The lock on my door was old, and after several days of cold rain it finally rusted solid. There was a key-cutting stall at the mouth of the alley, run by a thin middle-aged man. After hearing what had happened, he picked up a new lock and gestured for me to lead the way. I asked whether he needed to bring any other tools. He waved his hand and said there was no need.
When we reached my door, the locksmith bent close to the keyhole and cupped both hands over the lock, his sleeves completely concealing whatever his hands were doing. Before long he had removed the entire lock from the door. Then he deftly installed the new one, turned, and asked me to inspect the job. The work was excellent. I noticed that when he handed me the new key, his right hand too was still hidden in his sleeve. Since he had used no tools at all while repairing the lock, I grew curious, and as I thanked him I took the chance to grasp his hand. The locksmith’s expression changed at once. He jerked his right hand back with force, but I had already felt it: one of his fingers was extremely strange, as thin as a chopstick.
For some time after that, I often found excuses to chat with him. Only after we had grown thoroughly familiar with one another did he finally trust me enough to show me his right hand. His middle finger was remarkable, as slender as a bamboo joint, and its knuckle bent inward. When placed together with the index finger, the two formed something like a delicate pair of tweezers. He told me that his clan’s surname had originally been Suo, Lock. Since ancient times they had made their living by climbing beams and practicing burglary: when they met a lock, they undid it; when they saw a door, they opened it. In the Tang, one generation was caught while stealing from an official treasury, and the entire clan had both hands cut off. From then on, any child born into the family was likewise to be mutilated, until the punishment was finally abolished with the fall of the previous dynasty. Thereafter their descendants established a family rule: never steal again. To this day the Suo clan lives only by craftsmanship, and many of them have become well-known artisans. Among the people of his hometown who still bear the same surname, there are even now several masters of miniature landscapes in cups.
When I first met this locksmith, the creature I thought of at once was a kind of monkey called the aye-aye. This animal lives far away in the Americas, belonging to the primates, within the prosimian suborder and the aye-aye family. Its middle finger is long, thin, and incomparably nimble. Whether it is fishing insects from tree trunks or drilling holes in fruit, it relies on that finger. No one knows how far back the Suo clan’s peculiar lineage goes. None of the strange-tale collections from before or around the Tang ever record fingers with such marvelous properties. I suspect that has something to do with the clan’s habit of keeping a low profile. Extraordinary gifts may be a blessing, or they may be a curse. The crucial thing is where their owner chooses to put them to use.