The Ancient Ship. Zhang Wei

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СКАЧАТЬ out in his head over and over: He and Jiansu were standing shoulder to shoulder on the concrete platform, buffeted by cold winds. Jiansu’s hand had been so hot he had to let go, and he knew he must no longer let those gears come to him at night. And yet, the fervent images burned their way into his breast, day and night. He must keep his passions in check. The only person he had to listen to was Sui Buzhao, who could give Li a new lease on life.

      Li Zhichang had mixed feelings toward the older generation. He hated them, and he loved them. His grandfather, Li Xuantong, who had not considered himself an ordinary mortal since the age of fourteen, had shaved his head and traveled to a distant mountain to become a mystic. His father, Li Qisheng, had operated machinery for a capitalist in northeast China, making his return to Wali an inglorious one. People said that no respectable man would do what he did. Though he later tried to redeen himself through good service, the townspeople refused to forgive him. In their eyes, Li’s family was synonymous with abnormality, to be neither understood nor trusted. Once the smartest boy in school, after finishing the fifth grade Zhichang was ready for middle school but was told he could not continue his education. The reasoning was convoluted, but it rested primarily on the fact that his father had operated machinery for a capitalist. An elementary school education was deemed sufficient for someone like him. He returned home burdened with unquenchable loathing for both his father and his grandfather.

      In his nineteenth year something happened that left Li Zhichang with eternal regret. What he experienced that year made him realize that a man must always behave scrupulously; he must neither be slack in his work nor allow himself to get carried away with it.

      Early one warm spring day, a feverish Li Zhichang walked alone on the bank of the river; never before had he felt such a need for something as he did now. He wanted it desperately. Sunset colors created a beautiful reflection on the water; budding new leaves on the floodplain willows swayed in the breeze like bashful maidens. He wanted it desperately. He strolled aimlessly for a while before crossing the floodplain to head back. But when he reached the willows, his throat turned hot and began to swell. He stopped, feeling weak, and sat down on the hot sandy ground. Time for pleasure.

      Li Zhichang did not make it back home until nightfall, feeling more relaxed, his hands unusually soft. He slept well that night.

      The next morning he drew curious looks when he was out for a walk. “Did you have a good time out in the willow grove?” a boy asked. With a malicious laugh, another boy went up to him and said, “In books they call that masturbating.” Li felt an explosion go off in his head. He turned and ran, heedless of everything around him. Damn it! he cursed inwardly. Goddamn it! Laughter was following him. “I saw you!” someone shouted. “I saw everything!”

      The young Li Zhichang refused to go out after that. His gate remained shut, and after several days had passed, people began to sense that something was wrong. So Li Yuming, the Gaoding Street Party secretary, and a clan member tried Zhichang’s door. Not only was it locked, apparently something was blocking it; it may even have been nailed shut. With a sigh, Li Yuming left, saying that the boy would have to get through it on his own. Others tried their luck but with the same result. Sighs were heard all over town. “The Li clan, ah, the Li clan!”

      Last to show up at Zhichang’s door was Sui Buzhao, possibly the only person in town who understood the Li clan, and someone who had become a friend to the young man. He asked him to come out but was rebuffed. So he pounded on the door and cursed. “Uncle Sui,” Li answered weakly from inside, “there’s no need to curse. I’m not worthy of your friendship, I’ve done a terrible thing, and all that’s left for me is to die.” Sui Buzhao pondered this for a moment before leaving. He returned with an ax, with which he easily broke down the door. By then Zhichang was skin and bones, his face ashen, his uncombed hair in tangles. He stepped unsteadily up to Sui. “Uncle,” he said, “be kind and use that thing on me.”

      The blush of anger rose on Buzhao’s face. “Fine,” he said as he swung the ax handle and knocked Li Zhichang to the floor. Li struggled to his feet and was promptly knocked down again. With his hands on his hips, the older man swore, “I must have been blind to befriend such a coward!” Li hung his head and said he was too ashamed to go outside.

      “What’s the big deal?” Sui growled.

      After getting Li Zhichang to wash up and comb his hair, Sui Buzhao told him to step outside and walk with him, holding his head high. This time the people looked on with sober expressions; no one laughed.

      In a word, what happened that day nearly destroyed Li Zhichang. But Sui Buzhao’s ax had indeed given him a new lease on life. At night, as the golden gears turned above his head, he experienced both excitement and agony. He dared not try to touch them. He knew that sooner or later he would install them in the noodle factory, but impatience lay just below the surface, the same sort of impatience that had overcome him that day when he’d sought pleasure in the willow grove. Maybe, he thought, the passion he was experiencing now was an offshoot of the same force that had nearly destroyed him. It was sheer agony, and there was nothing he could do about it. What he needed to do was join Technician Li in setting up a generator for Gaoding Street and turning Wali into a town where the lights shone brightly. Too many people had suffered as a result of insufficient lighting in town.

      A resident had once gone to the Wali Emporium to buy one of Zhang-Wang’s clay tigers, and she had taken advantage of the weak light to sell him a cracked model. Then there was the fellow named Erhuai, who was responsible for maintaining the floodplain; he was known to run like the wind through the shadows, a rifle slung over his back, reminding people of Zhao Duoduo as a young man. Li hated the way the man scurried through the darkness.

      Li often stood outside the old mill on the riverbank. That is where the first gears were already turning. The millstone rumbled like distant thunder. By looking through the window he could see the most taciturn member of the Sui clan inside. He too was beginning to take on the man’s disinclination to utter a sound. The man seemed to contain as much power as the millstone itself as it tirelessly ground everything in its path, smoothly, steadily. But he did not utter a sound.

      On one occasion the man stood up and, with his long wooden ladle, broke up a clot of mung beans on the conveyor belt. On his return to his stool he glanced out the window and raised his ladle. Li Zhichang looked in the direction of that glance and saw Jiansu, who was walking lazily up to the mill, pipe in hand. Once inside, Baopu offered his brother the stool, but Jiansu said no. “I was afraid you were getting drunk the other night,” Baopu said, “so I waited for you in your room…”

      Jiansu just smiled. Then, abruptly, the smile vanished. His face was slightly pale, much the same as that night on the platform. He hung his head and knocked the ashes out of the bowl of his pipe. In a soft voice he said, “There’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about. I was going to mention it when the idea first came to me, but I got drunk that night and had no desire to sleep the next day. People said my eyes were bloodshot. I decided I wouldn’t come see you after all. I didn’t want to tell you what I had on my mind.”

      Baopu looked up at his brother, a pained look on his face. He stared at the tip of his ladle, dripping with water. “Go ahead, don’t hold back. What was it you wanted to talk to me about?”

      “Nothing. I’ve changed my mind.”

      “Go ahead, let’s hear it.”

      “No, not now.”

      The brothers went silent. Baopu rolled a cigarette. Jiansu lit his pipe. The smoke clouded the air in the mill as, one puff after another, they created layers of smoke, all of which slowly settled onto the millstone, as it turned slowly, taking the smoke with it, until the swirls stretched into a long tube and drifted out through the window. Baopu smoked on and on, finally flipping away the butt. “Keeping СКАЧАТЬ