Страница 67 из 78
The scaffolding shakes, and we are quiet. But the person who shows up turns out to be Yellow Hair. One of our own. He drops the weighted plumb line over the corner of the wall, then squints down and swears, using all his might to pry off one stone that protrudes prominently from the others.
If Yellow Hair has it in for Old Wu, it is because the latter is a loafer. And really, given half a chance to loaf, who wouldn't take it? When it's almost time for the bell to ring, there seems little point in being so diligent. It is not as if this structure will someday house people; it is going to be a meeting hall. We will continue to live in thatched huts. And while no one can dispute the fact that meetings are more important than sleep, on the other hand, there seems little danger that a column will come crashing down in the midst of a struggle session on account of a misplaced stone. This job is appropriate compensation for Old Wu, I kid him, because he has for years written political essays, beautiful works that he recites with great verve. A bit of Marx, Engels, Stalin, and Mao; of landlords, wealthy peasants, reactionaries, bad elements, and rightists-there is something in his speeches for everyone, and so naturally his audience resounds with animated shouts of support. After each meeting, he routinely crumples the perfectly crafted manuscript into a ball, which he tosses atop his mosquito netting to await appropriate use the next time he visits the pit that serves as the gentlemen's lavatory.
Old Wu has grown indignant, and in order to avoid a quarrel, I try to tell Yellow Hair that we weren't in the mood for work a moment ago, which is why the stone was not in place. Yellow Hair' eyes widen. Before I can finish my sentence, he takes hold of the rope on which the pipes are hung and slithers to the ground.
Yellow Hair is, of course, also a nickname. His hair is a yellow ish brown. We have yet to learn if this is a genetic trait that has been passed down over the years or evidence that he offended his ancestors. In fact, he is of pure Chinese extraction, last in the line of several generations of master masons. Even after traveling to the South Seas, he was not able to cast off his legacy, for he became the master mason of our construction group.
The bell rings. Still no sight of Yellow Hair on the opposite slope. Strange. Then, in a moment, he arrives with a face as black as india ink and, out of the blue, begins swearing: "Are you playing games with me? Just watch me plaster your mouth shut with a bucketful of mortar!"
What has happened? We sense immediately that something is wrong. The ghost grave hasn't got a damn thing in it. Even the bones have rotted into thin air.
We look at one another for a moment, but Old Wu is quickest: "It's them!"
Them. A complete mystery.
They are from the mainland, the Leizhou Peninsula. I was there once visiting relatives: barren soil as far as the eye could see, bringing to mind the saying red earth for a thousand miles. Here the soil is rich and black, yielding bricks as light and porous as steamed yeast cakes. Fortunately, there are rock formations in the mountains with such a good grain that in cutting them out, one has only to drive in a wedge to pull out neat square blocks. On the surface, it looks easy enough, but there's a trick to it, and no one at our farm can manage it.
They are strangers here and, as strangers, have yet to communicate with anyone outside their group, although the sounds of pounding echo in our respective camps. I have never been able to get a head count, but there must be six or seven of them. To me, they all look alike: jet-black faces with no more than a few ounces of flesh, their arms nevertheless thick from wielding a sledgehammer. They have their own language. The difficulty of the Leizhou linguistic family has stymied even the linguistically gifted Wu. A clan unto themselves. Though our brigade has empty huts to spare, they insist on pitching their own camp; our brigade has an eating hall, but they prefer to choke on the smoke of their cooking fires, stubbornly preserving their self-contained society. They know only work, with one exception. When the occasional young peasant woman makes her way to the rice fields, they come to life, first staring, then talking softly, perhaps in an exchange of opinions. Though the odds of viewing educated young women, who leave like clockwork at dawn and return at dusk, are greater, the stonecutters dare not take liberties-their eyelids never budge. While phoenixes may not be as valuable as chickens here in the wilderness, surely the cutters should allow themselves to take a glance or two.
The outside laborers keep their trade secrets to themselves. Their blasts produce scarcely any reverberations, the sound waves seemingly swallowed up into deep crevices. Every year when we expand our frontiers by opening up the mountains, we try to appropriate a small quantity of dynamite to throw at fish in the river, in the hope of varying our otherwise vegetarian diet. Damnably, control is tight, one stick to a ditch, and without this stuff there is no hope of snaring even a bit offish scale.
They do not use sticks of dynamite; heaven knows what alchemy they perform. Do you think you can glean their secrets? They pretend not to understand what you say and refuse to let an outsider observe them at work. Even stranger is the imported marvel called directional blasting, of which we have heard vague mention. Who would have guessed that the Leizhou natives mastered this technique long ago, for they are able to set off silent blasts that are devoid of flying chips, and they do so in seeming disregard of their own mortality. Worthy indeed to be the descendants of the men who invented gunpowder. Although this technique is primitive, the clan has passed down its secret for years, perfecting it with each successive generation.
The riddle of their existence is particularly elusive.
Even the concept of outside laborer is tarnished and suspiciously independent of the established social order. In our civilized nation, the relatively advanced notions of isms and social classes dictatorships and party lines permeate the hearts and minds of even women and children.
What could have befallen the homeland of these nomads? Was there a restoration? A coup? Is their fee divided up according to work points, or do they split it evenly? Such a casual approach to compensation flies in the face of political economics.
Our brains are routinely washed, our tails routinely lopped off. But as we listen to nightly lessons on political struggle, we can hear in the distance the pounding of rocks, and we feel sorrowful and alone. When we aspire to conquer the mountains and rivers and then remember that we are stuck in this anthill of a meeting room, we have new regard for our comrades in the wilderness who continue the revolutionary struggle apace.
But then comes our epiphany: in a land so vast, with a population so great, some things just shouldn't be too conscientious. The people from Leizhou are capable of overturning anything and yet seek only to keep their families from starving. Their stomachs are not thinking organs. They do not concern themselves with philosophy.
And so it is as if we were living in different worlds: our philosophies conflict, our political lines differ, yet we coexist in peace.
Sleeping brass lion!
Well water and river water wage war before the ancestral graves.
"Who's in charge here?" We rush into their self-contained hut. Old Wu towers above the group, his voice ringing out, his query threatening.
No response. The scorching white rays of noon creep in to reflect detached wooden faces.
We take a look around, but of course the brass lion is nowhere in sight. We have never seen anything like this: woks on stone, bedding on stone, with no cushioning pads. The bed planks shine where sweat has polished them. The hammer handle of hard bamboo, which they replace daily, has been split into kindling and flickers and sputters as the cassava roasts.