Old Guan's Paste

In the old south quarter there used to be three or four scroll-mounters. In the end only Old Guan was left.

Mounting a painting is no rare skill. Mix the paste evenly, back the picture flat, set the top and bottom rods straight — master those few things and you can hang out a shingle and eat. What made Old Guan rare was not the mounting. It was the lifting.

Let a painting sit for years, let it take damp, let it grow mold, and the picture-layer fuses with the backing paper behind it into one dead lump, hard as sun-dried hide. Another man takes it in his hands, turns it over twice, shakes his head, and hands it back — this one's finished, not even the gods could save it. Old Guan did not see it that way. He would spread the painting on his long table, mist it with warm water, lay a wet towel over it, press a slab of bluestone on top, and let it steam through the night. Before dawn he would rise, eat nothing, wash his hands first, and rub one fingertip lightly along the back — and that rotted backing paper would come away thread by thread, like a cicada shedding its skin. When he reached the picture-layer he would stop, take a breath, press the pad of his finger to the paper, and go slower than a woman embroidering. Onlookers sweated in their palms. On his own face there was not a bead.

Years back a family named Shi in the west of town had their storeroom flooded. A treasured hanging scroll, passed down for generations, was soaked to pulp — what they fished out was several dozen fragments, a whole basket of them, and no other shop dared take it. Old Guan tipped the basket of scraps onto his table like a basket of broken porcelain. He did not rush to piece it. First he laid each fragment out to dry in the shade, filled a whole room with them, and looked at them for three days. On the fourth day he began. Lift a layer, patch a layer, join a piece, back a piece — three months lifting, three months patching. When it went home, the scroll hung smooth and flat, and from three paces off you could not tell it had ever been ruined. Old Master Shi ran his hand over the seams, felt for a long while, and could not find them.

Someone asked Old Guan how it was he never tore a painting in the lifting. Bones, said Old Guan — a painting has its bones, paper has its temper. Follow it and it goes with you; fight it and it breaks on you. It sounded like mysticism. Really it was decades ground into his hands. He had one more knack no other man had: when a painting came to him, he did not look at the signature or the seal first. He bent his head and smelled it. Old paper has the smell of old paper, new paper the smell of new; paper that has been artificially aged has yet another odor, a strange one, like dried tangerine peel with raw ginger stirred in — it could fool the eye, but not his nose.

Old Guan kept one rule his whole life: work meant to fake age, he would not take.

In earlier years a man brought him a new painting, decently done, and begged Old Guan to lift it thin — thin as the cicada-wing layers of Song paper — so it could pass for an antique and fetch money. The price offered was high; lifting one layer, the man said, was worth ten of Old Guan's ordinary mountings. Old Guan heard him out, rolled the painting up, pushed it back with both hands, and said: this hand of mine is for giving paintings more years to live, not for helping a man rig a con. The fellow would not give up — who's going to be able to tell? said he. Whether others can tell, said Old Guan, is not my concern. I can tell. The man left sullen and told everyone Old Guan was a hidebound old fool. Old Guan heard, and was not angered; he only said, hidebound then, so be it — a hidebound man sleeps at night.

Last autumn a Boss Liu came, a man of the antiques trade, well dressed, cradling a brocade box, bowing before he was through the door. Inside was a hanging scroll, the sea of clouds over Mount Huang, signed with the name of Shitao. Boss Liu said he'd bought it dear from the countryside, that it had taken damp over the years and the picture-layer had begun to blister, that he feared it would spoil if left, and asked Old Guan to lift and mount it fresh. And he added: Old Guan's name carried far — a painting that had passed through Old Guan's hands, when it came time to sell, the whole trade would trust it.

That last sentence Old Guan took in, and did not answer. He only took the painting, spread it on the table, and — before misting it — bent his head and smelled it. One eyebrow moved. He said nothing. Water, towel, stone, and a night of steaming.

The next day, lifting between the picture-layer and the backing, his hand stopped. He saw that the backing paper was new. Old painting on new backing is common enough — merely remounted once, nothing to it. But he went on lifting, and when he reached the back of the picture-layer itself, there was pasted against it another thin sheet of old paper, and beneath that old paper lay a few faint strokes of ink — the ruined remnant of a still older painting, cut down and used to line this "Shitao" as a shell, so the new work would borrow the aged breath of old paper. The picture-layer itself — the ink had not yet settled deep. It was new.

Old Guan laid the half-lifted painting back down, sat, and smoked a pipe. Boss Liu came in the afternoon to ask. It can be saved, said Old Guan. Three months. Boss Liu was pleased; money's no object, said he, so long as it's done well — well enough to go out as a genuine Shitao.

Old Guan knocked out his pipe. I'll mend the painting and return it to you as it was, said he. My fee by the old rule, not one coin over. As for whether it's a true Shitao — when you sell it, tell people yourself. Leave my name out of it.

Boss Liu's face fell. What kind of talk is that, said he. I mend paintings, said Old Guan, not that business of yours. The old sheet lining this one — that's a painting too, some gentleman's heart's blood, cut down to line a shell. It's been wronged enough. I'll lift them both out cleanly, each to its own — one sheet is one sheet. I've done right by the paper. If you mean to fool people with it, that's your affair. It has nothing to do with my paste.

Three months later Boss Liu came for the painting. Old Guan gave him back two scrolls. One was the "Shitao," the backing lifted clean away, mended smooth and flat. The other was the old ruined painting lifted from beneath it — Old Guan had spent his own materials and labor backing that one too, and rolled it up neat. This old one, said Old Guan, most likely you never saw it when you bought the lot. It's out now, so here it is with the rest. It's worth more than yours. A pity it's ruined.

After Boss Liu had gone, the apprentice asked: Master, you knew he'd take it off to rig a con — why mend it so well for him? Old Guan was beating fresh paste, the wooden pestle turning slow in the basin. When a painting comes to my table, said he, I owe it my best — that has nothing to do with whether the man's a good man or bad. His con is his account. My mounting is my account. Two accounts. Each man answers for his own.

And what do you get out of it, the apprentice asked.

Old Guan lifted the pestle to check the paste for thickness. It trailed down slow from the head of the pestle, drawing out one line that did not break. Look at this paste, said he. Only when it's cooked right does it run like this — unbroken, no lumps. That's what I get. The work in my hands, a whole life of it, unbroken, no lumps — and I sleep at night.

Old Guan is seventy-nine this year. In the south quarter his is the last mounting shop left; the shingle has gone old, the characters nearly worn away. Someone urged him to write down the lifting art, so rare a skill, and pass it on. Old Guan shook his head. It can't be written, said he. It's all in the fingers. The fingers know. The paper knows. He paused, and added one thing more: even written down it would be no use. Men willing to follow the paper — there are fewer and fewer of them.