Chapter Nine: Companionship

Once the large-scale stripping was done, Wang Erlang began repainting from the top of the dome downward. Even though he was only eighteen, he couldn't hold out forever against the ache and stiffness in his neck and shoulders from craning upward for such long stretches, on top of pigment constantly dripping onto his head, eyes, face, and clothes; every so often he had to stop and rest a while. Besides stretching and pounding his own shoulders and neck, he also had to keep wringing out a cloth to wipe the pigment from his face and eyes, or else his eyes wouldn't open and he couldn't keep working.

At first, once he'd finished wiping his face, the young woman would hand him her own water skin; later, when he could barely open his eyes at all, she would wring out the cloth herself and bring it right up to him. He'd take it, stunned, after a long pause, and find the cloth against his face somehow deeply, soothingly refreshing. Once he'd wiped himself down, she would take the pigment-stained cloth back, work it clean in the bucket with her own slender, delicate hands, and hand it to him once more...

Wang Erlang couldn't begin to describe the little deer bounding wildly in his heart with joy; at first he felt a flicker of bashfulness, but before long he found himself settling comfortably into this quiet, blissful contentment. He never quite noticed when she slipped down from the scaffold to change the water, but every time she handed him the cloth for the first time, the water was always clear and clean.

The same held true for the urine bucket.

She would never let it hold more than two uses before setting it right and clean again. Along with the three buckets of "water" used for mixing pigments, she always kept them at their freshest, tending to them just at the right moment.

Wang Erlang couldn't help but feel a little guilty about it — hauling buckets up and down the scaffold, whether water or otherwise, along with the weight of the bucket itself, was no light task. Yet she never once complained; handing him the cloth, handing him water, forming a quiet, wordless warmth, accompanying Wang Erlang day after day through the tedious, grueling work upon the scaffold.

More than that, once she'd gestured for him to press a clean cloth against his own shoulders and neck. At first he had no idea why, but once he tried it, he discovered that the cloth she handed him didn't merely clean him — it eased his aches and soothed his exhaustion as well.

Wang Erlang was utterly astonished...

He stared at the cloth on his shoulder, then at her, and for a long while found himself unable to speak at all.

In truth, he rarely spoke much anyway; the heavy demands of his painting left him little leisure for idle chatter, and since he'd fallen behind schedule because of his decision to start over, he had no right to any leisurely conversation regardless.

And the young woman spoke little as well. From the very first day she'd come to the scaffold, she had rarely opened her mouth at all, and even when she did, her words were brief and to the point. And yet her companionship was steady and real; the two of them, in their daily life upon the scaffold, had blended into one, no longer two separate people. Every morning, the moment Wang Erlang stepped into the cave, his eyes would go straight to the top of the scaffold, and seeing her there, swinging her legs, gave the whole day something to look forward to. He quietly told himself that once he'd finished the work at hand, he would ask her properly — what was her name, and where was her family's home?