Braised Pork Read online

  She did start painting again. She dug out some of her old brushes and unused canvases from the storage room on Christmas morning while Leo was making breakfast.

  ‘Merry Christmas,’ he said, taking a canvas from her hand and replacing it with a glittery, silver bag.

  ‘Oh, thank you. I didn’t know you celebrated Christmas.’ She had not bought him a present. In fact, she had not even been aware of the date. She had planned to spend the morning going to the 798 Art District, to the gallery where she had worked for a few years after university – and where in fact she had first encountered Chen Hang – to see if she could find a job of some sort that could pay the bills.

  ‘I don’t,’ responded Leo. ‘I don’t like foreign holidays. But it’s a good occasion to give you this.’

  She opened the bag and saw a photography book titled The Sea. True to its name, the book was a collection of shots of tall ships riding against stormy waves, solitary lighthouses, and boundless seascapes that almost looked like oil paintings.

  ‘This is beautiful,’ said Jia Jia, closing the book and storing it on the shelf, next to Chen Hang’s collection of photography books. She walked over to Leo and held his hand. ‘What do you think, shall we go to 798?’ she asked. ‘For an exhibition? Perhaps a coffee?’

  The exhibitions in Beijing were rarely much good, but she felt compelled to celebrate Christmas with Leo now that she had accepted a present from him. After breakfast, she tried to decide on what to wear. She must not dress too casually, but overdressing would attract too much attention. She put on a dark blue polo-neck and some black tailored trousers.

  On their way to 798, she began dreading seeing her old colleagues, especially since she was going with Leo. She had not been back to the gallery since her husband’s death, and she did not want to spend the afternoon hearing condolences.

  Jia Jia had met Chen Hang during her first week there as a receptionist. He had called in one day to visit the owner and had given Jia Jia his business card before leaving. At the time, she had not had many friends there: the manager was older and married to her university roommate’s brother, and the other younger employees had boyfriends their own age, many of whom had careers in art as well. Once she started dating Chen Hang, her colleagues distanced themselves from her, as if she belonged to a different category of woman: the practical kind who did not care for romance. She had never really minded this impression – she did not see it as shameful – but going back on a date with a man her own age would confirm to her colleagues that their idea of romance had been the correct one. They would think that it had taken her husband’s death for Jia Jia to understand something they had known all along. That, to her, was more humiliating. So she guided Leo elsewhere.

  They headed towards UCCA, a bigger gallery that seemed to be popular that day. The entrance was packed with young couples and parents who wanted to educate their children. There was a large banner outside with a portrait of a middle-aged man, an artist who worked with ink on paper. From the photo, no one would have ever guessed that the man was a painter: with his white shirt, brown blazer and cropped hair, his appearance resembled that of a businessman or a politician.

  The gallery was as lively and crowded as it could get. People lined up side by side, moving along the walls from painting to painting like students waiting for food in a canteen. Every picture was largely the same but with slight differences in composition. Each one had a woman and some animals in it. Sometimes the women would be looking right, and other times they would be facing left with the same expression of indifference. The cows, the sheep, the birds and the rabbits in the paintings, however, always stared straight at the viewer.

  After the exhibition, Jia Jia and Leo spent the rest of that afternoon setting up his bar. They did not talk much, and when he made any remarks about the exhibition, about how wonderful it was, she disagreed with most of them. When the bar opened, she said that she was tired and walked home alone. They had forgotten about the coffee.

  Back home, Jia Jia placed the fish-man sketch next to a blank canvas and studied it. She wanted to paint it. Her idea was that the experience of reinterpreting Chen Hang’s sketch as her own art would give her a clue or two about the fish-man and her husband’s dream in Tibet. She had often done this when she found it difficult to relate to a piece of artwork – she would reproduce it onto her own canvas, and through this, understand what that piece meant to her.

  The sketch looked easy enough to copy. After all, it was only the face that was intricate; the body could have been drawn by a child. She sketched the outline of the fish-man onto the canvas with a pencil. The light was shining from the upper-left corner, so she briefly shadowed out parts on the right side. She stepped back and observed the proportions – about a third for the head and the rest for the body. She would have to decide on the colours of the fish and Chen Hang’s drawing gave no help there. The silver fish from the deep sea came to her mind. It was a good start, she thought. Next, she had to mix the paint for the background. She began with a vibrant blue, like the shallow parts of the ocean on a sunny day. It was challenging as always – the colours came out artificial, like food colouring. She put her brush down and imagined the sea in a transparent blue, constantly changing in hue when the waves moved in soft, quiet beats. She added some yellow to her paint and spread it neatly around the fish-man. Dipping a smaller brush into silver paint, and then mixing it with some grey, and finally with a dab of dark, muted green, she painted its body. She wanted it to be like Chen Hang’s drawing, rough and unfinished, so she left it at the blocking stage and avoided adding too much detail.

  Jia Jia was unable to paint the face. That part of the canvas, as if rejecting her, erased all the outlines and colours from her mind. Whenever she looked at the empty face of the fish-man, it was as if she had forgotten how to paint. She did not know where to put the eyes, what colour the lips should be, how much space the nose was supposed to occupy. Sure, she could measure out the proportions from Chen Hang’s sketch and transfer it to her own canvas, but she had never liked to work that way. Even though she was copying, it still had to be her painting.

  In the days following, she painted more. She took out six canvases and painted different versions of the fish-man. Sometimes she began with the body; other times with the face. But whenever she directed her brush to the empty oval where the face was supposed to be, her mind went blank, and she could not recall what kind of an expression the fish-man wore.

  Only at night, when she lay in bed, would its face finally come to her, lucid and precise. She would jump up, go to her canvas, pick up her brush, and all the images would evaporate from her mind again. Once, she looked through the photography book that Leo had given her, but quickly remembered that it was entirely filled with landscape photos. Had someone given this collection to her when she was younger, it would have helped her tremendously. But now, it was not what she needed. She needed a face.

  It was not until a cold and brisk January night, two weeks after the exhibition, when Jia Jia needed to step away from her paintings, that she made her way to Leo’s bar again.

  ‘I tried to call you,’ said Leo as he watched Jia Jia sit down in her usual seat. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Oh, I’m doing well. I was away for a few days,’ she lied.

  Why did people ask each other how they were? Jia Jia wondered. How are you was a question that most of the time resulted in an untruthful response. She could not tell Leo that she was not well, not really. It was a dreadfully lonely experience to be asked, as if she were being given a small rock to step on to cross a deep, rough river.

  She knew that by now Leo was able to tell whether she wanted to talk or not. There had been times when she had intentionally carried herself as though she preferred to be treated as a normal customer. She would greet him with a smile, sit down, order a drink, end their exchange with a simple ‘thank you’ and proceed to read a book. She was never impolite in these moments, but if it was just the two of them in the b
ar, her behaviour exhibited a slight hint of uncertainty. Tonight was not one of those nights. She did not want to sit alone tonight.

  ‘What do you want to drink?’ asked Leo.

  ‘How about something new and strong,’ she said. ‘That book you gave me is wonderful, I’ve been studying a lot from it. I dug out some of my old materials and I’ve been trying to paint a fish.’

  ‘A fish?’

  ‘Well, not exactly. A fish-man.’ She dragged the word ‘man’ out a little.

  He raised his eyes from zesting limes and looked at her.

  ‘My husband left a drawing for me,’ Jia Jia explained. ‘A fish-man drawing. It has a man’s head with a body that resembles a fish. You know, with scales and fins. Ever since I put my hands on the drawing, I’ve been having this feeling that I need to find out more about it. It has quite an odd-looking face. I can show you next time. Anyway, I’m painting it now. I didn’t think it would be so difficult to recreate.’ She slouched over and rested her elbows on the counter.

  ‘What do you mean, an odd-looking face?’ Leo asked.

  ‘I mean, I’ve been studying the drawing, but whenever I turn to my canvas and try to paint its face, my mind goes blank and I can’t remember what it looks like. It’s as if the fish-man doesn’t want me to paint it. Weird, isn’t it? Does this happen to you when you make cocktails?’

  ‘I’m not quite sure. I do run out of ideas,’ Leo said hesitantly. ‘But painting is not the same as mixing drinks.’

  Jia Jia shook her head. ‘You’re right. That’s not it,’ she said. ‘I know exactly what I want it to look like, but I just can’t paint it. It seems like the face only exists in my head, and it’s always changing.’

  ‘Why is it that he drew a fish-man, do you think?’

  Jia Jia had been expecting this question from Leo. She started answering him almost before he had finished asking.

  ‘Chen Hang said that the fish-man was in his dream once. The dream itself was a strange one. He couldn’t remember most of it, but how could he draw the fish-man without remembering most of the dream?’

  ‘So you know what you want to paint, but can’t do it. He didn’t remember the dream, but could sketch the fish-man in detail.’

  Jia Jia nodded slowly.

  ‘I would love to see the sketch some day,’ Leo said. ‘And, of course, your painting, when you succeed.’

  Leo stayed with Jia Jia that night. She kept the door to the study closed and did not show him her paintings. She was not ready yet. She kept Chen Hang’s sketch from Leo too; it felt like something that was too intimate, as if it was the one thing that was honest about Chen Hang. She could not explain why, but she knew that Chen Hang would have wanted to keep it hidden from others.

  Early the next morning, Jia Jia’s aunt paid her an unannounced visit. Jia Jia was brushing her teeth, so Leo answered the door. Her aunt was slender and tall, and she carried herself in such a youthful manner that Leo later told Jia Jia that he had mistaken her for one of Jia Jia’s friends.

  ‘Oh! It’s very nice to meet you. I’m the girl’s aunt. I watched her grow up,’ Jia Jia heard her aunt say and saw, through the crack of the bathroom door, the woman poking her head inside the bedroom. ‘I shouldn’t have come so early. I wanted to talk to Jia Jia. Ah! Jia Jia’s changed the painting. Beautiful, isn’t it?’

  ‘She has fine taste in art,’ Leo responded.

  ‘She painted this one about two, or maybe three years ago,’ her aunt said. ‘She’s never happy with her own work.’

  ‘Auntie, why didn’t you call me?’ Jia Jia hurried out from the bedroom, abashed at being caught in her husband’s apartment with another man. She avoided looking at Leo. ‘Did you stay at the Four Seasons again?’

  ‘No, not this time.’ Her aunt wore a slightly worried, hesitant expression. ‘The project I told you about didn’t go through.’

  Jia Jia was ready with her next question when Leo gave an excuse and said that he really had to leave. He gathered his coat and wallet while the women waited in silence, and walked out the door.

  Jia Jia continued, ‘But I thought you told me—’

  ‘Who was the boy?’ Her aunt sat down with a grin.

  ‘Oh, Auntie, don’t think that it’s so easy to move on.’

  ‘But you really should. Chen Hang was not good to you,’ her aunt said. ‘You know, I blame myself. As you were growing up, I should have told you how important it is to love bravely. I should never have told you that you were too young to be dating that boy, what was his name again?’

  ‘That boy from high school? Oh, please, don’t expect me to remember!’ They both laughed.

  ‘Sometimes,’ her aunt continued, ‘we don’t ask for things because we don’t want to be broken. But that’s how we drive away the life we care about. Maybe it’s better to be more like your mother. No, no, don’t object. She was broken, yes, but she knew what she wanted all along.’

  In Jia Jia’s memory of her mother’s later years, she always had a glow of sadness around her. When her father fell in love with the other woman, Jia Jia saw her shattering like antique porcelain. Unable to separate herself from her mother’s pain, she had concluded that love was the most fragile of bases for relationships: there had to be something else, some more rational reason for two people to be together, so that there could be a piece of solid ground to stand on when everything else crumbled. But what was she to think about her opinions now? Now that Chen Hang was gone, was her ground not collapsing, her life not broken?

  ‘How are you getting used to living here by yourself?’ Her aunt started fumbling through her handbag.

  ‘Not too badly.’

  ‘Oh, here it is! Li Chang’s found you a job.’ Her aunt picked out a business card and set it on the table. ‘This is a friend of his. She wants someone to paint a Buddha on her wall.’

  Jia Jia thought that there were professionals who specialised in religious paintings. Was it even acceptable for a non-religious person to be painting the Buddha?

  ‘Auntie, I’ve never painted on a wall in my life. If she wants a painting to decorate her home, I can find—’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll be able to impress her.’ She pointed at the horse painting. ‘Look at how nice this is!’

  Jia Jia picked up the card and studied it. The woman seemed to be a comedy film editor at a company she did not recognise. What an oddly specific profession, Jia Jia thought, she only edits comedies? There was a mobile number and a personal email. Jia Jia said that she would try to contact her. Her aunt, seemingly satisfied with Jia Jia’s promise, rose and danced out the door, waving her hand behind her.

  The comedy editor’s name was Wan Lian, or Ms Wan, as Jia Jia would address her. She lived with her family in a duplex apartment in Yayuncun, further out from the centre. When Jia Jia visited the following Wednesday, Ms Wan was at home alone with a maid who was busy transferring bottles of imported beer from a box into the fridge.

  ‘My husband is at work,’ Ms Wan told Jia Jia.

  Ms Wan was a few years older than Jia Jia. From the photos on the bookshelf, Jia Jia gathered that she had two children: one boy and one girl. The woman was incredibly small and bony, which made her head with her bob haircut appear overly large and round, like one of those bobble-head toys that people kept in cars. Her body looked so fragile that Jia Jia wondered how she had been able to give birth to two seemingly normal-sized children. When she carried a pot of hot water from the kitchen into the living room, Jia Jia watched her carefully, concerned that the large iron kettle might break her.

  ‘So you see –’ Ms Wan set the kettle on the table, dumped herself down on the sofa, and pointed to an empty white wall in the entrance hall – ‘I’m thinking of having a Thangka painted on that wall.’

  ‘I don’t have any experience painting on silk appliqué.’

  ‘Oh, no, not silk. I want the picture to be painted directly on the wall. I think that’d look nicer, wouldn’t it?’

  Jia Jia wanted
to explain to this woman that Thangkas are normally painted and embroidered on silk. When Jia Jia was young, her mother had received a Thangka as a present from a Tibetan monk. She had studied it carefully every day after school – it was an incredibly intricate craft that took years of training to master. But Ms Wan cared little about what Jia Jia had to say and continued insisting that she thought a painting on the wall would be more beautiful.

  ‘Ms Wan, may I ask, are you a Buddhist?’

  ‘I believe in karma,’ she responded. ‘What do you think? Would you like to help me out?’

  Jia Jia agreed and said that she would try her best. If it did not turn out well, she would not charge Ms Wan any money. Ms Wan seemed to be pleased with the deal, and they settled on a final price of twenty thousand yuan.

  Jia Jia painted in Ms Wan’s home five days a week. Ms Wan insisted that she stay for dinner every time. The children would return from school and join them, but Jia Jia did not meet Ms Wan’s husband until two weeks into the project – by which time she had begun to think that either the man returned home very late every night or did not return at all. One afternoon he pushed open the front door and seemed startled to see Jia Jia standing there, painting on his wall. He had a large beard, his hair had a few strands of grey and was tied up in a high ponytail. They exchanged a few words and Jia Jia found out that he owned a jazz lounge.

  ‘I know that place,’ Jia Jia said. ‘I used to go there when it first opened. I was still an art student.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear that,’ he said in a soft and raspy voice. ‘What are you painting here?’

  ‘Your wife asked me to paint Shakyamuni here.’

  He seemed to be completely unaware of what was going on in the household. Jia Jia pointed at the centre of the wall, above a pencilled outline of a lotus. ‘It’s more difficult than I had thought. I want to do it well.’