The Painter of Shanghai

by Jennifer Cody Epstein

  Now, though, worry tugs at her like a little anxious dog. At a total of fifteen hundred yuan, that comes out to roughly two hundred yuan a tumble. Two hundred!

  Don’t count, she tells herself. Don’t think. Don’t think about it.

  Zanhua shifts against her sleepily. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nonsense. You’ve sighed twice just now.’

  Yuliang considers her options. If she tells him the truth, she breaks an unspoken rule: that regardless of how openly they discuss China’s poor, China’s women, and her history (and like many patriots, Pan Zanhua seems to see China as all these things: a poor woman with an ancient, glorious history), Yuliang’s own muddy roots are to remain buried. On the few occasions she has even brought up the Hall, he has stiffened, then shifted the subject. Even this morning’s meeting, in fact, was announced as dryly as a line read from one of the telegraph tapes with which government runners frequently arrive: ‘I’ve found someone to help us finalize your status,’ Zanhua said. ‘A barrister. I’ll take you to meet him tomorrow.’ And that was all.

  ‘The truth,’ Yuliang says now, ‘is that I worry about the fee. The one we – you – Attorney Wen – set today.’

  ‘What of it?’

  ‘It’s – it seems too much,’ she says. Very softly.

  Her soul leaps to her mouth as he stares back at her in silence. Then he leans over to retrieve his wristwatch.

  ‘It’s nearly six. Dinner will be waiting.’ He says it indignantly; as though the time has been smuggled past him without proper documentation.

  Yuliang doesn’t ask again in coming days. But she can’t quite drive it from her mind – fifteen hundred. She tells herself that of course he’s paying, that he would have told her if he weren’t. He’s a man of his word. But then she’ll stop and realize: even if he does buy her freedom, what has changed? He may still leave. And if he does that, what awaits Yuliang is worse than one simple beating. Beatings (she knows now) are for disobedience. Not betrayal. Payment or no payment, without Zanhua beside her Yuliang doubts she’ll last the week.

  The deadline is two weeks away. Then ten days. Then one week. Don’t count, she thinks. Don’t think. She spends the days as tight-lipped as Mi Fu’s turtle, focusing on the vocabulary lists Pan Zanhua has – at her request – prepared for her. Casualties, she has written, over and over. France. France. France. Imperialist expansion. Warlord. Warlord. Bandits. Then, Beheadings.

  Despite these bleak teachings, though, she finds that she is happy. She enjoys her studies: the thrill of conquering one new word, then another. Of recognizing it in a formerly incomprehensible poster or essay. She loves the way she and Pan Zanhua talk; the new intimacy between them now that they aren’t just housemates, but bedmates. And she loves seeing the city beyond its banquets.

  Zanhua takes her out often, at first just on the slow, sidestreet walks they’ve taken together in the past. Then, increasingly, to more public destinations; like the cathedral, where he wants to see a Sunday service, with its oddly Taoist rituals (rosaries, incense), its swollen-sounding organ music. They go to the new French bakery-café in the Settlement district, where he orders baba and Napoleons and coffee, which arrives in gold-rimmed demitasse cups. Yuliang has had coffee and likes its complex, charred flavor. The baba looks like the Arabian sweets Yi Gan brought her back once from his travels. But as she bites one, she discovers it is soaked not in honey but in some sweet liquor that brings tears to her eyes.

  Zanhua laughs at her expression. As the rum beats warm wings within her, he reaches over and picks a pungent crumb from her chin. ‘You’ve much to learn, little Yu,’ he says. At times she’s almost tempted to say the same thing right back: his disregard for Wuhu gossip astounds her. And yet despite herself, she doesn’t want the outings to stop.

  And so they continue: visits to teahouses to eat cakes and sweet, larded rice. Trips to Wuhu Lake for a picnic. They even go to the opera, to see Escorting Jingniang Home. It’s an afternoon performance, the curtain lifting at a time when most of the Hall’s leaves and flowers are burrowed in their dank beds. Still, Yuliang scans the audience between scenes as the stagehands rotate the stage, half afraid she’ll see Godmother or Suyin there, glaring at her. The story is familiar, that of a brave warrior who devotes himself to protecting a maiden’s chastity. When he fails to do so, of course, she is the one who commits suicide.

  Afterward, Zanhua leads her to a restaurant and a table outdoors that is only slightly beyond the light cast by the bobbing overhead lanterns. Yuliang, already giddy from the brilliant backdrops and lush costumes, allows him to fill her wine cup once, then again. Soon she is tipsy and flushed, reveling in the night’s colors, scents, even nearby conversations, all so refreshingly different from the spite-filled whispers that fill the Hall. So I say to him, she hears, if you want a modern wedding, go ahead. But damn me if you’re going to dress my daughter in white, as though she were mourning someone. Not unless you plan to hang yourself first! To their left, a group of students are drinking and discussing a Western play that one of them wants their school to put on. It’s by this westerner – I can’t recall his name. But the girl in it, Nora, learns that marriage is nothing but slavery. To their right is a table of well-dressed taitais. The baby was dead already? A mercy, really. After all, it was a girl. The last thing that house needs is more mooncakes…

  ‘Ah,’ Zanhua murmurs. ‘That’s the true evil.’

  Yuliang looks up. ‘Mooncakes?’ It seems a mild enough tradition to her: after most matches are made, the groom’s family sends mooncakes to the bride’s house as a gift. Wealthy families send whole cartloads, which perhaps is wasteful. But evil?

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘That society still sees women strictly in terms of their ability to serve men, of the fruitfulness of their bellies. It ignores the much more important part of their bodies.’

  ‘Which is…?’

  ‘Their minds, of course.’ He drinks again, the maotai tingeing his eyes and cheeks with pink. He is drunk, she thinks. ‘Think, little Yu, about your beloved Lady Li! Look at Joan of Arc! Qiu Jin, the Woman Knight of Mirror Lake!’

  ‘The one they beheaded for plotting to overthrow the Qing?’

  He waves this off. ‘There’s Sophia Perovskaya, too.’

  ‘Perovskaya…’ Yuliang twirls a strand of hair, combing her memory.

  ‘The Russian radical,’ he prompts. ‘She tried to kill Alexander II.’

  ‘Didn’t they hang her?’

  ‘Yes, yes. But that’s not the point.’ He indicates the jug with his chin; obediently, she refills their glasses. ‘The point is, she did something. She didn’t see herself as some pointless flower, there merely for decoration or fertilization. She didn’t fall into a trap of useless beauty.’

  Don’t, the pragmatic part of Yuliang’s mind warns. Don’t don’t don’t don’t. But she is a little drunk as well now, and the maotai, sped along by an unexpected swell of outrage, washes right over the warning.

  ‘It’s not such an easy trap to escape,’ She says hotly. ‘I never had a say in – in the decoration I became. And besides –’ She’s plunging into forbidden territory, but she can’t stop. ‘Besides, beauty’s not pointless. It’s essential. It’s what sustains our minds. It’s part of what makes them big in the first place. Men and women.’

  It isn’t at all what she’d planned to say, but it comes out so ardently that she knows it’s true. Beauty is, at least in part, what sustained her those years, in the Hall’s fetid hell. Li Qingzhao’s poems. The dull white shine of Jinling’s forearm, her graceful ivory hands. The wedding shoes… at the thought of the shoes, a sense of loss shoots through her like a physical pain. Like the rest of her belongings, they’re still at the Hall. Godmother won’t send her belongings until she’s paid.

  ‘I’m not saying that beauty has no place,’ Zanhua goes on. ‘Merely that it can be… abused. This whole idea of lily feet, for instance. A perfect example of a misguided, even
evil misuse of beauty.’

  ‘Some might say it’s less a way of men controlling women than of women controlling men,’ Yuliang counters. ‘There are girls I know who have received everything they ever need from a man. Just by taking their shoes off.’

  The two matrons at the next table are looking over in disapproval; one simply doesn’t discuss such things with men. Yuliang flicks her eyes at them. ‘Either way, we have no say. My mother bound my feet when I was seven, as her mother did to her. It was simply something that was done.’ Not looking at him, she adds, ‘Aren’t your wife’s feet bound, too?’

  For a moment she can hardly believe that she has said it. When she looks up, though, he has a strange look on his face. ‘Forgive me,’ she says softly. ‘I just – I can’t help but wonder these things. I have no idea what she looks like.’

  For once, he doesn’t deny her the apology. He takes a long drink, looks down at his hands. ‘Yes, they’re bound. Supposedly, they’re the perfect length. But this is one of the things that’s wrong. You see, she too said she had no say. Even when I told her there were methods…’ He sighs. ‘And remember, it wasn’t your feet that drew us together.’

  ‘It was my beautiful face.’

  She says it mockingly. He responds with a vehemence that almost startles her. ‘It was you. Your words. Your mind. Until you used them, you were just another pretty girl to me. When you debated poetry with me, I saw more.’ He holds her gaze a moment. Despite herself, Yuliang blushes.

  ‘I’ve been to Anti-Binding League meetings in Shanghai,’ he goes on. ‘I have pamphlets on it somewhere. I can help you to unbind them.’ He leans across the table. ‘You will still be beautiful,’ he says softly. ‘To me, you’ll be more beautiful. You’ll be free. Free from the oppression of men.’

  ‘Free from you, you mean? Will you leave me afterward?’

  Again, she means it as a joke. But the look he gives her this time is so hurt she actually catches her breath. ‘Everyone leaves,’ she says in a small voice. ‘They lie. Then they leave.’

  For a moment neither speaks. Then his hand is on hers. ‘You must understand something. I’m not like everyone else. I said I’d take care of you. I meant it forever.’ He squeezes her knuckles, so tightly they hurt. ‘I’ll never lie to you, Yuliang,’ he says. ‘I’ll never leave you.’

  To her shock, she sees that his eyes have filled with tears. Apart from the maudlin outbursts of Hall clients who’ve overdrunk or overspent, it is the first time she’s really seen a man cry.

  ‘Say you believe me,’ he says. ‘It’s essential that you believe me.’

  It takes a long time to make her mouth shape the word. When she finally does, it comes out in barely a whisper – less a statement than a sighed prayer: ‘Yes.’

  She should say far more, she knows. Thank you. You have saved me. Still, the look he gives her is one of such vast warmth and relief that Yuliang feels it right down to her littlest broken toe.

  Two days later, after Zanhua has left for the day, Yuliang retreats to his office to study. As usual, he’s left a page of characters on his desk for her to copy out and learn. On top of the page, though, is something else – a formal photograph in grainy black-and-white. The sort matchmakers give to potential grooms.

  Her heart pounding, Yuliang picks up the framed image. The girl in it sits in a lacquer-painted chair. She looks young, no more than fourteen. Her hair is crowned with flowers and pulled back from her slim face. Her eyes are large and strikingly clear, her ears delicate and finely shaped, dripping with jade. She wears a silk jacket with wide matching trousers hiked just high enough to display a perfect set of golden lilies. The feet, bedecked in ornate embroidered slippers with wooden heels, would be dwarfed in an average-sized male hand.

  The girl’s features, while winsome, seem stiff as a doll’s. Nothing hints at what makes them move, to smile or cry. She is simply a product on display at market, like scores of others in a matchmaker’s book. The only thing setting her apart, Yuliang realizes, is that Zanhua’s parents happened to pick her out.

  Her eyes drift to Zanhua’s list. Bind (), he’s written. Cord (). Oppression (). Yuliang traces each with her finger first, absently setting stroke order in her head. Finally, faintly chilled, she pushes the frame to the farthest corner of the desk. She turns it over. Then she picks up her pen, and begins to work.

  15

  Later that week Zanhua wakes up and suggests a trip to some gardens a little west of the city.

  ‘Don’t you have to go to work?’ Yuliang asks him, peeling herself from his arms (where, she realizes with mild shock, she has actually slept. All night).

  ‘They can do without me for one day,’ Zanhua says, stroking her hip. ‘Besides, it’s time I took a holiday.’

  Yuliang looks at him in surprise. It’s no exaggeration to say that Pan Zanhua is the hardest worker she’s ever met. He leaves early each morning to oversee his clerks, arrives home late most nights, drawn and tired. Still, after dinner he works again from his office, in his scholar’s robes, reading dispatches and reviewing forms until midnight. In the weeks she has been here he has not taken a full day off yet, and as he pulls her toward him, this thought gives Yuliang some pause. A question hovers lightly as he brings his lips to her neck. A moment later, however, it is gone, fluttering back into the recesses of her mind as his lips flutter against her arched neck.

  The park is thinly populated when they reach it; as they wander down the dirt paths, they pass children on outings, university students, visitors from various other parts of the country. There are foreigners as well: a khaki-suited man and his wife, a black-robed Jesuit sketching by a pond. As they pass him, Yuliang looks over his shoulder to see a delicate scene depicted in black charcoal. The big man has deftly captured the gentle bend of the willows, the pale bursts blossom against black waters below.

  Zanhua, noting her interest, slows down as well. When the priest glances up, his eyes are as pale as the first chill wash of morning. ‘Bonjour, mon père,’ Zanhua says, practicing the French he learned from a Russian tutor in Tokyo.

  ‘I didn’t know they drew flowers,’ Yuliang murmurs, as they continue along the pathway. ‘I thought they only drew pictures of their god’s son. And their virgin.’

  ‘They draw and paint many things. They were the first to bring Western art to China. Have you heard of Lang Shining?’ Yuliang shakes her head. ‘His real name was Giuseppe Castiglione. He came from Italy – a priest, like that one back there. Only earlier, about three hundred years ago. He lived in the Forbidden Palace, where he studied guohua.’ He checks his watch, for the third time that morning.

  ‘Are we meeting someone?’ Yuliang asks, puzzled.

  He shakes his head. ‘Just habit. I’m not used to taking holidays.’

  Neither am I, she almost says, but doesn’t. Instead she says, ‘He painted like a Chinese, this Casti – Casti – this Italian?’

  ‘He endowed Chinese art with Western elements. You’ve heard the saying “Chinese spirit, Western technology”?’ She nods. ‘He was among the first to apply the idea to art. He understood, you see, that the traditional ways don’t have to resist newer ones. That the one might well complement the other, like yin and yang. They don’t have to be in opposition.’ He indicates the receding priest. ‘The Jesuits also set up a Western-style art school for boys in Shanghai. It’s called – what was it? Siccawei, I think.’ He strokes his cheek thoughtfully. ‘My friends in Shanghai say another’s been started in the French Concession. Some young fellow who used to paint backgrounds for photo studios – I can’t recall his name. But apparently he’s set off a furor by bringing in naked girls.’

  ‘To the school?’ she asks, shocked.

  He smiles wryly. ‘Just so the boys there can draw them.’

  Yuliang glances at him. ‘So this school takes only boys?’

  ‘I believe so.’ He quirks an eyebrow. ‘Why? Are you thinking of enrolling?’

  For some reason she blushes. ‘Oh
, no. Of course not.’ And yet there’s a small thrill at the thought: a school to study art! It seems almost revolutionary, like the goals of Zanhua’s beloved Dr. Sun, which he’s had her practice writing until she knows them by heart. One: Expel the Manchus. Two: China to the Chinese. Three: Establish a republic. Four: Equalize landownership. Yuliang tries to imagine what such a place might be like. But her only schooling has been with her uncle. And after that, at the Hall.

  ‘Speaking of studies,’ Zanhua is saying, ‘I’d like to add some political tracts to our reading. Have you heard of the periodical New Youth? It promotes developments in science, democracy. It was started by a good friend of mine, Chen Duxiu. He’s in Japan now. But we fought together for the republic… Little Yu, where are you going?’

  ‘What?’ Yuliang pauses. Unwittingly, she’s turned back toward the priest.

  ‘Are you tired?’ he is asking. ‘We can go back.’

  ‘I’m fine.’ She resumes walking, but not before giving the artist one last glance. His sketchpad is no more than a tiny white rectangle now, and his robe a black blur against sun-silvered water.

  For two days Zanhua leaves for work each morning and returns at supper as usual. He reads the news to her and writes out relevant terms for her to copy (Capitalist: . Hegemony: . Freedom: ). When Yuliang finally gathers courage, on the third morning, to stammer her question to him, he cuts her off with a curt ‘Yes.’ Both his expression and his tone tell her this is as far as he’ll engage with the subject. And so she goes through the next day in a state of suspended relief. She is aware of her freedom (). But she is not convinced. And it’s not until evening that she understands, at last, how he did it.

  On the way to the courtyard to study in her favorite light of the day (the cotton-soft luminescence of early evening), Yuliang stops short in the front hallway. Tucking her copybook beneath her arm, she runs her fingers over the wall, and her entire being thrums in disbelief.

  The wall is bare. There is no sign at all that the Shi Tao ever hung there.