Mo Yan - Radish

A point was pounded onto a blunt chisel as its colour cooled from dusky red to silver grey. The ground was covered with white slag, hot enough to ignite straw, which disgorged lazy threads of white smoke.

‘Who splashed me, damn it!’ the mason roared in the face of the young blacksmith.

‘It was me, so what!’ The blacksmith said, cocking his head elegantly; his body seemed to glow as he stood with his hands on his sledge handle.

‘Are you blind?’

‘Only the one eye. I flung the water, and you walked into it. Just your luck.’

‘That’s a ridiculous argument!’

‘These days the bigger fists win the argument.’ He clenched his fists, making his muscles bulge.

‘Come on, then, one-eyed ogre. I’ll put the light out of the other one,’ the mason said, drawing up threateningly. The old blacksmith approached innocently, and bumped into the mason, who sensed something radiating from the old man’s sunken eyes, a kind of sign, and his muscles went slack. The old man looked up and casually sang a line from either an opera or a popular song.

For love of your sword, your learning, your youthful virility

I followed you across the earth, wracked by storm and hunger, enduring countless hardships …

He sang only that much, then stopped, and it was clear that he had swallowed the melody’s last mournful strains. He glanced at the mason again, then lowered his head to quench the newly sharpened chisel in the bucket; but just before he did that, he rolled up his sleeve and thrust a hand into the water to test the temperature. A deep purple scar on his forearm, round with a raised centre, did not really resemble an eye, but it looked like one to the mason, who felt that the strange eye was watching him. Twisting his lip, he felt as if a spell had been cast. He emerged from under the bridge as if walking on air, and disappeared for the rest of the day.

The boy’s eyes ached, his sun-baked scalp burned. He stood up from her seat and strolled back to the forge. It was dark under the bridge, so he felt his way over to the old blacksmith’s folding stool. As he sat on it, his mind a blank, his hands abruptly began to burn, so he pressed them against the cold stone wall and directed his thoughts to the past.

Three days earlier, the old blacksmith had taken time off to return home and fetch padded clothes and bedding, saying that the older you got, the more you valued your legs, and that he didn’t feel like walking home after work each day. He would spread his bedding near the forge to stay warm at night. (Hei-hai eyed the blacksmith’s bedding. The northern edge of the bridge opening had been sealed by a flashboard, though sunlight shone through the gaps and fell on a greasy padded jacket and mangy dog-skin bed mat.) When his master left for home, the younger one became the ruler of the forge. He entered that morning, chest thrown out, belly protruding, and announced amiably, ‘Light off the forge, Hei-hai. The old guy’s gone home, so it’s just you and me.’

Hei-hai just stared.

‘What are you gawking at, you little prick? You think I’m not good enough? I’ve been with the old guy three years, I know all his tricks.’

Hei-hai lazily started a fire as the blacksmith smugly hummed a tune. He thrust several pieces of steel from the day before into the mouth of the forge. Hei-hai made the fire inside roar, adding red to the black of his face. The young blacksmith burst out laughing. ‘Hei-hai,’ he shouted, ‘anyone would think you were a Red Army soldier, with all those scars.’

The boy pumped the bellows even harder.

‘How come that foxy foster mother of yours hasn’t come to see you lately? She’s probably mad that you bit her. What does her arm taste like? Is it sour? Sweet? You sure know how to enjoy good food, you little fuck! Give me a chance to hold that tender arm of hers and I’d gnaw it like a cucumber.’

Hei-hai picked up the tongs, pulled a piece of white-hot steel out of the forge, and banged it down on the anvil.

‘That was fast, boy!’ The blacksmith picked up a medium-sized hammer, smaller than his sledge but bigger than the ball-peen, gripped the steel with his tongs, and pounded with all his might. Hei-hai stood watching. The blacksmith was strong, and his hammer seemed to have a life of its own. The pointed end of the chisel was perfectly tapered, like a newly sharpened pencil. Hei-hai looked sadly at the old blacksmith’s ball-peen hammer. The younger man carried the chisel over to the bucket and quenched it in the water, his actions a mirror image of those made by the older man. Hei-hai turned away and fixed his eyes once more on the hammer lying alongside the anvil. Its wooden handle was as shiny as the horns of an old bull.

The young blacksmith worked with quick precision, and in short order had tempered a dozen or more chisels. He sat proudly on the master’s stool and rolled a cigarette. After putting it between his lips, he told Hei-hai to bring him a live coal to light it. ‘You see, son? We did just fine without the old guy.’

At the height of his self-satisfaction, masons who had taken the new chisels to the worksite reappeared.

‘What kind of shitty work are you giving us, black-smith? The tips either break off or bend. We’re working with stone out there, not bean curd. Wait till your master returns, and don’t use our chisels for practice.’

They dumped the chisels on the ground and left. The blacksmith’s face darkened. He shouted for Hei-hai to get the fire going again and reheat the chisels. Soon after, when he’d hammered and quenched them a second time, he personally carried them to the worksite. But he’d no sooner returned to the bridge than the masons followed, dumping more ruined chisels on the ground and raining curses on his head. ‘You pathetic fuck, quit messing with us. Look at your work! Every fucking tip has broken off!’

Hei-hai looked at the blacksmith, wrinkles appearing at the corners of his mouth, though it was impossible to tell if he was happy or sad. The blacksmith flung his tools away, crouched down and sulked. As he smoked a cigarette, his good eye rolled in its socket, resulting in a puzzled, angry stare, his eyebrows wriggling like tadpoles. He flicked his cigarette butt away and stood up.

‘Shit!’ he said. ‘Light a fire, Hei-hai, and let’s get back at it.’

Hei-hai pumped the bellows lethargically. The blacksmith exhorted and cursed him, but he didn’t look up. The steel was hot. The blacksmith struck it a couple of times and then carried it over to the water bucket. But this time, instead of quenching the steel gradually, like the old master did, he dunked it all the way in; the water sizzled and released a twisting cloud of steam. He lifted the chisel out of the water, held it up and cocked his head to examine the pattern and colour. He then laid it on the anvil and rapped it lightly with his hammer, splitting the steel in half. Dejected, he threw his hammer to the ground and flung one half of the steel as far as he could outside the bridge opening, where it landed on a rock. It looked ugly.

‘Go pick that up,’ he barked at Hei-hai. The boy’s ears twitched, but his legs stayed put. For this he received a kick in the pants, a bang on the shoulder with a pair of tongs and a deafening shout in the ear: ‘Go bring that thing back to me!’

Head down, Hei-hai walked over to the chisel, bent over slowly and picked it up. It sizzled in his hand. There was a smell of fried pork. The chisel thudded to the ground.

The blacksmith could hardly believe his eyes. He burst out laughing. ‘I forgot it was still hot, you little prick. Your trotter is cooked. Let’s eat!’

Hei-hai walked back to the bridge opening, ignoring the blacksmith as he thrust his scalded hand into the bucket of water. Then he walked slowly out from under the bridge and bent over to examine the broken chisel. It was silvery with a rough, pitted surface. The muddy ground on which it lay was steaming: a thin, almost invisible whiteness. He bent lower until his rear end was sticking up in the air; his shorts hiked up to expose thighs that were much lighter in colour than his calves. One of his hands rested on his back, the other hung straight down and swung closer to the chisel, water dripping onto it from his fingertips. Each drop hissed and bounced noisily as it shrank to form a pattern, smaller and smaller until it disappeared. He felt the heat on the tips of his fingers, heat that made its way through his chest and into his heart.