The Painter of Shanghai (26 page)

Yuliang hasn’t told these things to anyone – not even Zanhua. For all his encouragement of her drawing, she’s
still afraid he’d think it odd. A waste of her time. But this man, this complete stranger:
he
would understand.

What was it he’d said?
We all express ourselves most naturally with our own kind.

She touches a hand to her cheek. ‘I – I should go now.’

Teacher Hong eyes her mildly. ‘It was a pleasure. Please feel free to come again.’

‘Oh no, I shouldn’t impose,’ she says, though what she’s thinking is:
When?
She wants to shout it over the soaring music.
When can I come back?

Instead, of course, she bows politely, murmuring, ‘Thank you so much for your kindness,’ before hurrying off toward her street. Leaving Verdi, whoever she is, to sing sadly in her wake.

Two weeks later Ahying appears in the study, drying her chapped hands on her pants. ‘Madame, a gentleman has come to see you.’

Yuliang looks up from her sketchbook, surprised: apart from the occasional jewelry or fabric vendor, the only ‘gentleman’ who visits her is Qihua. But he checked in on her just two days ago. ‘Who is it?’

Ahying shakes her head. ‘An older gentleman. With a funny hat.’

Yuliang frowns.

‘Like a blackened pancake, sitting on his head,’ the girl adds helpfully. ‘Shall I show him in?’

Yuliang hesitates, then puts her charcoal down. For all she knows, it might be one of Qihua’s friends. Or a courier from the Shanghai Customs Office – they were
the ones who arrived with word that Zanhua’s last visit was postponed. ‘I’ll meet him in the courtyard. Please offer him some tea.’

A few moments later, apron off, she steps into the courtyard – and freezes. Her guest, who sits with his legs crossed on the courtyard’s one small stone bench, sipping tea, is none other than Teacher Hong.

The artist wears baggy trousers such as construction workers wear, although they’re spattered with paint instead of dust. These he’s paired with a blue work shirt like the ones Yuliang has seen on French foreign nationals. On his head, looking as though it might slide off at any moment, is the black beret he’d worn on the Bund.

‘Good morning,’ he says cheerfully, lowering his cup. ‘I trust I don’t arrive at a bad moment.’

‘I wasn’t doing anything important.’

‘Work isn’t important?’

Yuliang stares at him. Hong Ye grins. ‘Charcoal on your forehead.’

‘Oh,’ she says, and pats her brow helplessly. ‘It’s very kind of you to visit.’

‘Not at all. I’m enjoying your very fine tea.’

‘Oh, it’s nothing, really. My husband buys it from Hangzhou.’

‘He’s not here now, I gather.’ Yuliang shakes her head, uncertain as to how much to elaborate. Ocean Street, like most old neighborhoods, is an open harbor of information, filled with whispered cross-currents of other people’s business. The last thing she wants, for Zanhua’s sake, is more scandal.

Seeming to sense this, Teacher Hong clears his throat.
‘Autumn,’ he announces, ‘is my favorite season. Easier to work once the fans are set aside and the humidity lifts. Don’t you think?’

Yuliang nods. ‘I do hope my rudeness the other day didn’t interfere very much with your work.’

Teacher Hong shakes his head. ‘Art is a lonely profession. In fact, it was your visit that encouraged me to intrude upon you at this early hour.’ Setting his cup down, he reaches for the canvas she’s only just noticed leaning against his seat. ‘Words don’t paint a picture, as they say. I thought it might be helpful to illustrate a few of my points.’

He turns the canvas toward her, and she finds herself looking at the portrait he’d been working on in his studio. At least, she assumes it’s the same one. For the work is very different now. The painted Hong Ye has been infused with color, fleshed out with brilliance and depth. His trimmed beard and mustache glisten with gray and silver. The eyes that peer through the glinting lenses (
How,
Yuliang wonders,
does one do that – paint what one barely sees?
) look just as they do now: sympathetic, warm with interest. As she stares into them, a strange feeling washes through her. It’s a little like longing. A little, too, like love. But not the kind of love the poets write of. It’s more a fierce yearning to
be
this man, to inhabit his weathered skin. She’d give anything, anything at all, to be able to paint like he does.

‘You see,’ he is saying, ‘the sienna undertones do nothing to dampen the brightness. They merely give the image depth.’ He looks up at her. ‘I take it you approve?’

‘Is it dry? Can I touch it?’ After she says it, the request strikes her as outrageously intimate. Like asking to run her hands through his hair.

But Teacher Hong simply nods. ‘That’s part of the appeal of oils, isn’t it? Texture. So much richer and more interesting than water-based paints. The first time I saw Monet’s
Japanese Bridge
, I found myself reaching toward it as a boy reaches for candy.’ He chuckles. ‘The guards almost wrestled me from the room.’

He waves her closer. Yuliang, too intrigued to bother asking who
Mo-nay
is, cautiously traces his brush’s lines with her fingertips. At first glance the paint seemed almost sculptural – thick and layered. Following shifts in light and shape with her fingertips, however, she realizes it’s less the physical dimensions of the paint itself than its color that throws the image into relief.

‘It’s my belief,’ Teacher Hong says as she explores, ‘that brushwork is the key aspect of painting. Principal Liu from
l’école
where I teach agrees. You know of him?’

Yuliang nods, although in truth she knows only what she can make out in the newspapers, or hears from Ahying and the scandalized grandmothers on the street. ‘Isn’t he the one who’s been paying the models…’ She drifts off, faintly embarrassed.

‘To undress, yes,’ he says pleasantly. ‘One editorial last week also called him a “traitor to art.” He liked the title so much he’s had it carved into a chop. He signs all his documents with it now.’ He turns back to the painting. ‘But as I was saying, brushwork is the foundation of any good painting. Many of these Western artists have impressive perspective and color schemes but little grasp of how crucial the actual application is.’ He strokes his upper lip contemplatively. ‘It’s really much as in embroidery. Your strokes are the stitches. Without them, everything falls to pieces.’

Yuliang looks up, struck by this unexpected reference to her first and most familiar form of art. For all of Zanhua’s teachings on fate, it seems almost like a sign. It may even be what prompts her to ask what she asks next, since she certainly had no intention of asking it:

‘Teacher Hong. It’s very forward of me… but may I show you something?’

Finger to lips once more, the gentle-faced artist contemplates Yuliang’s latest sketch – a bowl of chrysanthemums, inspired in part (though of course he doesn’t know it) by Hong Ye’s own brilliant florals. Outside, Ahying is beating a rug. To distract herself from her clamoring nerves, Yuliang counts the blows:
one, two, three…
At twenty-seven she finds herself mildly irritated: does it really take so much beating to get such a small rug clean?

After what seems days, Hong Ye finally turns to her. ‘You have further pieces,’ he says. An assertion, not a question.

Obediently, Yuliang retrieves her sketchbook from behind Zou Rong’s
Revolutionary Army
in the bookcase, then watches as Teacher Hong leafs through the images. His face is impassive. But he taps some of them decisively, much as he’d tapped the study of himself he finally chose to paint. He spends several moments on the image of a little doll which she’d found lying abandoned on the street. ‘Disturbing,’ he notes.

Yuliang drops her eyes, uncertain whether this is praise or condemnation.

‘Do you have a tutor?’ And when she shakes her head: ‘Not in a formal manner, you mean.’

‘Not at all. My mother taught me some embroidery. Sometimes we’d sketch patterns together, to decide designs. And my husband has worked with me on calligraphy. But this’ – she waves at the chrysanthemums, the coal-dusted book – ‘this I’ve done on my own.’

Another short silence. ‘And your esteemed husband encourages this?’

‘Yes. But…’ Yuliang hesitates. ‘He’s afraid it will detract from my other studies.’

Hong Ye’s lips lift into a brief, grave smile. ‘I hear this frequently. Although not often from women, I must say. Your husband must be an unusual man.’

If he’s aware of her anxiety, he doesn’t reveal it. He sighs, removes his spectacles again, probes an ear with an earpiece. ‘What I’m going to say,’ he begins at last, ‘isn’t something I say easily, or often. By no means take it as an excuse to fall back from your work.’

Yuliang holds her breath, barely daring to move.

‘Only a few times in my career,’ Teacher Hong continues, ‘have I seen someone so unformed show such promise. I might add that my career has been long and has taken me many places. Japan, Italy, France… Happily, though, talent knows no nationality.’

‘You – you like them,’ Yuliang interrupts, barely trusting her ears.

He nods. ‘The images are simple. The perspective is often off. More disturbing is the intense romanticism here. Some are so feminine it’s almost intrusive. As a woman artist, you’ll want to guard against that. Let the art speak for itself.’

For some reason his use of
woman –
or perhaps the
way he emphasizes it over
artist
– annoys her slightly. ‘It doesn’t now?’

‘The little doll adds a nicely jarring note,’ he concedes. He resettles his glasses on his nose. ‘But true art must contain an emotional range that speaks to the viewer. Speaks – and I know many of our traditional masters wouldn’t agree – not by lulling them into a false sense of complacency, but by probing. Challenging. Even hurting, if need be. Anything to force us beyond life’s easier thoughts. I believe you will learn this with us in coming days.’

‘With – with
us
?’

The hope in her voice is so raw he must hear it too. But he just smiles. ‘What would you say to standing for the academy’s entrance exams in January?’

Yuliang’s hands fly to her throat.
‘What?’

He nods, the action sending his beret slipping slightly back on his head. He slaps it absently back into place. ‘I should warn you, we haven’t had many women yet. Actually, just one who stayed the full two-year term. But my sense is that you could hold your own with our young men.’ Seeing her expression, he quickly qualifies: ‘I mean only that I have sensed in you, almost from the start, a certain… shall we say strength? You trust your instincts. You aren’t afraid to stand up for yourself. You don’t let paltry boundaries of custom or etiquette stand in the way of self-expression. May I ask what year you were born?’

Yuliang blinks again. ‘The year of the boar.’

He nods. ‘Interesting. I’d have said sheep.’

But Yuliang is still processing the first astonishing part of Hong Ye’s pronouncement. ‘You want
me
,’ she says slowly, ‘to enter the Shanghai Art Academy.’

He holds up a finger. ‘I want you to stand for the academy examination. Our school is selective. Particularly when it comes to women artists.’

Again the emphasis is on
women.
Even so, it’s as though the room has turned to pure gold. Yuliang sees herself: an academy student! Sitting with
plein air
sketchers on the Bund. Striding through the school’s French doors, sketchbook under her arm… Then her gaze falls to the bookshelf behind him, filled with books Zanhua has given or sent her. Yuliang drops her head. ‘I’m overwhelmed,’ she says slowly, ‘by the honor you are offering me. But I’m – I’m afraid I’ll have to ask my husband first.’

‘He seems a modern-thinking man, from the way you describe him.’

‘Oh, he is. He’s been very, very kind. He – he just wants me to focus on my learning. Some art, perhaps. But mostly useful things – history, politics. The classics.’ She smiles wryly. ‘He trusts words over pretty pictures.’

Teacher Hong digests this for a moment. ‘I’m sorry to inquire so inelegantly. But your husband – he doesn’t live in this household?’

‘No,’ says Yuliang, feeling herself blush yet again. ‘Well, he does sometimes. But he’s posted in Wuhu.’

‘And might I ask, equally rudely, when he comes next?’

‘Just after the New Year.’ It’s an unspoken agreement that Zanhua spends the Chinese New Year, that most important of holidays, with his official family.

Teacher Hong claps his hands. ‘Well, then. We’re in luck. The examinations for the next term were supposed to be next week, but they’ve now been rescheduled for January twelfth. You can certainly take them without
committing to anything. And eight weeks, I believe, is time enough for me to help you prepare.’ He looks up at the ceiling. ‘I’d suggest three study sessions with me weekly, between now and then. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings work well with my schedule.’

He doesn’t understand
, she thinks. ‘Sir,’ she says breathlessly. ‘I’m sorry, but perhaps I haven’t explained myself. I’m not at all sure I can even go to the school. It’s – it’s not just the art.’ She hesitates; it’s bad form to discuss the family finances in public. But she blunders on. ‘There’s the issue of money too. Not that we’re poor. But I’m just not sure – you see, he has three households to maintain already.’

Teacher Hong stands up, tucking his cravat into his padded jacket. ‘My dear, one of the first things you must learn, if you are to enter this terrible field, is to ration out your anxieties – and there will be many – to where they’re truly needed. It isn’t yet a question of paying or even going to the school. For the next two months it’s a question of creating opportunity.’ Standing, he sets the sketchbook down on Yuliang’s little desk. ‘Happily, Education Minister Cai is a great friend of the arts. If you are accepted –
if
– I believe there is some scholarship money left. If that is the case – and again,
if
you gain entrance – why, then we can worry about the rest.’