Iron and Silk

by Mark Salzman

  A few other friends from the neighborhood trickled in, moving back and forth between the kitchen and the dining room as they helped to cook and to set the table. At about one o’clock the feast began, with fifteen of us sitting at a big, round table carried over from a nearby factory. Lin sat next to me and kept my bowl full the whole time, encouraging me to eat with hearty slaps on the back. Every five minutes or so he lifted up his wine glass to toast someone, so that after an hour had passed, everyone was very red in the face. The more Lin drank the more excited he became, talking in dialect too quickly for me to understand, but with emotions that were easy to read. He alternated between slamming the table and cursing with rage, murmuring softly in a trembling voice, as if terribly depressed, then turning to me and declaring with a shout that friendship was everything, it was all that mattered. This cycle of emotions became more exaggerated as time went on and more wine was consumed. Everyone else at the table seemed to be there to listen to him, agree with him, console him or support him as his mood required. At one point when he looked depressed, Zheng suggested that he show me some of his artwork. Lin jumped up and ran into an adjacent room, from which he emerged with a tiny clay sculpture of a naked man, hunched over in despair. It was a haunting sculpture, and I asked if he had any others to show me.

  “No,” he sighed, “I’ve given away everything else. I give away all of my work. But there is one thing I have that I will never give away—it is my treasure, my most precious thing. Do you want to see it?” I said that I would like to, and he produced from a desk drawer a single postcard with a photograph of Michelangelo’s David on its face. It was yellowed and badly worn from many years of handling.

  “Michelangelo is my teacher,” he said, “and this is my lesson book. It is all I have to work from. This sculpture, the David, is perfect, and I dream of it all the time. If I could see this sculpture with my own eyes and touch it with my fingers, I think I would die from happiness!” He carefully returned the postcard to the drawer, then burst into another angry monologue that I could not understand. By this time he was very drunk. He stood up, picked up an elaborate letter opener, pointed to it emphatically and rushed toward the door. He pretended to have trouble opening it, giving his friends time to catch him and take the letter opener away from him. He made a show of protest, struggling weakly to break free, but it was clearly for form’s sake, and no one except me seemed particularly alarmed. While Lin’s friends calmed him down, Zheng took me outside for a walk.

  “I’m sorry about this,” he said. “I’m very sorry that your day has been unpleasant.” I said that there was no need to apologize, but perhaps he could explain what was going on, since I was beginning to fear that I was the cause of the trouble.

  “No, no—not at all! Lin likes you very much! I think you have cheered him up by coming. I’ll tell you what is wrong. Lin is a very emotional man, an unusual man. He is very talented and smart, and he is my best friend. If you are his friend, I tell you that he would die for you, his loyalty is so great. During a period of hard times, he once saved my life. But sometimes he cannot control his emotions. He was married for a long time to a mean woman. After years and years of trouble, they were finally granted a divorce. Divorce, you know, is extremely rare in China. But Lin, even though he hates her, still loves her, too. That sounds impossible, but it is true. Anyway, she is getting remarried to someone else, and Lin is very upset. He promised he would not interfere, but not long ago he heard that the woman is having the wedding party only four blocks down the road—that building right there! Well, today is the wedding—they are over there right now. So we have come to cheer Lin up and make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid. Lin doesn’t want to make trouble—he asked us to come—but you see, being the way he is, I guess he can’t help getting worked up about it. I assure you, though, he is not a bad or a violent man. He is gentle, but today he is very upset. I’m sorry if this has frightened you.”

  When we went back inside, Lin once again sat at the head of the table, looking much better, and gestured for me to sit next to him. “I’m sorry for making so much noise,” he said. “The important thing is, I have all my good friends with me, and now I have a new friend, an American friend. Tell me about sculpture in America—what does it look like?” I was tempted to say “ridiculous,” but instead I confessed that I did not know enough about the subject to give him a proper answer. “If you like, though, I could ask my family to send an illustrated book about it.” Lin nodded appreciatively, then froze as if he had just seen an apparition. “Do you mean,” he asked in a whisper, “that it would be possible … to send a book of photographs here from your country? It would pass through customs?”

  “Certainly, if it were addressed to me. Then I could have Master Zheng take it to you, in case I don’t see you again.”

  He held my arm tight and looked closely at me, his eyes wild with hope.

  “Are there books like that … about Michelangelo?”

  “Yes, there are, and I will get one for you.”

  I thought he would surely cry with joy, but instead he drew himself up straight, nodded as if casually interested, and busied himself pouring wine for his friends.

  “Good—good. Yes, that would be very good if you could do that, but if it is too much trouble, of course …”

  “No, it would not be too much trouble at all.”

  “I don’t want to trouble you. You needn’t be polite.”

  “Not at all. It will be easy to arrange.”

  “Ah, well.… But if you can’t get the book, don’t worry about it. Sometimes, you know, a thing can seem easy one day and impossible the next.”

  Two months later I had a beautiful, soft-cover Michelangelo in my hands, but there was a problem. Not long after my visit to the sculptor’s home, I heard a rumor that Zheng’s students resented the special attention Zheng gave me, and felt that the content of their lessons had been rearranged to focus on my needs. There was no way of knowing if the rumor was true, but to be safe I asked Zheng if I might continue at a less feverish pace, and cut my lessons down to once or twice a week. He reacted strangely; he asked if I fully appreciated the risks he was taking by accepting me as a student, and said that if I was dissatisfied with the effort he was making to teach me I should just say so. I decided not to press the matter and continued seeing him three times a week, but after that he paid increasingly close attention to me during the lessons, and almost completely ignored his other students.

  One night none of the other students showed up. I asked after them and Zheng said that he had told them not to come so often, that they would be around forever but I would not, and he wanted to make sure I felt satisfied with his instruction. When I heard this I felt sick with regret, and told him right away that under those circumstances I could not possibly feel comfortable being his student. An expression somewhere between anger and fear passed over his face, and he blurted out that obviously I did not understand how important this arrangement was to him, and that I should not think only of myself.

  When he said this I felt bad, and I apologized for seeming ungrateful. Afterwards, though, this incident went through my mind again and again, and the more I tried to sort it out, the more confusing it became. At last I spoke to Hai Bin about it. He listened carefully, then told me that I should not feel angry or guilty, that it was no one’s fault, but that in this case, my being a foreigner was simply “too inconvenient.” He helped me draft a polite letter thanking Zheng for his generosity and kindness, then stating that unfortunately, due to an increase in my responsibilities at the college, I could no longer continue my lessons.

  I found Little Guo and showed him the Michelangelo book, asking if he could take it to Zheng to pass on to his friend Lin.

  Little Guo shook his head. “Under these conditions, it would be impossible. Lin, as a matter of face, would not accept it, because you have insulted Zheng by discontinuing your lessons. You will have to give it to someone else. How sad!”

  “Isn
’t there some way we could get the book to him without involving Zheng?” I asked, unable to believe that the book, having traveled twelve thousand miles, could not find its way a hundred miles more.

  “Mei banfa”—there is no way—he answered. “Just as Lin said, easy things become impossible. Most things are like that.” Suddenly Little Guo smiled, then laughed out loud. “And impossible things become easy! I never imagined that the mice in my lab would jump! Do you remember how we chased them for almost two hours?”

  I was too upset to laugh with him. He sensed my mood and patted me on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. Do you know the story of the old man and the horse? It’s a famous Chinese story, we all learn it when we are children. An old man’s horse runs away one day. His friends all say they are sorry to hear about the horse, but the old man says, ‘I’m not worried about it. You never know what happens.’ Sure enough, a few days later the horse returns, leading a whole herd of wild horses back with it. Everyone congratulates the old man on his good fortune, but the old man just says, ‘You never know what happens,’ and doesn’t make a big deal out of it. And sure enough, his only son becomes crippled in an accident while training one of the horses. Everyone says how sorry they are to hear the sad news, but the old man says, ‘You never know what happens.’ And not long afterward government troops pass through the village looking for healthy young men to recruit for a border campaign. Of course, the old man’s son is passed over because of his injuries. This is the Chinese way of thinking. Speaking honestly, it seems to me that you foreigners get terribly sentimental about little things.”

  I had walked along the river many times since meeting the fisherman that day in winter, but I did not see him again until spring. It was late afternoon, and I had bicycled to a point along the river about a mile downstream from where we had met, hoping to find a deserted spot to draw a picture. I found a niche in the sloping floodwall and started drawing a junk moored not far from me. Half an hour passed, and just as I finished the drawing, I heard someone calling my Chinese name. I looked down to see Old Ding scrambling up the floodwall, his boat anchored behind him. I noticed that he limped badly, and when he got up close I could see that one of his legs was shorter than the other and set at an odd angle. Such was his balance and skill in the boats that I only saw his deformity when he came ashore. He squatted down beside me and explained that he had just returned from a long fishing trip on Dong Ting, a sprawling lake in North Hunan. “Big fish up there,” he said, gesturing with his arms. Then he asked me what I was doing. I showed him the drawing, and his face lit up. “Just like it! Just like the boat!” He cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled something in the direction of the junk, and right away a family appeared on deck. “Let’s show it to them!” he said, and dragged me down to the water. He exchanged a few words with the family, and they leapt into action, the women going into the sheltered part of the junk to prepare food and the men rowing out to meet us in one of two tiny boats lashed to the side. We got in the little boat and returned with them to the junk. We ate a few snacks of different kinds of salted fish, had tea, and then I showed them the drawing. They seemed delighted by it, so I tore the sheet out of my block. I handed it to the oldest member of the family, a man in his sixties, who opened his eyes wide with surprise and would not take it, saying, “How can I take this? It is a work of art; what do I have to offer you in return?” I laughed, saying that it was only a drawing, and I would be happy if he would take it just for fun. But he was serious; when at last he accepted it, putting it down carefully on the bed, he began negotiating with Old Ding to choose an appropriate gift for me.

  Fifteen minutes of vigorous discussion, all in dialect, produced a decision: they would give me one of the rowboats. I looked at Old Ding and said that that was absolutely ridiculous, that of course I would not take a boat from a poor fisherman’s family in return for a charcoal sketch. “Oh, but it’s no problem! They can get a new one!” I realized that the situation was serious, for if I refused and left, they would no doubt carry the rowboat to my house and lay it on the front porch. I looked at the old man. “That is a very fine gift, it is worth thousands of drawings like that one, but we Americans have a custom, and that is we speak directly. If we want something, we say so.” Many Chinese people appreciate “talking straight,” perhaps because convention almost never allows it, so they applauded this and told me by all means to speak up. “The boat is very fine, but there is something I want more.” They all smiled and nodded and said that of course I could have whatever I wanted, but I could see they were deeply nervous. I believe they expected me to ask for the junk. “In my country, we have a superstition. If someone gives you a piece of art, like a painting or a poem, you must give him a piece of art in return, or the feeling will be spoiled. If I take the boat, I will feel sad. I would prefer that a member of your family sing a folk song from your hometown.” The family, almost hysterical with relief, cheered my decision, saying it had “true spirit,” and each of them sang something for me.

  After we left the junk, Old Ding asked me if I would have dinner with his family that night. I wasn’t feeling up to it just then; the encounter with the family on the junk had tired me out, so we made a date for a week from that day, a Saturday. I was to wait by the river in the afternoon, and he would pick me up in his boat.

  I brought my cello and an album of photographs of my family. I attracted a certain amount of attention as I stood next to the water with the hard case strapped to my back. By the time Old Ding came, a crowd had gathered. They watched me climb on, and the two of us pushed off and rowed downstream. The crowd followed us on the bank until I smiled and waved. They all smiled and waved back, nodded as if something had been explained, then turned and disappeared over the floodwall. As we rowed, the sun went down. Soon only the silhouettes of factory smokestacks and low hills could be seen through the copper-grey haze. We stopped near a cluster of other boats, all moored against the wall near a stairway leading up to the street. We left the river and walked for about fifteen minutes through a maze of narrow, dark alleys, arriving finally at a row of three-story concrete buildings. We entered a pitch-black doorway and felt our way up the stairs. Then he stopped me, and I heard him knock on a wooden door. The door opened into a small room illuminated by three candles. “No electricity tonight,” Old Ding said. It took a few seconds for me to orient myself to this eerie scene, but I soon began to recognize members of his family I’d met that morning in winter. I heard only gentle murmurs from the children who were seeing me for the first time. They asked me to stand next to a candle so they could see me clearly. After that they passed a candle around, holding it in front of each of their faces so I could see them properly, too, and Old Ding introduced them to me in turn. There were his four cousins, three aunts, three uncles, two nieces, his wife and two children, his two brothers and one sister-in-law, his father and his grandmother. In the doorway stood a few friends of the family who had been waiting across the hall when I came in. Everyone sat on the floor except for his father and his grandmother, who sat on the two chairs in the room. The father got up and, taking me by the arm, insisted that I take his seat next to his mother. He went into the kitchen and came back with a bottle of baijiu and a bowl of peanuts.

  The most striking figures in the room were the grandmother and the brother, the one who had helped row me back that day. The grandmother had brilliant white hair, carefully combed and tied back, and sparkling eyes that looked at me without blinking. She wore thick cotton trousers and a padded cotton jacket, all black, and though worn threadbare, her clothes were spotless. She sat only a few inches away from me, absorbed in pure wonder. She had great dignity nonetheless, occasionally turning her head as if to show me her profile in the candlelight. Fu Manchu sat on the floor right in front of her, like some sort of gargoyle, grinning demonically and waiting for someone to try and attack her. I tried talking to these two, but they didn’t understand my Mandarin, and I didn’t understand their dialect, so we
just looked at each other while I ate the peanuts and drank with the father.

  I took the album out of my bag and showed them their first color photographs. The clarity and brilliance of the prints overwhelmed them; several minutes passed before anyone asked about the people in them. Two pictures impressed them above all. One showed four generations of my family seated in my grandmother’s living room in front of an elaborate drapery—the drapery looked unimaginably beautiful, they said. The other picture showed my other grandmother standing with my mother. “This is your grandmother?” they asked. “How old is she?” They all clicked their tongues with disbelief when I told them, and when I pointed out my mother, they shook their heads. “She is too young to be your mother, she is a young girl. And this one you call your grandmother, she looks thirty years old.” I asked them what made these women look so young to them. “It’s easy—they are wearing such beautiful clothes. Only young women wear bright colors. And they are smiling! Old ladies never smile in pictures.”

  At length the grandmother said something to me and pointed to the cello case. I noticed that all the children had moved as far away from it as possible, so that it sat in an empty circle in the middle of the floor. “She wants to know what it is,” Old Ding said. I told him it was a datiqin, a cello. He passed this on to everyone, they discussed something, then he turned back to me. “What’s a cello?” I went over to the case and opened it, whereupon the children shrieked with terror, and two of them started to cry. Old Ding, between fits of laughter, explained, “My brother told them you had a spirit inside it that eats children I” I looked at Fu Manchu, and he nodded enthusiastically. I took the cello out of the case and the whole room gasped, clicked their tongues and sighed with appreciation. I walked over to my seat and began to explain the mechanics of the instrument, and then I noticed that none of them were looking at me or the cello. “It’s beautiful,” they kept saying, and one by one they all went to touch the divine object—the red velvet lining inside the cello case.