The Painter of Shanghai Read Online Free PDF Page A

stretch of gold-gray water somewhere between Tongling and Wuhu.
    Xiuqing pulls her jacket tight around her waist. After three days on the water she feels wind-whipped and shrunken, smaller inside her clothes. For a moment she imagines that that’s all she is: clothes. Creased and dust-streaked pants, a top. Rumpled cotton soaked in boat smells, hung on a railing to air. As her eyes reach the level of her thighs, she sees oily shadows of sloshed butterfly noodles. If they were home she could tell Lina to do laundry today, to soak their things in river water and pine ash. To spread it all on a boulder to dry. Little on earth , her mother used to say, is as sweet as sun-dried laundry. In the days before her foot-binding, Xiuqing would go along, chasing tadpoles and minnows while her mother beat clothes against a rock. That’s far enough, Xiuqing! her mama would shrill when Xiuqing strayed too far. Stay where I can see you!
    ‘That’s far enough, little Xiu,’ Uncle Wu says now. ‘Any farther and you’ll fall right off.’ He crushes his fifth cigarette of the morning under one of his heels. ‘He fell the same way you very well might, if you don’t start acting your age.’
    Just for a moment she defies him, testing gravity’s tug and tumble. She looks past her legs to where they’ve just been. The boat leaves bile-colored pleats in the river’s wake.
    ‘Little Xiu.’ Her uncle’s voice is beginning to tighten. With a small grunt, Xiuqing pulls herself upright. ‘He fell,’ Wu Ding resumes, ‘in the middle of an evening cruise. He was reaching for the moon.’
    ‘The moon?’
    ‘It was under the boat. Underwater. The old bastard had had too much to drink.’ He lights a sixth cigarette, fingers dancing a little. He’s beginning to reach his limit. Xiuqing does a quick mental calculation: It’s been two days since she spied him squatting in the ship’s soiled stern patio, sharing a pipe with a second-class merchant. They ran into the merchant this morning, strolling on deck. Her uncle gave him an ingratiating greeting and then hustled Xiuqing off. ‘Not a very refined man,’ he murmured vaguely. ‘Best to avoid him, in such small quarters.’ And Xiuqing knew without asking that he now owed this man too, just as he owed all the lenders and pawnshops back home.
    ‘He drowned,’ he says now, firmly, as though settling a debate. ‘The man couldn’t swim.’
    ‘That doesn’t seem very sensible. Reaching for the moon in the water.’
    ‘Artists aren’t interested in sense. They’re interested inthe senses .’ He coughs, the sound harsh and wet in the wind. He pats himself for his handkerchief, comes up empty. ‘They’re after life’s reflections, not life itself.’
    Xiuqing hops back on one foot, tries to balance again. She contemplates this gap: things and reflections. Objects and images. She stares at the sinking sun, its rays chipping gemlike off the river. The moon – Li Bai’s mirror – is a silver disk to the east. She’d like to string it on a silken cord around her neck.
    Her uncle breaks into another round of coughing. Xiuqing hands over her handkerchief, watches him shudder into it. He glances at the blood flecks before hastily tucking the cloth into his pocket.
    ‘I could get you some water,’ she offers worriedly. ‘I could go looking for the tea man.’
    ‘Ahhh, Xiuqing,’ he says softly, as he always does. ‘Little Xiu. What would I do without you?’
    A gull slopes toward them, its wings stiff and still. Its cry is a raspy echo of Wu’s cough. Below them, a swarm of coolies strip down and prepare to wade out to meet the boat. Her uncle watches them, the wind whipping a tear from his left eye. Then, abruptly, he looks up. ‘Wuhu awaits,’ he exclaims, as though this were a long-awaited surprise. ‘Let’s get ready.’
    As their launch bobs toward shore, Xiuqing squints ahead into the gathering darkness. She makes out the tiled tops of the riverbank shops, the