‘Progress?’ Yuliang repeats blankly.
‘The academy’s founder, Liu Haisu, mentioned you last week. We ran into each other at a photography lecture at the French Consul.’
‘Liu Haisu?’
‘It’s not often they’re faced with a serious woman candidate.’
For an instant Yuliang can only gawk. She’d entirely forgotten that Qihua knew the artist, who used to paint photography sets. She turns giddily back to Zanhua. ‘He knows about me. Liu Haisu knows about me!’
‘No doubt the whole city knows about you,’ Zanhua says, with asperity. ‘You’re paying visits to a man who pays women to strip.’
Yuliang’s ears sting as though he’s boxed them. But she struggles to keep her tone even. ‘He’s been giving me lessons,’ she says. ‘Painting and drawing lessons. He thinks I can get in. As a student.’
‘I don’t suppose these lessons are chaperoned at all, are they?’
In fact, they are not. To Yuliang’s surprise, though, Qihua again comes to her rescue. ‘To be fair,’ he says, fishing a pack of 555s from his vest pocket, ‘anyone who knows Madame Hong couldn’t doubt that they’ve been appropriately supervised. I’ve dealt with her over her daughter’s engagement portrait. The woman is a tigress.’ He shudders theatrically, strikes a match. ‘And for what it’s worth, the academy is highly respected. Haisu told me they offer courses in anatomy, history, and even political painting.’
Zanhua is studying Yuliang’s sketches. On top is the little broken doll. For some reason Yuliang wishes it were something else – a bamboo forest. A picture-poem. ‘This Hong Ye,’ he says, still not looking up, ‘he really thinks you have talent.’
A tendril of hope – pearl green, vulnerable – unfurls. ‘More than almost anyone he has seen.’ She says it not in arrogance, but in desperation.
‘And one gets into the school – how?’
‘There’s – there’s an examination.’
‘And when is this examination?’
She swallows. ‘This afternoon,’ she whispers. ‘Between three and five o’clock.’
He stares at her, stunned.
‘Zanhua,’ she says. ‘I was going to tell you if I got in. I wasn’t trying to deceive you. Please –’
But it’s too late: with a single motion he crumples the doll sketch and throws it at the wall.
‘You had no right to do that,’ she cries. ‘That’s my work!’
‘That’s a lie!’ he shouts back, just as furious. ‘You have lied to me! After all your talk of honesty. Honesty!’ His laughter is cold, utterly without humor. The step he takes toward her is so quick she actually cowers. But he just kicks the paper ball viciously across the floor before turning and striding toward the door. At the threshold, though, he pauses and turns back. For just the barest of moments, his lips twist into a bitter smile. ‘And I thought,’ he says, ‘I was surprising you.’
He stalks into the frosted courtyard, his footsteps fading onto the street. Sobbing in frustration, Yuliang hurls her charcoal against the wall. It leaves a dot-dash, a black streak against whitewash. She makes no move to try to clean it off. Instead she kneels, picking up the little drawing and smoothing it against her knee.
Yuliang doesn’t weep. But her shoulders heave – his anger, sparked by nothing more than her own cowardice. For he’s right – her silence was as good as a falsehood. Why on earth didn’t she write to him? Is her distrust still so deep that she can’t share her real hopes with him, untainted by shame?
She stares down at the ruined sketch. The doll’s blank face is now as wrinkled as an old woman’s. Yuliang shreds it into small, smudged bits. She lets them slip between her fingers, like dirty snow.
‘Madame Pan.’ Behind her, Qihua’s voice is uncharacteristically stripped of sarcasm. Starting, Yuliang twists toward him. She’d forgotten he was here.
‘I’m very sorry,’ she murmurs, rising to her feet. ‘I’m behaving shamefully.’
‘To be honest, so is he.’ He hands her back her charcoal. Very gently, as though returning a toy to a child. ‘But I’ll talk to him. We artists should stand up for one another.’
Yuliang gazes at him in surprise: it is the first time he’s addressed her almost as an equal. ‘He’s in the right,’ she says dully. ‘I’m a poor excuse for a wife.’
‘You underestimate both yourself and your husband.’ Brushing off his hands, Meng Qihua walks unhurriedly to the doorway, pausing to light another cigarette. Looking back at her, he winks. Then, flicking his match into the darkening courtyard, he follows its arcing ember outside.
When Zanhua returns, it’s nearly midnight. Yuliang is hunched in her study, sketching flowers in sputtering gaslight. As he enters the room, the smell of maotai drifts in with him like an excuse.
But Zanhua doesn’t make any excuses. He moves toward her, his step unsteady, his eyes red with fatigue and drink. He sinks to the floor and hugs his bent legs to his chest, resting his head on his knees. He remains this way until Yuliang finally goes to him and kneels by him. Touching first his cheek, then his hair. Both are wet. ‘Is it raining?’ she asks.
‘Snowing.’
Surprised, she looks out the window, something that, in her absorption in her work, she hasn’t done for at least an hour. Sure enough, cold flakes tap against the glass. It’s not the heavy, gentle snow one expects here, fattened by ever-present moisture and falling with the grace and softness Shanghai itself lacks. This is a vengeful snow. It hurtles in harsh lines and slashes. Somehow, the sight of it disturbs her.
‘I didn’t mean to deceive you,’ she tells him. ‘I was so afraid you wouldn’t let me go.’
He lifts his head and stares at her for a moment. ‘I came home this afternoon half believing you’d be gone. And when you were, I feared it was for good.’
‘Why would you think that?’
‘You hadn’t answered my letters. Even the telegram I sent two weeks ago went unanswered.’
Yuliang drops her eyes guiltily: it’s true. In her frantic race toward today’s exam, she hasn’t written to him in over five weeks. The telegram – one line drawn from one of Li Qingzhao’s poems (Her possessions are here, but her essence is gone: everything has ceased) – she had placed beneath her pillow, then forgotten. I’m so selfish, she thinks – but less with shame than a dawning kind of wonder.
‘And then you did come back,’ he goes on. ‘But Qihua had already told me how you’d been spending your hours. Perhaps I reacted badly. But the thought of you with another man…’ His voice cracks. ‘I’m so afraid you’ll leave me.’
She just stares at him at first, stunned as always by this fear, so precisely the opposite of her own. Boar and rat, she finds herself thinking. Perfectly matched.
‘I’ll never leave you,’ she tells him. Turning, she picks up the sketch of the flowers. ‘Please look at this. There’s something I want to show you.’
He stands, lifting the picture to the dim light. ‘It’s good,’ he says simply.
‘It’s not that. Look at the left border. At the name.’
‘Pan Yuliang,’ he reads as Yuliang stands and steps behind him.
‘Do you remember,’ she murmurs, her lips right by his ear, ‘when you told me to sign my work?’
He nods, shutting his eyes.
‘I do now. And there you are. You are a part of every picture. Even the ones that take me away from you.’
Leaning into her, he traces their name with one, white finger. Then he sets the picture down and, pulling her into his arms, rests his lips on her hair. ‘Promise me one thing.’
‘What?’
‘Promise you’ll always come back.’
She parts her lips to answer, but her tongue seems frozen. Instead she drops her face onto his damp shirt. Apparently taking this as a nod, her husband doesn’t press her. Lifting her into his arms, he carries her through the doorway. Then up the stairs, and into the darkened bedroom.
23
The day the results are post
ed, Zanhua himself takes her to the academy.
On the drive over, Yuliang looks at her husband just twice. Throughout the holiday they’ve feasted, shopped. They’ve bought new clothes for the New Year, dined with friends, played their poetry drinking game (again she beat him). Lovemaking has been frequent, tender. Throughout it all, though, it’s felt as though some part of her has been tautly waiting. Now that the moment is here, her nerves feel as brittle as the ice that crunches beneath the horse’s clipped hooves.
As they pull up to the academy, Yuliang warily scans the swarm of youth there, chatting, blowing steam and tobacco into the chill. She sees three young men toss their caps in the air. A moment later they’re striding past, arms linked, singing a tune popularized by the cinema. ‘You’re certain you don’t want me to go look for you?’ Zanhua asks as the carriage slows to a stop.
‘No.’ It comes out starkly; chagrined, she takes his arm. ‘I’m sorry. I just – I think I should do this myself.’
‘Don’t apologize.’ He pats her elbow. ‘I felt the same way when I received Todai’s acceptance letter. I all but snatched it from my mother’s hand.’ Sadness shadows his face briefly, as it always does when he speaks of home. Then he brightens. ‘Anyway, I got this for you.’ Reaching into his pocket, he pulls out something tiny and green. Taking it in her hand, Yuliang sees that it’s a tiny boar carved out of jade. ‘Your sign,’ he says. ‘For good luck.’
She looks up. ‘But you don’t believe in luck.’
‘In times of crisis I do. As long as it’s good.’ He gives her hand a squeeze, then nods toward the waiting bulletin board. ‘Can I at least come with you?’
She removes his hand from her sleeve gently, shaking her head. Then, taking a deep breath, she steps down from her seat.
For a moment she’s back in Zhenjiang, approaching a crowd of fellow passengers on their way to Wuhu. What was it that Wu had said then? A good woman is not afraid of people… Yuliang sets her jaw. The crowd, seeming to sense her resolve, makes way for her. She soon finds herself at the board’s base, facing the list.
The names are posted in no clear order. Zhang Diwa, she reads. Wong Zhihou. In the rear someone curses: ‘Fucking sons of slave girls!’
‘Bad luck, brother,’ says someone else. And then: ‘Bull’s balls. I’m not here either.’
Yuliang reads on: Ho Shenwan. Li Renju. Each name that’s not hers is a small weight added to her chest. Yong Reji. Sen Lishang, she reads, without blinking.
And the last one: Yi Leishe.
Three more boys hoot in victory, ‘See you in September!’
I must have missed it, Yuliang thinks numbly, and pretends to read the list again.
‘Yuliang.’ Zanhua is standing behind her.
She turns to him. ‘It’s not here.’
‘It’s all right.’
‘It’s not here.’
‘A mistake,’ he says, taking her arm. ‘The principal himself wants you here.’
She shakes her head. ‘He lied.’ She starts pushing back toward the car. Thinking: Little idiot. Stupid whore. The truth is, Zanhua was right in the argument about her candidacy: the whole city must know of her. And who on earth would want a street chicken in their art school?
Blinking back tears, she glances at her husband.
But he has stopped again. ‘Wait, Yuliang. You dropped…’ He bends down, stands up. Holds out the little green boar.
Yuliang takes it back, though she’s tempted to throw it in the gutter. ‘Let’s go. Please.’
The crowd around the announcement board is now clearing, but still Zanhua stands there. And when he does finally start walking, it’s not toward the car. It’s in the other direction entirely – toward the school’s entrance.
‘Where are you going?’
‘To make inquiries.’ He strides toward the French doors. Several students look after him, bemused.
Yuliang blinks at them, at their smug, smooth faces, and then hurries after him. ‘We should just go home. We shouldn’t create a stir.’ And when he continues: ‘Zanhua. That’s why we left Wuhu, isn’t it? Not to cause a stir?’
He pauses. ‘No,’ he says. ‘We left Wuhu so that we – you – would be happy.’
And having made this astonishing statement, he turns back toward the doors. At that precise moment, though, they burst open from the inside.
Two men emerge, walking very rapidly. The first is in his sixties and wears a merchant’s robe. The other looks young enough to be one of the students, although he’s dressed far more elegantly than any of them. Yuliang forms a quick impression: a well-proportioned, amused-seeming face; a strong, square chin; sharp eyes beneath high, well-shaped eyebrows. His voice carries a calm confidence as he shouts after the merchant, who’s now heading for a Bentley parked across the street. ‘The point, Master Chu, is just that. Contrary to your assertions, our school is not a whorehouse. And yes, it would be a most shameful waste of time and money if your son were simply ogling naked women in public. But that is not what he or anyone else at my school is doing.’
The older man turns back, incredulous. ‘Then you’re as blind as you are impudent. In case you didn’t notice, that girl had no clothes on – none at all! And not only has he been staring at her openly for days at a time, but he’s been displaying his pictures of the little chicken to everyone! Including, may I inform you, his future mother-in-law!’ He signals to the waiting chauffeur to open the car’s passenger door. ‘Or perhaps I should say now his former future mother-in-law.’
He barks to the driver, who hops to the front to crank the engine. Hands cupped to mouth, the younger man shouts over the loud grinding: ‘Within our hallowed walls, the human form is sacred. Nudity is that form’s most natural, pure state. As an artist, your son has the task – no, I’ll say it, the duty – of studying it. As a scholar studies the Analects, the Doctrine of the Mean!’
The merchant pokes his face out the window. ‘Now you compare yourself to Confucius!’
‘There is nothing dishonorable in what I’m saying!’ Principal Liu retorts. ‘Western artists have been performing life studies for centuries! In fact, it’s not just artists but all people who should strive to appreciate the body. As Robert Henri said, “When we respect the nude, we will no longer have any shame about it.”’
‘At which point,’ the man barks back, ‘I’ll be leaving China. Along with every respectable person here.’ As the chauffeur guns the engine, he puts his head out of the window again. ‘I’ll send my steward to discuss the bill. Athough I’m not convinced, Master Liu, that either you or your school deserves a single dog-fuck yuan of my money.’
The Bentley leaps forward, nearly hitting an old woman who is passing. Cursing, she fumbles in her pockets and pulls out a small mirror. This she flashes at the retreating vehicle, presumably to deflect evil spirits.
Liu Haisu, for his part, drops his gaze to the ground. He fishes a cigar from his pocket and lights it. A few students hurry up to him with sketches to show, questions to ask. Most, however, have already turned away. Apparently the spectacle is nothing new to them.
Yuliang glances at Zanhua, fully expecting the scene to have weakened his resolve. But he just straightens his hat. ‘Master Liu!’ he calls. ‘A moment, if I may…’ And in a few short steps he’s joined the small crowd gathered around the artist.
Yuliang watches, stunned, as her husband and Principal Liu fall into conversation. Zanhua’s back is to her, his voice low. But she reads the surprise on Principal Liu’s face easily enough. ‘That’s very odd, Inspector Pan,’ she hears him say, and she is struck by how easily his quiet voice carries. ‘At our last meeting we agreed upon your wife’s acceptance.’ His eyes flick thoughtfully toward Yuliang. His gaze this time is long and leisurely, and not without male inflection. It certainly doesn’t leave Yuliang feeling ‘sacred’ or ‘pure.’ She makes herself look right back at him, holding his gaze.
Liu Haisu smiles slightly. Then, nodding to Zanhua, he walks slowly over
to where she’s standing. ‘Madame Pan. I’ve heard so much about you. I’m only sorry to meet under these’ – he flicks a glance at the board – ‘unfortunate circumstances.’
What she really wants to do is throw herself before him. Please, she wants to cry. Please take me. I’ll cause no scandals. I’ll work hard. I’ll… But even as she pictures doing this, she knows it isn’t the solution. She knows Principal Liu. Or at least has known men who are like him. He may revel in scandal, as everyone says. But a weeping woman at his feet would simply bore him.
Instead, on an impulse, Yuliang lifts her chin. ‘Unfortunate,’ she says, ‘for whom?’
Principal Liu blinks. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘Forgive me, but I can’t help thinking that my rejection is less unfortunate for me than for your school.’
Two young women students, overhearing her, stop in disbelief. One titters, elbowing the other.
Principal Liu, however, is looking at her with renewed interest. ‘You do,’ he says.
‘I know I’m being forward. But I was so encouraged by all I’d read and heard of you and your famous academy. And impressed by how in the past you’ve stood up to narrow minds – minds like those of the man who just left. You made it so clear that his mode of thinking is outdated, and that your goals are indeed noble. And modern.’
Yuliang can hardly believe herself as she goes on. And yet she stands firm: there is too much at stake. Besides – she’s rarely known flattery not to work on large egos. Particularly on large male egos.
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ he says. He is actually beaming. ‘This school was founded largely for that. Modernity. Art in its truest sense, clothed or unclothed. Male or female.’
‘So I’d thought. Which is why I’m surprised that when a qualified woman presents herself at your doors, you turn her away. Not on the basis of skill, it seems. But on… other things.’ She hears Zanhua take in his breath sharply. ‘If I’m not mistaken, I believe you were quoted as saying that women should play a key role in China’s art revolution. Just as they should in the social revolution that’s to come.’ As Principal Liu frowns, she clarifies: ‘The Shenbao. Two weeks ago, I believe.’
The Painter of Shanghai Page 21