Iron and Silk

by Mark Salzman

  After the touching of the velvet, they asked to hear the instrument. I tuned it up, waited until they were ready, and began to play Bach’s First Suite for Unaccompanied Cello. The instant I drew the bow over the strings, the family started talking with one another, in full voice, mostly about the velvet. I thought perhaps I had misunderstood and they didn’t want me to play, so I stopped. Gradually they became silent and looked at me. “Why did you stop?” I felt puzzled, but started again. Right away they resumed their conversations, the children laughed and played with the case, and Fu Manchu initiated an arm wrestle with the third brother. When I finished the first movement, they looked at me again. “Is that all?” I must admit that I felt disappointed that their first exposure to the cello, and to Bach, was generating so little interest. But then I remembered what a Chinese friend had told me one night at a performance of instrumental music where the audience talked, laughed, spat and walked around during the show. I mentioned to him that the audience seemed unbelievably rude, and he answered that, on the contrary, this showed they were enjoying it. He said that for the majority of Chinese who are peasants and laborers, music is enjoyed as a sort of background entertainment and is intended as an accompaniment to renao, which means literally “heat and noise.” Renao is the Chinese word for good fun, the kind you might have at an amusement park in America, and noise and movement are essential to it.

  I accompanied their renao for as long as I could stand it, then put the cello away. The grandmother spoke again, and this time I understood her. “Sing a song.” My mind went blank; after several minutes of stalling, the only song I could think of was the first stanza of “Scarborough Fair.” Singing affected them differently, for they listened in complete silence. When I finished, the grandmother tapped me on the shoulder with her tiny finger. “Sing it again.” I sang it again, and she asked me to sing it one more time. “She likes the song,” Old Ding told me, and he encouraged me to keep singing it until dinner was ready. The children spared me from that task by squealing with disapproval, saying that we had all heard enough music, now it was time for a ghost story. “Could you do that for them?” Old Ding asked. “They think you could tell a good one, because you look like a ghost yourself.” I said I would be happy to, but only if the children sat close enough for me to touch them, knowing that this would add to the dramatic effect. It took a while for them to get up the courage, but in time I had a circle of trembling children around my feet, waiting to be terrified. The children had heard enough Mandarin on the loudspeakers and in school, so that if I spoke slowly, they understood. I created a horrible tale about a hungry ghost that hid in dark corners of houses or under beds, waiting to nibble at the ankles of little boys and girls, that had golden hair, strange blue eyes and a long, narrow nose. Upon hearing this description, they began edging away from me. “Would you like me to show you how the ghost nibbles?” I asked, and the entire circle of them vaporized, and could only be seen peeking out at me from behind doors for the rest of the evening.

  This amused everyone, but most of all Fu Manchu, who growled with delight and tried to capture the children and carry them back toward me. They scratched, kicked and bit him, which only added to his enjoyment. This could have gone on all night if my friend’s wife hadn’t stuck her head in to announce dinner. We all herded into a storage room on the first floor, which they had cleared out for dinner, and sat at three low tables, using overturned washbasins as chairs.

  They served five or six varieties of dried fish, a stew of fresh fish and Chinese parsley, and some sausage, along with rice scooped out of a huge black iron pot. There was a large bowl of fresh hot peppers mixed with crushed dried peppers on each table. A pinch on my rice was enough for me, but only whole mouthfuls satisfied my hosts, who considered the peppers a separate dish rather than a seasoning. Tea followed, and I noticed that most of them ate the leaves after drinking the tea. Suddenly Fu Manchu leapt to his feet and said something in an excited voice. Everyone got up and cleared the tables, moved them and all the washbasins out of the storage room, then returned to squat against the walls. The brother grinned at me, flashing his teeth and saying something I could not understand. Old Ding tapped me on the shoulder. “He wants to show you how strong he is. Watch!” The brother stripped to the waist, revealing a massive chest and arms muscled with steel bands. He jumped face-first to the ground and started doing push-ups on his fingertips while the rest of the family counted aloud. At seventy-five, with no signs of slowing down, he jumped back up, assumed a martial stance and punched the air in front of him one hundred times. He looked as though he were in some sort of frenzy, and after the punches he took a cloth soaked in cold water and squeezed it over his head, dancing with joy as the icy drops ran down his back. “Now it is your turn. Show him how strong you are, then you two can wrestle!” I chose to keep my shirt on, the temperature being forty degrees or so in their unheated building, and not to begin my demonstration with push-ups. I performed a routine of Chinese Southern Fist, which can be done in a very small area, embellishing it with one or two jumping kicks that I knew I did well. A silence fell over them, and Old Ding asked who my teacher was. When I mentioned Pan’s name, sighs of admiration filled the room. “Is it true?” he asked. I said it was, and his brother put his right fist into his left palm, an old-fashioned sign of respect, especially among fighters, and mumbled something to me. “He wants to become your apprentice,” Old Ding translated, “and he doesn’t want to wrestle anymore.”

  Later that night Old Ding, his two brothers and I returned to the river. They unfastened two boats, the brothers taking one and us the other, and we started rowing downstream. “Aren’t we going in the wrong direction?” I asked. “No! The big fish are downstream in the morning.” “In the morning?” “Yes—why, do you want to fish now, too?” “Am I going fishing with you in the morning?” “Of course!” “Where will I be sleeping tonight?” He pointed to the bamboo roof. “Under that.”

  We anchored far enough downstream that the lights from the city no longer illuminated the sky. The stars and a nearly full moon shone brilliantly over our heads, and the movement of their reflections in the water told us when another boat passed in the distance. Each of our boats had a small charcoal brazier on deck and a kerosene lamp, burning faint yellow, hung from a pole off the bow. Watching the brothers prepare the boats for the night, their faces and hands glowing red, the wood of the boats a deep walnut color becoming ebony where the lamplight could not reach, all reflected in the pure black glass around us, I imagined that a magic spell had transported me into a Japanese woodblock print.

  When it came time to go to sleep, Old Ding and I lay down, side by side, on a mattress of tattered army coats, using the same for blankets. The boat was narrow, so we pressed against each other, with our faces against the sides of the boat. He put out the kerosene lamp and pulled the bamboo cover back, so we could look up at the sky. Then we began talking.

  “How far away is America?” When I told him, he giggled. “Bullshit—the world isn’t that big!” He asked if I had ever seen the ocean, and when I said I had, he wanted to know what color it was. For some reason he thought it was yellow. He also thought Taiwan was an island off the coast of America. “Do you have robots in America that look just like people? I heard that you have them over there, but that sometimes they get angry and kill people.” I explained as best I could that we have some very impressive technology in our country, but as yet no robots that cannot be distinguished from humans. He fell silent for a while, and I thought he had gone to sleep, but he had one more question: “Is the moon higher than space?” I thought about it for a long time but finally had to admit that I really didn’t know. “But,” I said, “did you know that we have sent men to the moon, and they have walked there?” He was quiet for a moment, then he laughed and laughed, and pulled the bamboo cover shut.

  I woke up to feel tiny morning waves lapping at the side of the boat through my cheek. Old Ding woke at the same time and pulled back the ba
mboo cover. A heavy mist surrounded us, so thick we could barely see the other boat fifteen feet away. Without a word the three brothers prepared their long nets, dropped them into the water, then rowed apart. We waited half an hour or so, then rowed together again. We pulled the nets up, finding in them nothing but some mud and weeds. “Do you get angry if you don’t catch anything?” I asked them. They laughed as if I had told a joke, then answered no, they didn’t really care, but if they didn’t catch much, they would be scolded by their wives.

  Two hours passed, then a third boat appeared out of the thinning mist. It was the father, with an even longer net that spread out among three boats. We pulled it in, and still found nothing inside. “Even father will get scolded today!” Old Ding yelled, and they all doubled over with laughter. They folded up the net, and we started back to shore for breakfast. We rowed to a spot where seven other boats were moored, and where the fishermen’s wives stood on the floodwall waiting to give them breakfast. I hid under the bamboo cover again, and when Old Ding’s wife came down to the river with a container full of steamed bread and hot peppers, I jumped out, exchanged greetings, then jumped with the container back onto the boat. The other fishermen and their wives up on the wall watched in numb silence as we divided up the bread and started eating. In time I was properly introduced, and we pulled our boat into their little cluster and shared breakfast. When everyone had eaten, they took turns dropping their trousers, leaning off the sides of the boats and using the river as a toilet. At the same time, Old Ding insisted that it was time to wash up. He dipped an iron cup into the filthy water and began splashing it on his face and neck, inviting me to do the same. I declined, to everyone’s surprise. “Don’t you wash yourself?” “Yes, but not every day. I will tomorrow.” Then it came time to brush our teeth. He dipped the cup into the water again, swished a lump of steel wool in it, then put the steel wool in his mouth to chew on. He gargled with a mouthful of the water, then spat it out. “Here—your turn.” I declined again, and everyone agreed that it was an odd thing that Americans, who supposedly live in a fantastical future-world, understand so little about personal hygiene.

  Eventually I had to get back home, but they pleaded with me to stay. “Why don’t you live with us, here, on the boats? Your hospital isn’t far, you could ride your bicycle to class in the mornings, then ride back in the afternoons. You can have a boat to yourself, if you like.” I told them it was very kind of them to offer, but I had lots of books and things like that, too much to fit on a boat. They answered that we could put some money together and buy another boat just for my books. I thanked them again but had to say no, assuring them that I would visit them as often as I could. They looked disappointed but did not press the matter, and took me back to the place where I had first met them. I hopped on shore, climbed up the floodwall with my cello, and before disappearing over it, turned to wave once more. They hadn’t moved from the spot, waiting for me to turn around, and waved back with both arms, reminding me to come look for them again.

  The rest of the day I spent thinking about the night on the boat. Teacher Wei warned me that if I slipped away to live with the fishermen on their boats, she would be very angry, because she would probably have to teach my classes. That night I slept uneasily, dreaming that I had pulled my ears out to clean them and was driven by some horrible compulsion to chew them to pieces. I woke up feeling anxious, but pleased that my ears had not been spoiled, got ready for class and opened the door to leave the house. A crowd of old ladies, on their way to get breakfast from the dining hall, stood around the porch looking curiously at something on the steps. It was a large washbasin holding a fish, so big that its head and tail hung over the edges of the basin and touched the ground.

  Pan Learns Script

  A Runaway

  Teacher Black

  In a Gallery

  I enjoyed the time I spent with Pan very much, though I must admit I preferred the time he was teaching me wushu to the time he was teaching me how to teach him English. I remember with special clarity how close to madness I came the day he decided to learn to tell time. He managed to find a broken clock, set its hands at exactly twelve o’clock, then asked how to say what time it was. After he had repeated “It’s twelve o’clock” to his satisfaction, he moved the minute hand exactly one minute forward to 12:01. “How do you say this?” he asked.

  Eventually, though, it always came time to put away the recorders and clocks and ride over to the training hall, and no matter how short the lesson, it always seemed worth a lifetime of English tutoring. I felt that I could practice for him until my heart burst, and the times when it nearly did, and he smiled at me, I thought I would surely float up through the ceiling with joy and power. After each lesson he would tell me a story about his own training and eventual mastery. He was the youngest of several sons, and had lost his father when still very young. His older brothers apprenticed him to a metal worker and disapproved of his interest in martial arts, calling it a waste of time. He practiced secretly, at night, and sought out fifteen of the greatest masters in China, quickly becoming their favorite student. Year after year he forged metal during the day and practiced slavishly at night, returning home after the rest of his family had gone to bed. Not even his neighbors knew about his hobby, for Pan wanted no one to see him until he was ready. When that day came, he signed himself up for the national competition in Beijing, took a week off from his job, and without even a proper uniform or a pair of sneakers, became China’s grand champion.

  Several things hindered our lessons, though. One problem, of course, was that officialdom felt uneasy about our relationship. I was able, in time, to convince my college that denying me permission to see my teacher would not be “convenient” for me, but the cadres of the Sports Unit, whom I never saw, thought differently. One day during my second year, when I went there to drop off an English tape, a guard stopped me at the gate. “You can’t come in here anymore,” she said. “Don’t ever come back.” I asked the Foreign Affairs Bureau to make inquiries and find out what had gone wrong. The first message from the Sports Unit went something like this: “Chinese wushu is a National Defense Secret and as such, cannot be leaked to aliens.” This was nonsense, so we asked for a better reason. The next message, that Master Pan was away on a very long trip, would have been more believable had Pan not been in my room when I heard it. By the third message, we were getting warmer. It was feared that I was a spy and might gain access to “internal documents” kept in the offices below the training hall, which contained such State Secrets as the number of athletes in the unit, their names, ages and so on. After several weeks, though, the most reasonable explanation reached our college. China was at that time undergoing a nation-wide purge of incompetent, radical leftist elements, known as the Party Rectification Campaign. This meant that cadres at all levels were subject to evaluation and were likely to be shifted around according to the results Rumor had it that quite a bit of shifting around had occurred within the leadership of the Sports Unit, though no one really knew for sure. Anyway, a team of new, forward-thinking moderate progressives had presumably just come to power. It might seem odd that their first step toward modernization and “Opening Up to the West” was to forbid me to pass through their gate. But China was at that time in the middle of another nation-wide movement, the Campaign for the Elimination of Cultural Pollution, “cultural pollution” meaning Western ideas and habits. The new leaders encouraged the adoption of Western management and training methods in their unit, but at the same time had to demonstrate a firm resolution to protect their unit from contamination by a Western person.

  No further explanations were given, and I never saw the training hall or the athletes again. After that, Pan taught me on the roof of a public bathhouse early in the mornings, where we had to dodge wires, piles of roofing materials and gusts of steam that shot up through ventilation holes under our feet.

  Time was another problem. Pan accompanied the troupe on all of their trips to perform or t
o compete. One of these trips took them to Shanghai for a month, another to Wuhan for three weeks, and a trip to Singapore and Hong Kong kept him away for more than two months. They often performed in neighboring counties in Hunan, which involved four to five days of preparation, and Pan occasionally had to travel by himself within the province to choose new troupe members. He never knew beforehand how long these trips would last, or whether during the trip he might suddenly be called to Beijing or Hong Kong to make another movie. Since I could not go to his unit, I never knew when he was in town, or for how long, until he appeared at my door. I lived in constant fear of his showing up when I didn’t happen to be home, and disappearing again for another few weeks, which frequently happened. Before the long trips, though, he always managed to find me and deluge me with new material, sometimes showing up on the rooftop every morning at five o’clock for weeks at a stretch. “When I come back, this should be perfect,” he would say, then disappear.

  As for his English, something had temporarily distracted him from memorizing the oral English “routines,” and according to his wife, occupied him during nearly all his free moments. Apparently he had seen in my room a letter from a friend written in script. He was so taken by its appearance that he decided right away to learn it, even though he could not write in print yet. My protests were futile. I drew up a series of models for him to copy from, and barely escaped having to rewrite all of our phrase sheets in script as well. His wife sensed my frustration, and one night, as he sat at a little table copying out letters onto a pad that he always carried around with him, she pleaded with him to be reasonable and let me teach him the way I knew how. “After all,” she groaned, “teaching English is his job.” Pan’s eyebrows shot up and he glared at her. “Neither of you understands me,” he whispered. “No one understands me the way I do.” Then he picked up a single chopstick. “In the hands of an ordinary man, this is just a chopstick.” He looked at it for a moment, then burst into motion too fast to see clearly, bringing the chopstick to a trembling halt less than a centimeter from my throat. “In my hands it becomes something else. You think it is foolish that I want to write script, but I do what I like, and who knows what I will do with it? Who knows what these letters will become when they are mine to use?” His eyes burned into mine, then a boyish smile came over his face and he moved on to the next letter.