Afterwards, she learned about Rousseau’s life. He had kept his distance from painting schools, acknowledging no one as his teacher, although he had gone to Africa and been influenced by African art. His works had an utterly primitivist feel to them and he was eventually recognized in France as the archetypal primitivist painter. His paintings were rich in a primitive lyricism, and had a beauty filled with harmony and a decorative quality, creating a world that was quite unearthly.
There were many painters she liked — Gustave Moreau, Odilon Redon, Hieronymus Bosch, Reny Lohner, as well as Rousseau. Oddly, they shared one thing in common: they had not been famous in their lifetimes, only after their death.
Then came the Monet paintings. Apple Trees in Bloom reminded her of John Galsworthy’s story The Apple Tree. This was just how she imagined the scenery he described. The lush beautiful abundance of apple blossom!
Everybody knew that the name ‘impressionism’ had come from Monet’s painting Impression, Sunrise. Apparently, Monet’s early teacher was Eugène Louis Boudin. Then he got to know Renoir, Whistler and others, as they left their painting studios and went out into the woods and meadows to paint from life. Monet greatly respected Gustave Courbet and Manet and was entranced by scientific experiments on light and colour. She recalled an anecdote from a book on Impressionism. One day, when he had not painted for a whole day, Courbet asked him why. He replied; ‘I’m waiting for the sun.’ Apple Trees in Bloom must surely have been painted after the sun came out. The sunshine filtering through the mottled clouds created a charming dappled effect on the apple blossom. The shadows thrown by the brightly-lit blossom contrasted beautifully with the green grass.
‘ “I am waiting for the sun.” What a beautiful way to put it,’ she murmured.
‘What?’ Zheng asked.
‘I was saying thinking how beautifully Monet expressed it … “I am waiting for the sun”.’
She saw a shadow pass over his face. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘waiting is anguish, whether you’re waiting for someone or for the sun.’
She looked hard at him. ‘You must miss your family a lot.’ He shot her a quick glance. She understood that look. He meant: What nonsense! But of course it was not nonsense. He was not made of iron, of course he missed his family.
And of course it was not only his family that he missed. He was someone who truly loved his native land. She was keenly aware that the minute he left that land, he was deracinated. He, who had been a luxuriant tree, had had his roots chopped away, and the only reason he had not died was that he had such vitality. The root runners still nourished him, but for how much longer?
‘You can go and see another exhibition if you like, there’s arms and armour, musical instruments, jewellery, not just drawings and paintings. I’m a bit tired, I’ll wait downstairs in the café, look, go down the lift there by the fountain.’
She went on walking around until the museum closed. The café downstairs was huge, open-plan and filled with beautiful green plants. The fountain sometimes spurted as far as the little tables, and there were statues too, made of metal. He was sitting there, deep in thought. She sat down next to him, and ordered an apple juice. It was as if they simultaneously became aware of the sunset sky in the west. ‘We aren’t waiting for the sun, we’re waiting for the sunset. And it’s beautiful,’ he said quietly.
They sat there, chatting. They talked of the rainy evening in Tiananmen Square in 1976 when they sang songs to commemorate the passing of Premier Zhou Enlai. They remembered eating peculiar-looking cream cakes at the Xinjiekou Street dairy products shop, and evening swims in the Miyun Reservoir … it all felt like yesterday yet twenty years had passed just like that. They were old now, sitting in the Met Museum in New York. She found it hard to take in.
‘You know what? Just yesterday, Song Meiling came on a visit here, at ninety-nine! She wanted to see the exhibits from the Taiwan National Palace Museum. I guess she saw this sunset too.’ She nodded. ‘Red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning. Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight. Tomorrow should be nice.’ He nodded, too. Then he looked her in the eyes for the first time that day.
‘So you remember telling me I was the ultimate idealist?’
‘Of course … of course I do.’
‘You’re a good woman,’ he said.
‘And you’re a good man.’ Tears pricked her eyelids.
She was to take the last train to Boston late that evening. At the station, couples embraced and kissed goodbye. He and she kept their distance from each other, did not even look at each other, just exchanged a few meaningless words.
Suddenly, she said: ‘I love American ice-cream.’ He looked momentarily taken aback, then set off quickly down the escalator. Impassive, she watched him recede into the distance, a desolate figure. She felt a stab of anguish.
The train whistle had blown when Zheng finally returned, bearing a large tub of icecream, and quickly pushed it into her hand. In the instant that he turned away, she saw he was fighting back tears. She felt as if she was drowning, and her memories of the rest of the evening were blotted out.
23
It was 1996. Now that she was back in China, Tianyi found the contrast with America almost unbearable. The filthy puddles around the food market made her shoes dirty, and these were shoes that had walked the streets of America for three months and stayed clean. Lian just told her to get real. ‘This is China,’ he said.
But Tianyi’s patience was wearing thin. Before, she just got on with things and kept herself to herself, but recently things had changed. The man she loved was unable to return home, her friends had scattered, the atmosphere was oppressive, and with her husband and her son, the two people she had to face every day. It was like her feelings were choking her. She could neither swallow them back, nor say how she really felt.
Her son had become a liar and a thief. She had to keep a close guard over her purse, although she was not happy about doing it. She searched her son’s face and saw a gradual change. Of course, his skin had lost its flawless smoothness as he grew into a youth. But it was not that. She had noticed a new quality in him, a sort of viciousness. Yes, viciousness. It was not too strong a word to use. She kept an eye on him, and saw he was always with an older boy called Liang, a particularly vicious-looking young man.
One day she cracked her son’s password on his computer. Her son had been surfing foreign porn sites! She clicked and clicked: photo after photo, one video after another. She was appalled. Oh my God! Do today’s young people really look at this stuff? She thought back to the stifling rules they had had to live by in her youth. This is beyond belief. She felt completely powerless, like an ant whose life could be ground underfoot at any time by the relentless march of a new era. But she was too frightened to tell Lian.
Lian had become increasingly moody of late. His salary had increased tenfold since starting at the B. O. Holdings. His three hundred yuan salary had gone up to three thousand. But as far as Tianyi was concerned, it had actually dropped. Before, those three hundred had gone straight to her, but she never saw a cent of the three thousand.
Every evening Lian would come home and slump in front of the television until the programmes closed down and the screen filled with static. Then one day there was an explosion of rage. He went off, literally, like a rocket. It was around nine o’clock in the evening, and Tianyi had been reading. Suddenly she heard him bellow: ‘Mother fucker!’