Can Xue - The Last Lover

“Mr. Reagan is in love.”

“God, that’s frightening. I thought the farm was getting out of order.”

“Lately I’ve been worried about a fire. I stuck the fire department’s phone number on the wall.”

Martin went over to the well, pulled up a bucket of water, and splashed it head-first over himself so his whole body was left dripping. Yesterday he’d been loafing around outside wearing Reagan’s hunting gear when the outer jacket suddenly hooped around his neck so he couldn’t breathe. When he’d opened the buttons and thrown it to the ground, the feeling of suffocation grew even worse. He’d run, tumbling headlong into the lake. Immediately — the water hadn’t even reached his neck — his suffocation was alleviated. Water had had this capacity before. Just now when he’d been speaking with Lisa, he’d broken out gasping again, and cold water had come to his aid. How could this be happening? He’d never had asthma before. Martin had worked for Reagan for five years, and he’d long since grown accustomed to his employer’s eccentricities. He formulated a principle: meet the frightening without fear, the strange without wonder. He believed that he shouldn’t approach his employer in the same way he approached most people. So without the least care he did a few things out of the ordinary, including stealing the clothes and so on. When his conduct met with Ali’s rebuke, he was even a little pleased because it meant he wasn’t going unnoticed. But there was the asthma. Martin remembered something. Once, on the way back from a long drive, when they reached the farm Reagan said that he wanted to get out of the car to look around. So Martin stopped the car under the trees, and leaned against a tree trunk to nap. Suddenly, a pair of strong hands stretched out from the tree trunk and locked around his throat. His eyes flipped to white and his legs kicked blindly. He thought his day of judgment had come. He could see nothing. Without knowing how long he struggled, he heard the sound of Reagan’s voice by his ear. He opened his eyes. Nothing had happened at all. He was sitting in perfectly good shape under an old poplar tree. “You’re having bad dreams again,” Reagan said as he got into the car, glancing at him insidiously. When Martin started the car, he smelled his employer’s body giving off an unexpected, intense, thick odor of anesthetic, a smell strong enough to make him dizzy. On the road, still confused, he reflected that Mr. Reagan was the kind of man to firmly control his domain. His domain was his farm, and every matter here was decided by him.

In the past Martin had also thought of changing himself into someone like Ali. That way he could get used to being on the farm. But it was no good: his natural instincts were too crooked, so he was constantly punished. He knew that he was violating the customs of this place. It brought him happiness; still more the dread of death. Who could figure it out? It was impossible to say on what day the sorcery of Reagan’s farm would call for his life: think of those disgusting little snakes. Sometimes driving the car at night he’d crushed more than twenty to death all at once! After crushing the snakes, he always hallucinated, seeing the windshield crawling so full of them that he couldn’t make out the road signs. When he’d first come to the farm to take this job, Reagan had asked him whether he was allergic to pollen. He still remembered Reagan somberly staring at him as he asked this. At that time he took Reagan to be a bachelor with an obstructed heart, a man with a cheerless disposition. But events quickly proved him mistaken. His employer’s capabilities left Martin’s eyes wide and his mouth gaping. Although he couldn’t exactly say what kind of capabilities these were, nevertheless he always felt himself firmly drawn in, then afterward exploited. Martin wondered if he was harming himself by his own rash, rebellious nature. Otherwise, why was he always uneasy?

“Look at him, it’s like he’s stuck to the window,” Martin warned Ali.

Ali took the woven stuff in her hands and placed it on the bench in the arbor, stood up, and furiously criticized him:

“What nonsense are you talking about? Look, isn’t Mr. Reagan eating downstairs?”

Martin blinked. Mr. Reagan really was sitting right in the dining room. Through the glass door Martin saw two snakes crawling onto his back, although Reagan stretched and seemed quite pleased. Martin was about to enter the room, but was shouted back by Ali.

“Stay there! You’d better stand there, don’t move. What can you see, child? You can only see things that are already obsolete. Go change those wet clothes, you stink.”

Martin didn’t go to change his clothes. He went outside. Beside the old poplar tree where he’d leaned on the trunk to rest, he ran into Ida.

“Ida, are you looking for my boss?” He brazenly moved closer.

“I am looking for my diamond ring.”

“You have a diamond ring?”

“I don’t remember. If I find it then I have one.”

Ida used a sharp knife to poke a hole in the tree. Wood scraps scattered in all directions. Martin hadn’t realized the girl’s arms were so strong and he quickly backed away.

“Ida, that day when I fell asleep against the tree trunk, was it you who clutched my neck?” Martin shouted at her.

But Ida appeared not to have heard. After a short while she’d bored out a hole as big as a shot glass. Martin saw the tree branches violently shaking and the leaves rustled with a sha sha sound.

“Ida, Ida! Stop that!”

He didn’t know why he needed to call out.

“If you don’t stop, I’ll go get Mr. Reagan!”

Ida seemed to tremble. She disdainfully threw the knife to the ground and stood with both hands on her waist, looking at Martin. Then she squeezed out one word from between the cracks in her teeth: “Out!”

Martin took to his heels in fright, because he saw a poisonous striped snake on Ida’s shoulder.

He ran a long way, with Ida’s voice following him. It sounded like a stream of lascivious teasing, mingled with a few filthy words. Martin found her voice difficult to understand. He ran and ran again, his damp clothing sticking to his body. He became a drowning dog.

“Your diamond ring is inside the snake’s stomach, I’m sure of it.”

Ida’s friend made this statement to Ida while asleep, but tightly holding her hand as if she were wide awake. Ida knew it was dream-talk. She gently withdrew her hand and slid across to the screened window to look outside. The afternoon sun was at its most poisonous. Flies and mosquitoes surged in a frenzied chorus. Out on the road, an army of snakes braved the scorching sun and headed toward the apartment building. A few had already entered the main gate. Ida thought to herself that a large group of the snakes must be inside the building already. She certainly couldn’t go back to her own room now, because once she opened the door she would be besieged from all sides. The others must be taking afternoon naps. At this time of day, everything on the farm fell into a lethargic sleep, except the snakes.

Ida only indistinctly remembered that night with Reagan and the scene of the chaotic snake dance. The recollection of sex was almost horrible because it wasn’t clear if it was persons or snakes, with the soil underneath her body becoming quite hot, swelling and undulating. . Afterward it seemed that she had slunk away first, because desire is a valley that is impossible to fill, or that, in other words, she gave rein in order to capture. She heard Reagan murmuring a sentence from underneath her: “An orangutan in heat.” After he said this, his skull suddenly dissolved; the body without a head shook with a convulsion. This man was everywhere but also had no substance. Ida felt the wide mouth of her womb already incredibly frenzied. .