The Art of Confidence

by Wendy Lee

  Little Xiu considered for a moment. “What I want out of life is a Gucci handbag.”

  Harold had to laugh. “Well, that’s easy enough to get.”

  “Not a real one. Not for me.”

  For a moment Harold wondered whether he should go to the Gucci store that he was sure must be located on Huaihai Lu, Shanghai’s premier shopping street, and get Little Xiu her coveted handbag, just as he had gotten Vicki her Louis Vuitton handbag in New York. It would possibly take a little more effort, as he was due to fly out early the next day. Maybe Vicki would find the receipt for it, realize she’d never received a present from him after his trip to Shanghai, that she didn’t even have a Gucci handbag lined up in her closet, and think he had a mistress. Would she care then, or would she continue to let their marriage slip away?

  He realized Little Xiu was talking to him. “It’s getting late,” she said. “I need to get back to the bar before my boss notices I’m missing and some new customers come in. This is just the beginning of the night for me.”

  Harold checked his watch; it was two thirty in the morning. Then, on impulse, he unclasped the watch and held it out to Little Xiu. “This isn’t a Gucci bag”—it was actually much more expensive—“but you can have it.”

  “No way!” Her already large eyes widened as she took the watch from him, turning it over in her hands. “It is silver?”

  “Stainless steel. It’s expensive, made in Switzerland. You can sell it if you want.”

  She grinned, put it on, and held out her arm to admire the watch on her thin wrist. “I want to wear it. It’s probably the closest I’ll ever get to Switzerland.”

  As they walked back, Harold felt Little Xiu’s hand creep into his. Her fingers were small and soft, reminding him of a child who didn’t want to let go. The watch on her wrist felt cool where it came into contact with his skin. Already, it seemed to be a part of her in the way it had never been part of him.

  At the entrance to the bar, she whispered, “Thank you,” and went inside.

  Harold returned to the karaoke room he thought he’d left Charlie, Jenny, and the others in, but saw he’d made a mistake as soon as he opened the door. A bunch of college-age boys were inside with bar girls, several of whom seemed to have lost their tops. Harold muttered an apology and got out of there as quickly as he could, after settling the bill; as usual, Charlie had expected him to pay.

  * * *

  It took a few days after he got home from the Shanghai trip for Vicki to notice that he wasn’t wearing the watch.

  “Did you lose it?” she asked.

  Harold tried to sound contrite. “I forgot to tell you. Maybe I left it at the hotel in Shanghai.”

  “Have you called the hotel?”

  “What’s the use? Someone probably took it and it’s on the black market as we speak.”

  “Well, that’s a pity.” She paused. “You never really liked wearing that watch, did you?”

  “I liked it because you gave it to me.”

  “But you didn’t like it.”

  “I wore it, didn’t I?” He turned his eyes back to the financial section of the newspaper he was reading. As Charlie’s friend Jay had said, Chinese stocks really were terrible.

  For a moment Vicki subsided, paced around the living room, rearranged the cushions on the sofa, then returned them to the exact same place. “Did you have a good trip?” she asked.

  “It was fine.”

  “Other than losing your watch.”

  Harold looked at her over the edge of the newspaper and held her gaze. “Yes, other than that.”

  “I suppose you spent a lot of time with Charlie Lin.”

  “Yes, I was there to tour a factory with Charlie. You know that.”

  “While you were gone, I had lunch with Serena.” Vicki began to pick at her nails, a bad habit Harold had noticed when they’d first met. “She says you must have a ‘little third’ in Shanghai, just like him.”

  Harold laughed and put down his newspaper. “Do you really think I’m like Charlie? First of all, I’m almost never in Shanghai for more than a night. How would I find a mistress, let alone spend time with one?”

  “All right, not Shanghai, then. Maybe New York. You seem eager to go back there. Serena says everyone does it.”

  “Serena is a bitter woman who wants to see everyone around her as unhappy as she is. Just stop talking to her.”

  “Don’t tell me who I can talk to.”

  Vicki was more than just agitated, Harold realized. She might even be delusional. At another point in their marriage he might have gone to her and held her, but her entire body, in a silky gray sheath that clung to her slim form, seemed to be vibrating with tension.

  “Vicki, there’s no one but you and Adrian.” He stood up. “You’re welcome to sit here and think the worst about me. In the meantime, I’m going to take Adrian out for the afternoon.”

  “Where?”

  “I was thinking Keelung Harbor.”

  Vicki nodded abstractedly, without seeing him.

  Adrian seemed happy to be going on a trip with just his father and insisted on bringing his Staten Island Ferry replica. On the bus, he surfed the orange vessel alongside the cars speeding by the window. As they disembarked at the bus station and walked toward the water, Harold wondered what his grandfather would think of Keelung City now, with its skyscrapers and modern port, appearing like a miniature Hong Kong.

  He and Adrian strolled along the harbor, admiring the boats.

  “Which is bigger, Daddy?” Adrian asked, holding up his toy and pointing to a white fishing boat in the distance. “The real ferry or that boat?”

  Harold had never seen the Staten Island Ferry, but he assured Adrian the Taiwanese boat was bigger. “Do you remember when we took the ferry to Xiamen, Adrian?”

  He was pleased when his son nodded. The trip had required them to book a berth overnight, and Adrian had liked running from one end of the room to look out the porthole, balancing himself against the almost imperceptible swaying of the ship.

  “This is how your great-grandfather Yu came from the mainland to Taiwan,” Harold had told Adrian.

  “On this ferry?” the little boy had asked.

  “Well, not on this exact ferry. But probably something like it.”

  In fact, from the stories his father had told him, Harold’s grandfather had come over with around fifty other people on a fishing boat that would normally accommodate ten. When their supplies ran out, they ate raw fish caught from the boat. Their goal had been Kaoshiung at the southern tip of the Taiwan island, but storms had blown them days off course and they’d arrived in Keelung in the north instead. They were lucky to have even gotten there; if they’d missed the island altogether, they would have drifted out into the East China Sea and either died from thirst or pirates. But this wasn’t a story fit for a three-year-old.

  When they got to Xiamen, although Vicki complained about the guesthouse conditions and mainlanders in general, she eventually calmed down and they spent three days on Gulangyu Island, walking along its beaches and down its winding lanes. The lack of cars made it feel like they had stepped back in time, and Harold allowed himself to think about his grandfather’s family. Although his family hadn’t come from Xiamen, they must have migrated from somewhere along the coast of Fujian Province, or perhaps Guangdong Province just to the south. What would his grandfather have thought of the relations between Taiwan and the mainland now? For decades, people said there were three things that would never pass directly between the two: planes, boats, and letters. The fact that all of these were happening now was unthinkable.

  Harold also had wondered what his grandfather would have thought of Harold’s own life, his company, his expensive apartment, his beautiful wife, his smart son. All at once, he felt like bursting with pride at his accomplishments. Walking down the beach, with Vicki at his side and Adrian running ahead, he felt like the luckiest man alive.

  That trip to Xiamen had taken place over a
year ago. Maybe it was the last time he and Vicki had been happy.

  Behind him, Adrian had set his toy ferry on the ground and was busy chasing a white paper bag down the wharf, the wind keeping it just out of reach. Harold turned away from him and looked into the waters of Keelung Harbor. In his mind he saw the Andrew Cantrell painting and its grayness swirling around an uncertain center.

  Chapter 5

  When I was in my last year in school in Xiamen, I won a contest in my art class to see who could most accurately copy the work of the great Chinese master painter Qi Baishi. In the early 1900s he was considered to be one of the best painters of nature in the country. While he did paint landscapes, his specialty was flora and fauna, especially shrimp.

  Why shrimp? And why were people so obsessed with his depictions of them? I attribute it to the Chinese fascination with food, especially seafood, and more so, fresh seafood. Qi Baishi’s shrimp are definitely fresh. Antennae waving, arms and legs scrabbling, they look as if they are about to crawl off the paper and into your mouth.

  “The point of the contest is lin mo,” my teacher, Master Zhuo, explained. “The art of imitating the masters. The winner will get one hundred renminbi.” Back then, especially for students, that was an unheard-of amount of money.

  Immediately, my classmates and I set about devising strategies for winning the contest. It was no question that we’d all paint shrimp, but there can be twenty different versions of shrimp, just as there can be twenty different versions of the same story. Which is the most believable?

  My classmate Rong Jiawen and I decided to work together. I considered him my biggest rival, although considering our backgrounds, he had a far greater advantage in life. His family was from Shanghai, one of those merchants who had miraculously survived not only the Japanese Invasion, the civil war, and the worst of communism, but had actually come out better for it. Not to mention his father was friends with the principal, but I had to admit he had talent. As for me, it was a miracle that my parents were able to pay my tuition. I suspected my father, who hadn’t gone beyond primary school, might have been proud of me for the first time in my life.

  “I have an idea,” Rong told me after class. “Let’s study real shrimp.”

  “What’s the point of that?” I asked. “We’re supposed to copy Qi Baishi, not actual shrimp.” I had anticipated holing up in my room with my textbooks and copying Qi Baishi’s shrimp paintings a thousand times, or until I got a cramp in my hand.

  “Just come with me.”

  I expected Rong to lead me to the market, or maybe to the harbor to see what the fishermen had caught, but instead he took us to a small restaurant tucked away down a side street. SPECIALTY, LIVE SHRIMP! the handwritten signboard proclaimed.

  Of course Rong was taking us somewhere to eat. He loved his food and wine, and could afford lavish meals at restaurants while the rest of us made do with steamed vegetable buns that tasted like paste from the school cafeteria.

  After we sat down at a table, Rong ordered beer and lifted his bottle to mine in a toast. “To whoever wins the contest!”

  “To whoever wins,” I echoed, and took a long swig. I hadn’t eaten live shrimp before, and while the prospect did not disgust me, I did wonder about getting food poisoning. Better bathe the stomach in as much alcohol as possible beforehand.

  As the waitress plunked down a bowl of shrimp, it was apparent that the shrimp themselves were also on their way to getting drunk. They were marinated in strong liquor and soy sauce, spiked with scallions, garlic, and chili. Some of them barely twitched as we poked at them, while others contorted themselves enthusiastically, as if dancing to get our attention. One particularly feisty one did a backflip onto the table, leaving behind dark spatters of sauce.

  Rong laughed and grasped it in his chopsticks. “You ready?” he asked me.

  I picked a large shrimp from the bowl, positioned it in front of my lips, and nodded. On the count of three, we both popped the shrimps into our mouths. I had gotten a real live one. It squirmed against my teeth and punched the top of my mouth. Amid its frantic wriggling I managed to bite off the head and worry off the shell with my tongue, both of which I spat out on the floor. Only then was I able to concentrate on the flavor of the meaty body. The explosion of salt and spicy heat was delicious.

  “Wait,” Rong said around his mouthful.

  “What?” I stopped midchew.

  “Feel the movement of the body in your mouth. The essence of the shrimp itself, its life as it drains away. Then draw it.”

  I thought he was joking until he withdrew from his schoolbag some paper and charcoal. “We’re drawing here?” I asked.

  Rong swallowed and shrugged. “What better way to practice?”

  It was truly one of the most enjoyable live-drawing experiences I’ve ever had. Rong and I got progressively more drunk on beer and more full on shrimp as we ate and drew, drew and ate. The table became scattered with pieces of sauce-stained paper upon which insectlike creatures swarmed, devolving from detailed depictions to blurred scrawls. Beer bottles piled up under our feet and shrimp shells littered the ground. The waitress scowled at the mess we were making, but she didn’t say anything as long as we continued to order. I was relieved at the end when Rong offered to pay for our meal, before we staggered out into the humid, subtropical night.

  That turned out to be the only time we practiced together. Otherwise I did what I had planned, studying any picture of Qi Baishi’s shrimp that I could get my hands on. The painting I decided to imitate was one that showed two shrimp, front claws angled slightly toward each other, as if getting ready for combat. I figured one shrimp wouldn’t be enough to show off my skill, while more than two would look sloppy.

  The day of the contest arrived. That morning, we students filed into the classroom under the watchful eye of Master Zhuo, armed with rice paper, brushes, and ink. We had an hour to complete our paintings. I concentrated on following what I had learned about Qi Baishi’s technique, that he had automatically painted each shrimp with a set number of strokes and in the same pattern, the way one might write a Chinese ideogram. He hadn’t been painting from live shrimp at all; he’d committed the very shrimpiness of the image to his memory.

  About forty-five minutes later, Master Zhuo was unexpectedly called out of the classroom. He set a student to oversee the contest, but as soon as the door closed behind him, I glimpsed Rong remove something from his schoolbag.

  “What are you doing?” I whispered.

  He just shook his head and indicated the student watching at the front of the classroom. Before my unbelieving eyes, I saw him stealthily replace his painting—which was of a single shrimp, and quite well done, from what I could tell—with a completed painting of three shrimp. They were all facing to the left, the same direction as mine, claws outstretched, antennae gracefully streaming behind them. Had Rong painted this outside of class and, anticipating that nerves would get the better of him during the contest, brought this as a backup?

  Master Zhuo returned and I snapped my eyes back to my painting. All at once, in comparison to Rong’s three shrimp—let alone Qi Baishi’s—mine looked puny and lifeless. I dipped my brush into the ink and poised it above the paper, thinking I should try to draw another shrimp. But Master Zhuo called time and I only had the chance to sign the painting with Qi Baishi’s signature, which I’d also practiced.

  After lunch, we students milled about outside the classroom waiting to hear the verdict. Master Zhuo had promised to let us know the results of the contest by the end of the day, and already some students were talking about what they were going to do with their prize money—go to a restaurant, hire a prostitute, find a gambling den. Most of them were boasting, I suspect, and the money would go straight to their parents.

  Finally, Master Zhuo called us all in. As we sat at our desks, he said, “Rong Jiawen, please come to the front.”

  I took this to mean Rong had won, and I felt the weight of disappointment start to lower itself up
on me. But looking at him standing before the class, I saw that his face was more flushed from nervousness than pride.

  Master Zhuo held up Rong’s painting of the three shrimp, and everyone nodded and murmured in admiration, until he demanded, “Where did you get this?”

  “I painted it,” Rong stammered in the silence that followed.

  “You did not. This was painted years ago. I can tell from the condition of the ink, the age of the paper.” Master Zhuo rubbed the corner of the page. “It has oxidized over time. Let me ask you again, where did you get this?”

  Rong hung his head and said so softly the rest of us could barely hear him, “I got it from home. It belongs to my family.”

  Master Zhuo all but threw the painting at him. “Rong Jiawen, you have disqualified yourself from the contest. If this were an exam, I would suspend you for cheating, but I’ve decided to be merciful. You will have to live with your shame.”

  As Rong slunk back to his seat, Master Zhuo continued addressing the class. “All of your paintings were very good. But the one I was most impressed by, the one that achieves the very soul of Qi Baishi’s shrimp paintings, is the one by Liu Qingwu.” And he held up my measly two shrimp.

  While of course I was happy to have won, I was still confused by Rong’s attempt to cheat. I understood that it wasn’t about money, since his family could easily afford to give him the one hundred renminbi, but that for some reason he hadn’t trusted his own work enough.

  After class I followed him. “Congratulations,” he muttered, trying to get by me, but I blocked his way.

  “Why did you do that?” I asked. “And where did you really get that painting?”

  “It belongs to my family,” he said. “I didn’t lie about that. We’ve had it for years, before the Japanese Invasion. My grandfather says it’s a real Qi Baishi, although no one knows for sure. I thought maybe if Master Zhuo thought it was good enough to win the contest, that would mean it was real. And”—he lowered his eyes—“I did want to win that contest.”

  “Can I look at it again?”