The Painting

> *Taiyuan Prefecture, Yangqu County Office. Case file.*

> *Case: The Sudden Death of Scholar Wang of Taiyuan.*

> *File No.: 19th criminal file of the year Guihai, Kangxi reign.*

> *Supplementary deposition: the deposition of Scholar Wang (supplement 1). Interrogator's note: Wang had already given five depositions; this is the supplement, concerning the "painting" in the study. It is to be read against the earlier depositions.*

> *—Respectfully recorded, Liu, Chief Clerk*

**【Deposition · Scholar Wang · Supplement 1】**

The magistrate asks me about the painting in the study. I answer the magistrate: there was such a thing. I dare not conceal it.

It was the tenth of the ninth month. That afternoon she was not in the house; she said she had gone to the west market to buy thread. I was alone in the study, sitting at the desk reading. I had read a while when I felt the desk was not in order—the inkstone, the brush-rest, the paperweight, all in their places, but at the corner of the desk an extra thing lay, covered with a piece of blue cloth.

At first I paid it no mind. Later I rose to pour tea and passed the corner of the desk; my arm brushed the blue cloth, and one corner of it slipped down, showing what was beneath.

It was a painting.

I was startled for a moment. The painting lay spread, the edges curled, set at the corner of the desk as if its owner had put it down carelessly before leaving. I bent, lifted the cloth, and looked at the painting.

The magistrate asks me what sort of painting it was. I answer the magistrate: it was a portrait. It showed a woman, half-length, seated, her head turned, as if looking at something outside the picture. It was painted only to the shoulders—no hands, no background, the paper clean, only a single figure.

I looked it over carefully. The brushwork was neither good nor bad—the lines drawn steady, one stroke to a stroke, no wasted strokes. Where the line closed at the shoulder, the brush lifted cleanly, as if the hand were practiced. But the more I looked, the more I felt something wrong. What was wrong was not in the brushwork; it was in the painting itself. The paper was sized, its color yellowed, like old paper laid by a long time; but the ink on it was new, dried even, the color bright, as if finished not long ago. New ink on old paper is no strange thing. What was strange was this: I lifted the painting and held it to the light and saw the grain of the paper, dense and fine, far finer than ordinary Xuan paper. I touched it; the surface was smooth. It did not feel like Xuan paper.

Speaking of it, my voice sank lower.

The magistrate asks me whom the woman resembled. I answer the magistrate: she resembled her. Zhang-shi. The brows and eyes were not yet painted in, but that outline, that seated posture, that angle of the turned head—I knew it at a glance. It was her form.

The magistrate asks me what I meant by "the brows and eyes not yet painted in." I answer the magistrate: that painting had no face. Where the face should have been, the paper was still white, clean, with no features painted—no brows, no eyes, no nose, no mouth. As if the painter had stopped there, not finished, or as if he had left it blank on purpose.

At these words my hand clenched on my knee, then relaxed.

The magistrate asks me what the painting was made with. I answer the magistrate: ink, and pigments. But I found it strange—the ink was ink, and the pigments lay by the desk, yet I smelled no scent of ink. In the study those days there had been ink-scent every day, from ink I had ground myself. The ink on that painting was dried even, but it carried no such smell. I leaned close and smelled; the smell I got I cannot name, like paper kept too long, or like something else.

The magistrate asks me whether I touched the painting. I answer the magistrate: I touched it. I put out my hand and felt the paper. It was very soft, so soft it did not feel like Xuan paper, like... I cannot say it, like a piece of worn hide, warm to the touch. When I touched the place where the face was not painted, my finger paused, and a panic rose in me—the softness of that paper was not the softness of paper.

I drew my hand back at once, covered the painting with the blue cloth, returned to the desk, sat down, took up my book, and read a long while without taking in a single character.

The magistrate asks me whether I spoke of the painting to her afterwards. I answer the magistrate: I did not dare to. That evening she came back. I sat at the desk reading; she entered, set the thread she had bought on the table, glanced at the corner of the desk, went over, lifted the blue cloth, looked at the painting, and covered it again. I sat behind the desk and heard her ask:

"You looked at my painting?"

I said: "I took one look."

She stood by the desk, looked down at the painting a while, and said: "Just something I painted for fun."

I said: "It is well painted."

She did not answer. She took up the painting, rolled it, put it in the cabinet, and locked it. I sat behind the desk watching her lock the cabinet; the breath in my chest loosened halfway, and the other half rose.

The magistrate asks me why that half rose. I answer the magistrate: because when she locked the cabinet, I saw—on the back of the painting, the back of the paper—a hair was stuck. Long, black, hanging from the edge of the paper, lying across the back of her hand.

I wanted to speak of it, and did not. That hair I knew; it was her hair; I saw her combing it every day and knew it. But what I thought was this: when she painted, a hair had fallen and caught the ink and stuck to the paper—that is nothing strange. What was strange was that the hair was wet.

As if it had just been drawn out of water.

(At these words the court was still for a while. The interrogator asked whether the painting was seen again thereafter; Wang answered:)

The magistrate asks this, and I have thought of it since. I saw that painting only that once. From that day she locked the door in the daytime as before, and the rustling sound came from behind the locked door as before. I sat in the main courtyard and heard it, and thought: in there, what is she painting? That faceless painting? Or something else?

Once I walked to the study door and meant to push it open. My hand was on the ring of the door, and I stopped. There was no sound behind the door—not that the rustling had stopped; it was a stillness like the room held no one, or like someone in the room held her breath, waiting for the one outside to push the door. I stood at the door a long while, and in the end did not push.

That night I slept in the main courtyard and had a dream. In the dream that painting hung on the wall of the study, and the woman in it still had no face. But in the blank space, things grew, little by little—first the shape of brows, then the shape of eyes, then the shape of a nose, the shape of a mouth. As if something on the other side of the paper were painting, slowly.

I woke in a sweat. Outside the window it was black; the main courtyard was very still. I lay listening a while—from the direction of the rear garden, no rustling, no sound at all. But I knew she was there.

I wanted to ask, and dared not. Magistrate, I will tell you the truth—I was afraid. That painting had no face, yet I always felt it was looking at me. This is absurd; you will take me for a fool. But standing at the door of the study, looking at that locked door, I knew clearly that what I feared was not the painting.

What I feared was this: in that place where the painting had no face, beneath the white paper, something was covered.

**【Clerk's note】** The supplementary deposition of Scholar Wang, read against his earlier depositions: the earlier deposition states "the study door locked, a rustling sound within" (testified by Afu and Old Li); this supplement adds "a painting covered with blue cloth at the corner of the desk; the painting without features." Yet Wang's speech falters in many places—asked "whom did the woman resemble," he first answered "Zhang-shi," then changed it to "I did not see clearly"; asked "did you touch the painting," he first answered "I touched it," then "I only felt it once." Interrogator's note: of this deposition, what is credible is his "fear"; what is doubtful is his "concealment." As to whether the painting existed, Afu can attest (through the crack of the door he saw "a large stretch of white, like paper and not like paper"); as to the painting having no face, only Wang himself says so. Recorded here for reference.

**【Clerk's note · supplement】** The supplementary deposition of Scholar Wang having been recorded, the clerk notes privately: when Wang said "that hair was wet," his voice trembled. The interrogator asked, "What is remarkable about wet hair?" After a long silence Wang answered: "She had just come back from the west market, the sun on her the whole way. But her hair was wet—she had not, that moment, been in the west market."