Qi the Second's Grindstone

At the mouth of Locust Lane there has long squatted a knife-grinder. His surname is Qi, and as the second son he is known to everyone as Qi the Second. He does not hawk his trade with flourishes; he only drags out the old refrain, long and drawn: "Sharpen your scissors -- hone your cleaver --" and the moment the wheel turns, the whole lane buzzes with that low, living hum.

Qi the Second works from a long bench. At one end hangs a treadle-driven grindstone; along the side dangles a string of whetstones -- a coarse grey one, a fine oil stone, and a dark, sodden slurry stone. His gift in sharpening lies not in strength but in the ear. When a blade is laid before him, he does not set to at once. He draws his thumb-pad across the edge and listens for the thin zzt of steel, then tilts the blade to the sun to read the grain along its face. A blade, he says, knows its master. What it has been used for, what it has cut, what hand has clenched it -- all of it is written in the steel. A knife that has spent its life on meat carries the rank smell of it in its seams; one that has hacked bone hides a hard, vicious notch; only a blade that has sliced cabbage and tofu all its days keeps an even, mild temper, like a quiet, honest man.

He keeps three rules, written on a crumpled red paper tacked to the bench-head: first, he will not sharpen a blade stained with innocent blood; second, he will not sharpen one whose owner cannot say plainly what it is for; third, the knife that lies by his own hearth he will never, ever sharpen. The first is conscience; the second is a threshold -- a man who cannot name a blade's use usually hides something in his heart; as for the third, if anyone asks, he only smiles and says nothing.

That autumn a man named Zhao the Fourth moved in at the lane's end -- broad-backed and tiger-built, he worked as muscle for a loan shark, shaking down families that could not pay, and the pointed blade in his hand had frightened many. The neighbors gave him a wide berth. One day Zhao brought his hog-sticking knife, its edge rolled, and demanded Qi put a keen edge on it. Qi took the knife, drew his thumb, and frowned -- the edge showed several chips from hard bone, true enough, but along the spine ran a fine scratch he knew well. A few days earlier Zhao had gone to lean on a family behind with debt and slit the young son's arm with this very blade; the blood had run down the doorframe, and Qi had watched the boy come running out, clutching his arm.

"This knife," Qi said, pushing it back, "I cannot sharpen."

Zhao the Fourth's eyes bulged. "I'm paying. You dare refuse me?"

Qi did not fluster. He pointed to the words on the red paper. "This blade has touched innocent blood. I have sharpened knives forty years, and I only put an edge on tools for those who mean to live. I do not forge weapons for men."

Zhao's face purpled. He raised a fist to smash the bench. Qi did not step back. He laid the blade gently back in the man's hand and said, "If you must have it honed, walk on to Old Sun at the east end. He takes any knife for thirty cents, no questions." Old Sun at the east end would sharpen anything and never ask its history -- this was the step Qi left Zhao to climb down, and the way he sent a man packing.

Zhao stood there with the blade in his hand a long while. In the end he dared not make a scene under Qi's eye. He spat, took up the knife, and left.

At dusk Qi closed his stall. From inside the bench he drew a blue cloth bundle, and in it a kitchen knife crusted with rust, its edge so dull it could pass for a rolling pin. It was left by his dead wife. In her day she had sliced a lifetime of turnips and cabbage with it; the last supper she cut, she sliced him a plate of lotus root. Qi carries it on every round and never sharpens it. Dull is better, he says. Dull, it is still the knife she worked at the stove.

The lane's streetlamp lit. Qi tucked the blue bundle back into his chest, shouldered the bench, and walked home over a carpet of fallen locust blossoms. Somewhere behind him a wok threw up the scent of scallion in hot oil, mixed with a distant "Sharpen your scissors --" drifting on the air -- slow, easy, like the old lane drawing its own breath.