As Chen Ping'an carried his buckets through the lanes toward Iron Lock Well, his stomach announced, without so much as a by-your-leave, that it was hungry — and the scent of the breakfast stalls along Apricot Blossom Lane made matters only crueler. But his purse was empty, and the youth could only steel himself to queue like the rest, with three households ahead of him. When his turn at last came, the maidservant Zhigui darted in out of nowhere, small bucket in hand, and cut the line before him. The folk waiting behind were none too pleased.
No one raised their voice to curse, true, but the words that flew were sour enough. Chief among the complainers was a hunched old crone known as Granny Ma, whose two sons had both risen in the world, each in possession of a dragon kiln of his own — small ones, it must be said, at the very bottom of the tally of some thirty-odd kilns, yet towering wealth and status enough by the measure of Apricot Blossom Lane. For reasons no one could quite say, the crone had never gotten on with her two daughters-in-law; her sons and their wives had long since moved to Peach Leaf Lane, while Granny Ma kept on alone in the ancestral house of Apricot Blossom Lane. To the generation of Chen Ping'an and Liu Xianyang, Granny Ma had always been a terrifying elder — her tongue was venom, her nature grasping and miserly to the bone. In the deep of winter she would all but rake the snow before her courtyard gate into her own home, and should a child swipe a little of it for a snowball fight, or snap away an icicle dangling from her eaves, she would chase the offender down the street with a broom, scolding at the top of her lungs for the better part of a mile without tiring.
In the old days, across the western lanes of the town, only Gu Can's mother had ever been able to quell the fire of Granny Ma's tongue. Now that Gu's widow, so the gossip ran, had gone off to follow the distant kin of her dead husband back to his native place, the crone — who had softened just a little over the passing years — was abruptly hale and hearty again, returned to the arena of her old glory, finding fault in everyone she laid eyes on. So when Song Jixin's maidservant pulled this little stunt, Granny Ma at once began to snipe, in a voice not loud but dripping with false honey, launching into a cozy chat with the women beside her — how some girls were finally fleshed out and old enough for the wedding rites, how a body didn't even have to walk to see their legs could no longer close together; what a fine turn of fortune, to shed the lowly life of a serving girl and be openly hailed as a lady after all.
Chen Ping'an's scalp crawled, yet he could hardly drive off Zhigui, who had been at fault to begin with — not with all these years of life right next door. After he had filled Liu Xianyang's two buckets to the brim, he hastened to haul up one more for her as well, thinking only to escape this gaggle of clucking women as soon as ever he could. Granny Ma, seeing the little wretch of Song's household pretend not to hear a word, only blazed with all the more fury.
So it is between masters of the craft: the worst thing is when the enemy simply refuses to engage — all that fine martial skill has nowhere left to land.
In days gone by the crone had wrangled with that vixen of a widow Gu, and lost, to be sure — yet she had always felt herself the keener for the fight, certain the next quarrel would find her own restoration. Not so this little tramp of Mud Vase Lane, who deliberately held her tongue each and every time, only to leave a look in the eyes as she departed that unsettled the crone to the marrow. Granny Ma yearned to lunge up and scratch that bold face to ribbons, if only to spare the boys and young men of several lanes their foolish dream of hanging their very souls on the waistband of this shameless wench.
Particularly her grandson — a simpleton in the eyes of the world, yet of late even she, his grandmother, had come to think the boy had truly lost his wits. All day long he babbled nonsense about someday taking this maidservant of Mud Vase Lane to wife, and then punching a hole clean through the sky itself.
Seeing the loathsome girl give no reaction at all, Granny Ma set her mind on the poor straw-sandaled youth instead. "Pitiful lot of mud-baked clay, that one," she crowed. "Has the nerve to go on living after the deaths he brought on his own father and mother; knowing full well he'll never have a wife by honest means, he licks his lips and goes sniffing after another man's maidservant. A pair of dogs made for each other, no doubt — best they just wed and be done, for Mud Vase Lane is where the filth and the bastards live anyway, and the brats they spawn might well end up kings of the lane."
Chen Ping'an thought it over, bent at the waist, and was just setting the carrying-pole down from his shoulder.
The maidservant Zhigui had already let fall her bucket and was striding at a furious pace toward the crone who counted on her cronies' backing. Without a word the girl struck — one slap — that sent Granny Ma spinning clean around on the spot, dizzy and reeling, saved from a fall only by the women who caught her. Zhigui, not waiting for the crone to gather her wits, stepped in again and fetched her a ringing blow full across the face. "You dried-up old thing," the girl spat, "I've held my tongue for you long enough!"
The crone shook her head, fury streaming from all seven apertures; she meant to strike back, but whether by illusion or design, the two women's steadying grips were a shade too devoted to shake off, and so she suffered a third humiliation. The serving girl reached out a third time, hooked her knuckles, and rapped the crone sharply upon the brow. "Utter one more curse at me," she warned, "and I'll yank the tongue out of that long-gossiping mouth of yours! For every word you say against me, I'll jab you once with a needle!"
The crone was frightened out of her wits, clean forgetting even to answer back, let alone to strike.
The girl turned and walked briskly away, and finding that the neighbor youth had already taken up her bucket for her, she grinned and went with him back toward Mud Vase Lane.
Before Chen Ping'an could get a word in, the girl cut him off: "Don't thank me. I wasn't scolding on your account."
Chen Ping'an had no reply to that.
The girl, both hands empty, muttered to herself as she went, having no mind at any rate to take the bucket back from the hands of the straw-sandaled youth.
By the winch of Iron Lock Well, the crone collapsed onto the ground and wailed. "That wretch of a girl, she'll be struck down by heaven's own thunderbolt… oh, my bitter fate, heaven has no eyes, why won't it send a bolt to smash this little tramp to powder…"
The girl's steps were light, and with each one she pushed both hands upward against the sky, in a strange, incomprehensible gesture.
Luckily Chen Ping'an had been her neighbor for so many years that he found nothing odd in it.
When the two passed the breakfast stalls, Chen Ping'an caught sight of a familiar figure from behind — short of stature, robed in blue, buying a basket of steaming meat buns fresh from the oven, their fragrance drifting the whole length of the lane.
---
Today's dawn, unbeknownst to anyone, had seen the clouds sink low, strangely thick and heavy, like a rich man's great quilt laid out to bask in the sun.
A sudden boom of thunder rolled over the town.
From the far side at Iron Lock Well, Granny Ma scrambled upright in a flash and scurried homeward as fast as her legs could carry her, her little bucket jouncing and slopping well-water at each step until, by the reckoning of all, barely half would survive the journey.
She knew in her bones that if heaven ever truly opened its eyes, the very first bolt would all but certainly fall upon her own head.
At the sound of the thunder Chen Ping'an lifted his gaze and looked up, a little puzzled — it did not seem the sign of an approaching rain.
The girl smiled. "My young master says he's read it in a book — a legend that in every spring the true gods of heaven, girt in golden armor, drum upon the clouds to bid the old year farewell and welcome the new, cowing ten thousand evils, to answer for the coming spring."
Chen Ping'an nodded. "Your young master is well-read indeed."
The girl sighed. "My master is good in every way, only a little idle — and he does so love to curse heaven. I think that ill becomes him."
Chen Ping'an had no habit of speaking ill of others behind their backs, and so he said nothing of it. Song Jixin next door had for many years nursed a curious quirk: he cursed heaven — very much in Granny Ma's fashion, scolding the blind sky and the like. And yet the scholar in him kept his own observances: on nights when snow fell or thunder rolled, when the horizon was strung with sunset clouds, those were the three times Song Jixin would not curse, for he meant to catch heaven by surprise while it dozed — and thus, he reasoned, the sky would not hear him and would not take offense, and he, Song Jixin, would have his venting besides; a double gain.
Seeing Chen Ping'an make no answer, Zhigui asked, with a studied carelessness: "You didn't come home last night. You stayed over at Liu Xianyang's?"
Chen Ping'an nodded. "There was a guest at my house; it wasn't convenient."
Offhand she asked: "By the way, did Master Qi meet with you, and did he say anything at all?"
Chen Ping'an turned it back on her: "Why do you ask?"
She smiled with an innocent face. "Just asking idly. When I went out for water this morning I happened upon Master Qi, strolling at dawn, and he asked me whether you were at home — so I answered him truthfully."
Chen Ping'an smiled. "I ran into Master Qi by chance some while ago, and he spoke with me of ordinary things — in substance, that back then I ought to have gone to the schoolhouse with Liu Xianyang. I could only say my family was too poor to manage; it cannot be helped. Had it been otherwise, I should have been glad to study."
Zhigui frowned in doubt. "Is that so?"
Chen Ping'an looked into her eyes and asked, with a smile: "What did you suppose it was?"
She put the matter aside with a laugh.
The two parted at the corner of the street, where Zhigui took her bucket and went on to Mud Vase Lane, while Chen Ping'an turned back to Liu Xianyang's house; after that courtesy, he would still have to go to the eastern gate for the family letters, a penny apiece. Had he taken up this trade early on — with the legs that had carried him over every hill within a hundred li — he might well have saved up a bride-price by now.
At the mouth of Mud Vase Lane, Zhigui found her master standing there, yawning.
She hurried up to him, curious. "Sir, whatever are you doing out here?"
Song Jixin stretched his limbs slowly, idly: "It was dull indoors."
She asked in a low voice: "Sir, when will the new kiln superintendent be coming back to the town? And is it after that that we can at last go to the capital?"
Song Jixin gave it a thought. "Within the fortnight, I'd say."
Zhigui hesitated, and the little bucket in her hands swayed this way and that with her mood.
Song Jixin smiled. "What's the matter? A worry on your mind?"
She asked, timidly: "Sir, might I borrow that county gazetteer of yours for a look? Just a night or two, so I can learn my characters — so that once we reach that capital, no one will look down on me and, through me, make a fool of you."
Song Jixin was startled into a laugh, and after a little reflection said: "There's nothing to be shy about in asking. Only mind you wash your hands clean before you turn the pages, keep the leaves free of grime, and be careful no candle-wax drips upon them. Nothing else to fret over — it's but a battered book that has seen its end of readers."
Zhigui beamed. "Your servant thanks you, sir!"
Song Jixin was delighted, and laughed openly. "Come, come — let me carry the water for you."
Zhigui dodged aside, coloring. "Sir! Did we not agree that the gentleman stands far from the kitchen? Such petty chores are not for your hands; if word of it got out, the good neighbors would jab at my back for it!"
Song Jixin laughed, half in temper: "These rules, these laws of propriety — they're for cowing the likes of others, not for me…"
Here this seed of a scholar, raised in a mean lane, trailed off and spoke no more.
She asked, curious: "What are they to you, sir?"
Song Jixin resumed his careless grin and pointed at himself. "Your master here, in truth, is but a farmer. He marks out a field row by row, furrow by furrow, sets folk to sowing, draws the water to irrigate — and then he sits back and waits for the harvest, year after year. That's all it is!"
She was bemused.
Song Jixin roared with laughter.
Then the youth's mirth froze on his face and he asked, in all seriousness: "Zhigui, this fellow surnamed Chen — did he carry your bucket for you the whole way?"
The maidservant nodded, wide-eyed and innocent.
The youth said, with weight: "There was a sage who once said: a man will treasure a stranger's small kindness as a rare jewel, and yet count the whole devotion of those close to him as his due, never sparing it a glance. That is wrong."
The maidservant was only the more confounded. "Ah?"
The youth rubbed his chin and muttered to himself: "She did not catch my meaning at all — how is your master to carry on the conversation from here? Must I, once we reach the capital, take on some lovelier, cleverer little maid, quick to grasp a word and gentle of heart?"
The maidservant could not suppress a laugh, taking not the least stock of her master's threat, and gave the truth away: "The truth is, sir, you were waiting for me to ask — this sage of high learning, who might he be? I know it now, sir: it is you!"
Song Jixin laughed, unashamed, with open delight. "She who knows me — it is Zhigui!"
---
In the study of the schoolhouse, the middle-aged Confucian scholar sat upright and straight, and every black-and-white piece upon the board before him crumbled, in the thunder of the spring, to powder.
When the youths and children of the town hunt stone-plate fish in the stream, there is a trick of it: they take an iron mallet and strike hard upon a rock in the currents, and the fish hiding beneath — stunned by the shock — float up to the surface.
It is the same in spirit as what the books call beating the mountain to startle the tiger.
But if one would warn a local sage not to defy heaven, not to row against the great order of the world?
Then the only instrument on heaven and earth whose stature matches such a one is the thunder that shakes the firmament itself.