The Ferryman

Old Gao no longer remembered the river's name. As far back as he could recall, the river had lain across the front of the village, its surface always under a fog that would not lift, not even by day—and when the sun beat down hardest, it only pressed the fog lower, until it clung to the skin of the water like a film of grey oil. The water carried a stink, not the stink of fish but the stink of things rotted in mud for many years, seeping up thread by thread through the cracks in the boat's hull, into his trouser legs, into his bones, and never washing out even after he kicked off his shoes at night; the smell soaked his half-collapsed reed hut as well. He had rowed the night ferry on this river for decades and never once by day—the villagers all called the old man strange, yet when dusk fell and someone needed to cross to the far bank, they still waited for him. Every other boat took in its oar at the first fall of dark; only his ferried those who travelled by night.

He was a man of few words. When a passenger stepped aboard he gave a single nod, dipped the oar, and the boat left the shore. The oar was an old thing, its wooden axle blackened years ago by the river, and when it turned it gave a creak—a sound like someone swallowing back a cough in the throat, neither spit out nor swallowed down. Night fog rose from the heart of the river and bore down white and heavy on the water, and the village lamps on the far shore smeared into one blur, so you could not tell lamp from will-o'-the-wisp. He never lit a lantern, saying a light summoned things, though no one ever asked him what things. His own hands were like that wooden axle: thick-knuckled, laced with cords of vein, and on the web of his right thumb ran an old scar from a boat-pole nick he'd taken young; decades on, the scar stayed purple, and itched whenever the sky threatened rain.

In his youth he had learned to row on this same river, from a mute old ferryman who would never sail by night, saying the water did not know men after dark. When the master was gone, Gao took over the crossing, and for the first few years kept to the old rule of daylight rowing—until that business happened, and he moved his oar to the night. The village children made up a skipping rhyme: Old Gao's boat, seen only when the sky goes black; step aboard his boat, and never look back. The grown folk forbade the children near the reed hut by the bend, saying what lived there was no man but a keeper of debts. Once a drunken outlander insisted on crossing by day; Gao ignored him, and the man waded in to swim across himself—when they pulled him from downstream his face was blue-white and the mud was packed under every nail, exactly as it would be on those others, later.

The planks of the boat's floor he had scored with a knife in the very first year. That was the first time he carried a drowned man—he could not recall the fellow's face, only that the fog that night was so thick you could not see your own palm, and the man came aboard with wet feet that trailed all the way into the hold, leaving two tracks of water which the next morning's sun dried, though the stain stayed soaked into the grain. On the plank Gao carved the man's surname, the character Zhao, a shallow cut that the passing of many shoes later wore pale, leaving only a raised ridge to the touch. And so the rule was set: each crossing, each traveller by night he carried over, he cut a name into the floor. Some got only a surname; some not even that whole, only a mark, because in the dark you could not see a face, and he never asked, but let his hand fall by feel. He always felt that once a name was laid on the board, that person was safely sent across, and the soul would not wander halfway. The knife was his own whetting, its edge thin, and the curl of wood it raised fell into the river without a sound.

Years piled up, and the characters on the plank grew dense as an army of ants. Now and then in the creak of the oar he would look down, and feel a strange, wordless ease—as if every lonely ghost on this river had been pinned beneath his feet one character at a time, and could never turn again. Some in the village said Old Gao's boat was a boat of the yin, carrying things that ought never reach the far shore. He heard it and was not angered, only said: "A man must cross the river, living or otherwise." He believed that saying, and did not believe it, by about half each way. On a rainy night the village-head Zhao came across and squatted at the bow to talk, saying the shallows upstream had been throwing up dead fish of late, the stink keeping folks awake. Gao said nothing, only rowed the faster. Then Zhao spoke of an old matter on the river—a boatful of people overturned one night, not one surfacing, served them right, who told the boatman to gawk at the far shore's lamps. Gao's hand jerked; the oar-axle creaked; he kept Zhao from seeing his face. That night, back home, he cut two more characters into the plank, a Zhao and a Li, both scored deep, as if to press something down into the wood.

After that he dared show himself less by day. When a woman in the village lay in childbed, the old folk would set a bowl of rice and three sticks of incense on the ferry stone, saying it was for the river god—but Gao could see it was for him, and he would not touch the rice, only skirt around it before first light. Once a new pedlar, knowing no taboo, insisted at evening that he row by day; Gao shook his head, and the pedlar cursed him an old monster and paddled a little skiff across himself—next day someone found that skiff on the downstream shallows, empty, its oar still bound to the gunwale, no man aboard, only two wet footprints at the stern with mud packed in the toes. Gao went to look at those prints, and came home to cut another mark into the plank, a mark whose owner he has never to this day been able to name.

He lived alone in a half-fallen reed hut by the bend, his boat tied before it. By day he slept, heavily, and when village children called across the water he did not answer. Only at dusk did he wake, fumble the boat loose in the dark, pole to the usual crossing, and crouch at the bow with his dry tobacco. The smoke-rings dissolved into the fog and you could not say which was smoke and which was mist. He waited for the first night-traveller, pinched out the tobacco, and took up the oar. All night he rowed back and forth, and the creak of the oar filled the river and pressed down every other sound. Once an outlander asked him if he was not afraid, rowing this river at night. Gao looked at the man and said, "Afraid of what? They are all just folk who need to cross." The outlander later told others that when Old Gao said it, his eyes were empty, as if looking at something standing behind the man.

That night came on like any other. A wind rose, not strong, but carrying the river-bottom stink, and it numbed the face where it touched. Small waves roughened the surface and the oar sat heavier than usual. The first aboard was a pole-carrier with an empty load, yet hunched as if bearing some invisible weight. Gao asked nothing, only nodded as ever and dropped the oar. Midway the boat met the far shore and a figure drifted out of the fog, waving from afar; he turned the bow and took him on. This second spoke not a word either, and as he crossed the plank he left wet footprints over the carved names. The third came drifting up from downstream clutching a board, dripping all over, who shrank into the corner of the hold and shook, his teeth clicking faintly. The fourth was a woman in a wedding dress soaked through, a faded velvet flower pinned at the collar, who lowered her head and twisted her cuff, water dripping thread by thread into the seams of the plank. The fifth was a child clutching something unseen, barefoot, its soles also wet, leaving small prints where it stepped. The sixth was an old man with a lantern, unlit, yet he carried it still, as if carrying an empty shell. The seventh clawed up out of the fog and brought a smell of river-bottom with him, heavier than the wind's. Gao caught the scent and his stomach turned. The eighth came low, hat-brim hiding the face, showing only a pale, blue-white scar along the jaw.

He felt a small unease. On a usual night he took two, maybe three; such a busy night was rare. But the oar was in his hands and he only rowed—one more was a crossing, one fewer was a crossing. They came one after another out of the fog, wet footprints trampling the plank, trampling the names carved there over the years. He looked down and saw the new prints cover the old cuts, the water bleeding the long-faded Zhao character open again until it seemed about to live, its strokes swelling in the wet wood. The bride stepped across Li; the child stepped across Zhou; the lantern-old-man stepped across Sun—one by one, they trod the old account into new marks.

The night deepened and the passengers had no end. He lost count of which number he had reached, only felt the boat sit lower and lower in the water until the oar could scarce be pushed, and each stroke wrung from the axle a groan of protest, as if it would snap. On the plank they crouched, stood, leaned against the rail with bowed heads—a black, pressing crowd without a sound, without so much as a cough, only the drip of water from their hems, tick, tick, twining with the oar's creak. Cold sweat broke on his back, yet his hands could not stop—he had long since learned that once the oar stilled, the weight of the full hold dragged the boat toward the river's heart, as if something below were pulling, until the gunwales themselves squealed. He changed hands a few times; his left arm ached and trembled before he noticed a strange thing: not one of the full hold rose and fell with breath, not one drew air, not even the shaking one, not even the one with the child—their shoulders were all rigid. In all his years ferrying the living, the weariest soul aboard would at least sigh once; but in this hold there was not even a sigh, only water, drop by drop, falling from each body into the seams of the plank. And the water did not sink into the seams but ran along the carved strokes, soaking the names wet again, as if the characters wept for themselves.

He tried to speak, but his throat dried first: "Friends... which bank do you mean to reach?"

No answer. The wind tore a slit in the fog, and by that thin light he studied the nearest face—the head was bowed, hair plastered wet to the skin, the features unseen, only a pale, blue-white scar along the jaw. He edged half a step closer to see, and his foot came down on a carved stroke, the character Li, cut deep, the one he had made on some rainy night years back. He was suddenly reminded: that rainy night, too, the hold had been full, too, the silence had been this terrifying, and yet at dawn not a single footprint remained on the plank—he had thought he misremembered, or that the night fog had fooled his eyes. And there was another such night, the hold full, when he dozed at the bow and woke to an empty boat, only the names still on the plank; he had thought it a dream, yet that night he had plainly not slept. A few such full nights came each year, and he had taken them for good trade, never looking deeper.

Another figure crawled up along the rail, hands blue-white with mud packed under every nail, as if it had clawed a long while at the river bottom. Gao reached to pull, and touched flesh cold as a fish just lifted from deep water, with no warmth of life. The figure did not sit but stood pressed against him, and the breath it exhaled held no warmth at all, pouring straight down the back of his neck. He shivered, and remembered something all at once—many years ago, such a night, such a wind, carrying the river-bottom stink, such a full hold, such a silence.

That year he was young, rowing another boat, carrying home a boatful of villagers from the temple fair. Mid-river, the opposite village suddenly lit its lamps, one stretch after another, red and yellow, shattered to gold on the water. The lamps were brighter than any festival, as if the whole village had moved onto the surface of the river, one lantern against the next, a fire-dragon without end. From the shore came the temple stage's drums and gongs, an opera wail, mixed with laughter and the sweet smell of sugar figures drifting across the water. At the stern he lost himself in the sight and would not take up the pole, letting the boat turn slowly in the current, thinking a little longer could do no harm—one lamp died and another lit, one act ended and the next began, and he could not bear to leave the brightness on the shore. He had been newly betrothed that year; his bride-to-be lived in that village across, and he ought to have made shore early to stand beneath her window—but the lamps were too bright, the opera too merry, and he laid the pole across the stern and gawked. He would think often after: had he turned the oar but one moment sooner, those on the bank might have lived one night more; but for a river of lanterns he left the whole boat to the water.

When at last he came to himself, the waves were already up, the wind churned the lamplight to chaos, and the gunwale began to take in water, cold enough to bite, climbing past his ankle, past his knee. They went into the river one by one, and he heard the splashes, heard someone call his name, cry "Uncle Gao, take up the pole," the voice gone weepy, gone to the choking gurgle of swallowed water. But he panicked, threw himself to the stern for the pole the wave had torn away, and when he looked back the hold was empty—the whole boatful, gone under. Only he, nearest the pole, clung to a drifting plank and lasted till dawn; when the downstream fishing boat pulled him up he bore not a single wound, and slept three days in a fever of cold and fright. Awake, he asked the fishermen if they had brought up anyone else. They shook their heads: that night the water swallowed clean, not even an extra plank floating free.

He held to that plank in the river's heart half the night. At first he still heard splashing and shouting near and far; then even the splashing stopped, and only the water lapped the plank's edge, once, and once, like someone counting his life. He dared not make a sound, lest he wake what lay below, but laid his face to the wood and breathed the rot-mud stink, counting the boat's people over and over in his heart, and at the last name found he could not recall all their names. From that night on, what stayed with him was only the swaying lamps on the far shore, and the red-gold shadows that lingered long on the water after the lamps went out.

He told no one. From then he set himself a rule: row only the night ferry, carry only those who travelled by night, send them over one by one, paying back with this pair of rowing hands the lives he owed, thread by thread. By day he slept like the dead, afraid to wake and remember that night. By night he rowed, afraid that in sleep those boat-people would fail to find the shore. The names on the plank he had always taken for marks left by the living he ferried, the ledger of his debt, every stroke clear, every cut one less owed. Yet now, by the slit of wind-torn light, he looked from face to face—

the bowed heads, the hanging hair, the board-clutchers, the blue-white nails, the bride, the child with its burden, the lantern-old-man—every one of them he had seen on that year's river. The pole-carrier was the village-head Zhao's eldest, who had sat at the bow gnawing a cold bun, crumbs falling into the water. The board-clutcher was Zhou the Third from the neighbouring village, who went down still gripping his snapped oar—and the very Zhou character lay beneath Gao's foot this moment. The one pressed against him, breath pouring down his neck, was Granny Sun the sugar-figure seller, who went under with half a basket of unsold figures, the sugar melted sticky over her hand. The bride was the new wife from west of the river, who had taken his boat home from her parents' and never returned. The child with its burden was the blacksmith's little son, seven that year, refusing to let go a wooden top. The lantern-old-man was Old Zhou the crossing-keeper, who had been on that boat too, his lamp gone out, the man gone with it. And the jaw-scarred one was the blacksmith's apprentice himself, who before going under had swung his hammer and left a dent in the plank that remains on Gao's other boat to this day. Counting them one by one, they were all that night's people, not one missing—even those whose names he could not recall, marked only by a stroke, were here in the hold, heads bowed, waiting for him to know them.

He shook all over; the oar nearly left his hand. The names on the plank, which he had thought he cut for the living, were every one a soul he had killed that capsizing night, when he gawked at the lamps and would not take up the pole. What he ferried was never living travellers by night, but the dead who had crawled up from the river bottom year after year, waiting again and again to be rowed home. Each name he cut was not to pin a soul but to pry that old crime out of the mud, again and again, and lay it beneath his own feet to look at—and for decades he had looked and never known them. He had thought himself paying a debt; all along he had been fleeing, fleeing onto this boat, covering his own name with the names of others.

Somewhere the boat had stopped. The oar was still in his hand, yet the water did not flow, and the surface lay still as a sheet of frozen ice. Fog sealed every direction, and he could not tell which way was shore, which way was whence he came. The full hold stayed silent, yet he knew they were watching—though not one raised a head, those blue-white gazes were needles in the back of his neck, and he dared not turn. He looked down at the plank, the characters dense from bow to stern, Zhao Li Zhou Sun... one against the next they formed that night's full boat, formed the empty hold he had turned to find, that year. He counted, and the number matched, to the last, the souls aboard that night.

Then he saw the board was full, not a bare spot left to set a stroke. In the last seam still stuck the character Wang he had cut the night before, unfinished, lacking one horizontal. He held the knife above the plank, not knowing for whom to cut—after all those names, not one had been his own. He had thought himself outside that ledger; only now did he understand that the debtor belongs on the same board as the debt.

From the fog a hand rose and caught the gunwale. Then a second, a third, a pale row reaching up out of the mist, clutching the boat's side, mud under every nail. Only then did he see the hull was held from below by pair after pair of hands, a pale row risen from the river bottom, as if waiting for him, or as if keeping him. The boat was held and would not move; he dipped the oar to leave shore, but the hull had grown roots, and for all his rowing the axle spun empty and not a single drop was thrown up.

At last he understood: the moment the plank filled, his debt was counted clear. But what good is a counted debt? Not one of that night's people had he truly sent across. He had rowed the night road all his life, sending others over one by one, and in the end he was the one who never crossed—he had stayed in that year's river-heart, stayed before the lamps went out, never having taken up the pole. He had thought the boat ferried men; in the end the boat could not ferry him, because the shore was never on his side.

The wind rose again and the fog closed; the slit was sewn shut. Somewhere the oar-creak had stopped, and only the sound remained of water seeping up thread by thread through the hull's cracks, with the same stink as decades before. He lowered his head and, by the last of the daylight, saw at his own feet, in the final bare corner of the plank, a character freshly cut by some hand, the stroke still wet, the wood-curl lifted—

the character Gao.

He did not move. From the fog came the creak of an oar, not his, another one, rowing toward him across some far reach of water, creak and groan, like someone swallowing back a cough in the throat, neither spit out nor swallowed down. He could not tell whether that oar came to fetch him, or to ferry him, or simply to take his shift—sending him up to shore and leaving this boatful to the next man who would gawk at the lamps. He remembered what Zhao had said that night: a boatful overturned, not one surfaced, served them right, who told the boatman to gawk at the far shore's lamps. And he saw at last that the boatman was never another—it was himself, it was everyone who still grips the oar and cannot bear to turn back.

The fog thickened further. He gave a last look at the wet Gao on the plank, and heard his own oar, somehow, join the distant one in a single creak. After that sound the hold's people still did not raise their heads. Nor could he say whose hand would next rise from the fog at the crossing, to catch the rail of which boat. He only knew his oar would ferry no living soul again—the river-bottom stink would follow him always, like that night's water, never truly receded. He recalled his old master's words, that the water does not know men after dark; he had not minded them then, but understood now that it is not the water which knows no man, but the self that cannot bear to turn back the oar.

Ziye Lu's note: the night ferry cannot ferry its own man; carve the name, and you carve the heart first.