Elizabeth stands looking at a picture. The picture is framed and glassed. Behind the glass, bright green leaves spread with the harmonious asymmetry of a Chinese floral rug; purple fruits glow among them. Three women, two with baskets, are picking. Their teeth shine within their smiles, their cheeks are plump and rosy as a doll’s. A Fine Crop of Eggplants, the caption says, in Chinese, English and French. Elizabeth reminds herself to pick up some hot dogs on the way home, the children’s request, and for herself cooked chicken. They’ll sit on the front porch, Nancy’s idea of a picnic. Perhaps by then it will be cooler.
A man in overalls, pushing a large floor-polishing machine, reaches Elizabeth’s corner and tells her to move. She walks along the wall. It’s just after closing time and most people have left the Museum. She’s been waiting for this comparative emptiness to take a close look at the exhibit, which opened four days ago, but which she’s been too busy to see. She’s pleased with the press coverage, though. China is news, unlike, for instance, India, which was news several years ago, during that war. And the crowds have been good, though of course not as good as the long lineups they had for The Art of Ancient China exhibit a few years ago. People will stand in line for quite a long time to see gold, especially gold unearthed from tombs. Elizabeth still remembers the horses, those fierce-toothed horses from some Emperor’s grave. They weren’t gold; she can’t remember what they were made of, but keeps an impression of darkness. An omen, a catastrophe, rearing up, bearing down.
There is no catastrophe in these paintings, however. The New Look of Our Piggery, Elizabeth reads. She’s not much interested in pigs. These pigs are like toys, like the plastic pigs from the farm set the children still play with occasionally. They’re discreet and neat and evidently they don’t root or shit. Squashes and pumpkins grow like decorative borders between the rows of sties.
The floor polisher is following her. She crosses over, turns the corner into the second aisle. The paintings are hung on movable screens which divide the gallery. They’ve done a good job setting up the exhibit, she thinks; the life-size black and white photos of the actual artists add a nice touch. She can remember when this whole section was used to display medieval armour and weapons: crossbows, maces, halberds, inlaid blunderbusses, muskets. Only the parquet floor remains the same.
Do Not Allow Lin Piao and Confucius to Slander Women, she reads, and smiles. Everyone Helps in Building Each Others’ Houses.
Suddenly Elizabeth feels, not lonely, but single, alone. She can’t remember the last time anyone other than her children helped her to do something. She knows it rains in China, even though it does not rain in these pictures. She knows the people there do not invariably smile, do not all have such white teeth and rosy cheeks. Underneath the poster-paint colors, primary as a child’s painting, there is malice, greed, despair, hatred, death. How could she not know that? China is not paradise; paradise does not exist. Even the Chinese know it, they must know it, they live there. Like cavemen, they paint not what they see but what they want.
Persimmons Are Ripe at the Foot of Mount Chungman, she reads. Orange-yellow globes crowd the page; among the interwoven branches girls climb, happy faces peer, bright and uniformly patterned as birds. Elizabeth blinks back tears: foolishness, to be moved by this. This is propaganda. She does not want to line up and learn to throw grenades, she doesn’t want to work a threshing machine, she has no desire to undergo group criticism and have a lot of other people tell her what to think. This isn’t what touches her so that she’s fumbling in her purse now for a Kleenex, a scrap of paper, anything she can use to blot her face. It’s the turnips in their innocent rows, ordinary, lit from within, the praise lavished on mere tomatoes, the bunches of grapes, painted in all their translucent hues. As if they are worth it.
Elizabeth dabs at her nose. If she wants to see grapes she can go to the supermarket. She has to go there anyway, since there’s nothing in the house for dinner.
China does not exist. Nevertheless she longs to be there.