The Comb Maker

The comb shop in Tanxi Town stood beneath the second old willow by the river landing. Shen Changgeng had carved combs for forty years. The sweet, resinous smell of shavings mingled with tung oil and clung to his fingers the whole year round, not washing off even after three rinses. His hands were thick, the knuckles coarse, a hard callus built on the side of his thumb from forever gripping the plane.

A-Liu left on the ninth day of the twelfth month, eleven years gone now. She had a wasting sickness - first the night coughs, then her body thinning day by day. Her hair began to fall that autumn, great handfuls at a single stroke, sinking black into the washbasin, so heavy in his hands when he carried it out to pour. By the end her scalp showed pale and bare, and Shen Changgeng wrapped her head gently in a square of dark cloth. The yellow boxwood comb he had readied was never given - what use is a comb on a shaven head.

He kept that comb in the very back of the drawer, and beneath it one of her silver hairpins.

The afternoon after First Frost last year, no customers came. Shen Changgeng pulled the drawer open and took the comb out. The boxwood had darkened to a deep red from his palm's sweat; the teeth were still even. It was his old habit, after any work, to run his thumb along the gaps between the teeth, checking for burrs. This time his thumb caught on something - a long strand of hair wound tight between two teeth, black and shining, coiled as if someone had just combed and twisted it there by hand.

He carried it to the window. A-Liu had died bald; he had seen it himself, had wrapped the cloth himself. Yet this strand reached the length of his palm, and carried a faint bitter scent of mugwort - the herb she had boiled to wash her hair, saying it would slow the falling.

A cold ran down Shen Changgeng's back. He picked the strand out, wrapped it in paper, and pressed it under the inkstone. That night he left the lamp unlit and listened to the river slapping the landing stones until nearly dawn.

The days went on as before. The town's women came to buy combs, and by old custom he would first draw the comb twice through a customer's hair to show how smooth the teeth were, how they never snagged. Chuntao, the second daughter-in-law of the Wang family, wore her chestnut hair cropped to the ears; that day she came for a peach-wood comb to bring her mother-in-law luck, and he drew it through her hair as usual. As he handed it over he glanced down: a strand of long black hair hung in the teeth, nothing like Chuntao's short crop. He wiped the comb with his sleeve, saying nothing, though his hand had gone stiff.

Suspecting his own memory, he began to watch. Zhou, the embroiderer from the east of town, had hair gone wholly grey; A-Man at the ferry had fine, soft yellow hair. He noted each woman's color and length before combing, then counted the teeth. Every time, without fail, when the customer was done a strand of long black hair remained in the comb - never hers.

Unable to sleep, Shen Changgeng turned out every unsold comb in the shop and opened them one by one. Raw blanks fresh from the plane, finished pieces with two coats of tung oil - each held a thread or two caught in the teeth. He had made them himself; no other hand had touched them. Where did the hair come from?

He tried sealing one. He took a new block of boxwood and, that very night, planed and toothed it by lamplight, wrapped it tight in oiled paper, and pressed it under his pillow for three days unopened. On the third night, by the lamp, he unwrapped it: behind the very first tooth, a strand of hair was coiled as before, black and bright.

After the first snow, Zhou came again. She did not come to buy. She lifted her head scarf to show him: a layer of hair on her pillow, falling in handfuls since she had used his comb. Shen Changgeng took the comb. In its teeth, sure enough, a strand of long black hair - not Zhou's grey. His throat worked. He returned her money and kept the comb to split and burn.

He stopped selling to strangers from out of town, keeping only the regulars, and never combed another customer's hair, only handing the comb over. Yet the town began to say that Master Shen's hands grew colder, that touching his fingertips was like touching well water, even in the heat of summer.

On the night before Winter Solstice, the shop shut, Shen Changgeng took out the old comb and sat facing the bamboo chair where A-Liu used to sit. He raised his hand and drew the comb once, lightly, above the empty chair - and the teeth sank, as if combing into thick hair, and his wrist was tugged, gently. He was not afraid. He smiled, and combed again, and a strand appeared in the teeth, black and shining, winding at his finger.

After that he spoke less, and went on making combs, most of them split and burned in the stove, keeping only one or two. His hands grew colder year by year. The people of Tanxi came to say that the combs from the Shen shop grew colder the more they were used, cold as if pulled up from the river bottom.

Each time he finished combing, a strand still wound in the teeth, and he no longer picked it out - let her keep it there.