Chenxi and the Foreigner (12 page)

‘
Xie xie
! Thank you!' said Anna triumphantly, pleased that she had been able to make herself understood without the aid of Chenxi. She took out her inkstick and brushes.

With a little miming and coaching from Dai Laoshi, and helped by her observations of the other students during the first week, Anna deciphered the art of painting on silk. She discovered it was a matter of building up fine layers, one on top of the other, and washing the edges of the brushstrokes to blend out the lines; very different from the bold brushstrokes of Western painting. In areas where a dark colour was needed, she learnt to apply as many as twenty layers. White was always painted on the reverse as it was much more opaque than the black. To keep the feeling of the muted Ching Dynasty colours, Dai Laoshi showed her it was enough to have the white shine through the tea-coloured silk from the back.

With Chenxi not there to distract her, and unable to speak enough Chinese to chat to any of the other students, Anna soon lost herself in copying the intricate detail of the tiny mountainous landscape. Lunchtime came and went and she continued painting, engrossed in her work, declining Lao Li's offer to accompany him to the noodle shop.

At the end of the afternoon, the painting close to completion, Anna sat up and stretched, suddenly restless. The sun had shifted lower in the sky and all her classmates had long gone home. They had been impressed with her stamina and, as she pushed back from the table and looked critically at her day's work, she was pleased with what she saw.

Some of the lines were thick and shaky, but perhaps it stood up well against the replica style of the other students. Anna knew this had irritated her classmates. She didn't have to understand Chinese to be aware that they talked about her and that it unnerved them to see a foreigner so quickly learn the techniques of Chinese painting. They had all looked amused at the beginning of the day when they watched Anna lay down her first timid strokes, but were quiet when they returned from their lunch break and saw how the work was progressing.

Swirling her brushes around in the inky water, Anna contemplated how to fill the rest of the afternoon without Chenxi. She didn't want to go home to the vacant apartment, but wandering around Shanghai in the hot crowds appealed even less.

Who else did she know in Shanghai? The French student she had smoked a joint with outside the consulate was the only person she could think of. His university was just across the river, and he had invited her. She didn't know his last name but she was sure there wouldn't be too many Laurents studying there. Feeling adventurous, she decided to pay him a visit. Even though she didn't particularly like him, he might have some decent friends. It would be good to mix with some other foreign students so that she didn't have to be so dependent on Chenxi all the time.

She took a last look at the fishermen's net shining in the foreground of her mountain landscape, then left the silk painting on her desk to dry and went in search of Laurent.

16

‘Eh?' The bespectacled old man was scrunching his face behind a newspaper he hadn't taken his eyes off since Anna had approached the front desk.

‘Law-
ron
!' Anna tried again, and then in faltering Chinese, ‘
Faguo xuesheng
. French student.'

The man shook his head, his mouth turned down, and flicked over the page of his newspaper. Anna sighed.

‘I know Laurent!' came a gentle voice from behind her. She turned around to see a young African man smiling at her. ‘He's on the third floor. I'll take you there, if you like?'

‘Thank you,' she said, following him upstairs.

The sullen old man at reception watched over the top of his paper as the two foreigners ascended the stairs. Then he pulled out an exercise book and jotted something down.

At the first floor, the young man introduced himself as Youssou and said he was from Gabon. By the second floor Anna knew what he was studying, how many brothers and sisters he had, and his plans for the future. At Laurent's door, Youssou asked, ‘Is Laurent your boyfriend?'

‘No, my boyfriend doesn't live on campus.' She was not entirely lying, but she didn't want to give him the wrong impression.

Youssou didn't try to hide his disappointment and sighed. ‘Well, goodbye then?'

‘Yes, I suppose.' She watched Youssou walk away then knocked on the door.

Over the faint sound of jazz music came Laurent's voice, ‘
Shi shei
?' and when Anna didn't answer, ‘Who is it?'

‘Er...it's Anna White...we met at the consulate...'

The door opened and the smell of incense drifted out. It took Anna a minute to recognise Laurent. He had shaved his head and was thinner than she had remembered, with dark rings around his eyes. He grinned at her.

‘Hey! Come in! Come in!' he said, bowing low.

There were a couple of girls lounging in the corner on a mattress. Anna hesitated in the doorway.

‘Come on!' Laurent said and tugged at her arm.

In the dim light Anna recognised one of the students who had come with Laurent to the consulate party. He was sitting at a desk rolling a joint. On an ashtray beside him balanced the stub of another joint, still smoking.

‘You've come just in time,' Laurent said.

Anna shook her head. ‘No way! That last time made me really sick!'

‘I know!' Laurent groaned. ‘I was the one to take you home. Hey, come to think of it, you never thanked me for that!' He smirked and sidled up to Anna, pulling her down to sit on the mattress beside him.

‘Actually Chenxi was supposed to take me home,' Anna lied. ‘I don't know why he left so early.'

‘He told me he has a curfew,' Laurent explained.

‘A curfew?'

‘Where he lives. They close the gates at a certain time of night. Like they do for us here at the university. Except here, if we have to wake up the caretakers, we get away with it because we're foreigners,' he said, winking. ‘For the Chinese it's trouble.'

Anna turned this information over in her mind. Even though it sounded unjust, she felt better knowing the reason for Chenxi's strange disappearance that night. Along with the information she had gathered from her father and Zhou Lai, pieces of the Chenxi puzzle were fitting together. But she was still missing the most important piece: what did he think of her?

‘Here,' said the dark-haired man sitting at the desk. He handed the smoking butt down to Anna. She shook her head. He shrugged and held it out to Laurent.

‘Ladies?' said Laurent, offering the joint to the two girls.

'Oh no!' they giggled and pulled themselves up, leaning on each other for support. ‘We're out of here, man. We're wasted!'

They stumbled to the door, laughing and swearing in a language Anna couldn't recognise, before they fell into the brightly lit corridor, slamming the door behind them.

Laurent winced. ‘Don't worry about them,' he said. ‘They only come here for one thing...and it's not my body!' He chuckled at his own joke, then finished what was left of the joint before grinding it out on a small plate.

‘
Je m'en vais aussi
,' said the dark-haired joint roller as he stood up. ‘See you, Hannah?'

‘Anna.'

‘Yeah, whatever.' He swept up the last few specks of hashish on the glass top table and pressed them onto his tongue, then closed the door behind him.

Anna felt uneasy at being alone with Laurent in his lair but, to her relief, he now reverted to the gentlemanly manner he had used when they first met. He offered her tea and unscrewed a golden tin, from which he pinched a few scraggly leaves and dropped them into a ceramic cup with a lid. Then he picked up a large plastic thermos and told Anna he would go to the boiler room for hot water.

While he was gone, Anna studied his room. It was decorated with exquisite taste and was very different from the other students' rooms she had peered into on her way upstairs. Lengths of pale green silk patterned with dragons were tacked to the walls alongside the beds, like wallpaper. Half the floor was laid with straw matting. In the other half of the room were two desks and two cane bookshelves overloaded with Chinese books and porcelain teacups. On the floor against the walls were two mattresses made up into beds.

Laurent returned and answered her unspoken query. ‘My room-mate is never here. He spends all his time trekking through Tibet, so I have the room to myself.' He filled the two cups with hot water. ‘He was my room-mate last year, too, and I organised to have him again this year.' He smiled conspiratorially at Anna and she wondered if his room-mate really existed. Laurent seemed very good at arranging things to suit his convenience.

He handed Anna a cup of tea and sat down beside her. ‘So what have you been doing since I saw you last?'

‘I went away with Chenxi for a week. We stayed with his aunt in a town just outside of Xian.'

‘Really?' Laurent said, surprised.

‘What's wrong with that?' Anna retorted.

‘Nothing. I suppose. It's just that usually Chinese aren't allowed to have foreigners staying with them.'

‘It was organised by the school.'

‘I hope so. For Chenxi's sake.'

‘Who could he get into trouble with?' said Anna, but Laurent wasn't listening. ‘Laurent?'

Laurent put his finger to his lips.

‘What?' she whispered, exasperated.

Laurent pointed to a small loudspeaker over the doorway. It crackled a little. He leaned towards her and whispered close in her ear. ‘The intercom system. It's for calling us when we get phone calls. But it works both ways!'

‘You're paranoid!' Anna giggled. ‘You smoke too much dope.'

‘Maybe,' said Laurent. ‘But a friend of mine studying in Beijing found a bug in his bedside lamp just last week.' He leaned closer until his lips brushed Anna's ear. ‘We're in China, my dear,' he said dramatically. ‘Not Australia!'

Anna inched away and tried to think of a new subject.

The intercom gave a slight pop. ‘It's OK,' Laurent said, his voice returning to normal. ‘They've finished listening.' He sat back on the mattress against the wall. She sipped her tea.

‘What do you do at your college?' Laurent asked amiably.

He was trying to make conversation to keep her in his room. She wondered why she had come. ‘Painting,' she replied.

‘Thanks. I guessed that,' Laurent said. ‘But what kind?'

‘I almost finished a copy of a Ching Dynasty painting on silk today.'

‘Really? What's it of?'

Anna was bored. She knew he wouldn't understand. He wouldn't understand the technique, and he wouldn't understand the emotions. She was tired of trying to articulate her passion for art to people who didn't get it. Chenxi understood. He had the same passion as she did.

‘A landscape. It's one of the four subject matters you can paint in Chinese painting. Landscape, Birds and Flowers, People and Calligraphy,' she droned, holding up her fingers and counting them off one by one. ‘Calligraphy looks the simplest but it is actually the most honoured, and the most difficult. Chenxi is the only one in our class doing calligraphy.'

‘Is it difficult to paint on silk?'

‘It's OK. Just takes getting used to I suppose. You need special brushes. Small ones, sometimes only a hair thick, and you have to know how to choose them. Chenxi helped me choose mine.'

‘Really?' Laurent got up to change the CD. When he returned to the mattress, he sat closer to Anna. Their arms were touching. Anna stood to serve herself some more tea.

Between two pieces of music the room fell quiet.

‘So?' she asked to fill the silence. ‘Why are you here in China?'

She tried to look interested as Laurent described his fascination with economics and his lifelong plan to outdo his father's business success by finding a trading niche with China. ‘It's a very delicate procedure,' he explained, ‘to win the trust of the Chinese. By speaking Mandarin I will have an advantage over any other international interest. That's why I've been in this fucking hole for three years. It's a slow procedure, but it will be worth it! Marco Polo said China was a sleeping dragon, and economically that dragon is beginning to wake. It's going to be a case of first in first served and I plan to be first in. I've already made a lot of
guanxi
since I've been here.'

‘
Guanxi?
'

‘Yeah, you know…contacts. Influence. In China everything is run by back-door politics. Like they say: It's not what you know, it's who you know. You can't get by without
guanxi
here. I plan to make a lot of money and China is the place to do it. So, in answer to your question, I guess you could say my plan is to be rich!' he finished.

‘My father would love you,' Anna mumbled.

‘He already does, my dear. He already does!' Laurent leaned back on his elbows, smiling to himself.

‘Chenxi and I are thinking of doing a painting together one day,' Anna blurted to change the subject. She didn't know where this lie came from, but once she'd started she couldn't stop herself. ‘Actually it's my idea and I haven't exactly discussed it with him yet, but I'm sure he'll agree. We have the same ideas in art—it's amazing. It's like, even though we don't speak the same language we understand each other through art. It's such a coincidence that we're in the same class together, you know. I mean we've grown up in such different cultures and on either side of the world, and yet, here we are: two like-minds thrown together. Like destiny or something…'

Anna stopped mid-breath. She had the awful feeling of having disclosed too much to someone she knew too little.

Laurent was inspecting his nails.

He looked up with an amused expression. ‘You do know Chenxi is only hanging around you for an Australian passport, don't you? All Chinese students want to leave China. Go abroad. Make money. There's no future for them here. You think they are interested in you? Sorry to break it to you, honey, you are just a ticket out of here. Even your precious Chenxi, my dear. They're all the same.'