Midnight Records: The Soul-Nailing Iron

Tiexi town lies along a river. The water is called Gan, and at night it carries a tidal stink of iron-rust and rotting water-chestnut. At the town's tail stands a smithy whose front wall has half collapsed, with weeds pushing through the gap; yet inside all is kept neat. An old anvil stands in the middle of the room, tempered by forty years of flying sparks, bright as if soaked in a whole night's moon. The master is surnamed Fu, ninth in his family, and everyone calls him Fu the Ninth.

Fu the Ninth has forged iron all his life. When a hoe loses its edge, a lock its spring, a plough its tip, the townsfolk come to him. His hammering he learned hand from hand from his teacher, Tao the Hammer: the hammer falls like a peck, rises like a crane, and when the sparks land on his chest he does not even furrow his brow. Yet there is one trade he seldom takes, and seldom is asked — the forging of soul-nails.

In the customs of the south, when the dead walk as restless shades, the body unrotting, leaving the grave night after night, one must drive an iron nail into the coffin-head, the threshold, and the well-mouth alike — this is called 'settling the soul.' Iron is born in fire and beaten ten thousand times; the yin cannot come near it, and it is the cleanest thing for subduing evil. But a soul-nail is no common iron. Common iron dies when cold; a soul-nail, on the last blow, takes a breath of the smith's living warmth and hammers it into the nail's tail, along with a word from the dead one's kin. Fu says that breath is fire he lends the dead, and a debt he owes the living — a debt of size, a warmth of weight, and on the day the nail enters the earth, all the living man concealed, the iron remembers.

The first rule Tao the Hammer taught him, Fu kept for forty years: a soul-nail pins only the soul it ought to pin. Pin the wrong one, and inside the nail grows a thing that can neither live nor scatter — worse than any shade. The second rule: before the hammer rises, ask the kin three questions — how did the dead walk, what did the living hide, and how many lives lie between. Ask not, and the nail comes out blind. A blind nail settles no soul; it only gathers one, and what it gathers is seldom the shade but the wronged soul made to bear the shade's guilt.

Tao himself had once fallen. Young, in a neighboring county, he too forged a soul-nail — a wealthy household whose maid, they said, had stolen the lady's bracelet and hanged herself in the woodshed, her ghost rattling nightly. The lady wept so truly that Tao asked nothing and struck. The nail held the maid's ghost, yet thereafter the house heard fingernails scratching at a door each night, and it was the lady's own door they scratched — for it came out that she had hidden the bracelet and blamed the maid, who died unjust. Tao's right hand kept the affliction: every midnight it twitched of itself, as if someone gripped his fingers and tapped them one by one. He dug the nail up, tried to melt it, could not, and so enshrined it beneath the forge-god's altar, burning incense daily, begging the maid to spare his hand. The affliction he carried to his grave, and it became the mark in Fu's own heart.

Fu kept those two rules forty years without error. He had pinned drowned boatmen, hanged widows, a young mistress lost in childbirth, a drunk struck by lightning on a field-path; wherever his nail fell, the graves grew quiet. The town respected him and feared him — respected the craft, feared the eye that read iron and read men. Like his teacher, before forging he burned a stick of incense to the forge-god, struck at noon when the yang was fullest, and used only charcoal from thunder-struck wood, saying only such fire could hold the yin.

That anvil was no common iron, either. When Tao passed it to him on his deathbed, he said an anvil is raised by the smith — an anvil under generations of hammers drinks its fill of living warmth, and only then does the nail it receives hold the yin. Yet because it has drunk its fill, the anvil is also the readiest to ferry the soul trapped in a nail, grain by grain, into its own grain. Forty years Fu had raised this anvil, blow by blow, until at last the anvil knew those pinned souls better than he did.

The turn came that winter month. On the ninth, the first snow fell, and Qian Wanshan of the rice shop came to his door.

Qian was among the town's richest; his granary ran three courtyards deep, holding the grain of scores of miles, and even the county magistrate stepped down from his sedan to take a bowl of his tea. He came wrapped in a whole fox pelt, two assistants behind him carrying a gilt casket, and tramped in through the snow, melting a puddle of slush at the threshold. He said his father, Old Master Qian, had passed the month before and was buried on East Mound, a fresh grave. Lately the grave-keeper said there was movement every night, something scratching in the soil, a low humming — the old man, perhaps, had not gone clean, and walked as a shade. He begged Fu to forge a set of soul-nails; money was no object, only haste.

Fu said nothing, and asked his three questions. Qian answered smoothly: the old man died in bed at seventy-three, no illness, no pain; the family hid nothing, the shop's accounts were spotless; lives between — none, the old man had done good all his days and good men are rewarded.

Fu studied him a long while. Qian's left forefinger bore an old scar, the shape of a scale-weight's blow, gone dark at the edge; his cuff carried a fleck of grey-white powder — the slaked lime found only in the mortuary's storeroom. Fu did not interrupt, but kept those three answers and those two incongruities in his heart, and said he must see the grave before he struck.

East Mound lies two li east of town, in shadow, graves crowded upon graves. Old Master Qian's was fresh, the soil still loose, the stele of blue stone carved with the words 'Here lies our late father.' Fu squatted before the stele and laid the back of his hand against it. A fresh grave's stone is cool, but this was cold past reason, like a slab of ice, the chill climbing his fingers. He walked the grave once round and found behind it a shallow trench, newly dug and hastily filled, with half a hemp rope at the bottom, the rope carrying the same grey-white lime as the mortuary.

Fu knew, but said nothing. He took the commission; the deposit lay heavy on his bench — half a year's charcoal. The shop owed Old Zhou the charcoal-man, who had come last month demanding, 'Pay or I cut your fire.' Fu touched the gilt casket, thought of his teacher's midnight twitch, and set his jaw.

He chose the finest iron, lit the fire, raised the hammer. On the first two blows the flame in the hearth lurched sideways, as if shoved from the side, and sparks leapt to his cheek, burning a red dot. Fu's heart lurched — this was the ill omen Tao had named: the iron would not accept the work. Tao had said iron has a memory; when the smith's heart is false, the iron rebels. But the deposit pressed, the charcoal bill drove, and he gripped the handle and went on.

On the first day the iron went white from red on the anvil, and the sparks, instead of flying up, crept along the ground like silver fish swimming toward the threshold. Fu's scalp prickled — an omen Tao had never named. On the second day he quenched a nail in the Gan; the water met the iron without steam, only a heavy sound, as if something were swallowed. The more he struck, the clearer it grew: this iron had already owned another master — not Old Master Qian, but someone in that trench behind the grave, someone he had not yet seen. His hand trembled once, and the grain in the nail's tail sank a shade deeper.

Three soul-nails, three days' forging. With every blow he sent that breath of living warmth into the nail's tail until his lips went white. Yet the wronger it felt: once formed, the nails cooled faster than common iron, and held to the lamp they showed a fine tracery, curling, like a small figure curled in on itself. Tao had said this was the sign of something dwelling within — the iron would not own the soul yet could not hold it out, and so traced it upon its own body.

The night the nails were done, Qian came for them. Fu asked the three questions again; Qian answered word for word, even his tone unchanged. Fu passed the nails over, and his fingers brushed Qian's wrist — a cold sweat, and within the cold a tremor. In the end he did not stop him, and let Qian bear the casket away through the snow.

Those nights, Fu's right hand too began to twitch at midnight, just as his teacher's had. He held the fingers that tapped the air one stroke at a time, and suddenly was afraid — not of ghosts, but that his hammer had struck the wrong man.

Three days later came word from East Mound: Old Master Qian's grave was quiet, the keeper heard no more scratching. The town breathed easy and said Fu's nails were true. But a few days on, the strange things began.

First the mortuary-keeper, Old Cui, came to his door, white as if papered. He said a body had appeared in the cold room from nowhere — a youth, seventeen or eighteen, a rope-mark on the neck, the corpse light as an emptied shell, weightless on the scale. No one brought it, no one claimed it, no name in the mortuary book. Old Cui suspected Fu's nails had conjured it, and came to ask. Fu went with him to the mortuary, lifted the cloth from the youth's face, and touched the chest — hollow, like rapping an empty winnowing tray. He thought of Tao's 'empty corpse' and went cold to the middle.

Then a granary hand vanished, leaving one shoe, its sole flecked with grey lime. Then children said that passing East Mound at night they heard someone humming in the grave, a tune the granary porters sang, the tail of it dragging a cry.

Fu could sit no longer. He crept to East Mound by night and opened the shallow trench behind the grave. Beneath was no Old Master Qian but a young man's skeleton, the neck-bone snapped in two — plainly strangled, then hastily buried; in the ribs lay half a wooden tag carved 'Qian granary porter, A-Liu.' Fu knew the tag — the mark of the grain-carrying porters, for whom he had once forged iron measures.

He thought of the lime on Qian's cuff, the dark scale-scar, Old Cui's 'light as an emptied shell.' The matter cleared: before Old Master Qian died, a porter named A-Liu worked the granary, honest and strong. That year military grain passed through, and the old man had sand mixed into it and set A-Liu to carry it. A-Liu's conscience would not bear it; he said he would report to the county. To silence him, Qian Wanshan strangled A-Liu behind the mortuary and buried him in haste, then told the town his father walked as a shade — borrowing Fu's nails to pin A-Liu's grievance forever in the earth, so the youth could not come nightly to demand his life. As for the 'appeared' empty corpse, that was A-Liu's soul, nailed nowhere to go, borrowing the shell of some unnamed body in the mortuary to walk.

Only then did Fu know that the nails he forged had pinned not Old Master Qian but A-Liu. Three nails — one in the grave-head, one in the granary threshold, one at the town well — and A-Liu's soul was locked by the three, unable to leave the earth or scatter its shape, curled in the iron day and night. That pushing at the fire, that flame lurching sideways — it was the boy struggling in the iron.

Fu went to the granary that night for Qian Wanshan. The three courtyards were dark; the hands said their master had gone to the provincial city for grain and would be gone a month at least. Fu stood before the empty storehouse and smelled iron-rust and lime, and then felt — not heard — the bricks beneath his feet trembling faintly, as if someone scratched at the mortar with a fingernail, one scratch at a time. He lurched back two steps, yet the trembling followed his heels all the way home.

In the smithy the three nails were long gone with Qian, and Fu's hands were empty. He pulled out Tao's old handwritten notes and pored over them by the lamp. The notes were plain: once formed, a soul-nail will not melt in common fire. It has drunk the smith's living breath and become a thing half yin, half yang; no yang fire dissolves it. Only the smith's own blood as a kindling, burning back with that borrowed warmth, can free the trapped soul. At the end Tao had written in vermilion: save one, pay one; he who frees the soul takes its place. This was the nail's cruellest clause, and the smith's only redemption.

Fu did not hesitate long. He thought of A-Xiu. A-Xiu was the town's deaf-mute washerwoman; every first of the month she came and stood a while outside the smithy, saying nothing, simply standing, then left a bundle to be washed and came back the next day. Fu had always thought she brought laundry, until the tofu-seller told him A-Xiu had a brother who three years past went to the granary to carry grain, saying he would return after one winter to marry her, and was never heard from. The while she stood each first of the month was her waiting for her brother. Fu spoke the two characters 'A-Liu' from the tag to the tofu-seller, who slapped his thigh: A-Xiu's brother's pet name was precisely A-Liu.

Fu went neither to the granary nor to A-Xiu. Only at the next dawn he walked to the river landing outside town and watched from afar as A-Xiu squatted on the blue stone beating clothes. She beat them one stroke at a time, and the rhythm was strangely like his own hammering. Fu stood behind the reeds and watched her finish, wring the wet cloth, then draw from her breast half a wooden tag — the very twin of the one in the skeleton's ribs on East Mound, only whole — which she carried every day, to be known by her brother on his return. Fu's throat closed with pain, but in the end he made no sound, and turned back to the smithy.

The forge was lit again. But the three nails lay in three places, hard to gather. The one on East Mound was easy — he opened the trench behind the grave by night and pulled it free. The one in the granary threshold he took at midnight, climbing the wall and drawing it out pin by pin by the snow-light, his fingertips numb with cold. The one at the town well was the peril: a thin ice on the mouth, he tied a hemp rope and lowered himself, found the nail in the well's moss, and as he drew it the cold of the deep wrapped his ankle; he grunted, climbed the rope with all his strength, shoes and socks soaked, and looked back at the well — the surface flat as a face with no expression. The three nails were at last gathered and set back on the anvil.

The moment they touched the steel, the curling tracery came alive, as if it knew him, rising and falling like a caged beast's ribs. Fu felt the nail's tail; the breath he had sent was still there, warm, but wrapped within it was A-Liu's three years of wrong. Tao's words turned in his ear: pin the wrong one, and a thing grows that can neither live nor scatter; a blind nail settles no soul, only gathers one. What he had forged was no soul-nail but a soul-gathering nail, gathering a porter murdered by the living, whose name had never entered the family register.

He cut his wrist and let the blood fall into the hearth. The fire leapt a foot high, blue and dim, no fire but a well hung upside down, and at its bottom lay countless faces. The nails in the fire slowly reddened, reddened to white, and the curling tracery unfolded bit by bit, like a man at last straightening his spine, his throat working, though no sound came. Fu stared, and half saw A-Liu standing in the fire, seventeen or eighteen, nodding to him, light as a yawn.

The nails melted to iron-water, bubbling and welling. Fu felt the living breath drawn out of him along his veins; his limbs went cold, his sight went white, as if someone blew out the lamps in his chest one by one. He leaned on the anvil and heard from beneath it a sound exceedingly faint, like a sigh, like relief — A-Liu was gone, light as a shell at last emptied.

But the nails melted and Fu's man was emptied of half himself. After that the townsfolk found Fu's smithy never let its fire die at night. Passers-by saw blue light leaking through the door-crack and heard the anvil strike itself, one blow after another, as if someone within went on hammering, rising like a crane and falling like a peck, exactly Fu's stance. A new youth came to apprentice, and dared not push the door but only peered through the gap — the old anvil bright as moon-soaked, a fresh crack across its face weeping fine rust, and close by, the smell of lime and iron-rust, the very smell of A-Liu's grave.

The youth reached to touch that crack; his fingertip had barely met it when from beneath the anvil came a sound exceedingly faint — a scratch, and another, as if someone below, with a fingernail, scratched one stroke at a time, waiting for who would come to set him free. The youth fled on hands and knees; the next day he returned to find the smithy empty, Fu gone no one knew where, and only the anvil left, with the sound beneath it, unhurried, scratching.

Later Qian Wanshan returned from the provincial city. He found the nail-marks gone from the granary threshold, the nails gone from East Mound, the smithy empty, Fu vanished; he took it for a smith who had run off with the deposit, and so said nothing — his murderous deed, in the end, was never brought to light. Yet the town came to say that on every ninth-of-winter night when snow fell, blue light leaked from that smithy at the town's tail and the anvil scratched beneath, one stroke at a time, as if someone kept the account and, year upon year, would not let it blur.

Some years on, a smith from out of town passed by, heard the sound, peered through the gap at the crack, and reached to touch it; he came home with a fever and raved that something below had seized his wrist, demanding release. The old folk of the town hurried him away, saying the anvil knew no strangers and a stranger must not touch it.

Midnight note: The blacksmith's trade is born of fire and fixed by the hammer — a clean craft for subduing evil. But the nail is struck by a man, the words spoken by a man; when the living first deceive heaven, the iron gathers the soul for the living and settles it not for the dead. The half-breath Fu paid still rings, one blow at a time, in that smithy. The old southern custom says an anvil must not ring empty, for empty ringing demands a life in payment. If you pass through Tiexi and hear a smithy clang to itself at midnight, do not enter, do not answer, do not reach to touch that crack — for what is owed beneath the anvil may be more than A-Liu alone.