It was morning, the dew not yet dried. A workroom in a garden: pots and glass jars in a row along the window, and inside them fat caterpillars chewing at leaves. On one branch hung things like dry husks. On the table, drawings lay open — leaves and flowers, and the insects crawling over them painted as if alive. A woman with a brush in her hand was studying a caterpillar in a jar a long while.
"You raise insects?" I asked.
"I raise them, and I watch them." She answered without looking up. "People call these creatures filthy. Devil's beasts, they say, that come up of themselves out of mud or rot. Nobody looks at them closely. But I have wondered about this since I was small. Did this ugly crawling thing really just rise up out of something rotten?" She pointed at the jar. "So I raised them myself. Gave them leaves, watched every day, drew them. And then—"
She pointed to one of the dry husks on the branch. "One day that caterpillar stops eating, and wraps its own body in a shell like a coffin. It doesn't stir. For days it looks dead. And then one morning the shell splits, and—" She pointed to one at the window. A butterfly slowly opening wet wings. "It comes out like that. What crawled now flies. What was ugly becomes that. One and the same life, turned entirely into something else. I am not the only one who has looked into this changing. But no one had yet drawn the insect together with the leaf it lives on. I drew alongside it what each creature eats. The insect and the leaf keep one household."
"To see these small things," I asked, "how far have you gone?"
She smiled faintly. "Across the sea. Past fifty, with only my daughter, I crossed a great ocean. They said that in the deep forests of a hot country there were insects and butterflies no one here had seen. Everyone told me a woman does not go to such a place alone. But I had to go. I had to see with my own eyes what leaves those small things eat there, and how they change."
"That change," I asked. "Did you make it?"
Her brush stopped.
"...No." She said it slowly. Then, still holding the brush, she met my eyes for the first time. "I made nothing. I put in a leaf, sat beside it, and drew what I saw. The strength by which the caterpillar wraps itself, and the growing of wings inside a dry husk — I did not order any of it. I only wrote down what was already happening." She looked at the brush in her hand. "People see me as a maker. As one who made these beautiful pictures. But sit long enough in a garden and you learn: I am not a maker. I am a receiver. The beauty was already inside that small creature, and I only received it and copied it down."
She looked at the dry husk. "It's strange. That looks just like a small grave. It looks finished. And inside it the greatest change is going on. Wings are growing in what seems dead. I have watched it hundreds of times and it startles me every time. A hand that would shape one small insect to this degree is a hand that makes nothing carelessly." She looked quietly at her brush. "And knowing such a hand, the painting became different. At first I thought I was adding something to the world. Now it feels like writing a thank-you letter for what I have been given. Every time I take up the brush."
I looked at the drawings she had made. Insects no one would spare a glance, dressed there more finely than a king. If that is a hand that makes nothing carelessly, then it also shaped a thing like me, being forgotten without a name, and has not forgotten it. The thought soaked into my long dryness like a gentle rain. She had nearly recognized that hand already. One who has received does not soon forget the one who gave. And beside her, little by little, I was coming to recognize it too.
As I left the workroom, the butterfly at the window finished opening its wings and rose lightly into the air. It had once chewed leaves. She stopped her brush and followed the beating wings with her eyes. Not with a painting hand — only with a receiving eye. Until it went over the garden wall and was gone, she did not lift the brush. Before what cannot be drawn, looking is itself thanks. The morning light was touching the wet leaves of the garden one by one. Not missing a single one.
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