Everything Under the Sky (3 page)

I was pleasantly surprised by the French Concession. I'd been afraid the neighborhoods would have narrow streets and houses with those upturned roofs, but it was a delightful place. It had the same residential feel as the quarters in Paris, full of lovely whitewashed villas and gardens with exquisite lilacs, rosebushes, and privets. There were tennis clubs, cabarets, little plazas bordered by sycamore trees, public parks where mothers sat sewing next to their baby carriages, libraries, a movie house, bakeries, restaurants, clothing and cosmetic stores. I could have been in Montmartre, in the pavilions of the Bois, or in the Latin Quarter and not have known the difference. Every now and then, here or there, you could see a Chinese-style house with its red doors and windows, but they were the exception in those clean, pleasant French neighborhoods. Thus, when M. Favez stopped in front of a wooden gate outside one of the Oriental homes, I was slightly taken aback.

“Here we are,” he declared happily as he turned off the motor and got out of the car.

Underneath one of two red paper lanterns, adorned with Chinese characters, hanging on either side of the door was a chain coming out through a hole in the wall. M. Favez pulled on it energetically and then returned to open my door and gallantly help me from the car. Although his hand remained outstretched, waiting, a sudden and devastating paralysis took hold of me, and I was unable to move. Not once in twenty years had Rémy mentioned that he lived in a Chinese-style house.

“Are you all right, Mme De Poulain?”

The large doors opened slowly, without a sound, and three or four servants, including one woman, came out into the street. They were bowing and murmuring phrases that must have been greetings, in their unfamiliar language. The first movement I was able to make was not to take the patient hand M. Favez extended, but to turn toward the back seat and look at my niece in search of a little understanding and complicity. Indeed, Fernanda's eyes were as big as saucers, expressing the same horrified surprise that I felt.

“What's wrong?” the attaché asked, leaning in with concern.

I recovered from my confusion as best I could and finally put my hand in M. Favez's. I had nothing against Chinese houses, of course; it was simply not what I expected of Rémy. He'd been such a refined bon vivant, so French, always on the alert for comforts and European good taste. How he had managed to live in a vulgar old Celestial house escaped me.

The female servant was as tiny and thin as a reed, and it was impossible to determine her age—you could just as easily have guessed fifty as seventy. She ceased giving orders to the three men who were carrying our luggage and bowed down so low before me that her lips nearly kissed the ground.

“My name is Mrs. Zhong,
tai-tai
,”
²
she said in perfect French. “Welcome to your late husband's house.”

Mrs. Zhong, wearing a short jacket with a high collar and wide pants the same color blue it seemed all Chinese wore, bowed ceremoniously again. Her jet-black hair was pulled into a ponytail like Fernanda's, although that's where the similarity ended. It would have taken two or three Mrs. Zhongs to fill the physical space occupied by my niece, who remained sitting in the car, hesitant to leave.

“Come on, Fernanda,” I encouraged. “We have to go in.”

“Everyone in Spain calls me Fernandina, Auntie,” she replied coldly in Spanish.

“Watch your manners in front of M. Favez and Mrs. Zhong. They don't speak our language. Out of the car, please.”

“I'll say good-bye now, madame, mademoiselle,” the attaché said, elegantly adjusting his cravat. “I'll go by the consulate to confirm your lunch with M. Wilden tomorrow.”

“Leaving already, M. Favez?” I asked, alarmed.

As Fernanda got out of the Voisin, the attaché leaned over and took my hand, raising it lightly to his lips in farewell.

“Don't worry, madame,” he whispered. “Mrs. Zhong is absolutely reliable. She worked for your late husband for years and can help you with anything you need.” He straightened up and smiled. “I'll pick you up at twelve-thirty tomorrow, then?”

I nodded, and the diplomat turned toward my niece, who'd come to stand by my side.

“Good-bye, mademoiselle. It was a pleasure to meet you. I hope you enjoy your stay in Shanghai.”

Fernanda gestured vaguely with her head, tilting it I'm not sure how, and suddenly an image of her grandmother, my mother, came to mind. I could picture her sitting in the parlor of the old family home on calle Don Ramón de la Cruz in Madrid, wrapped in her beautiful Manila shawl to receive visitors on Thursday afternoons.

The Voisin sped down the street and disappeared. Fernanda and I turned toward the house with as little joy as if we'd been condemned to the garrote. Mrs. Zhong held one of the large doors open to allow us to pass. I don't know why, but just then she looked so like a Spanish civil guard that it unsettled me. Perhaps I'd mistaken her hair for a three-cornered hat; they were the same color and had the same lacquered shine. It was odd to be remembering things from Spain that I hadn't thought of in the last twenty years. No doubt this was due to the presence of that sullen, scowling child who'd brought my past back to me in her suitcase.

We walked onto an enormous patio with lush flower borders, blue-green ponds adorned with rock gardens, and enormous, hundredyear-old trees unlike any I had seen before. Some were so tall I'd noticed their branches above the wall from the street outside. A wide path in the shape of a cross led from the gate to three rectangular one-story buildings. Broad stone staircases ascended to porches filled with plants. Each building was painted white and had large, wooden windows carved with geometric shapes. The roofs had those horrible upturned corners of glazed pottery, painted such a vibrant green they shone brightly in the late-afternoon light.

With mincing steps Mrs. Zhong led the way to the main building directly in front of us. Watching her, I wondered why she didn't have those deformed feet that everyone who'd ever been to China always talked about. Rémy once told me that it was a Chinese custom to bind girls’ feet starting at the age of two or three, so that the four smaller toes would curl under the sole of the foot. In a monstrous ritual of tears, screams, and pain that led to the death of some unlucky girls, the bandage was tightened a little more every day, for years, to prevent the extremity from growing. These poor women were forever condemned to walk with a swaying motion because they could use only what was left of the heel and the big toe, having to extend their arms and stick out their buttocks to keep their balance. Such horrific feet, called “Golden Lotus” or “Golden Lilies,” caused the victim pain for the rest of her life and incomprehensibly provoked the most passionate desire in Chinese men. Rémy had also told me that the custom of foot binding had been banned since the end of the empire—that is, ever since Dr. Sun Yat-sen toppled the monarchy. But that had been only eleven years earlier, and Mrs. Zhong was more than old enough to have been subjected to the torture.

However, there she went, her small but healthy feet stuffed into white socks and the strangest flat black felt slippers, leading the way to the house that was now mine—as long as there were no more surprises during my meeting with Rémy's lawyer. I intended to sell it, of course, along with all the contents, and thus obtain some sorely needed income. I was also counting on the fact that Rémy would have left me a little money, not much, but enough to allow me to live comfortably for a few years until cubism, dadaism, constructivism, and so on went out of fashion and my paintings would fetch a better price. I admired Marcel Duchamp's innovation, Mondrian's geometry, and Picasso's genius, but as an art dealer had once told me, my paintings were too literal and too accessible. I'd never be considered one of the greats. No matter; I didn't care. All I wanted was to capture the surprising movement of a head, the perfection in a face, the harmony of the human body. I derived inspiration from beauty, wherever I found it, and wanted to express that magic on canvas, conveying the same power and emotion it evoked in me. I wanted whoever viewed my work to feel the pleasure, to be imbued with the same flavor and aroma. Unfortunately, because this wasn't in style, I was barely able to make ends meet. I was sure that Rémy, who knew all this, would have left me a tidy little sum in his will. The thought of inheriting his entire estate never even crossed my mind. The powerful De Poulain family would never allow a poor foreign painter to become coowner of their silk factories. But the house, yes—it would have been crass even for the De Poulains to deprive a widow of her husband's home.

“Please come in,” Mrs. Zhong invited as she pushed open the beautiful carved double doors to the main building.

It was much bigger inside than I expected. Large rooms stretched out to the left and right of the entrance, separated by wooden panels carved with geometric shapes, like the windows, and similarly covered from behind with a fine white paper that let an orangish, amber light through. Strangest of all were the doors in the center of the panels—if these round openings, these large holes in the shape of full moons, could be called doors. I have to admit that the furnishings were truly beautiful, inlaid and carved, lacquered in shades ranging from bright red to dark brown so that they stood out against the white walls and light-colored tile floor. The room Mrs. Zhong took us to—the last on the right—was filled with tables of all kinds, shapes, and sizes. Exquisite porcelain vases and bronze dragons, tigers, turtles, and birds sat on some; others were covered in flowerpots; on still others, red candles, wide at the top and narrow at the bottom, with no plate or candleholder underneath. I realized that all the decorations in this and the other rooms we'd passed through were curiously symmetrical—very strange to my Western eyes. And yet this harmony was deliberately split, by certain pictures or calligraphies on the walls, or a sideboard covered in ceramic bowls that looked out of place, almost accidental. It would take some time before I discovered that Celestials thought of each piece of furniture as a work of art, and its placement in a room had nothing to do with chance or mere aesthetics. A complex, thousand-year-old philosophy lay behind domestic décor. At the time, however, I thought Rémy's house looked like a museum of Oriental curiosities, and while such chinoiseries were still very much in style in Europe, I found the sheer profusion dizzying.

A servant with a mortarboard hat suddenly appeared carrying a tray of pretty white cups with lids and a red clay teapot. Moving as if sleepwalking, he set it on a large pedestal table in the center of the room. Mrs. Zhong pointed to a couch along one wall and then bent over to lift a squat, square table off the floor. She set it in the middle of the couch, exactly where I'd been about to sit, so that Fernanda and I were separated by it. As Mrs. Zhong poured us a cup of tea, the aroma drifting up from it awoke my poor gastric juices, making me feel suddenly famished. Unfortunately, however, the Chinese don't serve cookies with their tea, nor do they add milk or sugar, so I was left no choice but to simply rinse my stomach with that hot liquid.

“Tai-tai,”
Mrs. Zhong addressed me, bowing respectfully, “what should I call the young miss?”

“My niece?” I replied, looking over at the girl as she stared in confusion at her cup. “Call her by her name, Mrs. Zhong: Fernanda.”

“My name is Fernandina,” my niece objected as she continued to search in vain for the handle.

“Listen, Fernanda,” I said gravely. “Spaniards have the habit of using the diminutive of a person's name: Lolita, Juanito, Alfonsito, Bernardino, Pepita, Isabelita … but elsewhere it's considered silly, do you understand?”

“I don't care,” she replied, in Spanish to anger me even more. I ignored her.

“Mrs. Zhong, call the girl Fernanda, despite what she might tell you.”

The servant bowed again, accepting my order.

“Your luggage has been taken to monsieur's room,
tai-tai,
but if you prefer otherwise, please let me know. I've put Mlle Fernanda in the bedroom next to yours.”

“That sounds fine, Mrs. Zhong. Thank you so much for your help.”

“Oh,
tai-tai,
a letter came for you today,” she added, taking a small step forward and pulling an elongated envelope out of her pants pocket.

“For me?” I couldn't believe it. Who could possibly have written to me at Rémy's in Shanghai?

The envelope was imprinted with an important-looking emblem, and the note inside was written on fine paper. Fernanda and I were invited to dinner on Friday, August 31, at the home of Mr. Julio Palencia y Tubau, consul general of Spain, where he and his wife, along with the most distinguished members of the small Spanish community in Shanghai, would be delighted to make our acquaintance.

My social obligations were beginning to overwhelm me. After I spoke to his lawyer, I'd planned on visiting the French cemetery where Rémy was temporarily buried. However, that didn't look as if it'd be possible, since the consuls of my native and adoptive countries were determined to meet me right away. Why the hurry?

“We'll have to reply one way or another,” I murmured, setting the envelope on a corner of the little table and lifting the lid off my tea to take a sip.

Fernanda reached out and took the note. A smile—this time a genuine smile—came over her face, and she looked at me expectantly. “We'll go, won't we?”

When I looked at her, I realized that the girl was suffering from the malady that all of us feel who are forced out of our country for a prolonged period of time: the yearning for a familiar place and language.

“I suppose,” I said. The tea was really very good, even without sugar. The contrast between the white porcelain and the lovely bright red infusion was absolutely inspiring. I wished I'd had my palette and paintbrushes at hand.

“We can't say no to an invitation from the Spanish consul.”

“I know, but I have a lot to do tomorrow, and I'll be exhausted by evening, Fernanda. Try to understand. It's not that I don't want to go, I just don't know whether I'll have the energy.”