Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

The Headman returns to the village with his face swollen by a terrible toothache. He asks Luo to treat him, but Luo is unable to without a drill. The tailor comes to their village, and lodges with Luo and the Narrator, exposing them to an entirely new world of feminine intimacy as the women of the village compete for the tailor’s attention.

That night, the tailor asks them to tell him a story, and at Luo’s urging the Narrator agrees. He begins the story of The Count of Monte Cristo and cedes to the tailor’s pleas that he continue all night long. The tailor bribes the village Headman so that the boys are permitted to spend the day in bed rather than working, and has the Narrator continue the story to its completion over the course of the next nine sleepless nights. The tailor introduces styles and motifs from the tale into the clothes he makes.

On the third night of the recitation, disaster almost strikes as the village Headman interrupts them in the early hours. He had been listening outside and threatens to arrest the Narrator for spreading reactionary stories and to take him to the Public Security Office at the commune headquarters. Luo wants to accompany him, but the Narrator instead intimates that Luo should hide the books in case the Narrator breaks under torture. The Narrator is resigned, but despite himself, he is shaking with fear. The village Headman then makes Luo an offer: He will refrain from arresting or reporting the Narrator if Luo finds a way to cure the Headman’s toothache.

They improvise a treadle-operated drill out of the tailor’s sewing machine, but the pain of Luo holding the needle to his tooth is so bad that the Headman keeps interrupting the work by flinching and jumping up. To their surprise, he agrees to be tied down, and the tailor holds his head still while the Narrator operates the treadle.

Initially, the Narrator pedals quickly, but the Headman’s agony is amplified the slower the rotation of the needle, so the Narrator soon gives in to the sadistic impulse to slow down and cause the most pain possible in revenge for the miseries of re-education and the Headman’s earlier threats. As Luo drills into the tooth, he shares a complicit glance with the Narrator.

This chapter is told from the perspective of the old miller, speaking to the Narrator about an instance when he observed Luo and the Little Seamstress together in a secluded pool. He noticed them because they disturbed a flock of red-beaked ravens on the cliff overlooking the pool, one of which swooped aggressively at the old miller. He initially thought they were just swimming together, but realized to his shock that they were having sex under the water. Watching, the old miller was defenseless and painfully aware of his advanced age.

While Luo slept on the shore afterward, the Little Seamstress climbed the cliff to a ledge 10 meters high and jumped off into the water. Only later did the old miller recall that he recognized Luo as the supposed interpreter from their prior encounter. He says that Luo is lucky that only the old miller saw the two of them because he has never denounced anyone, but anyone else would have gotten them into trouble.

Luo tells the Narrator that the Little Seamstress has an innate knack for swimming, although she only knew how to doggy paddle before he taught her the different strokes. She enjoys diving into the water from high ledges, but Luo is too scared of heights to join her.

When they are swimming together at their secluded pool, Luo and the Little Seamstress often play a game where he throws his keyring into the water and she dives to the bottom to retrieve it. They began one day when Luo was overcome with despair that he would never return home, and cast the keyring into the pool. Luo’s keyring is akin to a good luck talisman, plated with gold and holding many keys that he does not need for as long as he is on the mountain. The Little Seamstress worried him by diving after it and staying submerged a long while, but emerged victoriously with the keyring between her lips, convinced that he would one day need it. They played often until disaster struck one day and the keyring was lost; now Luo never wants to return to the pool again.

The day he lost the keyring was the day he received a telegram summoning him to his mother’s sickbed. The Headman permits him to spend a month away from the mountain, and Luo notes the irony that he’ll be returning home without his keys.

The Little Seamstress relates how the books Luo reads to her always make her want to dive into the water. She enjoys diving to the bottom of the lake to fetch Luo’s keyring because she finds pleasure in making him happy. The bed of the lake is dimly lit and covered in stones, but the key always falls in the same area when they play.

During their final day at the lake together, Luo reads to her a scene from The Count of Monte Cristo wherein the count and his former lover reunite and pretend not to recognize each other. The Little Seamstress is deeply affected by the pathos of the scene, so she and Luo act out the reunion together, which is her first experience acting as someone other than herself. When she dives to the bottom of the lake and reaches to retrieve Luo’s keys, she instead touches a snake and retreats. She dives back down despite her fear and Luo’s protests, but the snake bites her before she can grab the keys, so she abandons them. She will thereafter always retain the scar from the snakebite on her middle finger.