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The Clay Bodhisattva

Three li beyond Nanxun town stood a private school called the Scholar-tree Shade Hall. Its master, Mr. Zhou, was a graying failed candidate, squint-eyed and round-backed, who taught a dozen or so children their "at the beginning of man." In the hall was enshrined a clay bodhisattva, a foot and a half tall, painted and gilded, its gold flaked away; it was said the former master had brought it from a temple fair and set it on the altar with a coarse earthen censer beside it, cold ash the year round. The figure was worked from local red clay tempered with hemp, the leftover of a smaller image molded for the village goddess temple; when that was done this one remained, and was given the school to guard it.

Master Zhou was strict with his pupils, yet he doted on one called Dong. Dong was seven; his father died early, and his mother washed clothes in town and often could not mind him. On rainy days, thin-clad, the boy would huddle by the window, and Zhou would lay his own old robe over him.

Dong was a quiet boy, but he remembered kindness. Each day when school broke, the others scattered to catch fish and sparrows, but he stayed to rinse Master Zhou's inkstone and set the paper-weight straight, then wipe the clay bodhisattva on the altar with a rag. Its gold was long gone, and he wiped it gently, as if loath to startle it. Zhou saw and said nothing, only now and then heaped him half a bowl more of rice, and pressed the bottom of that bowl a little fuller.

That autumn it rained for a fortnight together. The hall was an old thatched room with rotten beams and loose tiles, its corners filmed with green moss. One night the rain was especially fierce, and water leaked through the tiles at the northwest corner, dripping straight onto Dong's straw bed. The boy woke to it, shivering, but dared not cry out — Master Zhou slept at the far end of the hall, and he feared to disturb him, and feared worse to be thought a weakling.

The leak quickened and soaked a patch of the bed. Suddenly came a soft creak from the altar. Dong opened his eyes; by the ghastly white of the lightning he saw the clay bodhisattva had come down from its seat — no, not walked, but the clay figure had shifted of itself, leaning, its half-shoulder slanting to cover the leaking bed. The clay body, soaked through, was heavy; gold paint ran down it mixed with rain, yet the broken patch of roof was indeed shaded.

In the sound of rain Dong drifted back to sleep. Near dawn the rain stopped; Master Zhou rose with his lamp and found the altar empty — the bodhisattva lay askew by Dong's bed, plastered in clay and water, while Dong, dry and snug, lay curled in sound sleep. Zhou dropped the lamp in fright, then hurried to lift the figure back, wiping it with cloth; the clay had softened by two fingers' width, and would bear no more water.

The next day Zhou called a clay-mason to mend the figure. The mason pinched that shoulder and shook his head: the clay, soaked a night's rain, had loosed its spirit, and could never be mended to its old hardness — henceforth it must be honored, not moved. Zhou sighed, and set a perpetual lamp before the altar, and from then on the incense never ceased.

Dong grew, and went out to learn a trade; each year he returned to the Scholar-tree Shade Hall to see the clay figure. Upon its shoulder ran an old crack, which Zhou had traced in gold paint, like a scar. Dong said it was no scar, but the mark where the bodhisattva had shielded him from the rain.

The Scholar-tree Shade Hall still leaked, and Zhou had new tiles laid; yet where the bodhisattva had shifted that night the moss grew thick, as if it had left a print. Passersby would glance into the hall and say this clay figure was quicker than the gilded Buddha in the temple. Zhou only smiled, and each night before sleep he trimmed the perpetual lamp bright, lest it go out.

The Chronicler remarks: Clay is by nature senseless; wet, it softens; struck by cold, it cracks — such is its way. Yet through one night of wind and rain the clay figure knew to shift and shield a child — was it the clay's own spirit, or the sculptor's compassion of old, unquenched a hundred years? Men cast gilded images to beg for blessings, and the gilded need not be quick; a handful of yellow clay will step forth to cover a man from the rain. Thus the quickening lies not in the gold, but in a single thought of mercy.