The Night-Lantern

The blind man A-Luo had been blind since birth. The townsfolk said his pupils were grey from the day he came into the world, as if smeared with a film of soot that no one had bothered to wipe clean, or dust that had settled across the years. He could never tell black from white, yet he knew bamboo. In the stand of bitter bamboo behind the hill, he could feel out in the dark which stalk was three years' tender splint and which was five years' old bone; his fingers pinched, and the astringent taste beneath the green skin crawled up under his nails and into his flesh, and he knew whether that stalk would burn well or split true.

He made lanterns. The town called what he sold night-lanterns — a palm's span wide, a frame of bamboo splints, papered with a layer of cotton paper thin enough to let the light through, a pool of rapeseed oil within, and a wick twisted from an old cotton thread. He made them himself, and sold them himself. Being blind he could not walk far, so he crouched beneath the crooked willow at the bridgehead, a faded cloth spread across his knees, the lanterns set in neat rows like a brood of dozing fireflies.

He was blind and knew nothing of the world's colors, yet he told the distance of a sound and the thickness of a scent better than anyone. Wind off the river carried the fish-stink and the damp of rotten wood; people from the street carried hearth-smoke and sweat. By these he had lived decades in the town, never once walking into a wall or missing a step on the bridge. Others pitied him; he rather pitied them — they had eyes open, yet could never see clearly what walked behind their own backs.

Making a lantern was slow work. The bamboo had to be split in the deep of night when the dew lay heavy, the wood full of water so it would not crack at the mouth. The cleaver ran along the knot, push and draw, and the tube split into four, then into strands fine as a hair. A-Luo's fingers were all old scars, new over old, and they read the bamboo better than any other hand. The splinters bit into his thumb-pads and he did not draw back, letting the small pain remind him his hands were still there, that he was still living. The paper had to be pasted on a cloudy day; sunlight made the cotton paper brittle and the frame would crack the moment it bent. He felt the grain of the paper, laid each sheet on, and stuck it down with thickened rice paste, his finger-pads pressing until not a single crease remained. Last came the oil — first-press rapeseed, clear, burning without black smoke, only a raw greenish smell that carried far in the night.

He sold at night, too. By day he rested, setting the finished lanterns one by one into his basket, and only when the sun had wholly sunk did he feel his way to the bridgehead. The ground beneath the willow he could walk blind, knowing he had arrived when his heel knocked the crooked root that stuck out. He laid the lanterns open and shrank into the shadow himself, like a length of dead wood. Passers-by could not see his eyes, only a ring of yellow light, and they would crouch to choose. He listened to the sound of hands turning the frames, to coppers falling into his palm, to the thin stir of lantern-oil in the wind as a buyer walked away. Now and then that stir carried a thread of the faintest hum — and he knew what this lantern was about to show that night.

Those who bought were mostly people with work at night: porters on the road, a lone old man minding a grave, women afraid of knocking into unclean things on a dark path, and the pit-workers off shift from the mine behind the hill — dark-faced, hoarse, dropping a few coppers and taking a lantern without a word to spare. They came to buy light for the night, so as not to step into a ditch or walk into a wall, or onto something they ought not. A-Luo took the money and never let on. He tucked the coins into his breast and ran a hand over the lantern frame; the splinter bit his thumb-pad and a bead of blood welled, and he felt no pain.

Whether the lit lantern lit the living man's road ahead, A-Luo knew better than anyone. He had made lanterns all his life, and not one of them was ever truly meant to light the way. The flame leapt and the yellow halo spread, and the three feet ahead were lit indeed — but lit falsely, as though behind a film of water, or a fog not yet dissolved. What the light truly made clear was the shadow at the buyer's back.

Every living body drags a shadow. In the daytime sun it lies flat, stuck to the heel, and no one minds it. But when A-Luo's lantern was lit, that shadow stood up. Not the black mark on the ground, but a thing upright, pressed against the buyer's spine, its outline drawn all too sharp by the lantern's yellow glow — the shoulders, the back of the head, the two hands hanging down, even the folds of the cloth rendered without a flaw. Stranger still, that shadow was not the buyer's own. A-Luo was blind and could not see, but he could hear: when the oil was nearly spent, the wick gave off a thin, drawn-out hum, as if someone were whispering a sentence without end right against his ear. The moment that hum rose, he knew that tonight another had bought a lantern, and another shadow at someone's back had been drawn out by the light and set upright at their heels.

The buyers walked on, never looking back, and never knew that the lantern made the thing following behind them clearer than the road before them.

The first to look back was Widow Liu of the west bank. Her man had died in the mine, and on the seventh night she came to buy a lantern, saying the house was restless and she wanted a light for courage. The next day she came to his door, her face white as paper soaked in water, and said that walking home with the lantern she had seen, lit by the light, a figure standing at her back — the height, the gait, exactly her dead husband, even the shadow of the old scar on his left shoulder rendered clear. She asked if it was him come back to see her. A-Luo did not answer; he only took the lantern back and told her not to light it again. After she left he ran his hand over the returned lantern and found on its frame a trace of the scent from her sleeve, and in that scent, too, a thread of the hum.

Old Zhou the ferryman had come to buy one, too. He ferried by night and said there was something on the river that never finished crossing — it took his boat, reached the far bank, and would not step off, its shadow a heavy pool on the planks, heavier than a living man. A-Luo made him a lantern; Zhou took it across, and came back saying that, lit by the light, the thing's shadow was a child drowned years before, in wet clothes, barefoot, standing at his back and working the oar with him. After that Zhou borrowed a lantern every night, saying that with the light the child no longer pulled him down into the water.

A-Luo never told a soul. A blind man's words the town would not believe anyway; say it, and they took it for the rambling of a fool. So he kept his mouth shut, and went on making, went on selling, tucking the money into his breast and running his hand once across the frame, letting the splinters remind him, strike by strike, that of all things in this world only what can draw blood is real.

In the first years he did not care. A blind man lives as if he had no shadow and no trace; a few more draughts of wind, a few more hums — what of it. But later he noticed that the footsteps behind him, on the walk home in the dark after he closed his stall, were not right.

He was blind and walked by tapping the ground with a bamboo pole. The head knocked on the flagstones: tap, tap, tap, each beat an eye he struck for himself. But from some day he could no longer name, behind that tapping followed another, lighter string. Not his pole, but cloth soles on earth — soft, slow, yet falling into the gaps of his own steps without missing a beat. He stopped and the sound stopped; he walked and it walked. Once he spun round and swept the pole across — he swept only empty air, only a gust of cold that carried a little warmth not yet gone, sliding past his cheek. Twice he called out “who's there,” and only his own voice came back off the river, hollow.

He did not dare call out again.

The town began to murmur. They said that those who bought the blind man's lantern, looking back in the night, saw a thing standing at their back — neither man nor otherwise, upright, made perfectly clear by the light, every nail bright, every stitch of the hem countable. The word spread, and another said: that shadow is not your own, it is something else, walking at your heels; you walk and it walks, you stop and it stops, you turn and it shrinks down, flattening to the ground as if nothing were there. The tale grew wilder, yet more came to buy. Those afraid in the night are always more than those who are not.

Then there was Suo-zhu, a boy from the west end, who stole a copper from his mother to buy a lantern, saying he meant to catch crickets at night. He took the lantern down the river bank and looked back — and saw, lit by the light, two shadows: one his own, the other short, like a small child, barefoot, walking at his side. He dropped the lantern in fright and ran home with a fever that lasted three days. His mother came to scold, and A-Luo only listened, his finger rubbing slowly across the lantern frame. He understood: that short shadow was not Suo-zhu's, but something come from elsewhere, shown by the light the moment it lit. Boys like that, shadows like that — he had seen them all his life, only never minded before.

Some brought lanterns back. A-Luo did not stop them, nor return the money; the lantern stayed at the bridgehead and he gathered it into his basket in the dark. But a returned lantern he would never sell twice. He said it had taken on fear; whoever wanted it could have it, he would not. The town laughed at his foolishness. He said: a lantern knows its owner; once returned, the owner is no longer the one it was meant to light, and sold again it will show not a shadow but something else.

He sold fewer and fewer, yet the footsteps behind him grew longer.

This was no lie. At first that light tread reached only to his shoulder. Later, past his waist. Still later, tapping his pole, he heard the sound come down from above his head, as if someone stood pressed against the back of his skull, a head taller, its shadow drawn from his heels all the way into the willow's shadow at the bridgehead, a long band laid across the earth road, cooler than moonlight. He reached back to feel the wall behind him and found his own spine. Yet that cold came plainly from behind, seeping through his blind sockets, drop by drop, into those two grey pools.

In spring the footsteps behind him only circled his feet. But once summer came and the rains were heavy, those steps trod upon his shadow, layering one over another, and he felt a weight upon his back, like a soaked jacket hanging heavy and dragging him down. In autumn the wind rose and the weight grew solid; tapping his pole he would always hear above his head that light tread, with a faintest sound of bamboo splints clicking — as if that shadow, too, carried a lantern near to dying, walking and swaying with him.

In his empty sockets, sometime without his knowing, there had always been a little yellow. Not the lantern he had lit — that one sat extinguished in the basket. It was another light, shining from behind him, seeping in through his blind eyes. The more he feared, the more he sold, as if one more lantern sold might push whatever was behind him a little farther off.

He was wrong. The more he sold, the longer the shadow grew. Not another's shadow, but the shadows that followed him, stacking one upon another at his back — the lanterns he had sold, one by one, moving the shadows from behind the buyers onto his own back. He had shown so many people the thing at their back, and those things, following the lantern's road, came one after another to him. A lantern does not light the road; it lights the shadow. He showed others their shadows, and the shadows at their backs took him for their lantern-man and followed him home.

One night, having closed his stall, he stood at the bridgehead and counted those footsteps. He could tell them by number: one lantern, one thread of hum, one shadow. The lanterns he had sold these years numbered no fewer than a thousand. And so he knew that what followed behind him was not a single string but a great dark stretch laid across the earth road, lit one by one by his own lanterns. He counted to the three hundredth and dared count no further — because the very last, the very longest, the very tallest, stood behind them all, carrying a lantern whose frame was bamboo splint, papered with a layer of cotton paper thin enough to let the light through. That lantern's shadow he knew; it had been made by the hands of one who made lanterns.

One night it rained hard. He closed his stall and felt his way into the alley mouth. The lane was narrow, the walls high on both sides; his pole knocked on wet brick, the sound muffled as if beating on someone's heart. Halfway through he tripped, the pole slipped from his hand and he fell forward. By instinct he reached to brace against the wall, and his palm met a coldness — not brick. Cloth. Coarse cloth, soaked through with rain, limp across the back of his hand, still carrying the warmth that only a living body holds, not yet gone. He froze. The shadow that had always followed, a head taller than him, stood right behind that cloth. He could not see it, but he had touched it. The cloth slid down his hand, past his wrist, his elbow, and rested on his shoulder, as if a hand had reached out and laid itself lightly there — lest he fall, or else to guide him, deeper into the lane.

He fumbled the pole back with shaking hands and crawled out of the alley on hands and knees. All the way, the footsteps behind were denser than the rain.

He fell ill. He lay in the draughty rented room and coughed as if his lungs would split. No one came. A blind man is meant to live alone. Yet through his sickness he kept hearing that hum, the hum of oil near spent, against his ear, night after night, never stopping. He knew: those lanterns he had sold were still lit, one by one, lit in the buyers' nights and in the shadows at his back. Those shadows, one lantern to a shadow, hundreds of lanterns to hundreds of shadows, had all followed him home and stood outside his little room, waiting for him to mend and go on selling.

As he slept, that hum would turn into the very lightest footsteps, circling his broken bed, once, twice, as if keeping watch over him, or as if counting how many lanterns he had left unsold. Half dreaming, half waking, he always felt a hand resting on the bed's edge — rough, carrying the splinters of bamboo, like the master's hand on his when he taught him to split bamboo long ago. He dared not open his eyes, dared not draw his hand away, but let the hand rest there until near dawn, when the hum at last fell still.

When he mended, his hands were steadier at the lantern frame. Not that he feared less — he dared not stop. He feared that if he stopped, the footsteps behind would walk to the front.

That twelfth month a troupe came to sing night opera, raising a stage on the open ground by the bridgehead. Below the stage heads jostled and lantern-light wavered. A-Luo crouched as ever beneath the willow to sell. There were more people than usual and the lanterns sold fast. He felt the frames pass one by one from his hand, splinters biting his thumb-pad, beads of blood welling, and felt no pain — only that the cloth on his knees grew emptier by the day, and the wind at his back heavier. The singing ran past midnight and the crowd scattered. A-Luo felt his way through closing the stall and heard behind him, now, not a single string of steps but a row of them — a rustling, like a line of people pressed against his spine, tall and short, fat and thin, each lit by the lanterns he had sold, lighting themselves and lighting him. In his empty sockets that little yellow grew brighter, bright enough that with his eyes shut he could “see” the press of shadows at his back, black and heavy, upright, hands hanging, waiting for him to turn — and he dared not.

He walked all the way to his door before that row of steps halted outside it. He closed the door and braced his back against the panel, and heard beyond it the hum rise — the hum of oil near spent, thin and long, like the verse of the formula his master had recited teaching him to make lanterns, slipping in through the crack of the door, line by line.

Master.

He remembered suddenly. He had been blind, and his master had raised him. The master too was blind, blinder even than he, born never to have seen the daylight, not even grey — in his sockets two pits of deeper empty. The master's craft of lantern-making had come down from the generation before, passed to men and not to women; it reached the master and the master passed it to him. The master taught him to split bamboo, to cut splints, to paste paper with rice glue, to trim the wick, to listen for the hum of oil near spent — saying that was the lantern speaking, telling what stood at the buyer's back. The master said: a lantern lights no road; it lights the shadow, and the one who sees the shadow, the shadow knows. He had kept those words all his life, yet never turned them on himself.

He remembered his childhood, too — nights like this, the master leading him by the hand to sit beneath the bridgehead willow. The master's eyes were emptier than his, yet calmer. The master taught him to listen for the hum, saying that when the oil nears its end the lantern sighs for the buyer, sighing at who stands at his back. He had been small then and taken it for an old blind man's teasing; only after making so many lanterns did he believe. On the night the master died he hid by the wall and heard from the bridgehead an exceedingly long hum, one layered upon another, as if the master were reciting a lifetime of the formula into that one lantern. At dawn the man was gone; only a slab of cold stone remained, and in its crack a pool of unspent oil.

The year the master died, he was still small. The master left no word, no lantern, not even a name; the town only called him “that blind old man.” He went by night, they said, having lit a lantern of his own making and sat beneath the bridgehead willow until the oil was spent and the man with it. No one ever saw what that lantern showed, and no one dared ask. After the master left, A-Luo was brought up by neighbors, and only later taught himself to make lanterns; the first he made had a crooked frame and paper creased where it was pasted, yet lit, its hum was exactly as the master had taught.

He never spoke of the master. To speak of him was to call by name the shadow that had always followed. He would rather it stayed nameless, pressed to his spine, following him to the end of his days.

But that night, the door closed, his back braced to the panel, he heard among the row of steps beyond the door the very last, the very longest, take half a step forward.

That shadow stood taller than all the rest, nearly touching the eaves of his house. Its outline was drawn perfectly clear by the hundreds of lanterns he had sold — a blind man, his two sockets empty, carrying in his hand a lantern near to dying: a frame of bamboo splints, papered with a layer of cotton paper thin enough to let the light through, a pool of rapeseed oil within, a wick twisted from an old cotton thread. The lantern lit, showing no living man's road ahead, showing only the shadow that follows behind the living.

The master's shadow was the longest. Because he had been raised by the master, the master's shadow had always dragged at his back, longer than all the lanterns he had ever sold, all the buyers, all the things that had followed. That shadow stretched from his heels all the way to the willow at the bridgehead, across the slab of stone where the master had once sat, into the deeper night he had never dared to face.

He suddenly understood what the lantern the master lit that night had shown — it had shown the one who would carry the lantern after him, which was himself. The master had handed him the craft, the lantern, and the longest shadow all at once, and gone ahead first, leaving him alone at the bridgehead to turn, lantern by lantern, other men's shadows into his own. From then on, every lantern he made, every lantern he sold, would lengthen that shadow by an inch, until one day he too, like the master, would sit back on that slab of stone with a lantern near to dying, and recite the hum to the next blind man.

A-Luo slid down the door panel and sat on the floor. In his empty sockets that little yellow still burned. He knew that from this night on, every lantern he sold would lengthen that longest shadow by a measure. The master spoke no word and reached no hand, but stood behind him with that lantern near to dying, waiting — for him, and for the lanterns in his hand, to burn on, one by one. Beyond the door the hum sank low, but did not stop. Like a line of the formula left unfinished, hung in the air, waiting for the next person to buy a lantern.

He set down by the door the one lantern he had not sold, gently. Its wick was still warm, as if it too had heard the hum beyond the door. Tomorrow he would go to the bridgehead again; the bamboo splints still lay stacked in his room, the rice paste still warm in the pot — and so long as there were those who feared the dark, so long as there were those who bought his lanterns, that longest shadow would draw, day by day, one notch closer to the nape of his neck.