Dreams of Joy: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

can’t possibly have approved of your being here,” he adds. I can tell he’s trying to get more information from me, but that’s still not going to happen.
    “Your government has asked people like me to come here,” I say, trying to voice the enthusiasm I’ve felt for months now. “I want to help build the New Society.” But it’s like a lid being lifted off a rice pot. All my steam has escaped too quickly. Why isn’t he happier to see me? Why hasn’t he hugged or kissed me? “I’m not the only one, you know.”
    “You’re the only one who is … who is …” He swallows. I wait for him to say the words I need to hear. “Who is my daughter.” He falls silent and squeezes his chin with his fingers. Every once in a while, he looks at me, weighing, considering. It seems like he’s trying to figure out the solution to a difficult problem, but what’s the problem? He’s already acknowledged I’m his daughter. Finally, he asks, “Are you an artist?”
    Strange question. I don’t think anyone would call me an artist, so I lie. “Yes! People have always said so.”
    “Then tell me about the four kinds of art.”
    So I’m to be tested? I bite my lip to keep my disappointment from showing and try to remember things I’ve seen in Chinatown. Everyone had calendars for Chinese New Year. Even Pearl’s Coffee Shop made a calendar that we gave to our most loyal customers.
    “There are New Year’s calendars,” I say tentatively.
    “That’s right. They are one of the four accepted art forms. They are for peasants—like folk art—and therefore good for the masses. Political portraits and propaganda posters would fall into this category as well.”
    I remember something I learned at the University of Chicago, and I begin to recite. “Mao said art is to serve workers, peasants, and soldiers. It should be closely associated with revolutionary practice—”
    “You haven’t finished with the four kinds of art. What about Socialist Realism?”
    This I absolutely remember from college. “It gives an almost scientific likeness—like a mirror—of the real world: the masses building a dam, young women making cloth in a factory, tractors and tanks rolling down a country road side by side uniting workers and soldiers. Like what you did for China Reconstructs . My mother and aunt”—again I don’t specify who was who—“used to save the issues with your artwork.”
    “May saw those?”
    May, again. He seems to have more curiosity about her than he does about me.
    “Yes, she pinned them to the wall above her bed.”
    A slight smile comes to his lips. I can see he’s flattered.
    “What else?” he asks.
    About May? About art? I stick with art.
    “There are cartoons. Good for politics …”
    He nods, but I can see his mind is still enjoying that someone far away in another country still aches for him.
    “And the fourth?” he asks.
    Blood flushes my cheeks. It’s as though everything I’ve ever learned or seen has abruptly left my brain. In my mind, I’m looking at the walls in our house in Chinatown, in the cafés and curio shops I’ve been in all my life, in the garages and stores …
    “Landscapes! Flowers and butterflies! Pretty ladies gazing into a pond or lingering in a pavilion! Calligraphy!” One of those has to be right.
    “Traditional Chinese painting,” he says approvingly. “It is at the opposite spectrum from New Year’s calendars. It is far removed from the lives of soldiers, workers, and peasants. Some consider it too elitist, but it is an accepted art form nevertheless. So which is your specialty?”
    “People in Chinatown always said my calligraphy was uncorrupted …”
    “Show me.”
    Now I’m to do calligraphy for this man—my father? Why do my artistic skills matter? Is this an investigation to see if I’m really his daughter? What if I fail?
    Z.G. gets up and motions me to follow him to the desk. He pulls out the Four Gentlemen of the scholar: paper, an inkstone,