Can Xue - The Last Lover

“With a place like this, once you enter you can’t leave again. It isn’t a bad thing, either. Close your eyes, and you can always reach home. Didn’t you give me your address?”

“I gave it to you?”

“Yes. What you gave me was an incorrect address. There is no such place. Then your host gave me another address, written quite clearly. Your host is the kind of person who even plans out what to dream. For decades I’ve been making trips back and forth through this area, and I’ve figured out his disposition. Just think, why would someone want to live halfway up a mountain? That fat cook, I heard she murdered her own sick father and then fled here. Now she messes around with caterpillars all day to atone.”

Joe heard this chatter and found the man disagreeable. He picked up his book to read again. He couldn’t understand its contents, and even the characters’ names had changed. The plot seemed to speak of a serving cook avenging herself on her unfaithful lover. The cook’s name was also strange, Yi Zhi Mei (or Iljimae, “a plum branch”). The lover went to eat at a small restaurant. Yi Zhi Mei threw a bowl of boiling soup at him. The soup didn’t touch the man; all of it splashed onto her own body. Within a second, her skin and flesh fell to the floor and all that was left was a skeleton standing in the restaurant. The man stared fixedly at the bones in front of him. . Continuing, there was an explanation of the name Yi Zhi Mei. The book said that it was “Eastern.” The serving cook came from some island nation in the East, these things had happened in ancient times, the cook’s status was somewhere between a prostitute and a respectable woman, and the lover was in truth a patron of brothels. That lover, after seeing the cook’s accident, went completely insane. He brought the cook’s bones back home, made a glass cabinet, put them inside, and locked it from outside. From then on every time the lover fooled around with a woman, his eyes saw the objects inside of the glass cabinet. The glass cabinet was set next to the bed for a long period. Joe read this and started to smile. He felt that the novel was too hyperbolic. However, he still wanted to know the whereabouts of that glass case, and imagined the look of the skeleton wearing a light, graceful summer kimono.

The car went faster and faster. Joe couldn’t sit securely in the back seat. He realized that the driver was making maneuvers, and thought he must have some insidious motive. He feared something would happen. There was one moment when Joe saw him call out to a person through the car window. Joe hurriedly looked outside and saw to his surprise that it was Kim. Kim stood in grass as high as his waist, dressed up to look like a hunter, with peacock feathers stuck in his hat.

“You’ve left me no way to rest,” Joe complained.

He let down the velvet curtain over the car window, deciding that no matter what, he wouldn’t care or notice. He wouldn’t even care about his own life. He reflected that the driver had no reason to be after his life, altogether no reason. If he wanted to make a point, then he’d made it. Perhaps that person in the grass masquerading as a peacock was his audience. At this time, Joe’s longing for Maria was more intense than at any other. He recalled that night in her room with its small purple lamps shimmering like fireflies; even her slightly aging slackness filled his body with longing. The occasion had made him embarrassed. Strenuously, he would not think of that scene. Over the days, he’d nearly forgotten the events of that night. But now, Maria’s body overbore him. Her breasts with their erect nipples would block his nostrils, stifle him. Joe’s body quickly shriveled. He hid in the darkness of the back seat, and did not notice when the car reached a dangerous speed again. He heard the driver curse, then suddenly the car stopped.

“That day you weren’t at home, there was a hailstorm. The second day, in the morning, the roses opened even more exuberantly. Can you tell me what happened, Joe?”

“I can’t, my dear.”

Maria left the side of his bed and quietly went downstairs. Joe lifted his head from the pillow, looking at the wall in front of him. To his astonishment he discovered a new tapestry on the wall. It was a human skeleton wearing a kimono, and the flowers of springtime bloomed on the kimono. The tapestry was so large it covered almost half the wall. When had she started weaving it? Joe’s heart was full of gratitude, but the impulse for sex completely disappeared.

The day Joe left for the north on a business trip, Maria was like a small brook rising in the springtime, cheerfully welling up with hope. Joe had taken a taxi at dawn. The previous evening they’d already said their good-byes, so Maria didn’t see him off. She stood at the window of her bedroom on the second floor, listening with minute attention to the sound of the taxi’s motor, watching Joe get into the car, his briefcase with the words “Rose Clothing Company” printed on it clamped under his arm. For a long time after the car drove off Maria still stood there, smoking a cigarette and reflecting on the Rose Clothing Company’s situation. She thought of how the company’s business had spread across the entire country, and was now even expanding to a few countries in Africa. But what kind of people was it relying on to prop it up? Everyone said her husband was the backbone of the company, an employee who’d given outstanding service, but as for Maria, she’d truly thought about it in a hundred ways and still couldn’t understand. She knew that Joe had some natural talent for the business trade, yet she knew his thoughts didn’t lie there. Joe’s thoughts all lay with his books, and because of this the essential life between husband and wife had begun separating years ago, moving little by little onto different paths. This had continued until two years ago, when Maria had grown nervy in the process of weaving those odd tapestries. Then a subtle communication had begun between them again. Maria hoped Joe would go on business trips. She was pleased with his frequently leaving home for a few days at a time. But this wasn’t because she wanted to have affairs of her own; it was rather a thirst for change. Every time Joe went away for a spell, the house grew clamorous, on the brink of something happening. For example, at this moment she heard the two cats in the backyard shrieking in a frenzy; a large flock of sparrows followed them onto the steps; and in the southern wind there was a cloth flapping with a pa pa sound. Even her tapestry loom downstairs began making a rhythmic noise.

There was someone coming along the path leading to the garden. It was her son, Daniel. Daniel had long since stopped going to school, but the two of them kept Joe blind to this fact. Maria had her son stay at her friend’s house two streets away. Daniel did nothing all day now. The times when Joe wasn’t at home, he snuck back secretly to help Maria tend the garden. Recently he’d brought home a Great Dane of enormous build, and had made a doghouse for it with his own hands. He proved quite skillful at these things. The Great Dane was extraordinarily gloomy. Perhaps this had to do with the climate of its homeland. But after the dog arrived at their home it appeared quite comfortable. Although it didn’t heed either the family or the two cats, they could see it was vigilant and much affected by its new environment. The better part of the day it lay dozing among the roses. Daniel christened it “Pirate.”

“Mama! Pirate took our spot. Can we still drink our tea there?” Daniel shouted into the house.

“No, child,” Maria, her hands covered in flour, came out and answered. “It might make Pirate unhappy. Don’t you see he’s trembling? Nightmares from the past still hover around him. Think about where Pirate came from, a place where there’s no daylight half the year.”