The Night Watchman

The watchman's clapper sounds in the dead of night, when all in town are long asleep. I carry a corner-chipped lantern and half a stick of watch-incense in my breast, beating from the Earth God's shrine at the east end all the way to the stone bridge at the west. The clapper is jujube wood; thirty years of striking have soaked its grain with frost, and it answers with a muffled thud, like striking a bone frozen through. On winter nights the snow falls slow; a lantern's yellow light reaches only a few steps around my feet, and beyond lies an ink-black dark in which drift things without a name—when they hear the clapper, they step back and yield the way.

The town is small—seven hundred paces from east to west, a walk I could do with my eyes shut. Yet those seven hundred paces are never the same, night after night. Summer nights are damp; the clapper falls and stirs a chorus of insects that soon falls quiet again. Autumn nights are dry; stepping on fallen leaves makes a soft rustle, as if someone followed behind, gathering up my footsteps. Cruelest is winter: once snow falls, the world turns a boundless white, and in the lantern's glow I am the only living thing moving—all else lies beneath the snow, giving off cold, and when it hears the clapper, it buries its head deeper into the snow.

My surname is Shen; everyone calls me Watchman Shen. My given name no one remembers now. For thirty years the town has known only that one clapper, that one lantern, that one shadow moving through the snow. The children fear me, saying Old Shen walks without a sound at night, like he skims along the ground. The grown folk don't notice—they sleep deep, taking the clapper for granted, the way the sun sets and rises, the way the watchman beats his watch so the night stays calm.

I was an outlander once. In my youth I was like that traveler who froze beneath the bridge—walking by night, missing my lodging. That year of heavy snow, it was my master who fetched me from beneath the bridge and gave me this lantern and this clapper, saying your luck is hard; the work of reporting the hours to the dead is one you can bear. I understood nothing then, only took it for a meal. Now I see my master fetched not me but the one strike he kept beneath the bridge—I kept it thirty years, and in the end, what I kept was my own watch.

To an outsider the watchman's trade is telling the hours, but there is more within. Once the hour of zi passes, the things of night multiply. The dead who have not returned before yin fear most of all losing the watch-points. You strike one for them, and they know which watch it is, how many remain till dawn, and can measure their time to walk back. My master told me when he taught me: what the watchman carries is no lantern but a banner to lead the way; what he strikes is no clapper but a word of peace sent to the dead. He said too: if you hear one beg for the watch beneath a bridge, by a grave, at a well's edge—that is no living man, but a soul that has lost its hour. You strike once, and he remembers where he ought to go; you do not, and he waits on, till you too forget the hour.

For the first ten years I believed him. Every strike, I truly felt, sent someone home. After the third watch's clapper I seemed to hear footsteps drift back from the alley's depth, soles scraping snow, a soft shh—like thanks.

For the next twenty years I slowly stopped believing, yet my hands never ceased. Three strikes for the third watch, four for the fourth; at the fifth the east pales, the clapper falls, and the night's footsteps scatter. I return to the shrine, set the incense in the burner, lie down in my clothes, and wait for the next dark. In time the work became a habit of the flesh; where the clapper fell, I no longer wondered whether what stood beneath was man or ghost.

Season followed season; I wore out seven clappers and three lanterns, and the incense burned down stick by stick. The shrine's burner gathered a thick ash I was too lazy to sweep—ash mixed with snow-foam, dried and crusted on the wall. The town's people turned over generation on generation; children grew to young men, young men weathered to old fellows, and only I kept this road and this clapper. Now and then a passing traveler lodged for the night, heard the night's clapper, and asked if the work was hard. I'd smile and say not hard, only cold. They wouldn't believe it—said watch-beating was never this cold—and I said no more.

In thirty years I missed a watch but once.

The bridge stretch was always the one I dreaded most. Wind funnels through the arch; walking there at night, the lantern flame shrinks, as if something drew away its light. My master said a bridge is the tooth where the two realms of yin and yang bite together, and the dead cross beneath it. I took that once for scare-talk; later, hearing faint footsteps on the ice down there, step by step, I believed a little—three parts in ten. But that night I could spare even those three parts, minding only my own bones, nearly frozen through.

It was the eleventh winter; the snow fell wickedly. The wind of the twelfth month was like shards of porcelain mixed in, slicing the face. That year's snow, once fallen, would not melt; layer on layer, it crunched underfoot like treading on someone's unclosed eyes. That night the bridge was my stretch to keep. The stone bridge stands at the town's far west; beneath it the riverbed lies dry, iced in winter, and the wind up through the arch is three degrees colder than anywhere else. I walked to the bridgehead, could bear it no longer, and hunched behind the pier to shelter from the wind, hugging clapper and lantern, meaning to doze a while.

The pier is bluestone; its leeward side hung with icicles I wiped away with my sleeve before leaning back to sit, the lantern clamped between my knees, the clapper laid across them. Wind passed above the deck, whining like someone weeping far off. I turned the lantern low, fearing the light would draw the wind; my ears reddened with cold, yet the little warmth in my chest had long been drawn off by the wind. I closed my eyes, counting how far the incense had burned, thinking once this wind passed I could walk two more rounds, and let myself lean on the clapper, half-dozing, taking the sounds beneath the bridge for wind.

Just then, I heard someone call from under the bridge.

The voice was faint, torn ragged by the wind. It carried an outlander's accent, a tongue stiff with cold stumbling over the words: "Watchman sir… strike the first watch… I'm cold… strike it and I'll know I'm still alive…"

I woke more than half. I leaned over the rail and looked down—nothing but black, and in the snow a hunched shadow, like a person wrapped in a ragged padded coat, curled in the arch. It was a passing traveler; the snow had closed the road, trapping him beneath the bridge—a foot-courier, likely, who'd missed his lodging and couldn't get back, and could only shelter in the arch.

He said: "Just one strike… I hear the clapper and I can last till dawn… my feet are numb, I can't move… you strike once and I'll know there's still someone out here…"

I should have gone down; I should have struck that one watch for him. But the night was too cold. I hunched behind the pier, clutched the clapper tighter, closed my eyes, and pretended to sleep. I reckoned: the first watch was long struck; to strike it now would be the wrong hour, and might startle the things wandering the night, which would only make things worse. Besides, an outlander freezing under a bridge was no concern of mine. My master's words suddenly grew distant, as distant as someone else's idle tale.

The voice called a few more times, each fainter than the last, until it became a whimper caught in the throat, and then nothing. The wind still whined past, covering what little remained. I kept my eyes open and listened a while, but in the end did not move; clutching the clapper, I toughed it out behind the pier till dawn.

At dawn I got up and looked down once. Snow covered everything in a thick layer; beneath it lay a body frozen hard, its padded coat sheathed in ice, curled like a shrimp. I said nothing. When the snow had melted some, I dug him out in the night and buried him in the scattered graves west of the bridge, setting up a slab with no words. I told no one. After that I kept the watch as before, the clapper sounded as before—only that one first-watch strike, I never made it for him.

For the first few years I could press it down, take it for an accident I hadn't seen clearly. But every year at the close of the year, when snow closed the roads, that hunched shadow under the arch would climb back out of my memory, clinging to my spine like an ice-shell. Crossing the bridge at night I couldn't help quickening my pace, and struck the clapper faster there than anywhere else, as if afraid the thing beneath the bridge would hear and follow.

Year after year, the snow fell and melted, melted and fell; the ice-shell beneath the bridge formed and dissolved. I said nothing, but in my heart I counted each year how old that traveler would be, if he lived. Counting so, the count turned onto myself—these extra years I'd lived past him seemed borrowed, and each winter I gave back a little of their warmth. The townsfolk only thought me old, cold settled into the bone; none knew that cold had crawled up, little by little, from beneath the bridge.

For many years after, crossing the bridge at night I walked wide around that arch. The clapper struck as before, the watches reported as before—but I knew well that on that snowy night of the eleventh year, I had missed a watch. That strike was the one owed the traveler, and I had not made it.

I thought missing one strike couldn't bring the sky down.

Until the thirtieth year's twelfth month.

That night the snow fell again, as heavy as eleven years before. As usual I took the lantern from the shrine and struck the first, second, and third watches; walking to the stone bridge, just as I was about to strike the fourth, the clapper in my hand would not fall. Not from cold—the wooden clapper grew heavy on its own, as if something held it up from below, or as if the jujube wood had suddenly remembered something and refused to fall.

I looked down. Beneath the arch, in the snow, a shadow hunched again.

Exactly as eleven years before.

My heart lurched; I nearly dropped the lantern. But looking closer, the shadow made no sound, did not move; it simply curled there, snow falling on it, slowly covering it into a human shape, the ice-shell on its padded coat gleaming greenish-white in the lantern light. I summoned courage and went down; I reached out to touch it—ice, the frozen-stiff hem of a coat, the shape that traveler of eleven years had left, yet the man was long gone, leaving only this contour packed full of snow, even the curled posture unchanged.

I climbed back to the bridge and retreated several steps, my back against the icy stone rail, gasping before I steadied. The shadow did not follow; it only curled there, as if waiting for my next coming. It came to me then that beneath this arch there had never been only one traveler—generation upon generation, how many night-walkers had frozen to death under the bridge, with no one to strike that one watch for them, all curled here, waiting. The watch I made up for that one, struck down—what it woke, I feared, was a whole arch of cold.

I climbed back up, hands shaking, and struck the fourth watch. The instant the clapper landed, I heard from beneath the arch a very faint answer—not wind, but someone with a throat frozen stiff, gently making up the strike that year had never received, muffled, pressed against the ice, like striking a bone frozen through.

From that night on, every night I had to make up that one watch.

The moment of making it up always fell between the fourth and fifth watches, a gap where no watch-point should be. I stood at the bridgehead and first heard the shadow stir softly, snow sifting down, and only then did I let the clapper fall. The two sounds merged into one, muffled, traveling out along the ice's face, starting the cold crows roosting on the withered willow by the bridge; they flapped away. I counted that sound spreading in rings, like a stone cast into a frozen river—the ripples are there, but the water does not move.

That first winter of making it up, I still forced myself to live as before. By day I'd hold a bowl of hot gruel, but my hand shook, and the spilled drops frosted on the table like a thin rime. The moment I stepped out at night, cold poured down my collar, more deft than before, as if it knew the way. I tried not making up that watch, deliberately going around the bridge—but halfway the clapper stopped on its own, my feet turned on their own, and round and round I ended up halting at the bridgehead. That one strike seemed grown onto the bridge; without it, my whole night could find no peace.

At first I thought nothing of it, meaning only to make it up and be done. But that one strike could never be made up clean. By day I still slept, yet more lightly, always waking as dusk ended, my whole body cold, as if someone drew my warmth away little by little, even the quilt cold. At night I woke earlier than before, wanting to be at the bridge before the dark had fully fallen, clutching the clapper, waiting for that hour—the hour eleven years before when I'd closed my eyes, clutched the clapper dead-tight, and refused to let it fall.

I gradually could not tell whether I was making up the watch for him, or he was living my days for me.

The second winter, the townsfolk began to say I had changed. They said my walk was wrong now: Watchman Shen used to plant his forefoot first, but now he dragged his heels, shuffling like a man with frozen legs, the soles trailing two grooves in the snow. They said I no longer carried incense in my breast but a ball of snow, melting wherever I went, leaving wet footprints that wouldn't dry till dawn. They said my striking had changed too—once I'd raised high to strike, now I let the clapper hang against my knee, beat after beat, muffled like striking on ice, without the old crispness.

Once I clearly remembered resting at midday in the shrine; I opened my eyes to find myself already crouched behind the pier, my padded coat open, the clapper clutched in my hand, the wind from beneath the bridge pouring into my collar. I didn't know when I'd left, or how far I'd walked; only that my hands and feet were so numb I'd lost all feeling, my fingertips gone blue-purple, as if soaked in ice-water half the night. That posture was exactly the traveler's, curled in the arch eleven years before, not a hair's difference. Cold sweat broke from me in fright—but the moment it appeared, it cooled to ice-shards that clung to my forehead, scraping, stinging.

The tofu-seller, Old Widow Sun, once caught my hand and said, Watchman Shen, how is your hand so cold, even in the height of summer, as if the blood had stopped. I pulled my hand back, smiled, said an old complaint. She didn't know that everything I touched carried the cold of that arch—the bowl was cool, the door-ring was cool, even the copper coins I handed over made the receiver flinch. I had become the coldest man in town; whoever touched me shuddered.

Come summer, the town steamed with heat; others waved fans, but I wrapped my padded coat tighter. However fierce the sun, it couldn't thaw the cold in my bones. Beating the watch at night, I shed no sweat—instead a frost-like white breath seeped out. Behind my back the townsfolk said I'd become a walking corpse; I took no offense, only thought they'd never heard the clapper beneath the bridge. How would they know some colds are brought from within the years, not given by the sky.

All this I knew, yet could not change it back.

I began to rest in the arch, like that traveler eleven years before, curling behind the pier. The wind from beneath the bridge poured into my collar, and I found it almost comfortable, as if I'd come back to where I belonged; the snow outside, the lantern outside, the work outside—all held at a distance. A few times I woke to find the padded coat on my body crusted with ice, the hem frozen stiff; I'd bend it and hear a crisp snap—exactly like that shape packed in snow.

I had long stopped setting the incense back in the burner. I carried it on me, lit by day, and watched it burn down inch by inch; the ash fell into my palm, cold as snow. I counted the ash, counted the watches, counted how many strikes I owed from that snowy night eleven years before. But it could never be counted clear; the ash fell through my fingers, and a gust of wind scattered it, as if that one strike had never found its place.

Once a young fellow of the town asked me, "Old Shen, how is there another layer of sound inside your clapper—like someone striking along with you, muffled, against the ice?"

I smiled, gave no answer. In truth the young man heard right. Each night at the watch to be made up, the shadow beneath the arch would stir first, and only then did my clapper fall. The two sounds merged, neither before the other, like two bones frozen solid knocked together. Later still, I dared not let the clapper fall until the shadow had stirred—as if that one strike had always been his to make, and I only filled in where it landed, mending the watch-point left unmended year after year.

By the third winter I hardly returned to the shrine. After making up the watch by night, I'd curl right there behind the pier, keeping the shadow company. The shrine's incense burner went thoroughly cold, dusted with ash, dusted with snow, no one to add incense anymore. The townsfolk seldom saw me, only thought Watchman Shen had moved onto the bridge, and no one dared ask—they heard two clappers merged beneath the arch and gave it a wide berth.

The twelfth month of the third year brought the heaviest snow.

That night I walked to the bridge; before I struck, I saw beneath the arch a human shape standing neat and upright, covered in snow—by its build an outland traveler, not tall, hunched, the hem of the padded coat frozen stiff and straight. It did not lift its head, only stood there, waiting. Snow piled thick on its shoulders, yet it did not move, as if it had stood beneath the bridge many years, waiting only for this one strike.

I raised the clapper, about to let it fall, when suddenly I remembered myself of eleven years before—hunched behind the pier, eyes shut, the clapper clutched dead-tight, letting the man beneath the bridge call out cold, letting that voice fall fainter and fainter till it became a whimper in the throat. I wanted to call out "I'm sorry," but my throat was stopped with snow, not a sound could come; I only heard my own teeth chatter.

The clapper fell; the shape beneath the arch trembled softly, and a layer of snow sifted down. Then it slowly turned and walked, step by step, toward the scattered graves west of the bridge. Footprints in the snow, step by step, deep and shallow, halted before the wordless slab.

When the snow melted, I often went to the scattered graves west of the bridge and stood a while before that wordless slab. The slab bore no words, yet I always felt the man beneath it, through the earth, listening to the clapper above. I struck once and the earth fell still; I did not strike and the earth held wind, fine and thin, seeping up through the grave-cracks, as if someone had turned over in sleep—or as if someone were still waiting.

Once, crouching long before the slab, I heard from the earth a very faint clapper, muffled, pressed against the ground. I could not tell if it was my own heartbeat, or the man below, striking that one strike for himself. Wind passed the scattered graves, whining, as if all those who'd never closed their eyes, many years, turned over at once.

I stood on the bridge, looking at that trail of footprints, cold to the bone from head to foot. Wind came up from the arch, wrapped in snow, slapped my face; I could not tell if it was the wind outside, or the last white breath that traveler of eleven years had exhaled.

It came to me then: he had not come to ask for a watch. He had come to tell me he had been there all along. The one strike I missed, he had struck for himself thirty years; and from now on, I feared, I too must live for him—become that curled shadow beneath the arch, waiting for a clapper that would never fall.

Every snowy night after, I dared not sleep deep. The moment I closed my eyes, I heard a sound beneath the bridge—not a call, but a waiting—waiting for a clapper that would not fall. I knew well that one strike could never be made up in thirty years, yet my hand could not help reaching for the clapper by my pillow, and what it found was always ice. Ice is cold, yet within the cold there was a familiarity, as if the traveler had laid his hand on mine, warming me—and freezing, for me, the hours, little by little, into stillness.

There were times I could not tell whether the voice beneath the bridge was him or myself. I called "strike the watch, I'm cold," and from my own throat came a tune stiff with frost. Only then did I understand: making up the watch, in the end, I made up for myself—I had lived that one strike I didn't make into all the winters since.

Near dawn I returned to the shrine. The incense had long gone out; the burner was cold. I lay down, in my clothes, but could not warm back no matter what. My hands and feet were numb with ice, as if I'd soaked in the ice-water beneath the bridge the whole night, even my heart cold. I closed my eyes and heard by my ear a wind—the kind that comes up from beneath the arch, carrying snow, carrying a very faint, frozen-stiff whimper: "Watchman sir… strike the first watch… I'm cold…" I reached to touch the clapper by my pillow, and what I touched was ice.

Note of the Midnight Record: Watchman Shen kept beating the watch after; only beneath the arch there was one more curled shadow, never dispersed. The townsfolk say: if on a snowy night you hear two clappers merged into one, muffled, against the ice, do not answer, do not turn back—that is not the watchman striking alone; he is making up that one watch for the traveler of those years, thirty years now, and still one short.