Read Online The Painter of Shanghai by Jennifer Cody Epstein - Free Book Online

Jinling scoffed later. ‘Killing herself. Over a man .’ It was her same verdict on Washing Silk Woman: ‘What a waste. She was quite pretty, from the way I’ve heard the story. She could probably have made a good match.’
    Now, frowning in concentration, she finishes coloring Yuliang’s lips. ‘Rub,’ she commands.
    The lipstick tastes like greasy soap. But when Yuliang looks into Jinling’s jade-handled looking glass, Mirror Girl looks lovely. Her eyes are larger and clearer than Yuliang has ever seen them. Her nose looks less like a button. Her lips seem to smile without her even moving them. Jinling, gazing at her over her shoulder, reaches out and strokes Yuliang’s cheek. ‘Won’t Godmother be pleased,’ she says softly. ‘You hardly look like your old self at all.’
    And in fact Yuliang does feel different – almost separated from herself. As though Mirror Girl has finally taken over. It’s a new sensation, a little dizzying. Yet unlike so many other new things here, she doesn’t fight it. The disconnection feels strangely like freedom.
    Two weeks later, when all’s back to normal, Yuliang sits stiffly in a fraying bamboo chair. She is staring at a portrait, a portrait of a woman. The woman’s face is a smooth moon of calm, her arms a pale nimbus around the boy in her lap. The smile on her lips is a mirage: when Yulianglooks at it with her left eye, it vanishes. When Yuliang closes the left and peers with the right, however, it reappears, clandestine, tempting. It’s the implication of emotion rather than its actual expression. It is the perfect womanly smile. When you smile, her mother used to say, don’t move your lips. When you walk, don’t move your skirts.
    A woman’s keening call breaks into her thoughts: ‘Ahhhh, ahhhhhhhh, ah-ah-ah.’
    ‘Is she watching? Is she?’ Wood creaks and wheezes. A long, drawn-out groan. Then the man speaks again. ‘I don’t think that she was watching.’
    ‘Yuliang,’ Jinling chides. Yuliang pretends to hear. Smile-smile. It’s occurred to her that there’s something fundamentally wrong with the picture. She finally realizes what it is: the blank little spot above the goddess’s lip. A real woman would have something there, a subtle double line. A soft flesh-furrow to the nose.
    ‘Yu- liang ! Look at me! Are you deaf as well as blind?’
    Sighing, Yuliang finally lets her eyes slide: down the wall, past the small, shuttered window, directly to the bed below. Jinling is lying on her side. Merchant Yi is behind her, his big arm heavily clamping Jinling’s neck. ‘She was watching,’ Jinling says. ‘You were watching, Yuliang, weren’t you?’ She pants a little as she speaks.
    ‘I saw everything,’ Yuliang says. ‘It was…’ But she doesn’t know what it was. She twines her hands in her lap.
    The merchant’s eyes stroke her face as he reaches down, adjusts something. ‘I’m glad you found it so edifying.’ He sits up, stretching his long arms toward the ceiling. His big hands flop about as though sloppily sewn to his wrists.
    Jinling sits up too, with an exasperated grimace at Yuliang. She caresses her client’s neck, croons. ‘Don’t pay any attention to her. You are formidable. You almost pierced me!’ She darts another look at Yuliang, who obediently stores the term with the other expressions Jinling has taught her: You’re as hard as iron! I almost died in your arms! It’s the first time she’s actually seen a man’s cock up close, and she understands now why it’s sometimes called a turtle. Merchant Yi’s shrinks and shrivels shyly under her open gaze. His testicles look like plucked chicken skin.
    ‘Washing,’ Jinling prompts softly, arching one perfect brow. Yuliang stands quickly, a line of sweat trickling down her knee. As she goes to the basin, carrying the little Buddha bowl, her thoughts return to the picture of Lady Guanyin. It was done by a local artist, with Jinling as its model. In merchant circles she is