The Painter of Shanghai

by Jennifer Cody Epstein

  ‘Wait.’ When she holds her hand up he actually flinches: the tabloids must be running that old story about her slapping the landscapes instructor again. Yuliang can’t help but take a small, spiteful satisfaction in his terror.

  ‘You realize,’ she says quietly, ‘that I’ve exhibited to fund the anti-Japanese movement. And that I’ve showed with the Silent Society.’

  He nods, looking slightly uncomfortable. Yuliang’s anti Japan statements (and open scorn for those who do not take a stand) have been amply covered in the papers. As was the Silent Society show, a collection of modern, Western-style paintings held in defiance of the nation’s newfound conservatism.

  ‘So you must realize,’ Yuliang continues, ‘that I really have no interest in hiding my work. If people dislike it, they may leave.’

  ‘In principle I agree. Of course. It’s just –’ The curator hesitates, then lowers his voice. ‘It’s been suggested to me that we highlight only the works that fall within the bounds of…’

  To his credit, he can’t bring himself to say the word. Yuliang says it for him: ‘Decency.’

  He just grins.

  ‘You are saying,’ Yuliang continues slowly, ‘that after profiting from my work these past five years, you have just now decided it’s pornographic?’

  ‘Not pornographic, of course. Only…’ Though still smiling, he throws a desperate glance at the door; quite possibly he is plotting escape. ‘Only one can’t argue with the fact that you – that your nude – shows all.’

  Yuliang suppresses a sigh. How often must this discussion be had? ‘Isn’t that the point of nudes?’ she asks dully.

  ‘Perhaps in Paris.’

  ‘They do call Shanghai the “Paris of the East.”’

  ‘The laowai do, yes.’ Again, that apologetic little chuckle. As though Yuliang were a foreigner herself. ‘But, madame, that is just the point. Our audience is one under foreign attack. Not just its borders, but its very culture. Its way of life. It seems to me that our job now, as artists, is to make them feel safe. To remind them of the strength and purity of their own heritage.’

  For a long moment Yuliang simply stares at the floor. When she looks up again, she speaks slowly. ‘Master Ma. You studied in Germany, didn’t you?’

  ‘That is where I first met Master Dean Xu.’

  ‘Then surely you, of all people, must understand that art isn’t about shutting down borders. It’s about expanding them. It’s about encouraging new techniques, fresh viewpoints. Not censoring them.’

  The little man bridles. ‘I am not endorsing censorship. I am simply stressing the need for sensitivity. And not just for the sake of our viewers.’ His smile turns almost supplicating. ‘I have, as you also know, a wife and two small children. And you – you have a husband, of course –’

  ‘My husband supports me fully,’ she interjects. For some reason, it comes out sounding like a protest.

  The curator smiles sympathetically. ‘I’m sure he does,’ he says. ‘But – and I don’t mean to be rude – have you considered whether you support your husband?’

  For a long moment there’s no sound but the scrape of a worker sweeping plaster from the floor. Yuliang crosses her arms and turns away. She gazes at Dreaming Nude, its calligraphic lines, its jewel-like colors. Mirror Girl gazes back, flushed and secretive.

  She’d painted the self-portrait six months ago, when she suspected that at last she might be pregnant. For all her reservations, there’d been a small thrill in the thought. As the idea took hold, she’d even included subtle hints: a white cloth draped in the background that might be mistaken for a swaddling cloth; a bottle of wine for the post-birth celebration, festooned with childish ribbons; a Cézannesque peach, recalling the peach-wood arrows traditionally put by a cradle to keep away the demons. When she was done, Yuliang had even placed her red chop extra-gently. Like the lipsticked kiss a mother might place on the face of her newborn child.

  Two days later, however, her cycle reasserted itself with a vengeance. Racked by cramps and nausea, Yuliang berated herself for allowing herself even to hope. In the days that followed, when the bleeding seemed to go on and on, she even wondered whether she’d brought a curse upon herself. After all, Guanyin holds that saying the very word baby invites bad luck into a pregnancy. What must painting one – even a hidden one – do?

  ‘We might move Negress as well,’ Curator Ma is saying behind her now, cheerfully. ‘Actually, we could put some of the oil landscapes there too. The one of the Parthenon, for example. That’s old, isn’t it? Most people have seen it. And Nursing Mother, though lovely, does deserve a bit more privacy. I would love to see the watercolor of pigs moved more to center view.’

  ‘What about that one?’ Yuliang asks, indicating Strong Man. ‘You can’t argue, at least, that he is dressed.’

  He studies the canvas, chin in palm, oblivious to her sarcasm. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘half dressed.’

  For an instant Yuliang really does want to hit him; her fingers actually curl into a fist. Digit by digit, she forces them to relax. ‘I don’t want them moved,’ she says tightly.

  He swivels to face her. ‘Not even the nudes?’

  She shakes her head.

  ‘But if you’ve understood me –’

  ‘All too well,’ she interrupts him. ‘It stays as I directed. In fact’ – she eyes the wall – ‘call the workmen back.’

  He swallows. ‘May I ask –’

  ‘No. Just listen.’ She begins scribbling on her notepad – plans for a revamped display. ‘Put the European landscapes here, closer to the doorway. The watercolors – Pigs, Lotus Lake, and Suzhou Bridge – can be moved back here, to the alcove.’

  ‘And the nudes?’

  ‘On the center wall. All of them. Dreaming Nude in the middle. Move Strong Man over if you have to.’ She hesitates. ‘But not too far from the center. I want him to be one of the first three works people see.’

  The curator takes off his glasses. He has finally stopped smiling. His face, stripped of its veneer of cheer, suddenly strikes Yuliang as almost menacing. ‘You truly want this.’

  ‘Yes,’ she says firmly. ‘I truly do.’

  The little man parts his lips, then clamps them shut again. He rubs his bald head, his thin neck. When he looks up again, his smile is neatly back in place, as mechanical and meaningless as ever. ‘It shall be so,’ he says smoothly. ‘After all, you are the artist.’

  ‘The woman artist,’ Yuliang reminds him.

  And smiling at last, she turns to leave.

  39

  ‘You did the right thing,’ Zanhua says an hour later.

  He reaches over, pats her hand. Yuliang clasps his fingers briefly, then sets them free to travel back to the plate of pastries that has just arrived. They are sitting windowside at La Maison de Patisserie, a favorite meeting place of theirs from the old days. ‘You don’t think I behaved badly?’

  He plunges his fork into a mini-Napoleon. ‘The important thing is to hold on to your principles.’

  It’s on the tip of Yuliang’s tongue to remind him that he doesn’t always approve of her principles, but she contents herself with dabbing sugar from her lips. The last thing she wants to do is to upset the careful balance they’ve worked so hard to maintain these past years.

  And in truth, she reminds herself, reaching for a small, glossy ramekin of crème brulée, she doesn’t know that Zanhua disapproves of her principles. They don’t discuss her nude paintings. Just as they don’t discuss his slow fall from political grace, prompted – or so Yuliang thought until today – by his close friendships with known Communists like Chen Duxiu and Meng Qihua. Their respective careers have come to occupy the same silent space in conversation as does her history at the Hall. Yuliang still can’t help reflecting at times, however, on the role reversal that has transpired since the day she was rescued from that place by Zanhua – a dashing young firebrand who seemed to know everyone and everything. Who had traveled abroad. Who was able to support h
er…

  ‘What’s in your head?’

  ‘It – it was an interesting morning.’ She smiles uneasily.

  ‘These are interesting times, as they say.’ He brushes his mustache free of lingering crumbs. ‘When a nation goes to war, even the most mundane things can seem threatening. Some might even see this, for example, as a weapon.’ He waves at the English cane he’d appeared with earlier, which now leans against the wall by his chair.

  ‘I meant to ask about that. Where on earth did you pick it up?’

  ‘I found it on the way over here from the train station. At the Shanghai Second Hand Shop on Nanjing Road.’

  ‘Are you becoming so lame in your old age?’ she teases.

  ‘I simply decided it’s high time I looked as smart and international as you do. So you see, I really bought it for you.’ He smiles. ‘You see how much I’ll sacrifice on your behalf.’

  Yuliang laughs along with him, but there’s a strange density to her mood. She scrapes gold flakes from the top of the little cake. ‘I sometimes wonder if I should sacrifice more for you.’

  He looks startled. ‘What does that mean?’

  She hesitates. ‘Does my work… worry you?’

  ‘Only when you suggest painting me without my clothes on.’

  Of course, this too is a joke. Yuliang has never suggested painting Zanhua nude, although over the past years she has done some affectionate, clothed sketches of him and Weiyi. ‘No, really,’ she says. ‘Has it hurt you? At the ministry?’

  ‘No,’ Zanhua says firmly. ‘Other associations have, perhaps. And of course there is my well-known “arrogance,” as they call it. Which in truth is simply old-fashioned honor – a concept as alien to them as it ever was.’ He bites into an éclair. ‘Why?’

  ‘I’ve heard rumors. And after today’s exchange with Master Ma, I’m wondering whether there’s any truth to them.’ Yuliang traces a circle in the snowlike dusting of sugar on her plate. Blue porcelain shines through: a small, hard lake. ‘Some say there’s a blacklist of artists and writers. Those whose work is seen as reactionary.’

  ‘What does your Dean Xu say to this?’

  ‘That it’s just wind. But he’s said to be on it too. As is Liu Haisu.’ Yuliang forces a stiff smile. ‘It might just be the one society in which they’d have to agree to share membership.’

  Zanhua is studying his hands. ‘There have been discussions,’ he says at length.

  Yuliang’s finger stops circling. ‘About the list?’

  ‘There’s no list. At least, I don’t think so. But my superior has implied in past discussions that the Culture Ministry has been, ah, aware of your works.’

  ‘Aware,’ Yuliang repeats.

  ‘Of the nudes, in particular.’ He smiles wryly. ‘And of course, of your views on the Generalissimo’s appeasement policy toward Japan.’

  ‘That’s all they said? That they’re “aware”?’

  ‘There was some discussion as to whether I have any… influence. Over you.’

  Yuliang drops her hands into her lap. It’s not the first time it’s occurred to her that she – her controversial work, her dubious background, her foreign connections and fashions – might hurt him. There are moments, in fact, when his bleak silences fill their little house. He’ll quietly turn from her in bed, turning their bond into a barrier. Yuliang is torn at these times between wanting to ask what is wrong, and wanting to stop her own ears against the answer. Now, though, she plows forward, prompted by a growing sense of unease. ‘What did you tell them?’

  ‘That I’d have more influence over an earthquake.’ He grins. And for just an instant, he’s the dashing young man who swept her to safety twenty years ago. But as the smile fades the image ages back into that of an older man. He looks paler, thinner. Less a victorious soldier of General Sun’s than an embattled bureaucrat. Almost, in fact, like someone who needs a cane. She can’t help wondering: Have I done this to him?

  Yuliang takes a deep breath. ‘Zanhua. Dean Xu has offered me a raise to take on a new seminar. If it’s just a matter of money, I could get an advance.’

  He looks at her fiercely. ‘I’ve never stooped to that kind of corruption.’

  ‘I know you haven’t. But if it’s a question of honor…’

  ‘Don’t you see, it doesn’t matter.’ He almost shouts the words. ‘Even if we pay them a small fortune, it will just make me seem like a hypocrite. It won’t change the fact that they all laugh at me behind my back. The fact that every report I write is stacked up somewhere, unread. The fact that –’ He catches himself, shakes his head.

  ‘The fact that what?’ Yuliang asks. ‘What?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ He tightens his lips.

  After a moment, Yuliang sits back heavily in her chair. Nearby, a waiter drops a tray, unleashing exclamations from surrounding tables in French, Yiddish, and Cantonese.

  Yuliang leans over again. ‘Zanhua,’ she says quietly, ‘I need to know the truth.’

  He passes a hand across his eyes. ‘You always do. I never lie to you, Yuliang. I promised I wouldn’t.’ Another wan smile. ‘Just like I promised I’d never leave you.’

  For a moment she’s so overwhelmed that she can’t do anything but blink. Seeing her face, he clasps her hand once more, and is about to speak when a smooth voice interjects from behind her: ‘I hope I’m not interrupting at a bad time.’

  Startled, Yuliang looks up – straight into the amused gaze of Meng Qihua.

  ‘Qihua!’ She leaps to her feet.

  Like Zanhua, the photographer is older, and thinner. But he’s still as dapper as ever, his hair combed back, his suit crisp and London-cut. He bows slightly. ‘A pleasure, as it always is.’ He indicates the young man standing by his side. ‘I don’t believe you know my colleague, Master Zhou.’

  ‘Ah. The famous Madame Pan,’ the latter says.

  Meeting his gaze, Yuliang gasps again. Because she actually does know him – or at least she has seen him before. The slender figure in the drab suit is in fact none other than Xing Xudun’s friend the bushy-browed boy from the Café de Cluny.

  ‘You’re – you’re the minister of mimeography!’ she stutters, astonished.

  ‘So I was, in Paris.’ Zhou Enlai laughs. ‘My title is somewhat different now.’

  For a moment she just gazes at him, the room spinning slightly. Then, for some reason she won’t later understand, she leans over and kisses him. French-style. On each cheek.

  She’s just leaning back when there is a flash of light. Blinking, she turns to see yet another newcomer – this one in a newsman’s suit. ‘Madame Pan,’ he says, lowering his Kodak, ‘do you remember me? Tang Leiyi.’

  Yuliang takes his card dazedly, afterflashes bobbing before her like tiny planets.

  ‘I heard you had a show here,’ the reporter’s saying. ‘What luck to find you.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Yuliang says it coldly; her warmth toward reporters has more or less dried up, along with her good reviews. She’s about to turn away when, somewhat to her surprise, Zanhua steps in front of her. ‘Why did you take that?’ he demands fiercely.

  ‘Social pages,’ the reporter says cheerfully. ‘You’re familiar with our “Seen in Town” section?’

  ‘I’m not,’ says Zanhua. ‘Moreover, I find it rude to take a picture without asking permission. We were simply having coffee.’

  ‘Many famous people have coffee here.’ The journalist is already slinging his camera over his shoulder. ‘Yesterday I got Butterfly Hu, sitting right there.’ He points to a corner table, occupied now not by the svelte starlet but by two Japanese businessmen.

  ‘It’s an invasion of our rights. I could take you to court.’

  The reporter shrugs. ‘I’m no lawyer. I just shoot what my editor tells me to.’

  ‘Tell your editor you can’t put my wife in your paper.’

  ‘Why?’ Tang Leiyi asks, smirking. ‘It’s not as if people don’t know what she looks like.’
>
  For an instant, Zanhua looks as though he’s been slapped. ‘How dare you,’ he hisses. And to Yuliang’s horror, he actually swings at the man’s camera with his cane.

  ‘Zanhua! Stop it!’ she shouts, reaching out to pull him back. Qihua, however, gets there first. ‘Easy, old friend,’ he murmurs.

  Zanhua shakes them both off, breathing heavily. Tang Leiyi chuckles. ‘I was hoping for a brief interview. But I think I’ve gotten more than I needed.’ Straightening his fedora, he adds, ‘Good luck with your exhibit, Madame Pan. I’ll look forward to seeing you both tomorrow.’

  As he saunters out, Yuliang turns again to Zanhua. ‘Why did you do that? He was just a photographer!’

  ‘Ah, but they’re a dirty bunch, those photographers.’ Qihua offers Zanhua his hand. ‘Please accept my apologies. For all of us.’

  Yuliang glances at Zhou Enlai. Not surprisingly, he looks distinctly uncomfortable: he avoids her eyes, scanning the room. Then he brightens slightly. ‘There are some comrades I should catch up with. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll come right back…’ And off he hurries.

  Mortified, Yuliang turns back to her husband. Qihua is addressing him earnestly. ‘Why so cold, old friend? Surely our different paths haven’t taken us so far apart.’

  ‘If they had, you wouldn’t be here. You, of all people, should know that.’ He turns to Yuliang. ‘We should go. You need to rest.’

  Yuliang, still mystified by his behavior, brushes him off. ‘I’d like to catch up a little first.’

  ‘Suit yourself.’ Turning away, her husband picks up the bill. Yuliang gazes at him for a moment before turning back to Qihua. ‘Where have you been? We haven’t heard from you since I came back from Europe!’

  ‘I’m more or less settled up north now.’

  ‘Yan’an?’

  He nods.

  ‘Did you go on the march?’ The CCP’s flight last year from its former base in Jiangsu is already almost legendary. Caught in a stranglehold by Chiang Kai-shek’s forces, the Communists initiated an almost impossible escape plan: a yearlong treck stretched through mountains, marshes, and hostile tribal and warlord territories, encompassing some nine thousand kilometers in total. By some accounts the Red Army forces, ninety thousand strong at the march’s start, were stripped down to a mere ten thousand over its course. ‘Was it as bad as they say?’ Yuliang asks, a little awed.