Agarwood Six Records · Side Story One: The Cedar Frame

Agarwood Six Records · Side Story One: The Cedar Frame

One: Biaobei Hutong

The first rain of autumn fell on Biaobei Hutong. Liu Zhiqiang had unboarded half of the shop's door; damp air poured in, and the smell of aged timber overwhelmed the smoke of the street's coal stoves. Wang Wanshu was settling accounts in the inner room, the abacus beads clicking sparsely.

The one who came was a picture-mounter, surname Ji, about sixty, in an indigo cotton gown washed pale, an oil-paper packet held square in his arms. He stood outside the threshold for a while, first rubbing the soles of his shoes clean on the stone step before entering.

"Shopkeeper Liu. This painting has been in my hands three years; the owner never came to collect it. The address left was this hutong, but the house number doesn't match." Master Ji set the oil-paper packet on the counter. "I asked around half the street; they say this shop is the Liu family's, and it hasn't moved in generations." Liu Zhiqiang untied the packet. It was an old painting, on silk, the center darkened, the corners worm-eaten. It depicted a cedar, painted in coarse, bold strokes — not the hand of a famous master. At the place of the inscription only two characters remained, blurred beyond recognition by water.

"What was the owner's surname?" "No full name left. Only that the surname was Wen." The abacus in the inner room stopped. Wang Wanshu came out and stood half a step behind Liu Zhiqiang, looking down at the painting, saying nothing.

Master Ji said: "There is a hidden layer behind the painting's center. I lifted one corner; the backing is old paper. I dared not touch further. With old silk like this, one lift and it falls apart. If you recognize the owner, best tell them in person."

Two: The Hidden Layer

After Master Ji left, the shop was quiet for a long while.

Wang Wanshu laid the painting flat on the table and fetched a bamboo spatula, tweezers, and a basin of warm water. Her hands were very steady; the craft of mounting and lifting she had learned from her father. Liu Zhiqiang held the lamp beside her, the wick turned very low, the light falling only on a square inch of the painting's center.

"The backing is Song paper," she said. "Fine laid lines, bamboo paper. Not of this painting's era." "The painting is Ming." "The painting is Ming, the backing Song. Someone padded a Song sheet beneath a Ming painting and mounted it back." She worked in from a corner with the bamboo spatula, separating it inch by inch. The old paste had gone brittle, falling like scattered snow. At the third layer there was indeed paper in the hidden space, folded in four, the paper yellowed to brown, its edges glued fast by paste.

Unfolded, it was a manual. Vertical columns, ink-written, the column rules drawn by hand and uneven. At the top, three characters: *The Manual of the Six Incenses*.

Liu Zhiqiang's fingers stopped at the paper's edge; he did not touch it.

The manual listed six notes: orchid, green, purple, black, yellow, and white Ranjatai. Beneath each note were small characters recording origin, flame color, and means of identification. The handwriting was thin and spare, the pressing strokes drawn long — the manner of Huang Tingjian's school.

After the six notes, there was one more line. That line had been covered with thick ink, very thickly applied, the ink darker than the body text, as if by a later hand. Viewed sideways under the lamp, the ridges of strokes showed through the ink layer, vaguely the upper half of a character "tong."

"The seventh note," Wang Wanshu said.

"The one who covered it didn't want it seen." "Applied this thick, he feared being seen — and feared forgetting himself." She turned the sheet over; in the blank of the back was a line of small characters, written so lightly it seemed jotted with a worn brush dipped in pale ink: *If you see the seventh note, go ask the one who painted it.*

Three: The Night of Transcription, Northern Song

The Yuanyou era, Bianliang.

That night two lamps burned in the back hall of the Liu family's Agarwood & Sandalwood Shop. Huang Tingjian sat at the table transcribing the manual; the Liu ancestor sat opposite, grinding ink. The draft was a joint compilation of the two families; the six notes were already recorded, but the seventh note's page — the Liu ancestor had drawn it out and pressed it beneath the inkstone at the table's corner.

"Why not record it," Huang Tingjian asked.

"A manual must not be complete," said the Liu ancestor. "The six notes are a manual of divided guardianship. Made complete, it becomes a map for gathering incense. If later generations follow the complete manual to search, they will sooner or later search their way to one place." Huang Tingjian's brush hung above the paper, hanging a long while. The ink at the brush's tip gathered into a drop, about to fall and not falling. In the end he set the brush down and did not write.

"Ranjatai is the mother incense; I can judge that clearly," he said. "The six notes divided and guarded — that too I can write clearly. Only this seventh note... If you do not record it, later generations will not know it exists." "Not knowing is better than knowing." "Not knowing, and someone will invent a name for it." Huang Tingjian looked at the page beneath the inkstone. "An invented name is harder to guard against than the true one." The Liu ancestor did not answer. He moved the inkstone aside, drew out that page, and burned it over the lamp's flame. As the flames rose, Huang Tingjian reached in and snatched a corner of the paper from beside the fire; on it remained half a character.

He folded that half-corner of paper and tucked it into his sleeve.

"I will not write it," he said. "But I will leave a thread. If someday someone sees the seventh note, there must at least be somewhere to ask."

Four: Half a Character

The present. The lamp was still lit.

Liu Zhiqiang held the fragmentary page to the light. The thick ink of the seventh note's line showed layers under the light: beneath one layer was the original ink, above it another coat had been laid; the one who applied it pressed heavily, with a pause-dot at the stroke's finish, as if he had written, then stopped a while.

"This ink is not Song ink," Wang Wanshu said. "Greyish — later. Applied by a Ming or Qing hand." "The one who covered it had seen this page." "Seen, and wanted it to vanish. But he didn't burn it." She laid the fragment flat. "Burned, it would be gone. He covered it, which means what he feared was not this page of paper, but this page being understood." Liu Zhiqiang looked at the small line on the back. "The one who painted it," he repeated. "The one who painted this cedar." "The painting is Ming, the backing Song, the manual Song, the ink later-applied." Wang Wanshu sorted the sequence. "The hands of three ages pressed onto the same sheet of paper. The earliest who left the manual, the middle one who mounted the painting, the last who covered it with ink." "The mounter padded Song paper beneath a Ming painting — he left it deliberately." "He hid the manual inside the painting, and sent the painting into this hutong." She paused. "He knew the Liu family was still here."

Outside, the rain lessened. In the hutong a bicycle bell rang once, then receded.

Liu Zhiqiang put the fragmentary page into a brocade case, its bottom padded with slivers of cedar — old stock kept in the shop. As the case closed, he caught a very faint scent: not sandalwood or agarwood, but the smell of the cedar frame itself — dry, astringent, like an old paper store.

"Tomorrow I'll trace this painting's origin," he said. "The owner surnamed Wen — any other leads from Master Ji's side." "I'll go," Wang Wanshu said. "I know the mounting trade well. You go to the Cultural Relics Bureau and file the fragment. Wen Ye's side should be told too." Liu Zhiqiang nodded. He closed the shop door, shot the bolt, and glanced back at the cedar image on the table. The cedar in the painting was drawn coarsely, a break in its trunk — as if split by lightning, as if cut by a knife.

The position of the break faced exactly the place of the seventh note in the manual hidden in the layer.

— *Agarwood Six Records* · Side Story One · End · Next: Side Story Two

> This is an original serialized story from *Agarwood Six Records*; characters and plot are fictional. Common knowledge of agarwood and aromatics herein is compiled from public materials and does not constitute investment or medical advice.