fuck with me! I’m a champion acrobat. Who’s better, those girls who walk tightropes in movies or me on this railing, tell me that.’ The masons were breathing hard by the time they got him back down under the bridge, where he collapsed onto his bed, foaming at the mouth. He tore at his own throat. ‘Mother!’ he shouted. ‘I can’t take it anymore. Hei-hai, my apprentice, save your master, dig me up a radish…’