Embers of the Broken River

Chapter 10 Broken Shore

Chen Wangqiu was drawn out from the moment Aheng tore the window paper.

Her hand was still pressed against the edge of the hole, her fingertips still stained with scraps of hemp paper. The next second, the thatched cottage was empty. The locust tree, the bamboo slips, the charcoal fire in the stove, the knife marks on the windowpane polished by her fingers—all the colors were ripped from the canvas of the imagined world, leaving no trace, not even a sound. He stood on a gray, empty ground, with no locust shells beneath his feet and no sky of Guanzhong above. There was no smell of burning corpses, no smell of dry earth, no smell of ink. There was no smell at all.

This is true history.

He saw a young examinee sitting in his examination cell. The cell was so narrow he could barely turn around; three sides were brick walls, one side open. On a wooden table sat an inkstone and a writing brush, and an oil lamp was nailed to the wall. The oil was almost gone, the flame shrunk to the size of a soybean, casting the examinee's shadow on the wall. On the draft paper in front of him was a line of small writing, as if afraid of being overheard by the next examinee: "Even a sage has questions he cannot answer?"

After writing it, he stared at the line for a while. Then he picked up his pen and crossed it out. Not in one stroke, but stroke by stroke. First he crossed out "sage," then "also," then "cannot answer," and finally "question."

Each stroke was forceful, each stroke covering the previous one more completely, as if burying a living creature that hadn't yet breathed its last. Three strokes were made. The first from left to right, the second from right to left, and the third from top to bottom; the three ink marks intersected to form a black wellhead. The ink seeped into the next page. The title of the next page was: "Describe, but do not create."

Chen Wangqiu stood outside the examination cell, separated by the wall and centuries, watching the smeared ink slowly spread across the paper. He knew who this examinee was—not a specific person, but everyone who had swallowed their questions in the examination hall.

What they swallowed back wasn't words, but instinct. It was the instinct for "why," the instinct for "that's not right," and Chen Tongfu's unauthorized "keep asking" when he heard the word "continue" being swallowed by the wind while standing under the locust tree.

The examinee used three strokes of ink to scrape the question off the paper, until the words penetrated the back of the paper and imprinted on the next page, onto the four characters "述而不作" (shuù ér bù zuò). "述而不作" means to merely transmit, not create; to merely memorize, not question.

He saw again that Shen Kuo's inscription "Waiting for those who come after" written in Runzhou had been remounted. It wasn't a deeper depiction; a deeper depiction is like a knife cutting into wood, retracing the strokes of the ancients within decaying inkwells, snatching the questioning back from the grasp of time. That's a deduction of events in the world. In real history, the four characters "Waiting for those who come after" were not deepened.

It was simply covered by a layer of new paper. The mounter's hands were very steady; he cut the new paper to the same size as the book pages, brushed paste onto the old paper, and applied the paste very evenly, without any bubbles or wrinkles.

The new paper bears the inscription "The learning of the sages is contained here," written in neat, upright strokes, like a newly carved monument.

The questions Shen Kuo hadn't finished asking on the old paper—why the compass needle was off-center, whether Bi Sheng's movable type was a problem with the ink or the clay, and whether a slight difference in the gunpowder ratio would be fatal—were all covered underneath. They weren't burned, nor torn apart; they were simply sealed with a layer of clean new paper.

Zhang Zai's four sentences became a screen wall. In front of the academy in Guanzhong, the screen wall was built extremely high, made of blue bricks and plastered with white lime. Inscribed on it were the words: "To establish a heart for Heaven and Earth, to establish a destiny for the people, to continue the lost learning of the past sages, and to usher in an era of peace for all generations." The inscriptions were filled with gold powder, and when the sunlight shone on them, the golden characters gleamed, like four knives reaching towards the sky. Students passed by the screen wall, heads bowed, hands clasped, and no one uttered a sound.

A young student stood before the screen wall, his lips moving as he recited four lines. He paused when he reached the word "continue." It was quiet; no wind blew from behind the screen wall, and his right ear wasn't being blown out by the wind. He didn't need to press his ear, nor did he need to fill in a word in his head. A classmate beside him reminded him: "To create peace for all generations." He nodded and continued reciting. "Continue the lost learning" wasn't about asking questions. No one misheard that word. No one heard the wind.

That locust tree stands in the courtyard of Guanzhong in real history. Its bark bears no trace of locust gnaws; the locust plague that year bypassed this village. No one has carved the character "安" (peace/safety) on its trunk. No one has ever held a five-year-old child while painstakingly carving their name into the trunk, and no one has ever left without looking back because of back pain.

No returned letter was buried under the tree; no one dug it up and buried it again in the dead of night. A bird's nest hung in the branch; it wasn't empty, for birds had returned that spring. Snow fell on the locust tree branches, covering them completely, then melted in the sun, dripping into the soil beneath and seeping in. No one squatted in front of the stove burning locust leaves.

This is just a locust tree. A locust tree that has never been questioned, never been protected, never been peered at through a hole left in the window paper.

Chen Tongfu does not exist. Not that he wasn't born, but that he didn't leave behind any trace. His thatched cottage was demolished, and a new academy was built on its foundation. On the screen wall of the new academy are inscribed four lines by Zhang Zai. No one passed down his bamboo slips, no one inscribed his questions, and no one ever heard his name.

His wife, Aheng, did not place the bamboo slip with only three characters carved on it in front of their son's cenotaph. In real history, her hands never held a carving knife, nor did they carve the crooked "Anbei Leng" on a scrap of bamboo. That hand simply hung by her side, clutching an empty bowl, mending countless windows, and finally letting it dry on the edge of the stove.

Chen Wangqiu stood on that gray, empty ground. What he heard was not the wind, but silence. Not questioning the forbidden silence, but questioning the silence that had never been heard. Just moments ago, he had been watching outside the thatched cottage as Aheng tore the window paper larger, watching the character "安" (peace) on the locust tree get soaked by snow, and watching Zhou Xiaoshi stack the bamboo slips one by one into his basket.

Now those images are all buried under this gray silence, like Shen Kuo's "Waiting for those who come after" buried under paste and new paper, not burned, not torn apart, but simply covered up.

He stood there for a long time. It wasn't that he didn't know which way to go; he had finally realized something.

He had always thought he was there to catch the questions, from the moment he stumbled upon the handwritten notes at the used bookstore, from the moment he saw the words "left for posterity." But now, standing amidst the ashes of true history, he suddenly realized he couldn't catch it. Not that he didn't want to, but the river was too vast. So vast that one person couldn't catch it. No one could catch it.

But he can see.

He saw Chen Tongfu carving bamboo slips under the lamp, replacing the character "问" (ask) with "继" (continue) because the wind had swallowed it. He saw Aheng mending window paper for seventeen years, taking down and reading the returned letters every night. He saw Zhou Xiaoshi carrying buckets of water for ten miles, kneeling before the sickbed with swollen knees to receive the bundle of bamboo slips.

He saw Lu Mingyuan kneeling in the rain, questioning his teacher, his sleeves trembling. He saw Zheng Anmin's ink falter in three places when he signed the reprimand letter. These people didn't exist in real history. But he saw them. And the act of seeing itself was already changing him.

He looked down at his hands. The dull sensation of the carving knife cutting into the bamboo still lingered in his thumb and forefinger—the feel of Chen Tongfu's hand when he carved the three characters "问绝学" (asking about the ultimate learning) under the locust tree.

The grain of the wooden plaque was still etched in his palm; he had clutched those three characters all night, the wood grain embedded in his palm lines. He could still feel the cool touch of Ah Heng's wrist brushing against the back of his hand when she handed him tea—it was cold, but paused for a moment. These sensations weren't his own. But he remembered them.

He suddenly realized: he wasn't the one who caught the fish. He was the witness.

This river, starting from the person who misheard the words under the locust tree in Guanzhong, flows through the bamboo slips in the thatched cottage, the holes in the window paper, the basket on Zhou Xiaoshi's shoulder, and then flows to the Humen Fort, the Yellow Sea waves, and the Nanjing rubble. Its true protagonist has never been any one person.

He wasn't Chen Tongfu, Lin Zexu, Deng Shichang, or even Chen Wangqiu. He was just a drop of water that would be splashed onto the river by 2024. He wasn't there to save the river.

It was this river that saved him. A doctoral candidate whose dissertation was stuck in the fifth part, a young man whose supervisor was suspended for investigation, a person who was also experiencing questioning and being cut off in the academic system, what he saw in the world of deduction was not the ancients, but his own origin.

He mentally re-marked the coordinates of that locust tree: In 1081, outside the Guanzhong Thatched Cottage, the locust tree had its bark eaten away by locusts, and the character "安" (peace) was carved on its trunk. In the world of deduction, it was the starting point of the chain of questions; the last horizontal stroke of that character was carved crookedly, curving upwards, as if it were smiling.

In real history, it was a non-existent locust tree. A non-existent tree, a non-existent questioner. But Chen Wangqiu remembered.

He pressed the coordinates of that tree deep into the depths of his heart. He pressed it in, and there was no sound, but he knew it was there.

The wind has never blown. But the riverbed remains.