Oil Painting
When it has just begun to rain, people will scramble desperately to find somewhere covered to take shelter, but once the rain has thoroughly soaked them through, they will instead walk freely and joyfully in the rain.
It was as if they had gone from their twenties back to their teens, perhaps even younger.
“Are you afraid of lightning?” Zhuyu shouted over the rain as she walked beside Liu Sizhao.
The words had barely left her mouth when a sharp flash of lightning, like silk being ripped apart, illuminated the horizon. Thunder came crashing down, continuing for half a minute without pause.
Liu Sizhao looked up. Zhuyu did the same. Not one of them was afraid of the lightning and thunder, even though they were standing outdoors.
In that moment, the entire mountain seemed to come alive. It responded to the wind, rain, thunder, and lightning, tossing itself about in the rain. The mountain forest roared, the grass and trees swayed. Whenever lightning struck down, there would surely be somewhere for it to land, perhaps deep within the mountain. The mountain did not fear the lightning's arrival in the slightest. Come, then. Come. After the torrential rain, it would grow even more abundant wild grass, clog the river channels, bury human footprints. The empty orchards would be replaced by wild grass.
It would be as though human beings had never come here at all.
They stood there, looking up at the horizon, letting the rain pour over their entire bodies. The sky was vast and distant, the mountains and rivers boundless. Within it all, the two of them became very, very small, so small that they seemed like two faint shadows.
“Are you afraid?” Liu Sizhao lowered his head and looked at Zhuyu.
“No. I guessed you wouldn't be afraid either!”
When she was fifteen, Zhuyu had thought that Liu Sizhao and she were alike in certain ways. They liked the same kinds of books, and the notes he left in the margins were often exactly what she had been thinking. That probability was already small enough. She had never expected that, like her, this person would dare stand outdoors in a thunderstorm.
But he shook his head. “You should be afraid. I should be afraid too.”
When they pushed open the door and entered the small Western-style villa, Zhuyu was still pressing him about the lightning. “Why should we be afraid?”
He undid his shirt buttons one by one as he headed upstairs, answering with a smile, “If you're afraid of nothing at all, you can't be an ordinary person anymore.”
Zhuyu did not understand. He was always like this, saying half of what he meant and hiding the other half, making himself impossible to figure out. To her, the opposite of an ordinary person was not a winner in life, but a complete oddity. Yet he was a winner in life, and she was a strange oddity.
Upstairs there were two bathrooms, one large one outside the bedroom, and another small one inside Liu Sizhao's bedroom. There were no women's clothes in this house. The only thing she could find was a white bathrobe.
By the time Zhuyu came out after taking a hot shower, he had already made tea downstairs.
He was ridiculously fast at showering. Apart from his short hair being a little wet, he had changed into another outfit and once again looked impeccably put together. The jacquard-knit pullover looked casual, but she somehow felt that he had deliberately polished his appearance.
As she walked closer and sat beside him, Zhuyu pressed her lips together to keep herself from laughing.
His cologne had the fresh, slightly astringent scent of green branches after they had been snapped off a tree.
She glanced at the green tea leaves unfurling in the cup and suddenly said, “I like Ovaltine.”
Liu Sizhao's hands stopped as he made the tea. “We don't have any at home. I'll buy some next time. Greek yogurt, Ovaltine, what else do you like?”
This was one of Zhuyu's favorite little games. She found it amusing. “I like vodka with orange juice. I like figs. I like pancakes with honey. I like soft, plump Arabian dates. I like all sweet foods.”
“You're suited to living in the city. They don't have any of those things in the countryside.”
“If they don't have any of them, tomatoes mixed with granulated sugar are pretty good too. But how long are you going to recuperate here? When are you leaving?”
“It'll be a while. When are you leaving?”
Both of them were outsiders who had arrived suddenly, yet at this moment they were circling around the subject like two people practicing push hands in tai chi, going back and forth without ever answering directly.
“I have to leave after you.” Zhuyu was quite certain of this.
“Maybe you'll leave first.” He, too, found the game amusing.
“Then you must understand that sooner or later, you and I are going to part ways, right? We should be careful, so we don't have to... develop something romantic.” Her arm rested along the back of the sofa as she spoke to him from the side.
“Something romantic” could mean a liking that stopped here, or a relationship that went further, or the simplest thing of all, a fleeting affair. Three paths lay before them, and no one knew which one they would take. The simplest, of course, was a fleeting affair. The hardest, and the least likely to be established, was a serious relationship.
None of these paths was suitable to touch upon. Zhuyu did not want to waste time on such things.
Liu Sizhao turned sideways to look at her as well, his expression perfectly serious. “I'm fine with anything. It's up to you. But this place really isn't very big. Until either of us leaves, we'll be seeing each other every day. No one knows what will happen afterward.”
The bright overhead light in the living room was not on. A floor lamp cast its light beside the sofa, dim and yellow, bathing his refined, handsome face in a soft layer of pale gold. He sat quietly beside her, as if there were an unspoken meaning in his silence: I am yours to choose. If you are willing, you can touch me at any time.
Zhuyu looked away, refusing to look at him, and instead examined the villa that was both familiar and strange. He seemed to have remodeled the interior. It had once been decorated in an affluent Chinese style, belonging to the aesthetic of the previous generation.
Now... it was a mixture of Chinese and Western styles.
“That painting is in the style of Pollock.” She pointed to a painting on the eastern wall. Deep blue and blood-red lines were tangled together chaotically, the entire painting so wildly disordered that it was astonishing, yet strangely beautiful.
He took a shallow sip of tea and nodded.
Having a painting like this in the living room felt rather strange to Zhuyu. Most of the other paintings on the walls were in the same style. Looking at them for too long made a person dizzy. They were neither elegant nor tranquil, and there was not the slightest sense of “home.”
Her own family had been wealthy in the past, but her father was a nouveau riche who understood nothing about art.
She had been to the homes of some wealthy white bosses, and few of them decorated their houses like this.
A thought suddenly surfaced in her mind. “This painting can't be real, can it?”
A shrewd glint suddenly appeared in his eyes. “You tell me.”
Zhuyu withdrew her hand. She had just walked up to the painting and had nearly touched it.
Someone as wealthy as him, how could he possibly buy a fake painting and hang it on the wall...
“Does it look good?”
“Beautiful.” Like the world falling apart in the eyes of a schizophrenic during an episode of worsening symptoms.
She sat back down in her original spot.
But he encouraged her. “Go take another look. You can touch it too.”
“You know, right? If that painting ever went onto the auction market, the price it sold for could buy all the mountains our family owns. I mean, it could buy several mountains.” And he was still telling her to touch it? What if she damaged it?
“This is my painting. You can touch it. Go on!” Liu Sizhao actually urged her on.
So she stood in front of the frame again. Puzzled, she glanced back at him, only to receive another encouraging gesture, as if telling her to look boldly.
The painting really was good, so good that after looking at it for too long, it made the back of her neck sweat and her blood pressure rise. Apart from making her dizzy, it would also make her increasingly restless without her realizing it. Perhaps the painter had been furious at the time. His use of color was crude, his technique wild and uninhibited. It was no different from the sight of a person's artery being slashed open by a dagger, blood spraying three feet into the air and splattering across a sheet of paper.
She repeated her impressions.
He only smiled, and he smiled with such smug satisfaction that Zhuyu was a little surprised. Liu Sizhao had always been someone whose emotions did not show on his face. Suddenly, he pondered for a moment. “Do you think the person who painted it was angry?”
“I think Pollock was a man with a very bad temper.” A painter with a serious drinking problem, depressed and down on his luck.
“Do you know why he was angry?”
How had this suddenly turned into a professor questioning a student? Zhuyu was at a loss for words. “I never studied art history. I don't know that much about his life.”
Liu Sizhao walked behind her and placed a hand on her shoulder. “If you even knew that, I'd be afraid of you.”
He took hold of the back of Zhuyu's hand and indicated that she should spread her fingers. Yes, like that. From below, he pulled her hand upward, then gave the Pollock oil painting a forceful smack with it.
In 2006, a work by this American painter had sold at auction for 140 million US dollars.
Zhuyu's hand was still resting on the painting, and she was a little dazed.
“If only there were some paint here. You could smear it onto your palm and leave a print on the painting.” He said it casually.
If he wasn't afraid, what did she have to be afraid of?
“I have lipstick in my bag.”
What was this, some kind of King You of Zhou and Bao Si playing with the feudal lords by lighting the warning beacons scenario?
Zhuyu held up a tube of lipstick, unsure where to begin. In fact, she was moving very, very slowly, waiting for him to tell her to stop.
After a long pause, he asked her, “Can you paint?”
“No...”
He took the lipstick and held her index finger, applying color to the pad of her fingertip.
Was this man actually going to destroy a work of art?? She stared at him in shock. Liu Sizhao gently took her hand and guided it to a place on the painting where the lines were slightly sparser, lightly dotting out a five-petaled plum blossom. Amid the tangled lines, the deep red flower was as tiny as a drop of water falling into the sea. Blink once and take a few steps back, and the plum blossom would be almost impossible to find. From now on, no matter how many people entered this villa, only she and he would know that a plum blossom was hidden there.
“All right. Your mark is on the painting now too. Do you want to write your name on it?”
“Liu Sizhao, I know you don't care about money, but what you're doing is seriously immoral...”
This was a Pollock painting!
“I don't care. Look here.” He pointed to the lower right corner of the oil painting, where there was an exuberantly arrogant signature in sweeping strokes: Liu Sizhao.
“As the creator of this painting, I am deeply honored to have received the assistance of Miss Norma.” He leaned against the wall, smiling as he looked at her.
“I treasure the oil paintings I create very much. Not just anyone gets to draw on them...” He touched the bridge of his nose, hoping she would understand what he meant. “What are you looking at?”
Zhuyu rose onto her toes and carefully scanned the painting, square centimeter by square centimeter.
She wasn't examining the man's skill as a painter. Rather... “I'm looking for any other women's signatures on it. From what I can tell, your painting could easily hide the names of ten more women.”
Brother Xiao Zhao, this move was simply too powerful. Any woman would be completely charmed by you.
“I don't do this with just anyone!”
“What tricks do you usually use?”
“Anyway, I wouldn't let anyone add a stroke to my paintings.”
“Oh? What other tricks do you have?”
Not good. She had maneuvered him into a trap. Liu Sizhao countered, “What tricks do you use?”
“Haha, don't ask. I'm afraid it'll make you uncomfortable.”
“All right, then. I won't ask about you, and you don't ask about me. So, do you want to leave your name on it or not?”
This time, Zhuyu looked at Liu Sizhao quite seriously. “To be honest, we both have our own emotional histories. We've both been through people and relationships. But a painting is different. I even feel that something you've poured your heart and soul into creating is more valuable than a particular romance.
“So, why exactly are you letting me scribble on it instead of someone else?” I don't believe you're doing this because you like me more than anyone else.
They were at the stage where they were mutually attracted to each other, but they could not yet speak of deeper feelings. For a one-night stand, that amount of feeling would be enough. But to leave her name on a painting he had created with his own hands, she felt it was not quite enough.
“Look at the date.”
“I see it. 2011.7.”
Liu Sizhao said nothing, waiting for her to remember on her own.
“What's so special about 2011? I was fifteen and still in China. But that was my last summer vacation in the country. Hmm? And then?”
If he said that he had already started liking her back then, Zhuyu would feel that he was exaggerating a little too much just to pick up a girl, like bragging that he could drink the entire Yangtze River dry.
“When I painted this, I was in a very bad mood. Every day, I hid in my study and wouldn't see anyone. My temper was terrible. I smashed things in my room, and even Auntie Zhou didn't dare knock on my door to persuade me to eat.
“You came eagerly to our house to find Xunli to play with, not knowing anything about what was going on with me. That day, you suddenly pushed open the door, only to find that the person inside wasn't Xunli, but me. You were holding a mousse cake your father had brought back from the city. It wasn't actually meant for me to eat.
“But you had walked through the wrong door and found the wrong person, and you were too embarrassed to leave, so you timidly asked me, ‘Do you want some cake?’ I guessed you were only being polite. I didn't expect you to really eat it.
“I hadn't eaten properly for two days. I was starving, so I took the cake from your hands, sat down, and just ate it with my hands. I scared you half to death. I remember grabbing a piece, holding it out in front of you, and asking if you wanted some. Even now, when I think about the look on your face, I still find it hilarious.”
Zhuyu remembered it too...
“Then I sat beside you and watched you eat. After you finished, I went downstairs and got you a towel. I remember telling Auntie Zhou, ‘Is Big Brother under too much pressure from the gaokao? Has he gone crazy?’”
The two of them collapsed into laughter on the sofa.
“After I finished the painting and filled my stomach, I gradually returned to normal. If you hadn't barged through my door, I don't know how many more days I would have gone on starving like that. The cake you brought was what I ate. In Europe, wealthy princes and nobles would kindly sponsor impoverished but talented painters, supposedly in the name of supporting art.
“That day, you sponsored me while I was starving. So you are the patron of this painting. That's why I asked you to paint on it.”
Zhuyu curled up barefoot on the sofa, looking at him intently. “You still haven't told me. Why were you unhappy when you were painting it?”
“That's another story. I'll tell you next time.”
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