An Autumn Mountain 171
actually had come within my range. Taking along only the barest necessities, I set out at once to see the Autumn Mountain.
“I still vividly remember the day. It was a clear, calm afternoon in early summer and the peonies were proudly in bloom in Mr Wang’s garden. On meeting Mr Wang, my face broke into a smile of delight even before I had completed my ceremonial bow. ‘To think that the Painting of an Autumn Mountain is in this very house!’ I cried. ‘Yen-k’o spent all those years in vain attempts to see it again—and now I am to satisfy my own ambition without the slightest effort….’
“ ‘You come at an auspicious time,’ replied Mr Wang. ‘It happens that today I am expecting Yen-k’o himself, as well as the great critic Lien-Chou. Please come inside, and since you are the first to arrive, you shall be the first to see the painting.’
“Mr Wang at once gave instructions for the Autumn Mountain to be hung on the wall. And then it all leapt forth before my eyes: the little villages on the river, the flocks of white cloud floating over the valley, the green of the towering mountain range which extended into the distance like a succession of folding-screens—the whole world, in fact, that Ta Ch’ih had created, a world far more wonderful than our own. My heart seemed to beat faster as I gazed intently at the scroll on the wall.
“These clouds and mists and hills and valleys were unmistakably the work of Ta Ch’ih. Who but Ta Ch’ih could carry the art of drawing to such perfection that every brush stroke became a thing alive? Who but he could produce colours of such depth and richness, and at the same time hide all mechanical trace of brush and paint? And yet … and yet I felt at once that this was not the same painting that Yen-k’o had seen once long ago. No, no, a magnificent painting it surely was, yet just as surely not the unique painting which he had described with such religious awe!
“Mr Wang and his entourage had gathered around me and were watching my expression, so I hastened to express my
