Chapter 5

The Gait

Old Wang was the first to rise and the last to sleep at Qin Manor, and so the sound of his cane making its round of the servants' veranda before dawn served the servants as their cockcrow. Even at sixty-eight his back was straight, his step was slow yet soundless, and with the tip of that cane he could pick out which of the servants had come in late the night before and which meant to skip breakfast.

In his former life, it was this old man who had taught Xiao Han the work of a servant. How to sweep with the wrist, how to hold the spout of the teapot an inch above the cup when pouring, how to read the master's mood from his footsteps: all of it had come from this old man. Until Xiao Han took over the steward's post in the year he turned thirty, the old man had called him nothing but "you wretch" and "you rascal," and only on the morning he drew his last breath, in the winter of the year he handed over the post, had he called him by name for the first time.

That old man now stood in the middle of the yard, looking down at Xiao Han's feet.

"You wretch."

"Yes, Steward."

"Come here and walk for me."

Xiao Han stood his broom aside and walked toward the old man. It was a distance of perhaps ten paces. As he walked he felt the old man's gaze fixed upon his heels.

"Again."

Xiao Han turned and walked again. The old man stood with both hands folded atop his cane and said nothing. Only when he had walked a third time did the old man open his mouth.

"Your gait has changed of late."

Xiao Han had known that those words would come someday. He had only not known they would come so soon.

Twenty days had passed since he began standing in horse stance every night. The legs that at first could not hold out for ten breaths could now stand for more than a quarter of an hour, but in exchange, the way his legs met the ground had changed. He had come to tread as though pressing the earth with the whole sole of the foot, and to walk with his knees a little more bent than before. It was a change so small he could not have noticed it himself. And the one who had noticed it was, of all people, this old man.

"It is because my knees ache. From carrying so many water jars."

"Are you the only one who carries water jars? That Xiao Fu carries them too."

"That is because Xiao Fu has more flesh on him than I do."

The old man's white brows rose by an inch. Xiao Han realized what he had just said. His habit of talking too long when he lied was the same in this life.

"Will you look at this wretch. That more flesh makes the knees ache less, that I hear for the first time in my seventy years."

"I humbly beg your pardon. This lowly one in his ignorance babbled heedlessly. I entreat you to look upon it with forbearance."

The end of his speech had grown needlessly courteous. The old man tapped the ground once with the tip of his cane.

"Enough. Hand me that broom."

When Xiao Han handed over the broom, the old man took it and swept a corner of the yard a few times. They were short strokes that seemed to do no more than flick the wrist, yet wherever the broom passed, the grain remained fine and straight as strands of hair. Each time Xiao Han saw that grain he resolved that someday he would sweep like that, and he had used up all forty-five years of his former life without ever producing it.

"See. Sweeping is done with the wrist. These days you are sweeping with the shoulder."

The old man returned the broom and drew Xiao Han's hands over to set them back upon the handle. The old man's hand gripping the handle was bony as a dry branch, yet its grip was no weaker than a young man's, and between thumb and forefinger and at the base of the palm, calluses were lodged like stones. It was a hand that had held a broom all its life. That hand bent Xiao Han's wrist once by way of showing him, then let go.

"A fellow who sweeps with his shoulder is not sweeping the yard but fighting it. When you fight, there is one who wins and one who loses. A fellow who fought the yard and won, I have not yet seen."

"I will bear it in mind."

"Bearing in mind is not done with words. It is done with the wrist."

All that day Xiao Han felt the old man's gaze more than once. Whenever he drew water at the well, split and stacked firewood, or wiped down the veranda of the inner hall, the sound of the old man's cane had stopped somewhere not far off. When he raised his head, the old man would be nagging another servant or gazing up at a cobweb at the end of the eaves, yet the tip of that cane was always pointed toward wherever Xiao Han was.

Toward sundown, Xiao Han was at last called to the old man. At the very end of the servants' quarters, the old man's room was too neat to be called a servant's room and too shabby to be called a steward's. Against the wall leaned two or three worn canes, and on the low desk the household ledgers of Qin Manor were stacked squarely.

The old man poured cold barley tea into two cups. It was not common for a servant to be served tea in the steward's room.

"Sit."

Xiao Han knelt and sat. The old man raised his cup, took a sip, and was silent for a long time. Through the paper window the evening sunlight slanted in and dyed the old man's white beard orange.

"The old gatekeeper does not doze at night these days."

"...Yes."

"He is a man who starts snoring as soon as the second watch comes. But these days, though he stays wide awake all night, whenever someone goes by he is sure to have his head turned away. Someone has paid that man the price of pretending not to see."

Xiao Han wrapped both hands around his cup. The tepid warmth of the cold barley tea seeped into his palms. It had been ten days since he told the old gatekeeper about the height of the gate bar. The gatekeeper's back had not been wrenched once since then, and in payment he had pretended not to see Xiao Han going in and out at night. He had not known that bargain would reach the old man's ears so quickly.

"The seamstress mends your clothes for nothing, and Lao San buys you peanuts. That Lao San, mind you. I have lived twenty years in this house with him, and it is the first time I have seen that fellow buy anything for anyone. And Zhang puts two pieces of meat on your rice."

"Auntie Zhang always..."

"Always put one."

The old man's eyes looked straight at Xiao Han over the teacup. There was neither anger nor suspicion in those eyes. They were only deep and calm, like the bottom of a long-aged well, and meeting them, Xiao Han recalled himself at about ten years old in his former life, the first time he had been dragged before this old man and made to sit.

"In the space of twenty days, half the servants of this house have come to owe you a debt. A boy of fifteen, mind you. And every night you go somewhere and come back. And when you come back, your gait has changed."

The old man set down his cup. The sound of the cup meeting the table was unusually distinct.

"So I am asking. Whom do you meet every night?"

Xiao Han's mind turned swiftly. He could not speak of the clearing. That a servant should mount his master's training ground was by itself a matter for a beating, and that he should imitate his master's sword formula there would not end with a beating. Yet to flatly deny going anywhere at all, the old man already knew far too much.

Above all, it caught at him that the old man had not asked what he was doing, only whom he was meeting. In the old man's mind, Xiao Han's nightly outings were already woven into a matter of meeting someone.

"...It is shameful to tell you."

Xiao Han bowed his head. He could feel for himself the tips of his ears growing hot. Of all the lies a man who had lived forty-five years might now have to invent, it had to be this one.

"Is it something shameful?"

"Yes."

"Is it a person?"

"...Yes."

The old man looked down at Xiao Han for a long time. Then all at once he blew out a short breath through his nose. It was a sound that might have been either a laugh or a sigh.

"Is it the miller's daughter in the village across the way, or the Li family's maid over the stream?"

Xiao Han did not answer. That not answering was the best answer, he had learned in thirty-five years of servitude.

"Ha ha, will you look at this wretch. A fellow who held nothing but a broom already knows about such things."

The old man took up his cup again. This time his face had eased considerably. It seemed that in the old man's mind the gatekeeper's silence, the coachman's peanuts, and the changed gait had been strung together on one thread. A boy of fifteen going over the wall every night to meet a girl, paying people for their silence, his legs grown firm from climbing up and down a mountain path. To the eyes of an old steward there could have been no more plausible tale.

"Let me tell you just one thing. The old saying goes that there is no tree that will not fall after ten blows of the axe. But that is a saying about trees. Strike a person ten times and they take your axe away."

"...I will bear it in mind."

"Bear it in mind, again? And do your work. If you come back from playing at night and sweep the yard with your shoulder by day, I will go calling at that girl's house."

"Yes, Steward."

"Off with you."

Xiao Han bowed and withdrew. As he closed the door and walked out along the veranda of the servants' quarters, he realized that cold sweat had soaked through his back. He did not even know the face of the miller's daughter in the village across the way. The Li family's maid had married past the age of forty in his former life, and on her wedding day Xiao Han had gone bearing a gift in the name of Qin Manor.

What face he ought to wear if he ran into that maid in this life, Xiao Han was a little worried about.

That night Xiao Han left the servants' quarters two hours later than usual. Making sure the old man was asleep had taken time. Even breathing drifted from the old man's room, and the old gatekeeper by the main gate, as Xiao Han passed, turned his head the other way as though they had agreed upon it.

The path up the hill behind the manor was dark, for the moon was on the wane. Xiao Han climbed the familiar way, stepping around the pine roots. It was a path he had gone up and down for twenty days, so that now he could climb it with his eyes closed, and his legs no longer shook as they had at first.

When he reached the edge of the rocky clearing, Xiao Han stopped.

The corner below the rock, the place where he stood in horse stance every night, was clean. For twenty days the earth there had been pressed down by his feet into two shallow hollows, like puddles, and around them the marks of his landing on his backside and of his falling and rolling had remained in disorder. He had roughly covered them with earth before daybreak, but he had not been able to fill in the hollows. It was only because the corner lay a little aside from the path his master climbed every morning that it had not yet been discovered.

That place was now filled in level. The hollowed earth had been evenly filled, and upon it remained the marks of a broom. They were the marks of short strokes that did no more than flick the wrist, and the grain was fine and straight as strands of hair.

Xiao Han stood before that grain for a long while. Then, so as not to tread on the filled-in earth, he stepped a hand's breadth to one side, spread his feet, and bent his knees.

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