‘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.’
‘That’s wonderful. Don’t let me disturb you.’
That was their only exchange. She left early that afternoon so that the husband and wife could spend some time together. No one told her to leave and the couple did not seem to mind her presence, but she did not feel like painting any more. Instead, she found herself heading to Leo’s bar.
‘I’m not sure about this job,’ Jia Jia told Leo, as he watched her sit down on her stool. ‘I barely have time to work on my own art.’
Leo took a glass and poured her some water. It seemed like she had decided to keep her hair down permanently. She looked exhausted, though also younger. Perhaps it was the way she was dressed – blue jeans, black sweater and white trainers. She had a canvas bag with her tools inside. Her lower eye make-up was a little smudged. Leo found her to be more beautiful this way. More honest, perhaps.
‘I can’t do it,’ she repeated. ‘How are we supposed to know what the Buddha looks like? What if the lotus is supposed to have, say, six petals instead of five? Then I would have messed it up.’
‘I thought Buddhist wall paintings were only seen in caves and temples,’ Leo said. ‘This woman must be a devoted believer.’
‘You know what?’ Jia Jia pushed aside a small plate of olives and leaned across the counter closer to Leo. ‘Yesterday when Ms Wan was studying the painting, she said to me, “I pray to this wall every night. I’ve been doing it ever since the first day you started working on it. I can’t stop now.” Then she said that it’s the only way to make herself feel safe. Every night, this woman prays to my painting to feel safe … and I barely even know what I’m doing.’
‘Look at that guy.’ Leo pointed out the window towards a guard dressed in uniform who was sitting at the entrance to the car park. ‘Do you think he knows what he’s doing?’
The boy was no more than eighteen years old. Indeed, it did not seem like he had had a proper education in safeguarding car parks. He saluted each driver with his left hand and his mouth opened slightly whenever an expensive model drove by.
‘Don’t be ridiculous, it’s not the same.’ Jia Jia laughed. Her slightly bulged teeth made her adorable.
‘Well, sometimes I barely know what drink I’m making.’
‘Is that so?’
Leo put his index finger on his lips, indicating that it was a secret not to be shared with other customers.
‘What are your plans for Chinese New Year?’ he asked, beginning to carve out an ice ball with a knife. ‘Want to come with me to my parents’?’
Jia Jia’s expression stiffened.
‘I’ll have to check with my family,’ she said, averting her eyes. ‘Hold on a minute.’
Pretending to make a phone call, Jia Jia stepped out of the bar and looked in the direction of the car park. The guard was playing on his phone when a red Porsche Panamera stopped at the barrier. The car honked, startling the boy, and he walked up to the window and said something to the driver with a nervous questioning expression on his face. Whatever the boy said seemed to have angered the driver and he started driving slowly towards the barrier. The boy panicked and slapped his hand on the door of the car.
‘You fucking idiot!’ Jia Jia heard the driver yell from his car.
Jia Jia walked around the corner of the building into the silent shadows. She allowed herself a crazy thought, one that involved starting a life with Leo, learning to love him – not the violent seas of love that she had read about in novels, but more a serene lake, contained within its boundaries. And she would bury Chen Hang away, sell the apartment, forget about the fish-man, tear up the drawing. Could she really live like that? No. Probably not. There was something unfulfilled about her relationship with Leo. The closer they pulled themselves together, the tighter her skin held her heart captive, unable to touch his. Still, she wanted to try, to free herself from Chen Hang, to try and live another kind of life.
By the time Jia Jia made her way back to the bar, the red Porsche was gone, and the boy sat there on his chair without his phone, turning his head to follow every car that passed by on the road.
At the end of the night, before the bar closed, Jia Jia accepted Leo’s invitation.
6
Jia Jia had agreed to meet Leo in the afternoon to drive together to his parents’. She felt unsure and anxious. Three months after her husband’s death, she was already spending the holidays with another man’s family: maybe Chen Hang’s parents were right, she thought, she was a curse. A destructive, vile scourge. First her mother, then her husband. And now, all tangled up with another man so soon, like moss that clings to other plants for life.