The Dissident

by Nell Freudenberger

  “He left,” she said. “He went back to China.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “One of his students told me,” Cece said. “The one he was tutoring in Chinese.”

  Gordon nodded, as if he’d expected it. “I was always afraid that this arrangement might not work out. The reason I suggested that on-campus housing might have been more comfortable for him—mentally, if not physically—is because of the international community. I thought he might have felt grounded enough to complete his project there.” Gordon paused and smiled at her. “You seemed so set on having him, though.”

  “I made a mistake,” Cece said.

  Gordon patted her hand. “No harm done.”

  “Some harm,” Cece said.

  “What’s that?” Gordon glanced at the desk: he was eager to get back to his General Warranty Deed.

  “I’m afraid I might have been postponing the inevitable,” Cece said.

  Gordon gave her a sharp look, and then turned away. He squinted at the window, as if he were puzzling out some problem, but she knew he had understood immediately—another helpful thing about him. She didn’t have to spell things out; in fact, he preferred that she didn’t. That was probably something that was different with his patients. Gordon had explained that you sometimes had to force people to say things they would rather not articulate, just so that they could hear their own words. It was interesting the way that people could know things and not know them at the same time. Denial, he said, was like a thick stone wall.

  “Do you think now is the time?” He was sitting on the couch in his habitual posture, one leg crossed over his knee. Now he put his foot on the floor, but otherwise he didn’t change his position. Even so, he seemed to be moving away from her, his whole body getting smaller but more distinct, the way his eyes did when he took off his glasses.

  “I was thinking that we should wait until after the holiday,” Cece said quietly. She was starting to cry. It would be wrong to expect comfort from Gordon in this situation.

  “I don’t think that’s quite right,” he said.

  She knew what he meant, but she hadn’t imagined doing it now. In her mind they were just discussing it, not acting on anything. It was only a couple of weeks until Christmas; everyone’s gifts had been bought and wrapped and secreted deep in her closet (although the children had stopped hunting for them long ago). Still, some things had to be protected. There had to be a last Christmas together, so that they would have it to remember. Otherwise what had all of the years of ornaments and cookies and stockings and gifts been for?

  “Please,” she said. “Let’s wait until the new year.”

  “You’re the one—” Gordon began, and stopped himself. It was the closest he was going to come to anger. “I do think you’re making a mistake.”

  “This is something we’re doing together,” Cece said, but Gordon got up and returned to his desk. For a moment she thought he was going to continue with his record—noting down price and acreage, births and deaths, military ser vice and marriages of those once, twice, and three times removed—but instead he replaced his documents in a manila folder, saved his file, and shut down the computer.

  “I’d like to stay in this house,” he said. “Until the end of the school year. It’s a convenient commute.”

  Cece was startled—not because she minded him staying, but because she hadn’t thought of even the most basic practical arrangements until now. Perhaps she had had a vague idea of Gordon moving to a condominium, as Pam’s husband had, and coming to take the children out to dinner on Thursday and Sunday nights. She had gotten so used to the way Gordon spoke; when he said the house was “a convenient commute,” what he meant was that he loved it. What would he do, if he couldn’t go out every afternoon and check the temperature of the pool?

  “Of course,” Cece said. “That makes sense.”

  “And then I would move out in May.”

  “Or September,” Cece said. “When Olivia goes away.” Would that make it harder or easier, she wondered, to send them both off at once? She had the absurd idea that she would have to buy her husband the same basic supplies she would buy her daughter: a wastebasket, a desk lamp, two sets of hardy, dark-colored towels.

  “The Hobermans have just bought a condominium in Venice Beach. I’ll ask them about their broker.”

  “Venice,” Cece said. It was amazing how quickly her husband was able to formulate a plan.

  “Not necessarily.”

  “I just heard of someone,” Cece said, without thinking. “A broker—I mean.” Was she trying to be helpful, or simply to stay involved? There was something about the thought of Gordon in a condominium in Venice Beach that terrified her.

  “Who?” Gordon said.

  “She was Phil’s broker—when he was here.”

  “Was Phil thinking of buying real estate in L.A.?”

  “I don’t think he was serious.”

  Gordon smiled.

  “I would want to move, too,” Cece hurried on. “After Max goes away, of course.”

  “You would live alone?”

  “Well, I’ll have to, won’t I? Once the kids are gone.”

  Gordon studied her. “I would think you would be lonely.”

  “I would have to find something to keep me busy.”

  “At the school.” He said it as if it were a foregone conclusion. What else could she do?

  “I don’t think so,” Cece said. “I think I would have to find something else. Something—”

  But Gordon didn’t want to continue the conversation, and she didn’t necessarily blame him. She was the one who was doing this, as he had pointed out, and he wasn’t especially interested in what she planned to do next.

  He took off his glasses, wiped them on his shirt, and replaced them. He stood up.

  “I’m going to Gelson’s,” he said. “Do we need anything?”

  “I’m going to do a big shop tomorrow,” Cece said.

  “So just for to night.”

  “I think so.”

  “All right,” said Gordon. He veered slightly toward her on his way to the door, as if he might do something wild and unexpected, some touch that would change everything. He seemed to decide against it.

  She waited until dinner was finished and the children were upstairs to go out to the pool house. Lupe had cleaned, and the room was returned to its crisp perfection. It was as if he’d never been there, except for the wooden drawing manikin—one arm lifted, as if to say, What can you do?—and the art book sitting on the desk, just where June said it would be. The cover was a view of a mountain dotted with tiny pavilions, minutely rendered in brown and black ink.

  Cece found the chapter on Zhao Cangyun (active late thirteenth– early fourteenth century) and his single surviving masterpiece, Liu Chen and Ruan Zhao in the Tiantai Mountains. She was reluctant to turn on the lights; there was still enough daylight. She opened the blinds and flipped to the end of the chapter, which showed the last panels of the scroll, the only ones she hadn’t seen, along with a translation of the Chinese text:

  The two men exited the cave and reached the roadway. They looked back, but saw only the brilliant glow of peach blossoms and the layered greens of the mountain. When they arrived home, they recognized no one. Greatly perplexed, they made inquiries until they realized that the villagers were their seventh-generation descendants.

  Cece wondered if it sounded less abrupt in Chinese. The last panels would probably have been the most difficult to copy (maybe that was why Mr. Yuan hadn’t gotten there yet). The penultimate scene showed a path leading away from the realm of the immortals, with only a thin shaving of light to indicate the passage between the two worlds. In the final illustration, Liu Chen and Ruan Zhao stood regarding a solid stone wall. Only a person looking at the scroll could see both worlds at once. For the men in the picture, time moved from right to left: they had passed through the cave, but it seemed to have closed up behind them. The rock face was grown over with deli
cate, knobbed branches, like the trunks of Mrs. Wang’s bonsais.

  Finding that their homeland held neither close relations nor a place to live, the two men decided to reenter the Tiantai Mountains and seek out the roadway that they had just followed. But the way was obscured, and they became lost. Later, in the eighth year of the Taikang reign era of Jin Wudi, the two again entered the Tiantai Mountains. What became of them remains unknown.

  A colophon by a later admirer revealed that Zhao Cangyun, in his youth, had been more famous than his contemporaries, Zhao Mengjian and Zhao Mengfu. Zhao Cangyun, who was also called Cangyun Shanren (“Gathering Clouds Mountain Man”), had never married or served as an official, however, preferring to live as a hermit in the mountains. This colophon, written directly on the scroll, was therefore the only record of the painter’s life; the painting was his only surviving work.

  Cece flipped idly through the rest of the book. Was it possible that he could just disappear among the hundreds of thousands of Yuans in China, and that they would never hear from him again? Of course she could always call Harry Lin: the professor had no reason to keep secrets from them now. The fact that the dissident had left the scroll with June suggested that he planned to keep in touch with her. Cece wondered whether the girl would share his news.

  She was about to close the book when she discovered it: there, on the title page, was an inscription—as if he’d left a colophon of his own. “Dear Cece,” it began:

  I am ashamed of the inadequacy of this gift, which is meant to symbolize another (perhaps equally inadequate) token of my gratitude, to be delivered at a future time. Certainly nothing could repay the hospitality you and your family have shown me this year. Here in the painting you see how the two Confucian gentlemen, although they miss their home, gracefully accept the kindness of their hostesses. I am afraid I have not followed their example. I feel that my own journey home is overdue—though I will be very surprised if I find my seventh-generation descendants there!—and I want to say that I am sorry I lied to you. Do you remember when I told you that I belonged to the…

  [Here, Mr. Yuan had sketched a dragon]

  It was, instead, the humble:

  [Here a lovely, long-eared hare]

  That was the first of several untruths—I hope in the future to have an opportunity to correct them all. Please apologize to your husband and your children, and to the rest of your family, for the trouble I caused them. I wish for you and for them all of the happiness in this world.

  Your friend,

  [Here he had signed his name, in Chinese characters]

  It was an eloquent note, Cece thought, better than most native speakers could have written. Her main regret was that he hadn’t signed his name in roman letters. Perhaps he’d done it on purpose, for authenticity’s sake? The characters were beautiful, of course. It was only that this way, to her eyes, it could be any name.

  78.

  I RETURNED HOME JUST BEFORE CHRISTMAS OF THE YEAR 2000. I STAYED with my parents for two months before finding my own place on a quiet street in the French Concession, near the library. Meiling and my cousin knew I was back in Shanghai, and they must’ve been waiting to hear from me. Some days I thought I would do it tomorrow, or over the weekend, but the weeks passed and I didn’t call.

  Although I did not make contact, it would be a lie to say I didn’t follow them. I scanned the culture pages of the papers and the listings magazine, where I saw that they had started working together, mostly on performance and photography pieces. When the reviews appeared, I read critics who panned the new work, saying that Meiling was just a fashion designer, and that X had sabotaged his career for the sake of a woman.

  Once, wandering into a small gallery in the corner of Fuxing Park, I happened upon an image of myself facing my cousin across a makeshift boxing ring. We were crouched in front of two hastily hung flags, sweating rhythmically on the top of a dismembered Ping-Pong table. I was surprised to read the caption under the photograph: “Zhang Tianming, Drip-Drop, 1994.” Not that I’d expected to see my own name—I’d been proud of what I’d contributed to the project (sweat, instead of blood), but I had always thought of my cousin as its author. The only part of the project that had survived, however, was the photograph, and that photograph had indisputably been taken by Tianming.

  I thought of Zhao Cangyun painting in solitude for all those years. Liu Chen and Ruan Zhao in the Tiantai Mountains was his only surviving work, and if not for the colophon by Hua Youwu, we would never have been able to identify it. “Gathering Clouds Mountain Man” would have remained anonymous: the scroll, authorless. I wondered if that mattered.

  I knocked on the door of a small office at the back of the gallery, and a sullen assistant came out to see what I wanted. When I asked the price of Drip-Drop, she escorted me into a back room, where a young man in a pin striped suit with a pink silk tie was talking on a tiny phone. The photograph, he was happy to tell me after he’d hung up, was priced at seven thousand dollars, U.S.

  “That’s some of his finest work,” the curator told me. “You see, it’s from the East Village period.”

  The East Village period! I almost smiled. Instead I asked whether the gallery also represented the performance artist Yuan Zhao.

  “We do have a few of his paintings, if you’re interested,” the curator said, sizing me up.

  “Do you have any recent work?” I asked, in the tone of voice I imagined a person who would spend seven thousand dollars U.S. on a photograph might use. I was wearing a T-shirt and a pair of cargo pants, but one thing I had learned from living with the Traverses is that you can’t determine how wealthy someone is by looking at his clothes.

  “I’m interested in something from the last year or so,” I added firmly. “Price doesn’t matter.”

  The curator gave a small smile and looked away: “Unfortunately I only deal in the work before he began collaborating with his…partner,” he said, letting me know by his tone what he thought of Meiling’s influence on my cousin. “For the new work, I’m afraid you’ll have to look elsewhere.”

  Although the remark at one time would’ve pleased me, I was offended. I thanked him curtly and left the gallery, as if I’d been the one insulted.

  Plenty of galleries are happy to show the work of an art-star couple, of course, and I’ve seen their latest photographs: a series of the two of them, completely naked, on the Huanghua section of the Great Wall. I remember one in particular, shot from a distance with a tripod. (My cousin learned the lesson of the East Village, and these days always takes his own pictures.) They are climbing up to one of the crumbling guard towers, which has a large diagonal crack across its southern face. You can tell it’s winter from the dry, terraced fields around the wall, and I wonder how they can stand the cold. Meiling has stopped to look up at the square tower: her hands are at her sides and her hair hangs straight to the middle of her back. Her bottom is like a white heart against the gray stones.

  My cousin, characteristically, cannot stand still. He seems to be jumping, and beckoning his lover at the same time toward the tower. The contrast between his silliness and her steadiness makes my heart ache, and I wonder whether the critics who dismiss this work might just be envious. My cousin still has the inventiveness that was evident in his “East Village period,” but when I am honest with myself, I have to admit that love has added a new dimension to his work.

  79.

  IT WAS THREE YEARS BEFORE I SOUGHT THEM OUT. I WAS IN BEIJING, on business for my father, and it was an unusually clear spring day, warm but with a breeze. On a whim I took line two to Dongzhimen, and then got on an airport bus. I knew they lived just adjacent to a new gallery, out past Dashanzi, and I’d looked up the address long ago. Still, it was difficult to find the right road. I got off the bus near the Nangao police station, and had to stop and ask the way: a policeman, of all people, gave me directions to X’s place.

  I arrived at their house, tucked away on a dead-end street, in a quiet area I suspect will
soon become an “art village.” The house was huge—one of the sleek live-work spaces that are now so popular—but built of old-fashioned brick, which blended in nicely with the smaller houses around it. It was lunchtime, and I thought they might not be home, but when I rang the bell, I heard footsteps coming toward me from behind a solid gray metal gate.

  “Who is it?” my cousin called, and it took me a second to decide how to respond.

  “Longxia Shanren,” I said. It’s the Lobster Hermit. “Open up.”

  The gate rolled back, and there was my cousin, his long hair pulled back in the habitual ponytail, but wearing ordinary clothes, just like mine.

  “Cousin,” he said, and put his arms around me. Standing behind him in the courtyard, as if they’d been waiting for me, was Meiling, along with their latest collaboration. Although he was only seven months old, he was very strong: while I watched, he pulled himself triumphantly to his feet, using the edge of the table for support.

  “That’s his new trick,” Meiling said, taking my hand. “He’s been out here for an hour practicing. He must’ve known you were coming.”

  The baby sat down with a thump, screwed his face up as if he were going to cry, and then changed his mind. I was confused for a minute, imagining that this was the child I’d seen in Meiling’s belly more than three years ago, before I left for Los Angeles. How was he still so young?

  “This is our second,” my cousin explained. “Ruyang—say hello to your uncle.” He looked at me carefully, to gauge my reaction. “His older sister is with her grandmother this afternoon.”