The Painter of Shanghai

by Jennifer Cody Epstein

  ‘These explain it better than I could.’ Yuliang removes the other two notes she has stored in her Tolstoy. One is her curt Beaux Arts rejection notice. The other is even curter; the communiqué from the Anhui government notifying her that both her scholarships have been withdrawn.

  The young artist scans first one, then the other. Yuliang settles back to study Parisian café culture, something that on her last brief trip here she had no time for. It is indeed a far cry from Lyon. As she watches, a man dressed in a harlequin costume prances past, delivering a note to a girl who is sitting across the room. The girl reads it and blows a languid kiss to the note’s sender. She herself is dressed in what looks like a man’s military uniform, her poodle tucked like a purse beneath one arm. Between its golden hairclips and monkey-fur-trimmed little sweater, the dog is decidedly better dressed than its owner. Or (Yuliang thinks dryly) than Yuliang herself.

  ‘You were with the new Sino-French Institute?’ Xu Beihong is asking.

  Yuliang forces her attention back to her own table. ‘Just for six months. Before I transferred to the art academy in Lyon.’

  ‘Long enough to tire of grammar drills and endless lessons on table manners.’ He drums his fingers. ‘Were you there for the demonstrations?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You participated?’

  ‘No. But I supported them.’ And, as he lifts an eyebrow: ‘They were in the right. The Chinese consul told them he’d guarantee their admission.’

  ‘From what I’ve read that’s not his story.’

  She sets her cup down. ‘Then he’s a coward and a liar.’

  Her companion looks amused. ‘Shouldn’t you be careful? For all you know, he might have friends in this café.’

  ‘If he does, they’re not friends of mine.’ Still, Yuliang casts another glance around. The dark young woman is now feeding her poodle almond pastry, shredding it with gold-painted fingernails before pushing the bits between the dog’s black gums.

  ‘Do you ever honey your words?’ Xu Beihong asks, reaching again for the sugar.

  ‘I did at one time. But I’ve learned you can’t paint with honey.’

  He smiles, a slow, warm grin that seems to illuminate the air around him. ‘Bravo! You’ll do well here, mademoiselle.’

  ‘Madame,’ Yuliang corrects him.

  ‘That’s right,’ he says, without interest. Patting his pockets, he pulls out a tarnished cigarette case. ‘This stuff about the consul,’ he says, flicking a Gauloise into his mouth and putting the case back, without offering it. ‘You heard it directly?’

  Yuliang nods. ‘A friend of mine from the academy came to Lyon from the Montargis faction.’

  ‘And he said he’d been lied to.’

  ‘They all did. I believed them.’ She laughs, remembering. ‘Although at that point I barely believed I was in France.’

  ‘And this friend – he was one of the radicals?’

  ‘A student, like me. Or – anyone else.’ Yuliang had been going to say like you. But even though the young artist graduated from the Beaux Arts just last year, she senses that he’d bridle at the suggestion they’re contemporaries. Xu Beihong has, after all, already shown with two salons. He is a protégé of the realist Dagnan-Bouveret.

  ‘It’s just that the government had taken away his stipend,’ she continues. ‘His job – he worked in an auto factory in Montargis – paid less than a living wage, let alone enough for schooling. It left no time to study, in any case.’

  She stares into her coffee. It’s excellent – cleanly bitter, far stronger than the black-tinged brew she’s allowed herself since her funds were cut off. But what she sees, staring down, is not this potent and precious liquid, but Xing Xudun’s warm eyes staring back without shame or reserve.

  The day she’d last seen him, Yuliang had been racing to class, her head filled with half-learned phrases and faces. Her taste buds felt flattened by all the butter she’d been eating, and at night Zanhua’s absence felt like a fresh bruise. Against the empty ache of her homesickness, the abrupt descent of a crowd of shouting Chinese students almost felt like a small homecoming. Pushing her way through them, she even found herself smiling at their high spirits. They greeted her in a flurry of dialects, French, and even a little German. They offered her a beer, a chocolate. A placard. ‘I have class,’ she’d laughed. ‘Please let me pass.’

  But then she’d paused, registering for the first time the image on the signboard she’d just rejected: two strong hands. Reaching across a giant globe to clasp each other.

  And suddenly there was Xing Xudun, as large as a statue before her.

  ‘Levons-nous!’ he boomed, and spread his arms in welcome.

  Her shocked hesitation stranded him for a moment, like some enormous bird. He dropped his arms, but not his smile. ‘Wh – when did you get here?’ Yuliang stammered.

  ‘Just this morning. Consul Chen paid our way. He’s supporting our fight to find placement here.’ Someone shouted his name from across the crowded student green. Xing Xudun waved back, his long arm reaching into the brilliant autumn sky. ‘Loosen your belt, will you?’ he called back. ‘The others aren’t even here yet.’ He turned back to Yuliang. ‘Where have they put you?’

  ‘In the girls’ dorm.’ She grimaced. ‘With five other girls. And you?’

  ‘That,’ he said cheerfully, ‘is what we’re here to settle.’ Another grin. ‘But if all goes according to our plan, perhaps we can finally go and get that coffee.’

  ‘Xudun!’ his friends called again. ‘We need that banner, comrade!’

  He touched Yuliang’s elbow. ‘Listen. Are you free tomorrow, at, say, four?’

  Yuliang had a seminar at four, on French culture and etiquette. She considered this. Then she said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good.’ Xudun smiled again – or perhaps he simply hadn’t stopped. ‘I usually need a coffee at four. Meet me here, then. S’il vous plaît.’ And off he loped across the trim green campus.

  Yuliang went on to class in a state of pleased anticipation. By nightfall, though, she couldn’t shake that vague sense of guilt she always felt when she saw him, though she told herself there was no reason for it. It’s just Xudun. We’re just meeting to discuss art. To soothe herself, she recited Li Qingzhao’s ‘Red Plum Blossom’ three times, then composed a list of scholarly subjects to discuss.

  She spent the next morning and early afternoon at the Lyon Fine Arts Museum, copying Van Goghs she wanted to show him at their meeting. At three o’clock – somewhat early – she packed her satchel and hurried back, reaching their meeting spot a little before four.

  Xudun, however, was nowhere to be seen. Nor were any of the other protesters. Grass was uprooted; placards lay crumpled, stripped, and smudged. Cigarette butts littered the site like charred, tiny bones. When Yuliang asked what had happened, the old janitor who was cleaning up the mess just pointed toward the men’s dormitories. It was then that she saw the line of police wagons parked in front of them. When she tried to push through the crowd, an officer blocked her. ‘Go home, little Chinagirl,’ he said. ‘Stay away from these lemon-faced troublemakers.’

  It wasn’t until much later that Yuliang read the story in the French papers: how, threatened with expulsion from the university, Xudun and sixty others locked themselves in the men’s dormitories, chanted slogans, and sang ‘La Marseillaise,’ eventually unrolling a banner Xudun had drawn of a blindfolded figure captioned both La Justice and , its Chinese counterpart. How most were trundled off to holding pens in Marseille, and from there shipped home on French postal steamers. How one hung himself, in shame, on the way.

  For several months, proceeding numbly from grammar to history to etiquette class, she’d assumed that Xudun too had shared in this fate. It wasn’t until his note came that she learned that he and several others were still in Marseille. They’d been helped by Le Parti Communiste Français, with whom they’d formed a European branch of the Chinese Communist Youth Corps.

  ‘I wouldn�
�t really have considered myself a radical before,’ he concluded in his neat, dark script. ‘But if that’s what they want of me, then par Dieu, that is what they’ll get.’

  Now Yuliang stirs her coffee, smiling as she almost always smiles when she thinks of this earnest pronouncement, which even now strikes her less as ‘radical’ than as unaccountably sweet. For in the end, for all his impertinence and his talk of ‘revolution,’ this is the impression Xudun always seems to leave with her: sweet boy.

  ‘It’s hard for all of us,’ Xu Beihong is saying, sipping his sugared sludge. ‘We didn’t come like rich Americans, to drink and eat and dance le Charleston all night.’ He nods toward a table of them, speaking loudly in their twanging voices. ‘We have to make our own way. We have to work.’

  ‘He was trying to get into a course that would let him both live and study,’ Yuliang protests.

  ‘And he failed.’

  ‘The system failed him. It failed all of us.’ Yuliang eyes him evenly. It is clear that he is bored now by this subject. She picks another, which she expects he will like more. ‘Is it true that you’ve been accepted into the next salon?’

  Predictably, the artist’s frown inverts into a small, smug smile. ‘Four paintings so far. And five more that they’re deliberating on.’ He leans back expansively. ‘But I want to hear more of you. How did you manage to transfer to the Lyon Beaux Arts so quickly?’

  ‘Principal Liu Haisu helped set up the arrangement. He had an acquaintance there.’

  ‘Liu Haisu.’ He pronounces the name as though it rings a distant bell, and Yuliang suppresses a small smile. In Shanghai, Xu Beihong and Liu Haisu are now almost as famous as rivals as Picasso and Matisse are here in Europe. It’s even said that when Liu Haisu started his Heavenly Horse painting society in Shanghai, Xu Beihong counter-launched his own painting society here: the Heavenly Dog Society. So named because dog eats horse. Having met Xu Beihong, Yuliang now fully believes this story. It’s about the level of hubris she’d expect from a man wearing red velvet.

  ‘So Monsieur Liu pulled some strings to get you in at Lyon,’ he’s saying now. ‘But I take it they don’t reach to Paris.’ He sounds distinctly pleased by this fact as he picks up the other letter: Yuliang’s Beaux Arts rejection. ‘“Respectable performance, particularly in coloration,”’ he translates, with an ease that makes her envious. ‘That’s not so bad. Many people don’t even survive the entrance concours. Is it still three days of exercises – perspective, portraiture, architectural drawing, et cetera?’

  Yuliang nods. ‘I think I did all right until the oral part.’ Grilled in Renaissance art history by a man who might have sat with Marat on the revolutionary tribunals, she’d felt her French disintegrate, hard-won word by hard-won word. Everything she had memorized – phrases, dates, architectural jargon – vanished like so much candied rice paper on her tongue.

  ‘Which old fart was it?’ he asks.

  ‘Lambour. Or Lambourelle. Something like that.’

  ‘Ah, oui. Claude Lambourdière.’ He rolls his eyes. ‘A negligible talent. He got his job because he exhibited with Pissarro in the old days. Which is somewhat ironic, since Pissarro didn’t even go to the BA.’ He glances at the portfolio that has been leaning against her leg throughout their talk. Yuliang lugged it here from her pension this morning, despite a fear that this would seem forward. ‘May I…?’

  Yuliang nods, her mouth suddenly as dry as the cardboard folder itself as Xu Beihong leafs through its contents, cigarette dangling from pursed lips. ‘The problem,’ she tells him, suppressing a surge of anxiety, ‘is that even if the Beaux Arts had accepted me, I’d still need a scholarship. The government cut off my stipend too. They’re cutting everyone’s. I guess they need every bit of gold to fight the warlords.’

  Pausing over a Cézannesque landscape, the young artist chuckles. Thankfully, it is not over her work. ‘No one born abroad will ever get a centime from the Beaux Arts,’ he says. ‘It’s like trying to pull ivory from a dog’s mouth.’

  He shifts through several more pieces, staring at each with practiced intensity before finally stubbing out his second, half-smoked cigarette. ‘Very impressive,’ he says at last, sliding the folder back toward her legs. ‘Though I’d urge you to take yourself to the Louvre immediately for a healthy dose of Prud’hon, Delacroix, and Rembrandt. What you must focus on is form. That’s the meat of art. You paint with honey after all, Madame Pan.’

  He waves at another waiter, one carrying a tray of small tarts. ‘Speaking of food, how important is it?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘You’re about to move to the culinary capital of Europe. Some say the world. Although I have to say I wish they’d use more salt.’ Lifting the pitcher, he dumps what’s left into his cup. A bit splashes, less a drip by now than a milky shadow of one. ‘By the way,’ he adds, lowering his voice conspiratorially, ‘never salt foie gras. No matter how bland it tastes. It’s rude. Like taking the last dumpling.’ He conveys the sloshing cup to his lips, sips. Then adds, ‘You think I’m joking.’

  ‘About the foie gras?’

  ‘About the food.’

  ‘Are you?’ Yuliang says it with a hint of annoyance. She hasn’t the faintest idea where this conversation is leading. And for all her hopes of a free meal, her celebrated host hasn’t even looked at the menu.

  ‘Think about it,’ he says. ‘What’s more important, a good painting or a good slab of beef? Or, for that matter, one of those loud Poiret dresses my wife is always pointing out to me?’

  The answer comes without hesitation: ‘A painting. Of course.’

  He grins again: that slow and liquid beam, and again Yuliang feels an absurd flush of pleasure. He is, she suddenly realizes, a man who flashes his charm like a swordmaster: it is his secret weapon.

  ‘Justement,’ he says. ‘ The steak fills you for a day. The dress will win you compliments, at least from my wife, for a week. But in ten years’ time, or a hundred, what you’ve made here’ – he indicates the portfolio – ‘will remain. Your children, your children’s children will see it. You have children?’

  The waiter arrives. Xu Beihong hands him the creamer, although Yuliang wonders why – by this point he barely has any coffee left. ‘Not yet.’ She looks away. ‘But I do need a little food to live on. Don’t I?’

  ‘A little,’ Xu Beihong concedes as the waiter materializes again, to replace the tiny pitcher with a flourish. ‘And as you’ll discover, a little in Paris costs much more than a little elsewhere. Biwei and I moved to Berlin for a while last year, thinking it would be cheaper.’ He pops a sugar cube into his mouth. ‘Of course prices were rising there at a rate beyond comprehension. You’ve heard how it is?’ He crunches, swallows audibly. ‘Bread cost a mark or two at war’s end. It cost two hundred billion marks – or more – by the time we left. Our friends with jobs were getting paid two or three times daily, just to keep up with inflation. But even then they had to race to buy things – basic things.’ He shakes his head fondly, as though this recollection were one of the happier ones of the trip. ‘Things are better now. If you have talent, and if you know a few tricks – no bonbons, no fancy hats or shoes. On some days, even many, no dinner. Do all this and you’ll get along, as I have.’ Here he breaks into a hacking, chest-deep cough that for some might have undermined his point. The waiter appears like a genie, a glass of water on his tray.

  ‘As for the school,’ Xu Beihong goes on, after a sip or two, ‘at heart they still don’t want anyone who’s not born here. When they do accept them, they give them postes extraordinaires. Not full student status. Those they leave for the full-blooded Frenchmen. Those few who are left after the war, of course.’ He finishes his water. ‘And you know, of course, that even if you win the school’s highest competition, the Prix de Rome, you won’t get the prize. Or the purse.’

  Finishing off his coffee, he signals to the waiter and, in French as virtually free of shame as it is of accent, requests un petit pot of hot water
. Then he turns back to Yuliang. ‘So don’t build that into your budget,’ he adds in Chinese.

  The waiter returns with a steaming teapot. ‘Anything else, monsieur?’

  ‘No. Thank you, André.’ The young artist produces from his jacket pocket a hard roll that looks suspiciously like those Yuliang had seen outside, left on tables by paying customers. As he dips it into the milky mixture she stares at her place setting, remembering those first dreary weeks in Lyon. Small fork for salads. Big fork for meat. Knife for cutting meat, not butter. Spoon for soup or ices, never for the dinner plate. But don’t lick it when you use it. And don’t touch any of the utensils before you unless you plan to use them. Somewhat defiantly, she picks up her soupspoon, studies it. What she sees is her own face, clouded. Upside down.

  ‘My husband wants me to come home,’ she says abruptly.

  ‘My wife wants me to stop buying paintings,’ he replies affably. ‘My gallery wants me to pay its commission. The world will always want us to spend differently, think differently.’ He jabs his finger at her. ‘What is it you want?’

  ‘To stay.’ The answer wells up fully, a small part of her soul. ‘I want to live here. To paint here. I want nothing more. But if the Beaux Arts won’t take me…’

  ‘They’ll take you.’

  She stares at him. ‘How? I didn’t pass the entrance examination.’

  ‘There is more than one entrance to the rabbit’s burrow. If you know where to look. Have you heard of the étudiants libres? They’re alternates, effectively. But if you’re disciplined, and if you form a good relationship with the maître de session, you can get every bit as good an education as any Frenchman.’ He finishes the bread, wipes his slim fingers on his napkin. ‘And while I can’t get you a scholarship, I can help find you cheap lodging. You wouldn’t need to pay much.’ He looks at her thoughtfully. ‘Do you embroider?’

  She blinks. ‘A little.’

  ‘Biwei does some work for the Magasins du Louvre. You know, handkerchiefs, scarves, ties. That sort of thing. It’s manual labor, of course. But it pays well enough.’