Embers of the Broken River

Chapter 5 Letter of Reprimand

The sound of the bailiffs' horses' hooves rang out on the morning of the third day.

In the spring of the Guanzhong Plain, there is still a thin frost in the morning. The locust shells are buried under the frost, and stepping on them no longer makes a cracking sound. The frost has frozen those empty shells brittle, and each step produces a fine cracking sound, like stepping on a pile of crushed fingernails.

Two horses came from the direction of the village entrance. The riders were dressed in official robes, their black boots resting on the stirrups, and a token from the Guanzhong Central Administration hung at their waists. The horses' hooves trampled the path under the locust tree—the same path Lu Mingyuan had taken three days ago, and the same path Chen Anbei had taken ten years ago. The hooves crushed the frost, crushed locust shells into the mud, and kicked up pebbles that hit the bark of the locust trees.

Chen Tongfu heard the sound of horses' hooves in his thatched cottage. He was carving bamboo slips, his carving knife hovering in mid-air. He could tell that these were not merchant horses; merchant horses carried goods, their hooves heavy and their pace slow. These were official horses, their hooves rapid, their strides long, interspersed with the metallic clanging of their bridles.

He had listened to the sound of horses' hooves his entire life. Back when he was studying in Bianjing, he fell asleep to the sound of horses' hooves every day. After returning to Guanzhong, the sound lessened, but every time it rang out, it meant trouble. He placed his carving knife on the corner of the table, stood up, and clenched and unclenched his fist in his sleeve. He pushed open the door.

The constables had arrived at the gate. One of them was older, with a thick beard and an expressionless face. He dismounted with practiced ease, as if it were not his first time doing this.

He pulled a roll of paper from his pocket; the ink on it was still damp, glistening in the morning light. Another young constable tied his horse to a locust tree—the one with the character "安" (peace) carved on it. The reins were wrapped around the tree trunk, rubbing against the bark that had been gnawed by locusts.

"A reprimand letter from the Provincial Education Commissioner of Guanzhong, received by Chen Tongfu!"

Chen Tongfu stood still. He didn't kneel, nor did he clasp his hands; he simply extended his hand. The bailiff slapped the scroll into his hand, then pulled a hammer and a nail from his saddlebag. The hammer had an iron handle, and the nail was newly hammered, not yet rusted.

The bailiff walked to the gatepost and took the reprimand letter back from Chen Tongfu's hand. Chen Tongfu didn't hold it tightly; the rolled-up paper slipped from his fingers like an eel. The bailiff unfolded the paper and pressed it against the gatepost, aligning the nail with the top edge of the paper, and raised the hammer.

The first blow. The nail pierced the paper and went into the wood. The locust wood was hard, and the nail made a creaking sound as it went in, like it was clenching its teeth.

The second strike. The paper trembled, not from the wind, but from the hammer's impact, which traveled from the nail into the wood, and then from the wood into the entire door. Dust fell from the door frame, landing on the threshold.

The third hammer blow. The nail hadn't reached the bottom, so the constable struck it again. The paper was pierced, a ring of wrinkles appeared around the nail hole, and the ink seeped out at the edge of the hole.

Inside the thatched cottage, Zhou Xiaoshi peeked out from behind a pile of bamboo slips. He saw his teacher standing at the doorway, his back to him, his shoulders not trembling. But he saw the teacher's hands, the hands that had been clenched in his sleeve for too long, the nails digging into his palms, leaving four white marks. He wanted to stand up, but his legs wouldn't obey him.

Chen Tongfu didn't look at the bailiff's face. He looked at the paper on the doorpost. A letter of reprimand. From the Provincial Education Commissioner of Guanzhong. The wording was harsh, accusing him of substituting inquiry for learning, deviating from the classics, arbitrarily altering sacred teachings, and disrespecting ancestors. Each charge was followed by a quote from a sage. The sage's words were quoted in whole passages, piled up like bricks, forming a wall that pressed down on him. He saw the signature: Zheng Anmin, the Provincial Education Commissioner of Guanzhong.

Zheng Anmin.

The name pierced his eyes, traveled along his veins, and shot into his heart. It wasn't a stranger, not a high-ranking education official. It was Zheng Anmin. The man who slept on the same straw mat in his youth.

They studied together in Bianjing, ate cold pancakes together, copied books under the lamp until dawn together, and debated under the locust tree whether "ancestral laws can be changed." At that time, Zheng Anmin did not have a beard, and when he smiled, he revealed two tiger teeth. When he got excited, he would slam the table, splashing ink from the inkstone.

Chen Tongfu remembered his laughter, the way his palms turned red when he slammed his fist on the table, and the way he took out half a pancake from his pocket, broke it in half, and gave it to him. The pancake was broken in half, with one half larger than the other. He handed over the larger half and said, "You eat it. You're thinner than me."

His signature is now on the letter of reprimand. There are three broken strokes in the ink.

Chen Tongfu recognized the broken stroke. When Zheng Anmin wrote the character "郑" (Zheng), the horizontal stroke of the left side of the character "奠" (Dian) would always pause slightly. It wasn't a matter of brush technique, but rather a problem with his pen-holding posture. When he wrote this reprimand letter at the Education Bureau, this stroke paused, the pen tip lingered on the paper for a moment longer, and the ink bleed, creating a broken point.

The last horizontal stroke of the character "安" was dragged out too long, and the hand was shaking when finishing the stroke, causing the ink to fade from dark to light, like a sigh that was being choked. The stroke of the character "民" was also broken; it wasn't that I couldn't write it, but that my hand was shaking at the end.

His hand was shaking as he wrote.

As Chen Tongfu looked at the three broken pens, a picture flashed through his mind: Zheng Anmin sitting behind the large desk in the Education Bureau, with a blank reprimand letter spread out in front of him and a pen in his hand.

The pen tip hovered above the paper for a long time. His hand trembled, not from anger, not from a sense of justice, but because he knew what he was writing and to whom it was written.

He might have considered turning down the assignment, perhaps softening his wording, or even omitting his signature at the end. But he wrote it anyway. He was the provincial education commissioner of Guanzhong; he had superiors, an official position, and a family to support. He dared not refuse. The moment he pressed the pen to the paper, his fingers trembled, and the ink broke in three places.

Looking at the three broken strokes, Chen Tongfu suddenly breathed a sigh of relief for his fellow disciple. "Great, Zheng Anmin is still trembling."

After the constables finished hammering the nails, they put the hammer back into their saddlebags, turned, and mounted their horses. They didn't look back as they left; officials never looked back when delivering reprimand letters. The sound of hooves faded into the distance, and the frost still clung white to the locust tree. Where the reins had just grazed the bark, another mark appeared.

There were already three marks on the locust tree: one was the character "安" (peace) carved by the son, one was from locusts gnawing at it, and one was from a horse's reins. The three marks were overlapping; the bark wasn't broken, but the wood inside was already exposed.

Chen Tongfu stood before the doorpost. He peeled off the reprimand letter; the nail was still on the doorpost, the paper torn from beneath the nail, the nail hole remaining at the top edge. He turned the paper over; the back was blank. He walked back to his desk, sat down, and ground ink. His hand didn't tremble. His hand had trembled many times in his life—when his son's letter was returned, when his nephew knelt in the rain questioning him—but at this moment, his hand did not tremble.

He turned the reprimand letter over and laid it on the table, back side up. He picked up a carving knife—not a pen, but a carving knife. The knife pierced the bamboo slips with more force than a brush, each stroke carving deep into the bamboo. He continued carving his questions on the back of the reprimand letter.

The first line he carved read: "The flaws of the Green Sprouts Law lie in the law itself, not in the people." The second line read: "The laws of our ancestors cannot be changed; if they are changed, how can we face the spirits of our ancestors?" This was carved for his opponents. After finishing, he wrote a note beside it: "The laws of our ancestors cannot be changed; if they are not changed, how can we preserve the people of our ancestors?" He continued carving. The third line. The fourth line.

The ink had seeped in; it wasn't his ink, but the ink from the front. The handwriting on the front of the reprimand letter was soaked through, and Zheng Anmin's signature was completely covered by his new ink. The ink seeped in from the back, submerging the three broken strokes on the front. The three characters "Zheng Anmin" on the front were stained a deep black by the ink seeping in, and the broken strokes were filled in with new ink, but the back of the paper was filled with brand new questions, each stroke more forceful than the last.

Aheng stood at the kitchen doorway. She didn't come over; years of experience told her not to disturb him at this time. She could tell from his footsteps that he had stepped into the thatched cottage today with heavy steps, each one extremely steady, not stumbling or falling, but simply a pace slower than usual.

She turned and went into the kitchen. The stove was cold. She crouched down, took out a flint and steel from the firebox, and started to strike a fire. She stuffed a pile of firewood into the firebox, the firelight shining on her face. She hadn't mended the window paper this morning; she'd run out of hemp paper. She leaned against the doorframe and looked at the locust tree for a while. The empty bird's nest in the locust tree swayed in the wind but didn't fall.

Suddenly, she wondered: why didn't that bird come back? The thought startled her; her son had been gone for so many years, and she had never considered this possibility. She knelt down, stuffed firewood into the stove, lit a fire, and boiled water. She knew he would be working late tonight. She would keep watch by the lamp.

Chen Wangqiu stood under the locust tree. He saw behind the paper-covered window that Chen Tongfu's back was bent over the table, exactly the same as when Lu Mingyuan left three days ago: hunched shoulders, slightly forward-leaning head and neck, and a hand tightly gripping the carving knife.

This time, however, he didn't tear up the reprimand letter, nor did he peel it off the doorpost and throw it on the ground. He turned it over and continued carving on the back. He transformed the reprimand letter into a letter of inquiry. This action was the same as when he carved "The ancestors are not worthy of emulation" on the back of the bamboo slips before—not by going against them, but by turning it over. Not by tearing it up, but by continuing to write.

No one helped Chen Tongfu today. No one stood in front of him to block the reprimand letter, no one stood between him and Zheng Anmin. But Chen Wangqiu saw the three broken strokes of the pen. These three broken strokes, at the fifth node of this deduced world, pushed the river forward another step. Because the person who signed it was trembling; he knew he had done wrong, but he had done it anyway.

This is more heartbreaking than a pure enemy. You can hate a pure enemy, but how can you hate someone who is trembling? He is simply afraid to disobey. And the person he reprimanded didn't write a single word of explanation on the letter of reprimand.

He turned the letter over and continued asking. He didn't ask why Zheng Anmin wrote the letter; he asked why the Green Sprouts Act had driven people to their deaths, whether the border wall was built in the right place, and whether the rules set by our ancestors should be changed. There was no room for hatred in his questioning.

Inside the thatched cottage, the carving knife still chirped. Bamboo slips were piled up like a mountain, the newest slip bearing three lines of text: on the front, "The ancestral ways are not to be followed," and on the back, the questions from the reprimand letter. Both sides were completely carved, the bamboo flesh pierced through two layers, ink seeping from the front to the back and back again, the questions from both sides blending together, making it impossible to distinguish which sentence was on the front and which was on the back.

One oil lamp had burned out, and Aheng got up to add more. She placed the oil lamp on the corner of the table, in the same spot as the returned letter. She didn't look at her husband's hand, but as she put down the oil lamp, her wrist lightly brushed against the back of his hand. His hand was still carving, without stopping, but the pressure of the carving knife had changed; it wasn't lessening, but becoming more steady.