Embers of the Broken River

Chapter 19 Bookstore

The year the Cai River breached its banks, half of the Shufang Street south of Bianjing (Kaifeng) was flooded.

The water rose in the middle of the night. The torrential rain had breached the upstream dam, and the murky yellow river water flooded the streets and alleys, submerging the dye vats in the dye houses, the stacks of paper in the paper shops, and the pear wood printing blocks piled up in the backyard of the woodblock printing shop. By daybreak, the water had receded, leaving a waist-high water stain line on the wall, yellowish-brown, like an old page that could not be torn off from a calendar.

The craftsmen on Shufang Street carried their water-soaked printing blocks to the street to dry. Printing blocks are ruined when they get wet; the wood absorbs water and swells, warping the characters and making the printed text look like it's been drinking. The craftsmen drying the blocks squatted on the street, flipping them like pancakes. Some sighed, some cursed, and Master Yu squatted on the doorstep smoking his pipe, flicking the ash into the puddle, extinguishing it with a hiss.

No one is vying for the workstation against the wall.

The wall was still seeping water. Dampness seeped from the cracks in the bricks, making your knees ache after sitting for a while. The other craftsmen had chosen dry spots near the door, window, or stove. Old Cui placed his toolbox in the seeping corner and propped up the table legs with two broken bricks.

He wasn't just being polite.

Of the fifteen engravers, he was ranked last. It wasn't that his skills were lacking; his engraving skills were at least among the top five in the bookstore. But he wasn't originally a book engraver. He was an arrow shaft engraver, having spent four years engraving arrow shaft numbers at the Chanzhou arsenal.

Carving arrow shafts and carving book plates are two different things.

The arrow shaft is round, the printing plate is flat. Only one number is engraved on the arrow shaft, but the printing plate must be engraved on an entire page. Once the arrow shaft is engraved, it's sent to the arrow storehouse; no one checks the quality, only whether it's engraved at all. The printing plate needs to print hundreds of sheets, and each character must withstand repeated inking. The craftsmen in the bookshop look down on those who engrave arrow shafts. Master Yu once said to his face, "Those who engrave arrow shafts are illiterate. How can someone who can't read engrave characters? It's like a blind man touching an elephant."

Old Cui remained silent.

He is indeed illiterate.

But he could tell the quality of the characters by touch. His skill in carving arrow shafts—the number at the end of the shaft, carved with a depth of one and a half millimeters into the wood—was exceptional. Too deep and the shaft would crack; too shallow and it would be invisible after a few polishing sessions. He didn't use his eyes to measure; he used his hands. The calluses on his hands, honed from years in the arsenal, were more precise than a ruler. He could tell if the characters were straight or not just by touching them; straight ones were smooth, crooked ones were rough.

He explained this to Master Yu once, but Master Yu didn't understand. So he didn't say anything more.

The apprentice, Chu Xiaosong, was indignant on his behalf. "Master, they say you're blind."

"What's engraved are words, not a book."

He picked out a scrap plate from the toolbox, closed his eyes, carved a character on it, and pushed it in front of Chu Xiaosong.

"touch."

Chu Xiaosong touched it. "It's real."

"Touch someone else's carvings."

Chu Xiaosong rummaged through the pile of discarded printing blocks for a long time before finally finding one that Master Yu had ruined. "Master, this one is crooked."

"Where is it crooked?"

"It feels rough to the touch."

Old Cui placed the two carving blocks side by side on the table. Master Yu's block was carved with the character "仁" (ren, meaning benevolence), and it looked perfectly upright. The block he carved had numbers, with simple strokes, but the depth of the knife cut into the wood was exactly the same, from the beginning to the end of the cut, there was not the slightest deviation.

"He can read, but he doesn't know what wood is. I can't read, but I know what a knife is."

Chu Xiaosong was ten years old that year and didn't fully understand. But he remembered the way his master spoke; there was no resentment, no grievance, he was simply stating a fact.

Old Cui worked on Shufang Street for three years. Other craftsmen engraved scriptures, historical texts, and literature; Master Yu engraved the Analects, and Old Sun engraved the Diamond Sutra. The printed books were sent to the Imperial Academy, the Sutra Repository, and to the desks of scholarly families. He engraved account books, calendars, and notices—boards that didn't require literacy. The account books were distributed in wine shops, rice shops, and cloth shops; the calendars were pasted on the walls and stoves of ordinary people; and the notices were posted at the entrance of the government office, only to be ruined by the rain. Nobody cared who engraved the numbers on the paper.

His workstation was against a leaky wall. In front of him lay the printing plate for the day, the distillery's daily log, the characters on the template large and crooked. He spent the entire morning tracing it. At noon, Chu Xiaosong brought in lunch: two steamed buns and a bowl of vegetable soup. He broke the buns in half and soaked them in the soup, eating them with the rim of the bowl.

Chu Xiaosong squatted beside a pile of scrap printing blocks, munching on a dry biscuit. He was from Xuzhou; his father worked on a canal boat, and his mother did laundry for others. At the age of ten, he became an apprentice of Cui Laodao, but after two years of learning, he was still sharpening knives. His master wouldn't let him touch the printing blocks, saying his hands weren't steady enough.

Someone was shouting something on the street outside. Cui Laodao looked up at the window. The drainage ditch at the street corner was half full of mud, and the water level of the Cai River was half a foot higher than yesterday. The restaurant on the opposite bank was still playing music, and the sound of the pipa drifted over across the water, indistinct and unclear.

He lowered his head and continued carving.

As evening approached, Old Zheng, the foreman, came over. Old Zheng had been engraving woodblocks for thirty years, working his way up from apprentice to foreman, and he had touched every single woodblock on the book market street. He leaned against the seeping wall, holding a teapot in his hand.

"Old Cui."

Old Cui didn't stop wielding his knife.

How many words have you carved in your lifetime?

"Does it count as an arrow shaft?"

"No, not the book version."

"Each page has a few hundred words, and over three years, that's at least several hundred thousand."

"How many do you know?"

I don't know any of them.

Old Zheng was silent for a moment. "Then you're better than me. I've been carving for thirty years, and the more characters I know, the less interesting it becomes. You don't know a single character, yet you can still keep carving."

Old Cui didn't answer. He put down his knife, picked up his teacup, and took a sip. The tea leaves, brewed with water from the Cai River, tasted astringent and had a lingering muddy flavor.

Old Zheng left. Old Cui sat in the leaky corner and continued carving. The sound of the Cai River outside the window was clearer at night. The restaurant on the opposite bank was lit up, and the red and yellow lanterns reflected on the water, the water shimmering in waves.

Chu Xiaosong dozed off beside the pile of discarded printing plates. The plates, soaked in water and dried, were covered in mold, piled up in patches of blue and black against the wall. Old Cui took off his outer robe and covered his apprentice with it before returning to his workbench and sitting down.

He was also a little tired. It was the feeling of someone who had carved arrow shafts for four years, ledgers for three years, and numbers for a lifetime, but had never carved his own name. He was illiterate and didn't know what he was carving, but he knew he was carving.

Someone once asked him: "You've carved so many characters in your life, how many do you actually recognize?" He replied that he didn't recognize a single one. The person then asked: "Then why did you carve them?" He said that someone had to carve them.

This answer was exactly the same as it was four years ago at the arsenal. Four years ago, someone asked him: "Once the arrow is shot out, no one will remember that you carved it. Why are you so meticulous about carving it?" He said: "If the serial number is carved crookedly, we won't be able to find the person when we investigate, and those who should pay with their lives won't pay."

The other person laughed at him, calling him foolish. He didn't laugh.

He neatly arranged the almanac printing blocks that were due tomorrow and covered them with a dry cloth. The jujube wood blocks were susceptible to moisture, and the wall was still seeping water.

The wick was burnt. He poked it, and the flame flickered. The sound of the Cai River still echoed outside the window, and the watchman outside Bianjing struck the third watch. He sat there, the calluses on his fingers gleaming dimly in the lamplight. Those calluses, formed from carving arrow shafts and thickened from engraving book blocks, lined his fingertips and pads like a row of carved characters.

He recognized those cocoons. They were the only words he knew in his entire life.