The Painter of Shanghai (32 page)

‘The face,’ Zanhua presses. ‘You are keeping it.’

Only then does she understand: he expects her, quite literally, to save her face. To replace it with someone else’s.

For it is her face, after all – her
own
face, untouched by shame or makeup – that makes the painting so outright revolutionary. Yuliang has taken Manet and outdone him by a step: she stares down the tabloids, the whispers, the academy, dressed only in the nude truth of her talent. ‘Yes,’ Yuliang says.

Zanhua repeats it slowly, as though she hasn’t understood the question. ‘
Your
face. Staring out at everyone with… that look.’

‘It’s a self-portrait.’

‘It’s a
naked
self-portrait.’

‘A
nude
self-portrait.’

The look he gives her is so pained her heart almost hurts for him. ‘Zanhua,’ she starts, stepping toward him. ‘When Yuan Shikai betrayed the republic, many people were too cowed and old-fashioned to protest. But you
picked up your sword. It’s part of why I admire you so. Don’t you see that this is like that – that this is my battle?’

‘Don’t you
dare
compare that to this.’ He jerks away. ‘And don’t
touch
me.’

Stunned, she drops her hand. Outside, a dog bursts into a furious round of barking, then quiets just as abruptly.

Zanhua’s jaw is working in silent fury. He doesn’t move until Ahying, stuttering abashedly through the closed door, asks if she may leave. ‘Yes,’ he says, far too sharply.

Several moments pass before he speaks again. ‘I cannot,’ he says at last, ‘comprehend why you have done this. After all the opportunities I’ve given you. All the chances to better yourself.’

‘I have bettered myself!’ Yuliang cries. ‘I’m the top student in my class!’

‘If this is your idea of bettering yourself, you’re more misguided than –’ His voice breaks. He shuts his eyes. ‘Get rid of it.’

Yuliang jerks her head up. ‘
What?
’

‘Get rid of it. Or I will. I will not permit you to – to do this to yourself. Again.’

That one word,
again
, has the weight of a slap. Very quietly, she asks, ‘Do what again?’

Zanhua opens his eyes. ‘Make a whore of yourself.’

It’s what she knew he’d say – perhaps, even, all he
could
say. Still, she barely manages to whisper the words: ‘You shouldn’t have said that.’

‘You!’
Zanhua shouts. ‘You have the impertinence now
to tell me what
I
shouldn’t do!
You!
Who…’ He steps toward her, his fists clenched, and Yuliang wonders if he’ll finally strike her now. There’s an odd satisfaction in the thought: if he does, it will almost certainly hurt him far more than her.

But instead, he lunges the other way, and does the one thing that hurts her more at this moment: lifting his arm, he strikes the painting from the easel.

‘Stop!’
Yuliang leaps forward.

Zanhua pushes her away with enough force to send her spinning toward the wall. When she launches herself back at him, he shoves her again. Then he sweeps up the jade letter-opener from her desk. Blade in hand, he whirls back toward her painted image, his face so contorted that it looks like a stranger’s. ‘
Don’t
, Zanhua,’ she cries, terrified now. ‘
Please…’

‘I won’t have it,’ he hisses. ‘You’re my
wife.
I order you to stop this.’ Holding her off with one hand he lifts the green blade over the canvas.
‘Stay there.’

But Yuliang doesn’t. Instead, using a Hall-learned technique she has no recollection of learning, she aims a flat-palmed punch at her husband’s neck. When he staggers back, she hurls herself to the floor, shielding her painting.

Zanhua recovers. An awkward dance ensues as he tries to stab past the clothed body to the undressed one.
‘Stop.’
She claws at his hand. ‘You don’t know. You don’t know what you’re doing.
’

‘I’m doing something I should have done long ago. I’m putting a stop to this insanity.’

‘You’re hurting our
child.
’

He laughs harshly. ‘You dare to compare this – this
filth
to a child?’

‘I’m not talking about the painting!’

A stunned silence. Slowly he rocks back on his heels. ‘What did you say?’

Yuliang blinks at him, squeezing her belly with her arms.

‘This is true?’ he asks, quietly.

And the astonishing thing is, it is.

Yuliang nods numbly, checking off the telltale symptoms as dispassionately as she’d checked off her remaining work for him: the mood swings, extreme even for someone of her extreme nature. The bloating and belly twinges. The nausea and indigestion, which she’d attributed to the fact that she always eats badly when she’s working. The soreness in her breasts that came and went two weeks ago. And then, more obviously – and how in heaven could she have ignored this? – the menses that simply did not come.

As if that weren’t plain enough, there is the abrupt way that paint and turpentine and even coffee have become noxious to her. There are the frequent trips to the outhouse, which until this very moment she’d told herself were from drinking extra tea in an attempt to fend off her growing fatigue.

Over the past week Yuliang has attributed all these symptoms to nerves. It’s only now, with him here, with her naked image behind her and her clothed body tingling with fear, that Yuliang finally allows the colossal truth to dawn on her.

Moving very carefully, Zanhua puts the opener back on the desk. ‘How far along is it?’

‘Nearly – nearly three months, I think.’

‘It’s almost rooted, then,’ he says. His voice barely contains his excitement. ‘It happened on my last visit.’

She nods bleakly. She vaguely recalls an empty box of the Six Fairies tea she buys from Lin’s apothecary on Fouzhou Road (‘Ideal for cleansing the system of unwanted seeds’). And thinking,
Just one day. And I probably can’t conceive anyway.
She made the classic mistake Jinling often warned against: putting faith in her flailing cycles.

‘You shouldn’t be on the floor.’ He is holding out his hand. Hesitantly, Yuliang lets him pull her to her feet. Once there, she immediately bends to study the painting.

Behind her he’s pacing, planning. ‘You’ll go to Tongcheng when the term ends. I see no point, in fact, in staying on.’

She looks up at him. ‘I have exams!’

‘All the more reason to leave,’ he counters. ‘You should be somewhere safer, quieter. Healthier for the child.’ He moves toward the door. ‘You can tell Principal Liu tomorrow. Do you have much to pack?’

Yuliang bends down again, dazedly retrieving her work. She locks gazes with herself. ‘No,’ she says softly.

‘Good.’ He begins walking toward the door. ‘We’ll find some movers before I leave. I’ll put a call through to Qihua.’

‘No,’
Yuliang repeats.

‘You don’t want movers?’

‘I am not moving.’

He frowns. ‘But you just said…’

‘I am staying through the student-teacher contest.’

He lets out a short laugh. ‘You’re not serious. What’s the point?
’

She turns to him slowly. ‘I can’t just leave. What would Principal Liu say?’

‘What about me? What about what
I
say?’ His face is honestly puzzled. ‘Yuliang,’ he says. ‘Do you really think that by doing this – by
undressing
for them all – you’ll finally win their respect?’

‘They do respect me.’

He snorts. ‘They do not.’

‘How do you know?’ She almost shouts it.

‘Because you’re a woman,’ Zanhua says. ‘Because, you’re an orphan, and a concubine. And your past…’ He waves a hand at her painting. ‘There are a thousand reasons why they’ll never respect you. This only gives them one more.’

‘This isn’t my past,’ she says furiously. ‘It’s my future.
’

‘It’s
my
future too. You know they’ll use this against me. You do recall that your reputation nearly cost me my position in Wuhu.’

What she recalls is his arrogance – his ridiculously naive faith that he could parade her around town without consequence. But what she says is this: ‘Is it possible for you to recall that I, too, now have a position?’

He laughs. ‘Position? You’re a
student.
Of an art no one in China understands.’

‘I’m a
painter
,’ she counters stubbornly. ‘A painter of Shanghai. And this’ – she touches her canvas – ‘this is my
painting.
’

For a long moment he just stares at her. Then he drops his head. When he speaks again, his voice is flat, and very
careful. ‘Very well. Here’s a choice for the painter of Shanghai. You can keep your picture. Your
position
.’ He takes a breath. ‘Or, you keep your position as my wife.’

For a moment, Yuliang isn’t sure that she’s heard correctly. But the look on his face leaves no doubt.
He would,
she thinks, thunderstruck. He’d abandon her to the streets, carrying his child. And not a court in Shanghai would deny him the right. After all, she is not even a wife. She’s a concubine. A slave, really. Nothing more.

For an instant the world stands still. Then, slowly, she turns to the door, tucking
Bathing Beauty
beneath her arm. He doesn’t move as she walks, then pauses, then walks again. At the threshold she stops again. He doesn’t even blink.

Out in the hallway she sets the canvas down long enough to lift her padded jacket from the hook. She listens again: still no sound. She feels as pale and empty as a cast corpse after Vesuvius. But she continues: past the Japanese maple in the courtyard, through the gate. Into the forgiving shadows of Ocean Street.

For almost two hours Yuliang wanders in the Old City, her breath forming cloudlike puffs against the evening chill. She’s barely cognizant of crossing Suzhou Creek, and of following the greening lines of Bubbling Well Road’s willows. She passes the deserted racecourse, St. John’s University. The Tudor homes of the taipans and compradors, Russian doormen standing staunchly at attention. Eventually she swings onto a northbound streetcar. Staring blankly out the window, she makes two, perhaps three runs before the conductor gently informs
her that the tram is going out of service. When she alights, she has no idea at all where she is. Not, that is, until she sees the red lanterns of Fouzhou Road.

It’s early Tuesday evening in the brothel district, but the evening is already in full swing. Tipsy sailors pass, joking in Cantonese. Red-faced Japanese businessmen follow libidos and a young guide who lisps at them in pidgin: ‘Can do go topside that girly house, chop-chop, two, maybe three dollar? That b’long much better than street chicken.’

Yuliang finds a bench and sits down. A few of the men look Yuliang over speculatively as they pass. She ignores them, staring instead at the padded swell of her stomach. How well it’s hidden, this unwanted guest. She presses her hands there, half expecting to feel it. She can’t, of course. And yet the way her flesh gives – it’s just that, after all; just flesh,
just skin
– is strangely reassuring. She kneads herself absently, as though her abdomen were a lump of clay. After a few moments she becomes aware of a dull ache. Rather than stopping, though, she presses harder. Soon she is driving her elbows into her stomach.

Some French sailors pass in boyish striped and collared uniforms. ‘Hey, mademoiselle,’ one calls. ‘You lookee-see good time like that
avec moi
?’ But what is ringing in her head is her husband’s earlier command:
Get rid of it.
The words circle Yuliang’s mind as she escalates her attack:
Get rid of it. Get rid of it
…

Oblivious of the gathering crowd, Yuliang strips off her coat, then stands to slam herself against the bench’s back. She batters herself for a full five minutes, her mouth
filling with bile. ‘She is mad,’ someone says. ‘Call the constable.’ The voice drifts to her, dreamlike.

And yet Yuliang has never felt more sane. Each lunge is a leap toward her future, each throb a harbinger of victory. Her belly’s on fire now, her ribs little more than bony bruises. She is as focused and determined as she’s ever been in her life. When strong hands land on her shoulders, she struggles wildly. ‘Leave me. Leave me
be.
’

When they don’t, she goes limp, just until they release her. Then she whirls back to the bench.

‘
Aiya
,’ one says, heaving her over his shoulder.

‘
My painting
!’ Yuliang cries.

‘How can they let them out on the street like this?’

‘
Please
,’ she sobs. ‘Get my painting!’

‘She doesn’t look like the others,’ says the other. ‘You sure she’s salt pork?’

‘They’ll know at the Hope Clinic,’ says the first. ‘Let’s just take her there. What’s that, miss? Paint? Your makeup? Oh. Your painting.
’
He swings around. ‘She must mean that.’

His partner picks up
Bathing Beauty
gingerly. A slow smile spreads on his face. ‘Sure,’ he says. ‘She’s salt pork, all right.’

27

The crowd swarms toward her like locusts to new crops. There are dozens of them, their eyes glittering, their lips moist. The women are heavily painted, the men burly and loud. They are not the sorts of viewers she normally sees at exhibitions. They are more like spectators at an execution. They are raucous, overwrought. Some are already drunk, on the atrocious wine Liu Haisu offers at these occasions. Standing by her painting, Yuliang can make out their condemnatory hum from across the room. ‘Shameless,’ she hears. ‘Pornography.’ ‘Disgraceful.’

Her first urge is to run. Instead, she smiles. (
Smile, smile.
) It is, after all, what Principal Liu would tell her to do. ‘Artists are sinners,’ he said, in one of his recent interviews. ‘We’re late, self-centered. We sleep with one another’s wives. But the one sin a true artist never commits is to apologize for his work.’