Sect Year 2 · ninth month · night of day 14 · the twenty-fifth life: the valley under Silent Terrace, Ah Dong’s sixty-fifth year
Spring came back to the terraces the way it always had, the willows first and then the beans. By the time the bean flowers opened, the forge yard had turned green at its edges, and the stream below the bridge ran loud enough to hear from the bench.
Ah Dong sat on that bench in the warm afternoon with the bellows at rest behind him and his hands loose on his knees. He was sixty-five. The bench was lower than it had been when he was young, or else he had grown taller in some other way that did not show.
He had oiled the frame that morning, as he had promised. Each spring since the frost he had knelt on the top step with the rag and the clay pot and laid the stroke along the grain. Each spring the wood had taken the oil and held. Men came up the valley road every few years with tins of bright paint and offers to make the old house look new. He sent them back down with a cup of tea and no order. The frame would not be painted while he lived.
