The Paper Figure

Old Cui's paper effigy shop sat at the west end of town, next to the charity mortuary. The storefront was small, but it ran deep; along the wall a row of wooden shelves held paper men, paper horses, paper sedans, paper houses, red and green, hanging—and by lamplight at night each one looked like a living thing owing a debt, about to step out.

Old Cui was past fifty, thick-fingered, yet when he bent bamboo strips and pasted cotton paper he was finer than a girl at embroidery. He spoke little and never painted a smiling face on his paper folk—what's a dead man's goods to smile about, he said; send them off quiet and that's enough. When anyone in town held a funeral they came to him. A paper figure he made would stand three days before the coffin without collapsing; two dots of ink for eyes, gazing heavy, as if truly keeping watch for the dead over the family.

I'm Xiao Man, fifteen, his apprentice—sweeping, mixing paste, handing bamboo. My mother died early; my father runs a boat upriver; Old Cui took me in and fed me. I'm not afraid of paper men, but I fear the small hours: the shop goes uncannily still, the paper folk say nothing, yet you feel a pair of eyes at the back of your skull.

Qian Gui was the town usurer, nicknamed "Yama Qian." He lent at usurious rates, interest on interest; the Sun family at the west end was ruined by him. Old Sun borrowed three strings; the interest ballooned to thirty he couldn't pay. Qian brought men to haul Sun's grain, then meant to take Sun's daughter Cuigu to settle the debt. That night Old Sun hung himself from his own beam. Cuigu was smuggled away by an aunt to the next county and never returned. Sun's wife lost her wits and took to the ruined temple.

This autumn Qian died himself—choked on wine, they said, strangled in his own hall at midnight. The Qians were rich and buried him grandly. They came to Old Cui for a full set of paper goods: four paper servants, two paper horses, a paper mansion, even a paper concubine. The young master tossed down a stack of coppers: "The grander the better. My father can't look shabby down below."

Cui took the work. As he shaped the four paper servants his hands were slower than usual. I saw him give the lead servant a face—not the usual blank one, but traced from an old portrait propped in the corner: a gaunt man, high cheekbones, not Qian Gui, and a stranger to me. Cui bent over the paste half the night and said nothing.

On the wake night the Qian hall burned its eternal lamp; filial sons and grandsons knelt in rows. By custom the paper goods must stand before the coffin the night before burial. Cui and I delivered them, stacked at the spirit hall's door. The lead paper servant stood frontmost, ink-dot eyes fixed straight on Qian's coffin.

When I got back the sky was ink-black. Fog rose after midnight; the paper folk hung on their shelves, shapes wavering. Sleep dragged my lids down and I dozed on the counter.

Half-dreaming I heard the door curtain give a creak—as if someone lifted it. I jerked up. The lead paper servant was gone from its shelf.

My scalp prickled, yet I thought maybe Old Cui had come for it. I leaned out: the street was white fog, empty, only the mortuary's lamp a yellow speck far off. No figure.

Near dawn the Qians sent to hurry the burial. At the hall we found three paper servants where there'd been four; the lead one's place was empty. The young master cursed; Cui frowned and said nothing, and hurried a replacement.

But after the burial the town erupted.

Sun's wife, the madwoman, was found at first light outside the ruined temple, laughing foolishly, a rolled bundle in her arms. The bundle was Qian Gui's account book—by old custom Qian had been buried with a yellow ledger recording the town's debts. The ledger was gone. Cuigu's deed of sale, tucked inside it, had come back too.

The ledger lay at the madwoman's feet, wrapped in red cloth; on a corner of the cloth a dab of white paste—Old Cui's paste, with a smell found nowhere but the paper shop.

Qian's coffin was opened to check: the ledger at his breast was truly gone. His hands, which had lain crossed on his chest, were now spread, as if grasping at something he'd missed. Beneath the death-gray of his face was fixed, somehow, a character of fear.

Old Cui heard this and was silent a long while. That night he closed the shop, took the old portrait from the wall, studied it by lamp, and burned it without a word. As the flame curled the gaunt face, I suddenly knew it—not a stranger. Old Sun.

Then I understood: the face Cui had given the lead paper servant was Old Sun's. He'd said nothing, yet that paper servant repaid the dead man's "last debt"—the life Old Sun could not get back, and Cuigu's freedom.

Later the aunt wrote that Cuigu had found an honest household in the next county. The madwoman was no longer mad, and sat daily at the temple gate sunning the ledger—an empty book now, which she treasured.

The Midnight Record notes: The paper figure walked for the dead man's debt and returned the account to those who should hold it; no one saw it go, only a dab of red paste remained. The recorder, passing the paper shop, hears at night the soft click of bamboo—as if someone were pasting a new face, for no one he can name.