The Painter of Shanghai

by Jennifer Cody Epstein

  Still, at the first six houses she learns nothing new, apart from confirming that the Hall of Heavenly Gates hasn’t existed for many decades. Her questions are met with universal headshakes and shrugs, except when one bitter-looking madam answers her fabrication with her own malicious lie (‘She was here, yes. But she died of Guangzhou sickness. Very sad!’).

  It’s well past noon – and well into the formal start of the day at most brothels – when Yuliang reaches the third-to-last establishment on the Lane of Lingering Happiness. A tiny, tumbledown house, it declares itself the Palace of Shining Opulence despite several broken shutters and a balcony that sags. So ramshackle is its appearance, in fact, that Yuliang almost passes it by. But the servant Yuliang calls to returns her greeting willingly enough.

  ‘I’m sorry, auntie,’ Yuliang says, picking her way over crumpled, yellowing call-cards and cigarettes. The courtyard looks ancient, as if no one has been through in weeks. Upon closer inspection, the servant proves older as well: her hair is ink-black, but her face is deeply carved with wrinkles. Her complexion is a strange and almost opalescent white, the legacy of years of skin-stripping whitening treatments. But she listens as Yuliang rattles off her story one last time. ‘Beautiful Moon,’ she says, thoughtfully scratching her scalp. ‘I know that name. Let me think. She was a young one, wasn’t she?’

  Yuliang’s heart leaps. ‘Yes,’ she says, trying to calculate how old Jinling must have been when she left Shanghai. At the Hall, of course, she was always sixteen. But Suyin, who always knew these things, claimed that she was twenty-four the year Yuliang arrived.

  ‘I might have known her,’ the woman is musing. ‘I might have. But it takes something to jolt an old memory like mine.’ She stares pointedly at Yuliang’s little silver purse.

  Yuliang hesitates. If she succumbs to bribery, she’ll have to walk home – something still not easy on her healing feet. Moreover, this woman and her shambling ‘palace’ unsettle her. Yuliang wavers a moment, fingering her purse’s snap. The woman shuffles her tiny feet. ‘Well, missy?’ she croaks.

  Yuliang snaps her purse open and extracts her coins. She hands them to the woman, who holds each to the light before tucking it into her pocket. ‘Crooked teeth. Big lanternlike eyes,’ she says cheerfully. ‘Feet not quite right – a shade too wide. In my day they called them “silk with linen sides.”’ She eyes Yuliang’s feet sternly. But her disapproval is lost in Yuliang’s burst of excitement: she has just described Jinling’s feet to perfection.

  ‘And something on her leg,’ she goes on. ‘A black mark. This big, wasn’t it?’ She holds up her hand, forefinger and thumb making a crabbed circle approximately the size of Jinling’s mole. ‘Like a big black eye, guarding the jade gates.’

  ‘Yes,’ Yuliang whispers, blinking back the tears that suddenly smart against her eyelids.

  ‘We called her Little Black Moon for that circle,’ the woman says, nodding. ‘How she hated it.’

  ‘The name?’

  ‘The mark.’

  Yuliang frowns. Jinling had always said her mole was lucky. ‘Oh, yes.’ The woman chuckles. ‘The girls were always catching her stealing tooth powder and skin whit-eners. She wanted to bleach it away.’

  The idea of Jinling stealing anything is as beyond Yuliang as the idea of her working in this grimy place at all. Still, the woman’s description connects with something. She steps closer, ignoring the sharp whiff of rotting teeth. ‘Please, auntie,’ she says. ‘Are there photographs of her here? Pictures? Did anyone paint her portrait?’

  The woman peers at Yuliang for a moment, as though gauging whether she is serious. Then she laughs, a coughlike fit that weakens her enough to lean against her broomstick. ‘Photographs!’ she says at last. ‘Who under heaven would want to photograph her! Even if I allowed them here. And mind you, I don’t. Those foreign-devil fire boxes snatch the soul straight from your body.’ She taps Yuliang on the sternum, as though reprimanding her for a bad joke. ‘But even if I did, why spend the money? She was barely a slave girl here. She’s half river-dweller, you know. Sometimes a gentleman would take her if the others weren’t available. But I’ll guarantee you, none would think to photograph her.’

  ‘You must be mistaken,’ Yuliang says when she finds her voice again. ‘Jinling – I mean, Yuhai was top girl. She was the most requested of all the flowers in Wuhu. She had dozens of dresses and jewels. She was wooed by a prince. The Crystal followed her every move.’

  ‘Wuhu?’ The woman scratches her head again. ‘Is that where she went? I always wondered. Didn’t bother tracking her down, though. Wasn’t worth it.’ She turns back to her sweeping. ‘I suppose that makes sense. Wuhu. Yes, that would.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why, she was with child when she left here,’ the old woman says, as though this were common knowledge. ‘Obviously Cook couldn’t keep her in the kitchen. And the girls all thought she’d done it on purpose, to try to steal herself a husband.’ She squints, as though trying to see the memory more clearly. ‘Xiumei was the angriest. Her best customer was a Wuhu merchant. She told Black Moon to stay away – even whipped her once, if I recall. But she always said that Black Moon made eyes at him. I never believed it myself. But perhaps I was wrong. She probably stole those dresses you talk of too.’ She sighs. ‘Poor Xiumei.’ She surveys the little courtyard again before lifting her eyes to the balcony. ‘You haven’t told me what you think of our banner,’ she adds reprovingly.

  Yuliang follows her gaze to a tattered yellow triangle hanging limply from the second story. Barely discernible on it is the five-toed blue dragon of the Qing Empire. ‘Dug it up from the pantry yesterday,’ the old woman says proudly. ‘As soon as I heard the good news. I always said this New Republic nonsense wouldn’t last. Maybe now they’ll stop these wretched inspections.’ Leaning her broom against a tree, she nods to Yuliang. ‘Well, they’ll sleep all day if I don’t wake them.’

  As she turns away, Yuliang steps after her quickly. ‘Wait! Can – can I speak to Xiumei? Or the cook?’

  The woman keeps hobbling, shaking her head. ‘Cook’s dumb as a log. The societies cut out his tongue a few years back. And Xiumei…’ She shakes her head again. ‘She died two years ago. Went out one night, turned up the next morning, her throat cut neat as you like. They’re careless with themselves, these girls. Not like we were.’

  She shrugs dispassionately. A moment later Yuliang hears her, voice dry as bark, threatening her sleepy flowers to their feet.

  It’s several moments more before Yuliang can pry her feet from the ground. Slowly, painfully, she forces them to walk.

  With child. A river-dweller. Barely a slave girl. She’s always known that Jinling embellished things. But was everything she’d said – to Yuliang, her acolyte, her sister of the soul – was every single thing she said untrue?

  ‘Hai!’ someone behind her grumbles, practically right in her ear. ‘Are you a horse, that you sleep standing up?’

  Looking down, Yuliang sees that she’s stepped into the gutter. But she doesn’t step out of it. Staring down at the mud, she pictures Jinling at her elegant toilette. She sees her tasting her pearl paste and grimacing: More sugar, Yuliang! She feels Jinling taking her hand after a particularly rough night: Listen, Yuliang. I want to tell you something I learned in Shanghai. Listen, Yuliang. You’re different from them – from all of them. You’re like me. You were not meant for this place… Was she lying then as well? And where did she get it all – her finery, her fancy stories? Were they stolen, as the old woman had said? Well, why wouldn’t they be? After all, the top girl clearly had stolen her own past. And in the end she robbed Yuliang too, of the one beautiful truth she’d had in that harsh world. And of the chance to comfort someone who surely needed comforting, too. She could have told me, Yuliang thinks. She could have cried to me about her losses, her wounds…. her child…

  People keep pushing past her. ‘Are you all right, miss?’ someone asks. Yuliang doesn’t answer. Nausea sweeps her, a b
ile-green flood.

  They lie. And then they leave.

  And then she is retching into the gutter, watching helplessly as everything within her joins the flowing refuse of the Lane of Lingering Happiness.

  21

  Puyi’s second reign lasts less than two full weeks, until another warlord ingloriously pulls him from his throne. Across China’s northern borders another monarchy has been toppled too; Yuliang now puzzles over character combinations barely older than the developments in Russia (Bolshevik, Kremlin). She is walking slowly home one day, Shenbao in hand, when she’s stopped by a sudden strain of foreign music. It is nothing like the reedy warblings from the neighbor’s Victrola; these are sweeping orchestrations, a sobbing soprano. Almost unconsciously, she follows the sounds to their origin, a nearby open window.

  The room inside is almost unfathomably messy. Chairs and table are littered with scraps of paper and paint-stained rags. Jars of murky liquid and brushes abound. Canvases lean haphazardly against every vertical surface, dazzling her after the day’s grayness: jewel-toned oils, swirling fruits. Impossibly vivid stars and flowers. Less images than riotous dreams in paint. Yuliang is so absorbed by them that at first she barely notices the two men in the back of the room. It’s only after she blinks a few more times that she sees it’s not two men at all, but one. He is studying himself in an enormous mirror.

  Humming along with the music, the man draws a huge black cross on a small sheet of paper clipped to his easel. He deftly sketches a small figure in each of the four resulting squares, adding shade and depth with quick, skilled strokes. In an astonishingly brief time he’s created four figures, each a perfect rendition of himself.

  The whole process takes perhaps five minutes. But it’s the most timeless five minutes Yuliang has ever experienced. Watching this man re-create himself – out of nothing, out of coal – she has no sense of the impropriety of the situation. There is, rather, a strange and giddy emotion that’s part recognition, part elation.

  She leans further into the window frame. She doesn’t want to miss a single stroke.

  The man squeezes a dollop of paint onto a wooden tray, which he lifts expertly in his left hand. He works the paint with a flat knife. Then, touching brush to palette, he quickly begins to create. To Yuliang’s faint disappointment, he uses not the brilliant spectrum of his other paintings but a muted brown. Still, she follows breathlessly, concentrating so hard that after a while her eyes actually begin to ache, and she pauses reluctantly to rub them.

  When she looks up again, the man is gazing at her in his mirror. ‘You must be tired by now,’ he says. And, when Yuliang jumps back, ‘Oh, please. Don’t scurry off again.’

  Again?

  It is only as he swivels his stool around to face her that it all falls into place: she has seen him before. He was teaching the tall New Youth illustrator she’s just met, Xing Xudun, and all those other students that day on the Bund. Yuliang flushes as red as a cherry.

  ‘I believe I owe you an apology,’ the man says. ‘I’m afraid my boys can get unruly.’

  ‘No,’ Yuliang stammers, ‘I’m the one who is sorry. I really didn’t mean to stare. That day. I mean – now.’

  Mortified, she stops. The soprano’s voice soars. He waves. ‘Verdi. Lovely, isn’t it? I find it very conducive to concentrating. In part, I’m afraid, because my Italian is so poor. I don’t get distracted by the lyrics.’ He looks at his wristwatch. ‘But it’s been nearly an hour. Your legs must be tired. Why don’t you come in for a break?’

  An hour? She had no idea so much time has passed. ‘Oh, no,’ she says. ‘I couldn’t… I really should be on my way home.’

  He indicates his painting. ‘Well, at least give me your opinion.’

  At first she’s unsure she’s heard correctly. ‘My opinion?’

  ‘I hope no one would study any work that closely, let alone mine, without forming some thought or idea.’ He taps his fingers together, waiting, his expression faintly amused. As though they are old friends. As though he’s honestly interested.

  ‘I think,’ she says carefully, finally, ‘it’s the best Western-style painting I’ve ever seen up close.’ Which is true: before today, she’s never seen one up close. ‘Except…’ Yuliang bites her lip. She’s uncertain how to proceed without seeming unspeakably disrespectful.

  ‘Perhaps,’ he prods, ‘you question the perspective. Did you like one of the other studies more?’

  ‘No,’ she says, with an ease that surprises her. ‘That one was the most natural. There’s less empty space in the background.’

  He removes his spectacles, polishing them with his spattered apron. ‘And this, you believe, is a good thing.’

  Yuliang nods. ‘If there’s too much space, then the eye gets confused. The viewer doesn’t know where to look.’

  ‘Ah. A fellow artist.’

  Yuliang blushes. ‘I scribble. I’m not any good yet.’

  ‘Few of us are qualified to assess our own skills,’ he says sternly, redonning his glasses. ‘But I apologize – you still haven’t told me what your question was.’

  ‘I just wonder why you use that color. Why do the whole painting in brown? Surely it would be more realistic to paint the picture in something other than… than mud?’

  Immediately she wants to clap the word back into her mouth. But the man just nods. ‘Excellent question. You haven’t had much exposure to oil work. Am I right?’ Yuliang shakes her head. ‘There’s no shame in that, of course,’ he continues. ‘Very few have yet. At least, not here. The thing is, oil painting works quite differently from water-based painting. Rather than leaving the canvas or paper blank, one covers every inch of it with paint. Some of us like to block out the shapes and shades beforehand.’

  He holds up the paint tube he used. ‘A neutral tone is best. Like this one. Which is not mud, but’ – he squints at the tube’s tiny label – ‘burnt sienna. After Sienna.’ He pauses, staring ruminatively at the ceiling as the music swells in the background. ‘Sienna. Lovely city. Have you been?’ Yuliang shakes her head, faintly flattered he’d assume she’d even know where Sienna was (which, in fact, she does not). ‘This underpainting serves two purposes,’ he continues. ‘First as a buffer. Then as a blueprint. Not only does paint take to paint better than to linen or pasteboard – we all express ourselves most naturally with our own kind, don’t we? – but it gives one a map. The truth, miss, is that paintings are a bit like dogs. Give them too long a leash and they end up walking you.’ He grins. ‘That’s good, isn’t it? I must remember it for my next lecture.’ He jots something on the corner of one of his sketches. ‘But it’s rude of me to babble on about myself and my dreary work. I still don’t know about you. Apart, that is, from your apparent interest in plein air art outings.’

  Yuliang flushes again. ‘I’m afraid I acted unforgivably that day. I – I wasn’t feeling very well…’

  His eyes twinkle. ‘I might forgive you if you tell me your name.’

  ‘I am Pan Yuliang. A wife of Pan Zanhua. I live just around the corner.’

  He bows slightly. ‘And I am Hong Ye, a painter of little or no consequence in this huge city.’ He smiles broadly, and though there’s nothing insinuating at all in the expression, the situation’s impropriety rushes back to her. And yet his gaze, as he sits down again, remains so matter-of-fact and friendly that Yuliang can’t help but return it. This, she suddenly senses, is a man who wouldn’t blink at the fact that she recently spent an hour simply staring at the Japanese maple in her courtyard. Or that she sometimes spends her allowance on expensive magazines from the French Concession, simply to copy the doe-eyed models on to her sketchpad.

  Yuliang hasn’t told these things to anyone – not even Zanhua. For all his encouragement of her drawing, she’s still afraid he’d think it odd. A waste of her time. But this man, this complete stranger: he would understand.

  What was it he’d said? We all express ourselves most naturally with our own kind.

  She
touches a hand to her cheek. ‘I – I should go now.’

  Teacher Hong eyes her mildly. ‘It was a pleasure. Please feel free to come again.’

  ‘Oh no, I shouldn’t impose,’ she says, though what she’s thinking is: When? She wants to shout it over the soaring music. When can I come back?

  Instead, of course, she bows politely, murmuring, ‘Thank you so much for your kindness,’ before hurrying off toward her street. Leaving Verdi, whoever she is, to sing sadly in her wake.

  Two weeks later Ahying appears in the study, drying her chapped hands on her pants. ‘Madame, a gentleman has come to see you.’

  Yuliang looks up from her sketchbook, surprised: apart from the occasional jewelry or fabric vendor, the only ‘gentleman’ who visits her is Qihua. But he checked in on her just two days ago. ‘Who is it?’

  Ahying shakes her head. ‘An older gentleman. With a funny hat.’

  Yuliang frowns.

  ‘Like a blackened pancake, sitting on his head,’ the girl adds helpfully. ‘Shall I show him in?’

  Yuliang hesitates, then puts her charcoal down. For all she knows, it might be one of Qihua’s friends. Or a courier from the Shanghai Customs Office – they were the ones who arrived with word that Zanhua’s last visit was postponed. ‘I’ll meet him in the courtyard. Please offer him some tea.’

  A few moments later, apron off, she steps into the courtyard – and freezes. Her guest, who sits with his legs crossed on the courtyard’s one small stone bench, sipping tea, is none other than Teacher Hong.

  The artist wears baggy trousers such as construction workers wear, although they’re spattered with paint instead of dust. These he’s paired with a blue work shirt like the ones Yuliang has seen on French foreign nationals. On his head, looking as though it might slide off at any moment, is the black beret he’d worn on the Bund.