He had made paper figures for forty years and kept three rules the whole time. Do not paint the eyes. Do not write a name. Do not let one stay in the shop overnight.
The knock came at night, three times. A slip of paper came under the door with a name on it and a date, and a voice on the other side of the boards said: I want one that can stay overnight. Then a cloth bag hit the ground and the footsteps went away, and when he unbarred the door there was nobody, only the money — enough that he could have stopped working for three years.
He counted it twice. Then he flattened the slip of paper on the workbench and weighted the corner.
Bamboo. Paper. Colour. And then the last step, which he had not taken in forty years: he painted the eyes, and he wrote the name.
It stood by the bench when he was done. The lamp threw its shadow up the wall, and the shadow was taller than the figure was.
The first night it did not fall over. The second morning it had turned a little. The third morning it was facing the door, and by the fourth it was gone, and the gate of the yard stood unbarred with a mark across the dirt like a paper edge dragged over it.
On the seventh night he opened the shop and there was a new figure standing on his bench. The bamboo was lashed exactly as he lashed it. Inside the collar, in the corner where nobody would look, was the small private mark he had put inside every figure he had ever built.
Written across the breast of it was a name, and the name was his own.