The Locksmith

The lamp at Changqing Locksmith's always burned past midnight. Ge Changqing was fifty-eight and had cut keys and mended locks for forty years; his hands were mapped with small white scars. He kept two rules: never force a lock no one wished opened, never copy a key no one wished given. The neighbors liked to say Old Ge opened not locks but human hearts.

He disliked the saying but never argued with it.

Late that autumn a man named Lin came to the shop. His father had just died, leaving an old riverside house. The old man had lived alone and been strange in his ways; while alive he had sealed a small room off the east wing with a brass padlock, kept the key on his person, and let no one enter. On his deathbed he had gripped his son's hand and said, 'There is nothing of value in that room. But if you must open it, fetch a man who truly understands locks. Do not bring a chisel.'

Mr. Lin had already asked two locksmiths; both had shaken their heads. The lock was not old, its brass warm to the eye, yet the mechanism was odd, as if someone had copied an ancient pattern by hand.

Ge Changqing looked at that lock only once, and his hand stopped.

On the side of the body, struck with a graver, was a tiny plum blossom, five petals, a single dimple at its heart. It was his mark. Thirty years before, young and proud, he had struck just such a blossom into every lock he forged himself, saying, 'Open the lock, leave a keepsake.' Later he gave up forging and turned to mending, and the mark died with the old trade.

He said nothing of recognizing it. He only asked, 'How many years since this lock was made?'

'My father said he made it the year he turned thirty-five,' Lin reckoned. 'Near forty years now.'

Ge asked no more. He knelt, drew a fine wire and a strip of copper from his kit, and listened at the keyhole. The room was so quiet he could hear the river beyond the window. He closed his eyes and probed with his fingers, light as feeling the pulse of someone asleep.

In the time it takes half a stick of incense to burn, the lock opened with a soft click.

Inside there was no gold, no silver, no paper of any kind. Against the wall stood a low table bearing a dozen-odd locks of every size, padlocks, hidden bolts, shapes he had never seen, and every one bore the plum blossom. At the table's corner rested a small hammer and a few steel files, worn bright. Centermost lay a lock still rough with unfinished burrs, plainly abandoned halfway through.

Mr. Lin was bewildered. 'My father never learned a craft. How could he—'

Ge picked up the half-made lock and turned it over. On its base was carved a single character, qing, its strokes crooked, as though the hand feared being recognized yet could not bear to change it.

He understood, suddenly.

Forty years before, he had indeed taken on an apprentice. The boy was twelve, quick beyond reason with his hands; in three months he could strike the plum blossom. Then the boy's mother remarried and took him away, and before leaving the child stole Ge's proudest lock. Ge, furious, swore never to forge again, took up mending, and mended for thirty years.

He had always believed the boy had let the craft go.

He had not. The boy had carried it through a whole life, into this room no one might enter, into every plum blossom. The old man's deathbed words, 'fetch a man who truly understands locks,' were no idle remark. He had known his master.

Ge set the half-made lock gently back on the table. From inside his coat he drew the old lock he always carried, the very one stolen from him long ago, which he had later redeemed from a junk stall and never let leave his side.

In the end he told Mr. Lin nothing. He only said, 'There is nothing else within. Keep it as it is. Seal the room again, as the old man wished.'

Lin thanked him profusely. Ge waved him off and shouldered his kit.

That night he did not return to the shop. He sat on the stone steps by the river dam, the two locks side by side on his knees, examining them by the lamplight. The night wind drove the water to a loud hushing; far off a boat horn sounded, low, like someone answering from a great distance.

Near dawn he rose and wrapped the half-made lock with care, tucking it inside his coat. When he came back to the shop, for the first time he left the door unlocked.

'Someone,' he said to himself, 'ought to leave a crack.'

The lamp inside burned, as always, through the dark.