Embers of the Broken River

Chapter 24, Section 3

Two days later, Cui Laodao picked up his carving knife again.

It wasn't that he was afraid to carve. It was that he was trying to forget. In two days, he carved seven ledger blocks, each one clean and neat. Master Yu glanced at them as he passed by and said, "Old Cui, your skills have improved these past few days." He didn't answer. He knew it wasn't that his skills had improved, but that he had no expectations. Carving ledgers doesn't require expectations. Carving triangular diagrams does, and he hadn't yet learned how to coexist with those expectations.

On the evening of the third day, after finishing work, he didn't leave. He opened his toolbox and pulled out a third jujube wood board from the bottom. The grain was denser than the previous two, and there was only one knot on the lower right edge. He ran his hand over it; the wood grain was even, and there were no hidden cracks.

Then he did something different from the previous two times. He picked out the smallest horn knife from his toolbox, the kind used for carving seals, with a blade only two-tenths of an inch wide. He held the knife up to the lamp, the blade reflecting a cold light. Water dripped onto the whetstone, and the blade moved back and forth on the surface, making a very faint sound. He sharpened it until the blade felt cool to the touch against his fingers.

The first two pieces of wood taught him one thing: you can't use brute force with this; you have to control your strength. Controlling your strength is harder than exerting it. A flat-edged knife has a wide blade, so the force is transmitted too directly when it enters the wood. A angular knife has a narrow blade, so there is less resistance, and the force is not all transmitted into the wood. He changed knives not to make them sharper, but to be more restrained.

The tip of the knife rests against the first number at the top of the board. It hovers. Then it penetrates the wood, only halfway in.

It's shallower than before. The shallower the lettering, the less pressure the wood fibers bear, and the less likely cracks are to form. The blade moves very lightly across the surface, so lightly that the sound of the blade is almost inaudible.

Chu Xiaosong was sweeping sand from the cracks in the blue bricks by the door. When he reached the threshold, he glanced inside. His master had changed his knife; he usually didn't let him touch that horn knife, saying it was too sharp and someone with an unsteady hand would cut themselves. He saw his master using that knife to carve a block, and the way he held the handle was different from usual—not gripping, but pinching, like pinching a needle.

It was completely dark. The restaurant across the river was lit. Old Cui was carving very slowly. For the first two layers, he almost stopped after each stroke, lifting the knife after carving each number to check the blade and feel the surface of the board to make sure the wood fibers weren't warped. The pace quickened slightly at the beginning of the third layer, but it was still several beats slower than when he was carving account books. He was getting used to the knife. The angular knife had a narrow blade and a shallow depth, requiring a much smaller range of wrist rotation than a flat-bladed knife. He had never tried this kind of technique before. Each stroke had to be completed within a narrower area, involving the initial cut, the turn, and the final cut. It was like carving a seal; one wrong stroke and the whole thing was ruined. He couldn't be fast, he couldn't be heavy, and he couldn't lose focus.

Chu Xiaosong finished sweeping and squatted by the pile of scrap metal. He didn't doze off; he was watching his master's hands. He had studied those hands for two years; he could recognize them even with his eyes closed. The veins on the back of his hands were arranged in two rows, and the calluses on his index and middle fingers were the thickest. But tonight, the force wasn't coming from those two fingers, but from his thumb and the web of his hand. His thumb pressed against the side of the hilt, and the web of his hand pressed against the top of the hilt. The force was more even, and it wasn't easy to press too deeply in one spot. He was learning. His master didn't know he was learning, but he was learning.

When he finished carving the fifth layer, the oil lamp flickered. The wick was burnt, and the flame shrank by half an inch. He pushed the wick all the way down, and the burnt part broke off, causing the flame to shorten even further. He continued carving.

The sixth layer of numbers was denser than the fifth. He pulled back even further, the blade almost floating on the surface, relying solely on the pressure of his thumb and forefinger to hold the tip steady. The speed was extremely slow; each number took twice as long. But he wasn't in a hurry. The first two pieces had problems near the end: on the first, his hand trembled when carving the last number; on the second, he tried to do a better job with the fifth number on the seventh layer, resulting in over-carving. This time, he treated every stroke as if it were his last.

The night watchman rang the third watch outside the window.

The seventh floor. Only one line left. The oil lamp had burned to its limit, the wick soaked in the last layer of oil at the bottom of the cup, and the smell of burnt coals filled the entire bookstore. He sped up a little, wanting to use up this last bit of light.

The wick fell over. It poured into the remaining oil at the bottom of the lamp, and with a "poof," a small yellow flame shot out before going out. The bookstore was plunged into complete darkness.

Old Cui's hands did not stop.

The last four numbers weren't finished yet. Her fingers traced the surface of the slab; the callus knew the location of the wood grain and remembered the carving path for each number on the seventh layer. The depth of the cut didn't need to be judged by sight; too deep, and the wood fibers would give the callus a hard rebound; too shallow, and the rebound would be soft. The difference was less than a fraction, yet the callus knew it.

One number is finished. The blade is lifted, the fingertip marks the position of the next number, and the tip is pressed against the surface again. The second number. The third. The last one is "1," the one at the very bottom. The fingertip finds the position on the surface, the blade slides in, and cuts vertically.

The last cut was made.

He lifted the carving knife from the slab. His fingers traced the lines from the first to the last, starting with the "1" at the top, moving down layer by layer, over each knife mark. Cocoon recognized the shapes of these numbers. Not the numerical values; he still didn't know what these numbers were called. But Cocoon recognized them, recognized the way they were stacked together.

When he touched the last "1" at the bottom, a burning pain shot through his wrist. He turned his hand over. He couldn't see in the darkness, but he knew that hot oil had splashed onto his wrist when the wick fell. He hadn't felt it. The interrogator's body wasn't entirely human when he was questioning. From the shoulder blade to the arm to the fingertips to the blade to the grain of the jujube wood, sensation gave way to touch.

He wrapped the printing plate in oilcloth and leaned against the pile of discarded plates, closing his eyes for a while. It was still dark. Outside the window, the sound of the Cai River echoed in the darkness, one beat after another, as steady as the rhythm of the carving knife striking the printing plate.