The Painter of Shanghai (46 page)

It’s a tradition Yuliang has developed these past years, taking one last little walk among her paintings. She doesn’t take notes, doesn’t repaint or change anything. She merely strolls, smokes, thinks. She adjusts one frame here, rubs a smudge from another with a tongue-moistened handkerchief.
You will be fine,
she tells her works, each and every one of them.
You are beautiful. You make me proud.
Strangely enough, it is this moment – not the awarding of prize or purse, nor the flash of the reporters’ cameras – to which she most looks forward. That bated-breath walk. That last quiet assessment. She and her artwork, alone.

Today, however, as the rickshaw turns onto the tree-lined avenue, Yuliang is surprised to see a small crowd already gathered. What’s more, the doors are already open. Not neatly hooked back as they usually are, but swinging loosely on their hinges. Like two loose white teeth.

‘A good turnout,’ Zanhua says, either missing or discounting this detail. ‘Perhaps we’ll see a sale or two.’

When Yuliang doesn’t answer, he touches her arm.
‘Don’t worry,’ he says. ‘This will be your best one yet.’

Yuliang forces a smile. It is both moving and inexplicable, his silent but unswerving support all of these years. ‘I’m not worried,’ she says.

Despite herself, though, she pats her pocket. All she feels is the ribbed texture of her stockings. She pats the other pocket: also empty.

Frowning, Yuliang slips her hand from her husband’s arm. Turning in her seat, she probes the rickshaw cushions.

‘What is it?’ Zanhua asks.

‘My boar.’ She checks her skirt again, then her jacket. She distinctly remembers slipping it into the day’s planned outfit (a checked suit with puffed sleeves and a hemline a good inch or two above New Life standards). But again, it’s not in any of her tiny, pointless pockets. Her embroidered handbag contains only its usual contents: cigarettes, her lipstick. Notes for an upcoming lecture at school. The rickshaw floor proves just as barren.

‘Do you need to go back?’ Zanhua asks.

And for a moment Yuliang actually considers it. After all, she carried the little sculpture with her to and from Europe, slept with it beneath her thin pillow in third class. She has taken it to almost every exhibit and major event ever since. It was even in her pocket when she first kowtowed to Guanyin. The thought of facing today, of all days, without it borders on terrifying. But she forces herself to sit up straight. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she says, stiffly.

Still, as they draw even with the Exhibition Space, her anxiety hardens into a painful knot, slung low and tight in her stomach. The crowd isn’t the usual sort that gathers
before an art opening. It is more like one that gathers at the scene of a murder. French Concession policemen in their small flat hats and silver buckles are talking sternly and scribbling notes. Newsmen cluster with their cameramen. Pedestrians pause. Gallery personnel smoke and fan themselves in tense clusters. And as her rickshaw pulls up, the reporters swarm over, their faces alert, intent. Faintly gleeful. ‘Do you have any idea who did this?’ one shouts. ‘Have you established what is missing?’

‘And do you have any sense of where those pieces might have gone?’

Recognizing this last voice Yuliang whirls around quickly. Sure enough, it’s Tang Leiyi, from the
Shenbao.
With a cool smile, he insinuates himself between Yuliang and her husband. ‘I’ve heard,’ he says in a low voice, ‘that the Blue Shirt Society was involved. Any comment?’

‘That’s outrageous!’ Zanhua sputters, pushing him back. ‘And you have no right to bother us again.’ Taking Yuliang’s arm, he tries to hustle her into the building.

Yuliang, however, remains rooted to the spot. She is suddenly aware of two somewhat hard-looking men across the street. When she stares at them, they stare right back. Expressionless. Smoking almost in unison.

‘Did you say Blue Shirts?’ she asks quietly. The society is well known in Nanjing, where it plays a key role in the eradication of Communists. Loosely modeled on Mussolini’s Blackshirts, the Blue Shirts have a stated mandate of ensuring absolute allegiance to their Generalissimo, Chiang Kai-shek, in government, military, and society. Some claim they control everything from public schools to publishing houses. Up until now,
though, Yuliang has never heard of them turning their steely gazes to painting.

‘No one has confirmed it yet. But after what they’ve found here, there are whispers…’

Fear spreads blue-black wings in her chest. ‘What?
What
have they found here?’

‘You mean to say they haven’t called you?’ He’s scribbling furiously. ‘Do you suppose, then, that the Exhibition Space was in on it as well?’

‘In on
what
?’ Yuliang begins. But she’s interrupted by a shrill exclamation: ‘Don’t write that. Don’t you write that!’

Curator Ma hurries over, glasses askew. For once his face is stripped of its smile. ‘We called Madame Pan right away,’ he tells the reporter. It’s the angriest tone she’s heard him use. ‘The concierge will confirm this, if you check at the Cathay. Surely you don’t think that we had a hand –’

Yuliang can stand it no longer. ‘
Tell me!
’ she shouts. ‘If someone doesn’t tell me
now
what is going on, I – I will never speak to your paper again. And I – I’ll take all my works somewhere else.’

The curator blinks. The journalist’s face creases into another smile. He writes something down, then underlines it. Twice. ‘I’ll leave you to escort her inside, Master Ma.’ Turning to Yuliang, he adds ominously, ‘Madame. My condolences. We all know how hard you work.’ He saunters to the exhibition poster by the door.

Hands trembling, Curator Ma attempts to straighten his tie. ‘We rang your hotel three times, no less,’ he says helplessly. ‘Three times!’

‘We had breakfast out,’ Yuliang tells him. ‘But I still –’ She breaks off abruptly as her gaze lands again on Tang Leiyi, now positioned with his camera before the entrance. He’s preparing to photograph a poster for the show, with the same wording Yuliang had asked to have changed. With a jolt, she suddenly sees that it
has
been changed – but not as she requested. Now not just
woman
but
painter
has been slashed out with red paint. Above are characters carrying a completely different meaning:
.

Whore.

Yuliang shuts her eyes.
It’s a dream,
she tells herself.
It’s just another one of my dreams.

But when she opens her eyes, the poster is still there. So are the two men, crushing out their cigarettes. One catches her eye. He grins – a hard, tight smile.

Stomach churning, Yuliang turns back to the curator. ‘Tell me what has happened.’

Curator Ma attempts a smile that’s so completely far from the mark that in other circumstances it might have made her laugh. ‘I – I think perhaps it’s better if you see for yourself.’

‘I’ll go with her,’ Zanhua says, stepping protectively in front of her.

But Yuliang shakes her head. ‘Let me go in first.’ She holds her hand out to the curator. ‘Please give me the key to the gallery.’

For an instant the ghost of his old smile hovers at his lips. ‘Actually, madame,’ he says ‘you won’t need it.’

As she enters the building she sees the posters inside, pulled from frames, ripped and hanging in shreds, and
the doors slightly ajar. One doorknob is broken. Glass from several shattered panes lies in gleaming piles on the floor. Yuliang stares at the shards with a sense, as elusive as scent, that she has somehow lived through this moment before. But if she has, she can’t recall it. And even if she could, she knows already, somehow, that it won’t help to prepare her for what’s to come. Wordlessly, she pushes her way through the battered door.

What strikes her first is the whiteness – the startling absence of color. It is almost what she imagines crossing over into the afterworld might be like. It takes a moment for her to realize that she is seeing only sunlight, bouncing blankly off the empty walls.

For the walls
are
empty, almost all of them: other than in the alcove, every single painting she’d ordered hung in the gallery has been yanked or knocked from its mounting. The ones the vandals left still litter the floor. Others are missing: They’re simply not there.

Stunned, Yuliang scans the room, cataloguing the lost. She counts five:
Negress, Boy, Paris Nude, Dreaming Nude, Nursing Mother.
She sees it at once: All the nudes. It is only the nudes they’ve taken. For a split second she is baffled. Why take the very paintings they’ve decried the most?

The answer comes coldly:
They’ve stolen them to sell them
.

Behind her, a whisper. A pencil hitting a notebook. She feels Zanhua behind her, his hand firm on her shoulder. She shrugs him off sharply and walks around the room, continuing with her numb inventory:
Lotuses, Chrysanthemums, Still Life with Vase and Paper.
All of these have been left alone. But her cityscapes – from Rome
and Venice, her Paris street scenes – have been scrawled on or slashed. And
The Bridge of Great Loyalty
has been almost completely destroyed: it’s now little more than a row of gray-and-black-painted ribbons.

But worst of all is
Strong Man.
When Yuliang first leans over to inspect it, she gasps and quickly averts her face. It’s as though she’s identifying a body, but one that bears almost no resemblance to the strong, fluid form she’s devoted herself to these past months.

They’ve embellished his lean form with cartoonish obscenities; breasts, a limp organ of impossible size. Little is left below the nose but poster paint. Even more chillingly, the eyes are gone – they’ve literally been cut out. They’re blank and white, the eyes of a ghost. Across the top is scrawled, in the same meticulous hand she saw on the poster, ‘A Whore’s Tribute to Her Client.’

Her hands shaking, Yuliang lifts up the frame. ‘How did they do this?’

‘We – we don’t precisely know yet, madame,’ the curator says. ‘But it appears someone came through the western window.’

He points. The window is open but, unlike the door, intact: no broken glass, no signs of damage or forced entry. ‘Are you saying it wasn’t
locked
?’

‘We’ve never thought,’ he begins. ‘That is, there has never been the need –’

‘That’s a lie!’ she shouts. ‘You yourself warned me yesterday that there was danger!’

Behind them is a whispered chorus of pens. Zanhua takes her arm again as the first flare goes off. In the afterstink of the sulfur he attempts to comfort her:
‘Yuliang. We’ll make them pay. We’ll call my solicitor.’

She laughs hoarsely. ‘Why? Can he paint?’ Her eyes welling, she waves an arm at the decimated room. ‘It’s gone. All gone. Half a lifetime of work.’

As more flashes go off she holds her hands to her eyes, blocking it out – the explosions, the wreckage. That awful, blinding nullity. And yet even through her trembling fingers she still sees it – what
they’ll
see when the papers come out tomorrow. Not a painter. Not even a victim. They’ll see a weeping whore in the ruins of her career. For in the end, she suddenly realizes, the vandals’ knives simply cut to the truth of what everyone already thinks of her.

‘They wanted this,’ she murmurs. ‘All of them.’

Her husband grips her arm. ‘Come. There’s no reason to stay.’

But Yuliang pushes him away. ‘No.’

And with that one gesture, what remains of her self-control crumbles. Falling to her knees, she rips
Strong Man
from its frame. ‘Is
this
what you all wanted?’ She hurls the frame to the ground. ‘And
this…
and
this…
’ She stamps on the wood until it snaps. She tries to tear the painting as well, but the canvas, fortified with layers of hardened oils, resists her fingers. In the end, as cameras flash and click behind, she uses her feet, kicking the frame to pieces, grinding her heels into the varnish. She scrapes and stamps on the obscene scrawlings until they’re indecipherable.

Then she turns back to the reporters.

‘There,’ she says. ‘At least write that I finished the job. If you write anything, write that. I always finish the job.’

41

In the end, the detectives assigned to the case confess to being at a complete loss. They have, they say, no idea who the vandals were, what their motives might have been. ‘These were very skilled,’ says one, who nevertheless can’t quite meet Yuliang’s eye. ‘I’d advise you to forget about them.’

‘About the vandals?’

‘Forget about everything.’

‘Do you really think I can do that?’ Yuliang snaps in disbelief.

The look he gives her is one of sheer scorn, only slightly leavened by pity. ‘Madame,’ he says, ‘they’re just paintings. You can always paint new ones.’ His tone suggests that this is regrettable.

Even more insultingly, the amount the gallery offers by way of compensation is barely enough to cover painting expenses for three months, let alone replace twenty years’ worth of work.