The Question Sheet

> *The lower right corner of this page bears a water stain, soaked through the paper; several lines of writing at the bottom have run and are hard to make out. The edge of the stain is yellowed—an old mark. The rest of the text is legible. This page records the beginning and end of the examination question. (A note by the descendants: in Song Tao's hand, matters of the unseen world are mostly set down briefly; this account of the question's beginning and end is the fullest he ever wrote, the strokes going over and back, as if he had revised it several times.)*

There was no water-clock in the hall. I do not know how long I waited.

Dust fell from the beams, unhurried, settling on my shoulders and on the blank paper. I sat without moving. The officials at the head sat without moving too. No one spoke; no one stirred; there was not even the rustle of cloth. I counted the old marks on the beams, and at the third I understood—there was no wind in this hall.

The door stood open, yet no wind came through. The chestnut horse outside, tied at the stone post, did not so much as flick its tail.

I reached into my sleeve. The vermilion brush I had found on the road was still there, the shaft cool. I drew it out and laid it on the table beside the new brush. Two brushes, the same vermilion lacquer, the same length. I looked at them a long while.

Then, from the roof of the hall, a small sound.

Not footsteps, not voices—the sound of paper. A sheet, falling from the roof. It fell steadily, neither fast nor slow, as if a hand were carrying it down. It landed before me, on the table, neither to one side nor askew. The paper was yellow, the edges neat, thicker than any paper I had ever seen.

I heard another fall beside me. Zhang's.

I did not reach for it at once. I raised my head and looked at the roof. It was very high, beams and rafters crossing in the grey, and nothing could be seen above. The place from which the paper had fallen could not be made out. None of the officials looked up. The one at the head, of imperial bearing, sat with lowered eyes, as one waiting for something.

I lowered my head and picked up the paper.

It was very light, lighter than it looked. I opened it and read—eight characters, the ink a dead black on the yellow paper: "One person, two persons; intentional or not."

Eight characters. No examiner, no signature, no year.

I set it down, picked it up again, read it once more. Still the same eight characters.

From beside me came the sound of a brush. Zhang Sheng had already begun.

His brush was fast, too fast for writing an essay. The tip crossed the paper—shhh, shhh, no pause, no sound of dipping. I remembered the old brush on his table; its tip had been wet. He had dipped it before he sat down.

I listened to his brush without turning my head. There was no other sound in the hall, only his brush, falling again and again, steady and urgent. I thought: how fast he writes. Is his mind made up, or did he know the question already?

He wrote a long time. His brush never paused, never dipped, never stopped, one line from beginning to end. I listened, and my heart slowly stilled. The dust fell on his shoulders; he did not brush it off. It fell on my table; I did not brush it off either. Two brush-sounds in one hall, one fast, one slow, each man writing his own.

When he stopped, the hall fell quiet for a moment.

I heard him lay down his brush, very quietly. He did not hand in his paper, did not look at me, only sat, as if waiting.

His paper lay open on the table, a corner of it held down by the brush-shaft. I could not see what he had written—only the ink, laid from one edge to the other, a dense sheet of it. He had finished, and still he did not move, like a thing done and left to conclude itself.

I looked down at my own table. The new brush lay there, vermilion handle, tip dry. I took it up and touched it to the inkstone. The ink was warm—the thin film of ice that had covered it was gone.

I dipped the brush in the ink and did not put it to paper.

I thought about these eight characters a long time. One person, two persons: one man, or two? Intentional or not: the heart that does a thing, or the heart that sees a thing? I am past forty; I have read no few books and sat no few examinations—but a question like this, I had never seen. It was not a question from the classics, not a question of policy. It was a question put to me, asking after a place I had never thought to look.

I thought of Wang the Good Man, east of the village. He had built a bridge, paved a stretch of road, and at every festival sent rice to the widows and the childless. Everyone in the village said he was good. One year a refugee from a neighboring village knelt a whole day at his gate, and Wang gave him half a measure of rice. After the man left, Wang said to people: "He knelt there; if I did not give, my heart would not let me pass."—That word got around the village, and some laughed at him, saying the good man had to talk about his own good deed. Wang said nothing. I was young then, and thought he was right to speak of it: half a measure of rice—was it for the man's hunger, or to be free of the sight of a man kneeling?

And I thought of my mother. She believed in the gods; on the first and fifteenth of every month she burned incense to the Kitchen God, one coin's worth, no more and no less for decades. I asked her once: one coin—will the Kitchen God even notice? Mother said: "The heart is what reaches him." She had made her offering all her life, and never once asked for anything.

I had thought it all through and still had no answer. One person, two persons; intentional or not. Did the question ask after the deed, or after the heart?

I rested the brush on the inkstone and sat thinking.

On the cobweb in the corner of the hall lay a layer of dust, and on the dust hung a small dried insect. I looked at it a while. The third old mark on the beam, seen from here, ran straight over the seat of the one at the head. He sat without moving, like a clay figure.

I thought of my mother.

Thought of her sitting before the stove, adding fuel to the fire, the light of it on her face. Thought of her saying, "Whether you pass or fail, it is fate"—she did not believe in fate. She was afraid. She was afraid I would fail and lose face in the village; afraid I would pass and leave, and there would be no one at home to look after her. All her life, my mother had never asked for anything for herself.

I took up the brush again.

One person, two persons; intentional or not. I wrote: he who does good, one man doing it, all men watching it... I stopped. No. I struck it out and began again.

I spoiled three sheets of paper. The hall stayed quiet; Zhang's brush had stopped long since—he had finished, and sat there, not looking at me, not handing in his paper, as one waiting.

I wrote a fourth.

This one I wrote slowly, stroke by stroke, very steadily. I wrote: he who does good deliberately, though it be good, deserves no reward; he who does evil unintentionally, though it be evil, deserves no punishment.

When I had written it, I laid down the brush and read it over. The ink was still wet; the strokes caught the grey light of the hall—my own hand, neat and square. I looked at it a long while, and suddenly it seemed to me that this sentence was not mine. It was as if it had always been there, waiting for me to copy it down.

I read it again and added two lines of my own: good done with intent, its goodness is already false; evil done without intent, its evil may be forgiven. When I had written them, I looked at the two lines, and struck them out. The paper kept two slanting ink lines where they had been. I stared at them a while, and did not touch the brush again.

The small insect in the corner was still hanging there. I glanced at it, lowered my head, folded the paper, and set it at the corner of the table.

Still no one in the hall spoke. I raised my head and looked up at the place where the paper had fallen, and at the two vermilion brushes on the table, side by side, alike to the last detail. The dust fell another layer. I sat without moving. Zhang Sheng sat in the last seat, also without moving. The officials at the head sat each in his place, as if sunk in stillness.

I counted the old marks on the beams; at the seventh I remembered something—the temple of the Lord Guan at the village gate. Its incense burner was always full in winter. This winter I had been too ill to go and burn. Who had filled the burner this year?

I had no time to think further. The hall was still quiet. I lowered my head, looked at the question sheet, and put out my hand to take it.

I took up the question sheet, meaning to turn it over and put it by.

When the paper turned over, my fingertips stopped.

On the back of the sheet, a line of tiny writing, the strokes fine as thread, the colour so faint it was like water drawn with a fingernail—barely visible. I had to bring it close to make it out—

"When this paper is marked, you will know where you are."