Can Xue - The Last Lover

She sat on a wooden stool, stretching out her right leg for him to see. He applied a few damp tea leaves to the wounded spot for her.

“Ida is already coming to terms with the snakes, little by little,” he said, lisping. “Here is your homeland. Right? You and that, that whoever, Mr. Reagan, you get together somewhere every night. I’ve seen everything. That one time, you wore black clothes to squeeze into his house, and fooled around with him there for a week. After that. . What am I talking about? Yes, you two are people who come from the same place.”

Ida was astonished at the old man’s acute memory. She couldn’t think of anything to say to refute him. Perhaps what he’d said had actually happened, who knew? It was the way of this forest keeper to not differentiate between things. It astounded Ida, while also enchanting her. Before she’d lived here very long she’d gotten to know the forest keeper. He told her he had seen her before, that she and the deer had lived together and often come to his shed. Each time, he spoke of Mr. Reagan as her lover. At first Ida found this this strange, but because the old man’s way of speaking about it was so particular, she was unknowingly drawn in. He often spoke of how Reagan had changed everything. Reagan had deprived him of his birthplace by force. He hated him. These snakes that bit but didn’t kill people, these rubber trees without even shadows were wholly unfamiliar. Yet Reagan swam back and forth, like a fish in water. “You are different,” he turned to say to Ida. “You and that man are the same sort of goods. You come from the same place and your homeland is connected to this place here. Everywhere waterwheels are turning. I tell you, after Reagan came, the lake had no wild ducks anymore.”

Ida could never figure out whether the old man really hated the changes to his environment. He used an enchanting intonation to describe things of the past, but what Ida heard was rather praising the present. He repeatedly said that this farm was Reagan’s farm, but Ida firmly set in her mind that he was the thick black shadow behind Reagan. When Reagan left his house, Ida saw numerous shadows dragging behind him. These shadows made his face as white as a dead man’s. Ida felt it was only at these moments that Reagan could finally draw her in.

The tea leaves applied to her leg only irritated the wound. Ida felt throes of pain. She reached out her hand to wipe the leaves off, but the old man blocked it.

“This effect is what’s wanted, you stupid girl. Think of the old toads in the swamp, think of them and you’ll be fine.”

Ida, in the midst of her pain, felt a sexual desire leap up inside her body. It was like that feeling just after being bitten by the snake. With her face reddening she strained to her feet and struggled to walk outside.

“That’s right, girl, but don’t fall down,” the old man said from behind her.

That night, she tested the lake’s depth once more. She was an expert diver, and without expending much effort she reached the center. After that she floated up to the surface of the water, and repeated this a few times. In the green sky there were all sorts of shouting sounds. She heard them all, and she knew that the person fishing on the shore heard them also. If not, why did he press down the reeds so that they kept making noise? Next, she heard her aunt speaking to her from underneath the water. In the past this aunt had often told people as a joke that Ida was too clever, she could calculate the moment of her own death. “A person of barely twenty who calculates the moment of her death — isn’t this abnormal? I won’t think of leaving Ida an inheritance. That would be the same as murdering her.” When her aunt had said this, Ida’s two older cousins were at her side, covering the smiles on their faces. Ida reached a hand down into the water and thought that she touched her aunt’s hard, prickly hair. Her heart was pained by love and pity.

“You really reached the bottom of the lake?” After a long while Reagan finally asked her, stammering.

The sudden sex caught him unprepared and afterward he couldn’t find the heap of clothing he’d tossed beside the lake. Fortunately his eyesight wasn’t as good as Ida’s: he couldn’t see anything clearly. In his head an unsuitable metaphor relentlessly appeared: “war between man and snake.” Sometimes he thought he was a snake, sometimes he thought his partner was a snake. At the beginning of their lovemaking Ida’s body swiftly disappeared. The snakes’ si si hissing was everywhere. Reagan hung struggling on a plateau of continuous climax. From start to finish he couldn’t find release. He recalled a sentence he seemed to have said: “Ida, you’re too frightening.” Afterward he was gasping for air. However, what he might, perhaps, have said was: “Ida, you’re too beautiful.”

Ida ran away on bare feet, carrying her shoes in her hand.

Reagan groped around on the ground for a long time before finally finding his clothes.

He faced the mirror in his bedroom. Inside the mirror was a blurring mist, and no matter how much he wiped it he couldn’t get it clean. He had no way to see his own face. Last night, his clothes had been wet through and full of mud, and Ali said he’d turned into a clay statue. But he didn’t think to change his clothes. His whole body burned like a flame as he paced, like a lunatic, back and forth across the bedroom. Ali kept on from outside, indomitably knocking at the door.

“Help find me a mirror.” He opened the door slightly, exposing half his face.

Ali returned shortly, and from outside the room she held aloft a round, antiquated mirror, which decades ago had been part of her dowry. Reagan looked into it, but the depths of the indistinct mirror were empty. After that Ali hid the mirror behind her back. “You’ve no need to look at this,” she said. “All things are hidden under this bit of land. Once it’s nighttime there are things that come out, and sometimes at noon, when the sun is right overhead, they also come out.”

Ali’s cumbersome body swayed like an old duck as she left. Reagan heard her going downstairs. At the same time he heard the sound of the desire inside his body ebbing, like unnumbered bubbles bursting in the water all at once. The first things to appear in the mirror were his two green eyes, before his entire aged face gradually emerged. Only in the deep recesses was there still a faintly discernable fog. “Ida, Ida. .” Reagan’s voice was at a crying pitch. Beyond the windows it was cloudless for miles. The burning rays of fierce sunlight opened cracks in the earth, while the workers wearing straw hats hid in twos and threes among the banana trees. There was a moment when he thought he’d discovered Ida. She was among those workers. He thought of going out, under the scorching sun, but his body trembled so fiercely he couldn’t stand up straight. He could not leave the house. “I’ve come to this,” he thought. “Why don’t I return to dreams?”

And like this he wore his filthy clothes, and fell asleep rolled up on the floor.

“Mr. Reagan took great pains in building up this farm, for more than twenty years?” asked Martin, feigning experience.

Ali looked at him disdainfully, as she heard right away the implication behind his words.

“Everything here is prospering. I’d think he could retire. Sleeping all day like this, not taking notice of anything, is about the same as retirement. He’s too hard on himself.”

“What if he gave his place to you?” Ali asked in return.

“Me? Sorry, I’m not interested. This business drives you to death. I haven’t been bitten by a snake, not even once, and I don’t want to be. Look at that window — isn’t that our boss standing there? Sometimes he doesn’t sleep at all, he’s surveying things instead. He’s been aging quickly, and soon he’ll have white hair.”