The Painter of Shanghai (36 page)

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.’

Despite herself Yuliang stiffens, thinking of her mother. Her long, artful fingers, her glorious threaded gardens.
It isn’t like assembling a Renault
, she wants to tell him.

‘Of course,’ he says, misinterpreting her expression, ‘if that’s not what you want –’

‘No!’ Yuliang forces a smile. ‘It’s – it’s so much more than I deserve. I’d be so grateful…’

He nods beneficently. ‘All I’d ask in return is that you keep me in mind if you happen to meet anyone useful.’

‘Useful?’

‘Oh, critics. Important painters. No picture dealers, though. If you ask me, their goal’s to squeeze the life from art as we all know it.’ Scanning the room, his face suddenly brightens. ‘
Allo!
Fujita!’ he shouts at a couple that’s just been seated. The darker and more diminutive of the women turns to face them, and it’s only then that Yuliang sees that it isn’t a woman at all. It is, rather, an Oriental with a severe haircut, owlish glasses, and glittering golden hoops in each ear. He waves back at Xu Beihong, then turns back to his companion. ‘Fujita Tsuguharu,’ Beihong offers, turning back to face her.

‘
That’s
Fujita?’ The man, Yuliang notes, is also wearing lipstick. Expensive lipstick, from the look of it.

‘In the flesh, as they say. He calls himself Leonard Foujita here.’ Xu signals the waiter. ‘His painting’s a bit bland for me. Lots of skinny girls and cats. But his lines are lovely. And of course he’s very well connected.’

He is also clearly successful. As Yuliang watches enviously, the Japanese artist picks several tarts from a passing pastry cart. To her horror her own stomach growls. She crosses her arms over it quickly.

‘Are you all right?’ Xu Beihong is watching her with amusement.

‘What? Oh. Of course.’ She fights back a flush. ‘I was thinking about that old saying. About not being able to draw a cake and eat it too.’

He grunts. ‘One of Biwei’s favorites. I heard it often in Berlin.’

‘And what did you tell her?’

Xu Beihong pulls his fragile frame slightly straighter. ‘That if I give up my art, I’ll end up eating my dreams. And dead dreams are worse than hunger. They’re poison.’

He holds her gaze for a moment. Then he licks his teaspoon, crunching its last granules of sugar with clear relish.

30

It is not quite eight-thirty, and the door to the Ampitheatre d’Honneur has been left very slightly ajar. Sounds of morning setup echo into the Cour Vitrée: easels clatter, stools shriek across the warped wooden floor. ‘
Alors
,’ someone scoffs. ‘That’s the boy? Looks more like a monkey.’

‘More like your sweetheart, you mean.’ The second voice is deep, full of soft consonants and silky vowels. Yuliang recognizes an Italian whom she often works beside in session.

‘Which sweetheart?’ says the Frenchman. ‘Your mother?’

‘Vaffuncuolo! Vai in culo!’

Yuliang, standing outside with the other alternates, stifles a tired smile. She doesn’t know what the Roman said, of course. But it sounded quite satisfyingly like a curse. She senses that she would like Italy.

‘Gentlemen!’ A third voice now: it’s Vincent, the professor’s assistant, charged with collecting the monthly fees, calling out the rest and pose times for the models, and in general maintaining the atelier’s order. ‘If you insist on fisticuffs, please go over to Julian’s,’ he says, referring to the cheaper – and famously rowdier – atelier across town. ‘Otherwise, please shake hands and resume painting.’ He returns to roll call: ‘Baudin!
’

‘Oui.’
Coins clink. The fee, three hundred francs, is a full three quarters of the allowance Zanhua sends her: paying it, Yuliang always feels a swell of frustration at how little it leaves her for the next four weeks. Even more frustrating is the fact that, as dear as the money is, it’s no guarantee that she’ll get into session – even though she’s usually first in the alternate line. Which is no easy task in itself: faced with reading assignments that often take her days to translate, as well as the embroidery assignments Xu Beihong’s wife passes over to her every few weeks, Yuliang frequently doesn’t sleep until three or four in the morning.

Worse than sleeplessness, though, is hunger. She survives on a pauper’s diet: coffee, day-old bread, the occasional bruised, discounted fruit. Thanks to soaring postwar inflation and the weakening yuan against the franc, Yuliang has even had to sacrifice her monthly Métropolitain rides. Now she walks to the Chinese legation, on shoes with soles that have given way to holes and patches made of cut-up canvases. It comes as little surprise, then, that exhaustion, like hunger, is mated to her; that she paints in a kind of giddy fog. Still, walking gives her time to look about her. And hunger adds a poignant glow to the city’s already ethereal beauty. The sheer number of styles and schools and eras of Paris’s famed architecture baffled her at the start. But at the same time it charmed her; the way each architectural thought seemed perfectly harmonized with its surroundings. It’s a marked contrast to Lyon’s low-lying urban sprawl. Or Shanghai’s Bund, where old and the new clash against the shoreline, bickering members of some enormous concrete clan.

But most of all, of course, there is art.

Art is everywhere here: sedately hung in the city’s
musées,
blaring in crowded color in galleries and exhibitions. It beckons from cathedral alcoves and dangles from café walls, its tones darkened by smoke and kitchen grease. In her first week in Paris Yuliang all but lived at the Louvre, sketching until her neck ached and her eyes smarted. Her feet and legs throbbed from all the walking and standing. But she tackled each style in turn: classic, Renaissance, realist. Romantic. She stared for hours at the brilliant blues and gilded ochers of Fra Angelico’s
Coronation of the Virgin
; at Corot’s frayed and tender
Woman with a Pearl. In China
, she wrote to Zanhua,
such works would be locked away in the mansions and palaces. Here they are strung up like peppers drying for the winter! Anyone with five centimes can come see them, sketch them. Do anything, in fact, but touch them.

She can see, too, how Teacher Hong was so tempted, as he’d told her, to reach out and connect with such wonders. And yet Yuliang doesn’t need to touch them. Just as she doesn’t need guides or teachers to articulate dryly why these works matter so supremely. Every time she copies from Raphael’s
Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione
(admired by Cézanne, Matisse, and Titian) she comes away more in awe of the Umbrian’s skills, of his controlled lines, his expert shadows and blending. At two paces, the work embraces her as powerfully as any living man.

Although of course she doesn’t write
this
to Zanhua. Not just because it would seem hurtful, but because she’s given up trying to communicate in writing the way such works make her feel. It’s like trying to define the
undefinable: infinity, enlightenment. It’s like trying to put true words to love.

Instead, she sketches him little pictures of vistas and monuments: the Arc de Triomphe, Sacré Coeur, the Luxembourg Gardens. She writes that she misses him, and this of course is true.
There is no one here
, she writes,
who knows me as you do… I missed you at sunset last night, walking home. You would have enjoyed the sights… I spent last night reading the book of poetry you gave me and drinking wine. I very much miss playing our poetry game together…
But even as she writes these things, and addresses the letters in two different languages, and carries them to the legation for expedited posting, another hangnail of guilt snags. For the bigger truth, the
overriding
truth, is that she’s not merely happy here.