Mo Yan - Radish

Hei-hai uttered an excited cry.

‘You still here, you little prick?’

A tall, slight old man ambled into the opening. ‘I thought the fire was banked,’ he said to the young blacksmith. ‘Why’d you bring it up again?’ The voice rumbled, the words sounding as if they emerged from somewhere below the old man’s diaphragm.

‘This little prick put it out.’ He pointed at Hei-hai with his shovel.

‘Let him pump the bellows,’ the old man said. He wrapped a yellow oilskin apron around his waist, then two more pieces around his ankles to protect his feet. All were covered with holes from hot sparks. Hei-hai knew this was the old blacksmith.

‘Let him pump the bellows, so you can concentrate on your hammer. That way you won’t have to work so hard.’

‘Let a little kid like him pump the bellows?’ the young blacksmith muttered unhappily. ‘He’s so monkey-skinny, the forge will bake him into kindling.’

Liu Taiyang burst in on them. ‘What’s the problem?’ he asked with a look of exasperation. ‘Didn’t you say you wanted someone for the bellows?’

‘Not this one! Just look at him, Director Liu, he’s so skinny I doubt he could lift a fucking coal shovel. Why’d you send him to me? That’s like adding rotten food to a plate just to make it look full.’

‘I know exactly what’s on your devious mind. You were hoping I’d send you a woman to do it, weren’t you? The prettiest one of the bunch, maybe? How about the one in the crimson bandana? Fat chance, you dog turd! Hei-hai, pump the bellows.’ He turned back to the blacksmith. ‘You can teach him, damn it!’

Hei-hai walked timidly over to the bellows, but his eyes were on the old blacksmith’s face, looking almost expectant. He noticed that the old man’s face was the colour of burnt wheat, and that the bulb of his nose looked like a ripe haw berry. He came up and began teaching Hei-hai the basics of pumping a bellows; the boy’s ears twitched as he took in every word.

At first he fumbled with the bellows and was sweating heavily; the heat from the flames pricked his skin painfully. The old blacksmith’s face was expressionless, hard as a broken tile. He didn’t so much as look at Hei-hai, who bit his lip and wiped the sweat from his face with a sunburned arm before it ran into his eyes. His gaunt chest rose and fell like the bellows; puffs of air burst from his mouth and his nostrils.

The mason carried in blunt-nosed chisels to be repaired. ‘Can you hold out?’ he asked Hei-hai. ‘If not, tell me, and you can go back to the rock pile.’

Hei-hai didn’t so much as look up.

‘Pig-headed kid!’ the mason said as he dumped the chisels on the ground and walked off. But he was back shortly, now in company with Juzi. She had tied her bandana around her neck; it framed her face perfectly.

Under the bridge, a light shone in the young blacksmith’s eyes; he swallowed hard, licking his dry, chapped lips with a thickened tongue. His eyes were as big as Hei-hai’s, but the right one was covered by an eggshell-coloured film. Over time he’d come to rely on his left eye, leading to a habit of cocking his head to the right. With his head pillowed on his right shoulder, he sent a burning gaze from his left eye to the woman’s rosy face. An eighteen-pound sledge stood between his legs, head on the ground; he rested his hand on the handle as if it were a cane.

The fire in the forge blazed, sending black smoke and sparks up to the bridge, where it swirled and returned angrily to enshroud the boy’s face. He coughed, his chest wheezed. The old blacksmith gave him a frosty look, took a pipe from a leather pouch that had been rubbed shiny, slowly filled and lit it from the forge, and blew two streams of white smoke into the black cloud, making his nose hairs twitch. He cast an indifferent gaze through the smoke at the mason and Juzi. ‘Not so much coal,’ he said to Hei-hai. ‘Nice, even layers.’

The boy frantically pumped the bellows, his skeletal figure rocking back and forth. Flames shone on his sweaty chest, throwing his ribs into clear relief. His heart beat pathetically, like a tiny mouse tucked between a pair of ribs. ‘Make long, steady motions,’ the old blacksmith said.

Juzi’s eyes filled with tears when she noticed the blood on Hei-hai’s lower lip. ‘Hei-hai,’ she shouted, ‘don’t work for them. Come back with me to break rocks.’ She walked up to the bellows and grabbed his kindling-stick arms. He fought to break her grip, and made throaty noises that sounded like the growl of a dog about to bite. He was so light she had no trouble dragging him out of the opening. His calloused feet scraped noisily across the rocky soil.

‘Hei-hai,’ she said as she set him down, ‘let’s not work for them. The smoke’s too much for you. You’re so skinny there isn’t a drop of sweat left in you — you’re baked dry. Come break rocks with your big sister, that’s much easier.’ She pulled him back toward the rock pile. She had strong arms and large, soft hands that enveloped his wrist as if it were a twig. Hei-hai’s heels ploughed furrows in the rocky soil. ‘Stop that, you foolish little boy,’ she stopped to say. ‘Walk with me.’ She tightened her grip on his wrist. ‘You’re so skinny, I could shatter your bone with a squeeze, so how could you take on that kind of hard work?’ Hei-hai gave her a nasty look, then dropped his head and sank his teeth into her fleshy wrist. ‘Ow!’ she cried out, and let go of his wrist. Hei-hai spun around and ran back to the bridge.

His teeth left deep imprints on her wrist. His canines, practically fangs, had drilled two bloody holes in her skin. The troubled mason ran up and took out a wrinkled handkerchief to wrap around her bleeding wrist. She shoved him away, wouldn’t even look at him, as she bent down, scooped up a handful of dirt, and smeared it over the bite marks.

‘That’s got germs!’ he shouted, startled.

She turned and walked over to the rock pile, sat in her place and stared at the endless ripples on the river. She didn’t break a single rock.

The women commenced whispering.

‘Look, another one’s turned dumb.’

‘I’ll bet Hei-hai knows black magic.’

‘Get your ass over here, Hei-hai, you little prick,’ the mason called out as he walked toward the bridge. ‘How could you bite a friendly hand?’

At that moment, a bucketful of hot, dirty water flew into the mason’s face. He was standing in the right spot, the aim was perfect, and not a drop of the water was wasted. His soft brown hair, his jacket and the upturned collar of his red athletic shirt were coated with iron filings and coal dust. The filthy water ran from his head in rivulets.

‘Are you fucking blind?’ he stormed into the opening. ‘Who did that? Speak up. Who was it?’

No response. The black smoke had dissipated; the fire in the forge was blazing. The old blacksmith, his skin crimson, was taking a white-hot chisel out of the forge with a set of tongs. Sparks of molten steel popped off the tip. He laid it on the anvil and tapped the edges with his hammer. The anvil answered crisply. With the tongs in his left hand, he turned and moved the chisel, hitting it with his ball-peen hammer. The one-eyed blacksmith’s sledge came down hard on each spot the older man’s hammer hit, moving like a chicken pecking at rice; the younger man’s sledge gave no ground.

Hot air swirled. Amid the frightful sound of steel being tempered, sparks sprayed from the chisel and landed on the oilskin aprons and foot protectors, where they sizzled and gave off white smoke. They also landed on Hei-hai’s bare skin. He grimaced, baring two rows of white wolf cub teeth. Blisters rose on his belly, but he gave no sign of feeling pain, and hypnotic flames danced in his eyes. His thin shoulders hunched, his neck tucked down between them, and with his arms folded in front, he cupped his hand over his mouth and chin so tightly his nose was a mass of wrinkles.