The Painting Crone

At the entrance of the south-city produce market, an old woman sold paintings. She looked to be about seventy, her head wrapped in white cloth, wearing a rough linen robe, seated on the ground with her stall. On the stall was nothing much: a few stacks of coarse paper, a couple of bald brushes, one inkstick, half a box of cinnabar paste.

Her paintings were crude in the extreme. She would draw a sparrow with a few strokes, the head large, the body small, the tail feathers indistinguishable, and passersby would laugh. She would draw a plum branch, the trunk stiff, the blossoms like ink blots, utterly without grace. But the old woman didn't mind. Whenever someone stopped, she would look up and ask: want a painting.

Her prices were low. A sparrow went for a few coppers, a plum branch for about ten. She only refused to paint people. When someone asked why, she said: painting people takes too much spirit. I don't have the strength anymore.

A young good-for-nothing from the market tossed down three coppers and said: draw me a cat. She lifted her brush and drew. The cat crouched on a rock, one ear higher than the other, its whiskers longer than its face, half cat, half wild thing. The youth took it home and showed it around to much laughter. That night as he slept, he heard a cat yowling. He traced it to the back courtyard and saw a cat squatting on the wall, exactly the one she had drawn. The cat saw him, leaped down, circled his legs three times, and vanished. The youth woke drenched in sweat.

The next morning he went to the old woman's stall and told her about the dream. She only smiled and said nothing. He looked more closely at the paintings on her stall and pointed at a sparrow. I saw this one too last night, he said, drinking water at the well. The old woman said: that sparrow was long sold to Third Sister Chen the vegetable seller. The youth went and asked Third Sister Chen. She stared. I did dream of a sparrow at the well, she said, its feathers dusty gray, exactly the same.

Word spread through the market. The old woman's paintings came to life in dreams, and each painting entered only one person's dream.

An old widower, three years bereaved and still grieving, asked her to paint a begonia, his late wife's favorite flower. The old woman looked at him for a long time, then slowly drew. When she was done, it was not a begonia at all. It was an old woman in plain clothes, sitting in a rattan chair with a handkerchief on her lap. The widower gasped. That's my wife. The old woman said: what your heart wanted was not the flower.

He took the painting home. That night he dreamed of his wife. She sat in the courtyard in the rattan chair, wordless, only looking at him and smiling. He tried to speak, but his throat seized and no words came. When he woke, tears streaming, the weight he had carried for years was suddenly gone.

As news spread, more and more people came seeking paintings. Some wanted to see the dead, some wanted visions of faraway places. The old woman refused them all and said: I paint dreams, not desires.

One morning the market was busy as usual. A customer passed the old woman's stall and found it empty. All that remained were three bald brushes, half a stack of coarse paper, one inkstick, half a box of cinnabar paste. On the paper lay a half-finished painting. It showed the back of an old woman in rough linen, white cloth on her head, bent over as if packing up her stall.

Everyone was stunned. Only then did they understand: the old woman was herself a figure from a painting.

After that she was never seen again at the market. But people have said they met an old woman selling paintings at markets in other cities, the brushes and paper and ink on her stall identical to the ones from the south-city. Some say they have seen her at ferry crossings, at temple fairs, at village markets. But by the time anyone goes to check, she is gone.

Some say: she was never human to begin with. She was a spirit formed from the gathered longings of a thousand hearts. What she painted was not a thing. It was that stubborn ache in someone's chest, that lingering feeling they could not let go.

The market is as noisy as ever. Where her stall once stood, a tofu vendor now sets up shop. In the early hours, before dawn, an old person will sometimes pass by, bend down, and pick up a wisp of ink from the ground. It dissolves on the palm the moment it is touched. The old person says nothing, only closes a fist and holds it for a long time.