The Painter of Shanghai

by Jennifer Cody Epstein

  She opens her own eyes. ‘How?’

  ‘Everything I’ve ever wanted in a marriage, I’ve found with you. No – more. I can talk with you openly, without fear or pretense. I am more myself with you than I’ve ever been with a woman. At times I believe that you are like me in that. That we’re the same. But then…’

  Yuliang finds herself holding her breath. At last he continues. ‘You remember the city I told you of, in Italy? The one covered by the volcano centuries ago? Sometimes – tonight, for instance – you feel less like my wife than one of the bodies they’ve found. I feel as if I must chisel through layers of rock to reach you.’

  Yuliang bites her lower lip. She remembers talking about this city, seeing pictures of the bodies that had been uncovered. The faceless forms of women and children who’d been caught by death, only to be redelivered into the world centuries later – as contorted white ghosts. She’d been both repelled and intrigued by how these sad sculptures had been created: the scientists had drilled through the hardened rock, filled the hole with plaster of Paris. The casts worked because the bodies themselves had long been vaporized by heat and time: they existed only because of that wrenching, tragic emptiness.

  ‘Are you saying I’m empty?’ she asks now, softly. She is surprised at just how much the thought hurts her.

  ‘Not empty. Just… distant. Sealed off from me sometimes. And when I feel this, I feel unspeakably lonely.’

  For an instant she can’t respond; she is too overcome by guilt. For how could she let him feel this, after all he’s done? ‘I’m not sealed off. Not from you, at least. You know me better than anyone.’ Yuliang curls herself around his stiff form. Putting her lips close to his ear, she adds, almost without thinking about it, ‘And I don’t have to be empty.’

  He looks at her. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘We could have a child. A son. For you.’

  She doesn’t know why she says it – she certainly hasn’t been thinking of childbearing. In fact, unbeknown to him, she’s continued the few preventative practices she can manage outside the Hall. She doesn’t dare ask Ahying to find her tadpoles. But she still uses coins tucked into secret places, and furtive, heavily salted douchings. She marks the bated-breath wait for blood every month. Not as good wives do, in hope, but in anxiety.

  And yet at this moment, seeing his misery, having him all but hand her his heart, Yuliang vows she will be better. She reminds herself again that he deserves it: if not the dozen sons that the old blessing prescribes, at least one. Just one. She knows it is something he wants. And if in her own mind a spark of doubt flickers (What about what I want?), she quickly suppresses it, kissing his nose, his chin, his ear. Reveling in the strange sensation of, for once, giving him something of value too.

  20

  A year after Yuan Shikai dies (from heartbreak, some say, over the collapse of his imperial dreams), a northern warlord charges into the Forbidden Palace and reinstates Puyi, the boy emperor, on the throne.

  The news sends shock waves through Shanghai: special editions materialize on every newsstand, in Chinese, French, Russian, German, English, Yiddish. Students take to the streets with mixed déjà vu and disgust. On Ocean Street, the neighborhood grandmothers smoke their pipes and debate the new monarchy, while the New Youth staff scrambles a crisis issue to press. Setting out on her daily walk one day, Yuliang almost bumps into a tall young man bustling past with a carton of cartoon-embossed leaflets, several of which slide off the top as he stops short. Looking up, she recognizes the boy she’d watched at the academy’s sketching outing to the Bund.

  Yuliang blanches. But the boy just smiles at her. ‘Excuse me,’ he says, and steps back.

  Yuliang kneels to gather the dropped leaflets, hoping desperately he hasn’t identified her. But as she stands to hand them back, his large eyes light up. ‘Say,’ he says, in his deep, sleepy voice. ‘You’re that girl from the Bund – I thought I’d seen you before.’

  ‘I…’ On top of being one of the few that has ever seen her hawk like a fisherwoman at the market, he has to be the tallest man she’s ever met. Looking up at him requires her to tilt her head back, almost uncomfortably.

  ‘I must apologize for that day,’ she begins.

  ‘No. I should apologize,’ he interrupts. ‘My friend was unpardonably rude. I’m afraid he doesn’t see many pretty girls at the academy.’

  Not according to the papers, she thinks, recalling the latest anti-nude essay to appear in the Shenbao’s editorials. But what she says is, ‘Don’t you go to the academy?’

  ‘I did. And I still tag along for the plein air sessions sometimes. But I’ve decided to put my efforts into more important causes.’

  ‘What’s more important than art?’

  The question comes out unprompted. Yuliang drops her eyes in embarrassment. The boy’s heavy brows lift in surprise. Then he gives another grin. ‘That’s a very good question,’ he says. ‘Here’s another I’ve been thinking about: what, in the end, is art?’

  Yuliang stares back for a moment. Then, despite herself, she laughs.

  A call comes from the New Youth office: ‘Hey, Lao Xing! Are you here to work or to impress girls?’

  ‘Your friends here aren’t much more polite than those at the academy,’ she notes.

  ‘I suppose not. But manners don’t get you far in politics. Yesterday’s news more than proves that, doesn’t it?’ Still smiling, he turns away. Then he turns back again. ‘Wait. I still don’t know your name.’

  ‘Yuliang,’ says Yuliang. For some reason she hesitates before adding, ‘Pan Yuliang. My – my husband knows your editor well, I think.’

  She sees the information register in his dark eyes. ‘Master Chen,’ he says. ‘Yes. He’s in Tokyo at the moment.’ He grins again – that big, open grin. ‘Anyway, I’m Xing Xudun. It was nice to run into you again. I’ll hope to see you again, Pan Yuliang.’

  As he hurries to the doorway Yuliang realizes, too late, that she’s still holding the leaflets she’s picked up. She takes a step forward, then stops and studies them, surprised. One, a caricature of a toddler in split pants staggering under a hefty crown, she has never seen before. But the other she recognizes instantly. It’s the New Youth cover from a little over a year ago. The one showing two hands clasped across a globe.

  And for the first time, she also knows how to read the tiny artist’s chop beneath the black-and-white world: Xing Xudun.

  Over the next few weeks Yuliang throws herself into her sketches as never before, rising sometimes as early as five or six to work in morning’s first light. She ponders breakfast peaches, with their velvet skin and dripping flesh. She lingers over fish with glassy eyes and paper-thin scales. She spends hours on a durian, its porcupine silhouette, and no easier to draw than to eat with its stink and spines. Her interest fired by the debate over models, she even tries her hand again at a real person, choosing as her subject the one female body she’s sure she still knows by heart: Jinling’s.

  Sequestering herself in her little room one morning a little after sunrise, Yuliang draws, her tongue clamped hard between her lips. She summons her late friend and mentor, not bloated and bruised and wrapped in sackcloth, but as she’d looked at the very start of a big evening: hair sleek and bound with pearls. Eyes and lips deftly defined. The eyes, Yuliang thinks, go… there. No, no, lower. There. There. She draws the nose men so adored, its delicate nostrils slightly flared. A nose fortunetellers had said foretold a life of money and ease. Although (only now does Yuliang realize) no one said anything about its length.

  After working for an hour, she pauses and takes in her progress. The neck looks squat, the eyes beadlike, suspicious. She sweeps the page away and starts over. Head, hair, neck. Think willow, she wills herself. Fine, slim, straight. A dimpled hallow. A tiny lake at its base. Draw with your arm, not your fingers. She sketches two high breasts beneath a simple silk robe, hints at the tiny furrow that runs to the navel like a small river. The world outside gossips and bus
tles as always. But Yuliang hears nothing but the soft scritch of her pencil tip and, almost as often, the reproving rub of her eraser.

  And then suddenly, it’s ten o’clock.

  Exhausted, she sits back, her spine and her eyes aching. She surveys. And once more whatever small hope she’s been harboring withers. She has drawn a girl, certainly. Even a pretty girl. The hair’s the right length and style, the eyes the right size. The body is slim and graceful. Yuliang has captured one lily foot, fetchingly short and pointed but just a shade too wide on the sides. Despite all this, though, it isn’t Jinling. The girl she’s drawn is a complete stranger.

  Dispirited, Yuliang rips the picture from her sketch book and crumples it into a ball. She slumps back in her chair, sketchpad in her lap and eyes fixed numbly on the previous page. It’s a sketch she did last week, the day after she met Xing Xudun. For the first time she’d actually mastered her own hands. She did several versions: one holding a wineglass, another resting against Zanhua’s picture. In this last one, she clasps a silk chrysanthemum she’d bought on a whim from a street vendor. Yuliang studies it listlessly. Why is it, she wonders, that she can draw her own hands so well and yet fail to capture even Jinling’s littlest finger?

  She stretches her hands toward the morning light, flexes them, makes fists. The answer comes in a rush of clarity: she can draw her hands because she has her hands. She can draw them from life. That, of course, is why it’s called ‘life study.’ Whereas she has nothing of Jinling’s life but her wine cups.

  For just an instant Jinling’s light voice seems to circle the little room. In Shanghai, it was more than just beds and money. We danced, wrote poems. Even drew, if we could… Back in Shanghai… When I worked in Shanghai…

  Yuliang picks up the little ball and throws it in the dustbin. Then, barely letting herself contemplate what she is doing, she picks up her shawl and purse and goes out.

  Fouzhou Road begins, broad and tree-lined, on the Bund’s western side. Its first mile is lined with the looming Western-style buildings of commerce that give Shanghai its European patina. But that austere architecture is soon replaced by a more suggestive sort of structure, the clubs by teahouses, the banks by brothels with their red lanterns and elaborately carved exteriors.

  For those seeking more refined pleasures, there are used-book stores crowding the little cobbled alley. But there’s no mistaking the real trade here. Even now, in late morning, there are still girls in the street, although most are simply returning from their evenings out on call. They come from all provinces, and nearly every country as well – there are even ‘saltwater sisters’ catering to Shanghai’s shifting tides of foreign sailors. Taken together, though, the whores’ worn faces and weary walks strike a startling chord of familiarity – and revulsion. Listening to an exchange she herself has had a hundred times, Yuliang finds herself fighting back a wave of panic:

  ‘Good night, Ling Ma?’

  ‘Ah, not so good, not so good!’

  ‘Eat well, at least?’

  ‘Ha! No time for food with an old dog like him!’

  There’s an inexplicable fear that at any moment one of the women will spot her and, if not actually recognize her, see some unseen aura or subtle clue of what she was. Good night? they will ask her. How’s your tax man holding up? How much jewelry, how many dresses has he bought you?

  I can’t do it, she thinks as the faded flowers part ways. I don’t know why I’m here.

  And in truth the trip was less plan than impulse, a wild, sudden hope that if she found Jinling’s first hall, she might also find some lingering remnant – a calendar portrait, a cameo cutout. A picture from some other lover’s locket. Now, though, the idea strikes her as foolish. For what on earth would be left to find? Everyone knows what happens after a flower dies or leaves: her belongings are sold, stolen, or burned. And while madams may call their workers ‘daughters,’ the term is legal, not sentimental. They’d certainly never hold on to a keepsake of a flower who’d fled.

  As with most tasks she sets for herself, though – and as with most boars – Yuliang can’t bring herself to simply give up. So when the runner stops the rickshaw in front of a row of green-painted shutters, she doesn’t say Take me home. Instead, she gives him the name of the flower house Jinling had said she got her start in: ‘Do you know the Hall of Heavenly Gates?’

  ‘Never heard of it,’ he says. ‘And I would have – I’ve connections with most houses here. I direct many a gentleman to their gates.’ He scans the street thoughtfully before nodding toward the biggest establishment in sight. ‘You might try there.’

  He says it respectfully, without a hint of suspicion or implication. As he gallops off, Yuliang stares after him a moment, slightly ashamed of her own lingering demons.

  The house he’d indicated has walls covered with climbing geraniums. A swinging sign pronounces it the Palace of Eternal Joy and Pleasure. Except for the Sikh guard in the doorway, it seems deserted. But as Yuliang approaches, she sees two women on the other side of the street hurrying toward the same building. One, burdened with parasol, purse, and some greasy-looking packages (banquet leftovers, Yuliang guesses) is clearly a servant. The other’s profession is easily identifiable by her uniform: a tight yellow dress, Western style, that reveals half her bosom through the white fur coiled limply around her shoulders. ‘For the love of heaven, Meimei,’ she calls, looking back at the maid, ‘hurry up, will you? I could die, I’m so tired!’

  Yuliang squares her shoulders. ‘Pardon my rudeness,’ she calls, quickly crossing the street. She has to call twice before the girl turns around.

  ‘Are you talking to me?’ The prostitute speaks with the coveted sibilance of a Souzhou native. But her eyes belie her voice’s softness.

  Yuliang swallows. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I must speak to you.’

  The girl signals her maid to stop. ‘Is this about your husband?’

  ‘What?’ Yuliang stops short.

  ‘Some advice for you, elder sister.’ The woman is already turning away. ‘You want him, work for him. Keep him happy and he’ll stop straying. But either way, leave me out of it.’

  She starts for the door again, maid scurrying behind. Yuliang stares after her blankly. For an instant she actually tries to picture Zanhua with this tart-mouthed beauty. Then she shakes herself. Of course the girl would assume that. As she’s already noted, Yuliang is obviously no whore. The clear alternative is that she’s an angry wife.

  ‘No,’ she says, more loudly than she intends. ‘I’m here because I’m looking for someone else. A girl.’

  ‘We don’t do that.’ The girl sniffs, unwinding her stole. ‘There’s only one place in Shanghai that does. Madame Lou’s, on Rue du Père Froc. You’ll never get past the guards, though. White devil women only.’

  ‘No, no, not like that,’ Yuliang says hastily, not even allowing herself to blink at this startling information. ‘A girl I knew. Know. I – my sister.’ She steps closer, fabricating as fast as she can and praying that she sounds compelling. ‘We were separated as children. Our father sold her here. Now he’s dead – drowned. In the river…’

  The girl heaves a bored sigh. Yuliang, sensing a gate closing, holds out both her hands. ‘Please. My – our mother is very sick. She must see her before she dies, to apologize. She sent me to find her. She said she’d been sold to the Hall of Heavenly Gates…’

  It sounds patently untrue, even to her own ears. But at the brothel’s name the girl looks up, her pink tongue touching her lips. To Yuliang’s amazement, she breaks into a peal of laughter. The maid, who has now caught up, joins in with a small titter until her mistress whirls on her fiercely. ‘Don’t laugh at the lady,’ she barks. ‘Have you no feelings? Her mother’s dying!’

  She turns back to Yuliang. ‘Hall of Heavenly Gates, you say? Unless your sister’s a ghost, it’s not possible.’ She wearily pulls out a hatpin. ‘There was once a place like that further down, near Nanlu Lane.’ Carelessly, she places her bonnet on th
e maid’s precarious pile. ‘But it fell into ruin long ago. While the empress dowager still reigned.’ Seeing Yuliang’s shoulders slump, she adds, not unkindly, ‘Tell me more. Where are you and your sister from?’

  ‘We were born in Hefei. Though I’ve heard rumors she left here for Wuhu.’

  ‘Wuhu!’ The girl wrinkles her nose, as though the mere name releases a provincial stink. ‘Why don’t you go there, then?’

  ‘I – I did. They told me she’d disappeared. I thought maybe she came back here…’ She breaks off again, certain that she sounds as foolish as she feels. When she looks up the Suzhou beauty is yawning so widely Yuliang can see straight through to the back of her throat. ‘Her name was Yuhai,’ she finishes quickly, fighting the urge to step back. ‘Zhou Yuhai.’ She can only hope that this is right. Jinling had several versions of her origins, and several family names that went with them.

  ‘Traits? Skills?’

  ‘She sang and danced and played pipa. She had lily feet, many dresses. In Wuhu she was famous for her jewelry.’

  The girl shrugs. ‘She didn’t work with us, anyway. Our men go for modern girls.’ She tosses the fur to her servant. ‘You could try one of the smaller residence houses down that way. A lot of the Anhui girls end up there.’ And in the same breath, neither changing her tone nor addressing anyone in particular, she adds, ‘I must go to bed this very instant.’

  And with that, she is gone. The maidservant follows once more. She hands the greasy leftovers to the guard as she slouches through the doorway. The latter grins, then slaps her backside in thanks.

  Yuliang spends the next two hours combing the smaller brothels and teahouses. Remembering that brothel life hides a soft and sisterly belly, she directs most of her questions to the girls: the younger maids, the little servants. She pleads with kitchen help, with ‘leaves’ hanging laundry in the back courtyards as she and Suyin once did. She reweaves her story until all its holes and gaps are covered, and it flows as smoothly as a sad ballad. Oddly, with each retelling the tale also feels more true, until by noon she almost feels it might just happen: if she finds the right person and strikes just the right note, she actually might find Jinling again. Here, whole. Singing out in her giggling voice, ‘Yu-liang! Where on earth have you been?’