Can Xue - The Last Lover

“His master drove him out of the house because of his smile. I don’t think he can tell how much light there is. In his eyes, it’s nighttime here where we are. Pirate dreams both day and night.”

Daniel was tall and thin and looked a little like a heron. Although there was nothing Maria and he didn’t talk about, she still felt that his nature contained some obscure thing. That obscurity originated with Joe. For example, Daniel hid at Maria’s friend’s house, overly cautious and circumspect, seldom going out, appearing to be extremely bashful, ordinary, but she knew he wasn’t an artless child. He had plans that would be difficult to realize; he was unable to abandon these plans.

Daniel arranged the garden systematically. He did such things almost without effort, but he was always nervous and unable to relax. This was the reason he ran away from boarding school. People said he was an excellent, self-disciplined student. But his mind was not on his schoolwork, and this was something only he knew. Maria wondered what this child’s mind was set on. Once she visited his school, where she watched her son from a distance, seeing him standing like a heron in the midst of many people. She suddenly felt that she was looking at Joe in his early youth. The sensation of it was distinct before her eyes. How could that be? Wasn’t Joe a short fellow?

When the two sat down together in the house and drank their coffee, Maria had Daniel look at the new tapestry on the wall. On it was woven a whirlpool, circle after circle whirling into its bottomless depths.

“This is a young woman wearing a kimono. I already saw her once, in Father’s study.”

Maria was inwardly startled.

“You read the same books as your father?”

“No, I only read travel stories. I like traveling.”

“Would you like to go abroad? To countries in the East, for example?”

“No, I’d just like to stay at home.”

Probably it was only Maria who could understand her son’s words.

One of the African cats passed quietly between their feet, its fur rubbing their pants legs and making pa pa crackling noises. The other cat, the yellow-and-white one, came over. Daniel called it “Beauty.” Beauty’s body was not electrified at present. She was a bit irritable, and apparently searching for something. Maria asked Daniel whether he heard his grandfather speaking inside the house. Daniel responded that he heard him every day. Maria asked him whether he was afraid. He said he’d been used to it from when he was little. What was there to be afraid of? Besides, being afraid was no use.

“If Father doesn’t like his work, he can come back here. Why does he have to go to the office every day? Couldn’t you sell all that jewelry you have? I’ve been to a dealer to ask, and the market value isn’t bad.”

“It’s exactly the opposite: he does like his work. Look, he’s off on a business trip again. If he didn’t work, he wouldn’t come into contact with all different kinds of customers. He was happy when he left in the morning.”

“So that’s how it is.”

Daniel was silent. He bent over, placing a piece of chocolate candy in the mouth of Beauty. Beauty ate the candy with a gloomy expression, and walked off haughtily when it was finished. The other, brown-striped cat, however, rubbed back and forth across their pants legs, seemingly to tell them something.

“I understand. Father is supposed to be far away from home, but he’s really returned to you here?”

“It may be. But what do Grandfather and those other people want to say? That he shouldn’t go far away? Like when we were drinking tea on the lawn and watched him appear in midair?”

Daniel didn’t answer. Maria also didn’t wish for her son to answer. For many years, she’d been awaiting a solution that was difficult to fix on, an unreckonable thing, proved only by action. She was in a confused state when she wove this whirlpool tapestry. Her son voiced her premonition, that the composition of this pattern came from Joe’s recent reading of a book by a Japanese person. Maria had never read the book, but she had captured Joe’s soul. And Daniel, without much effort, entered this unreal world.

“Daniel, later on won’t you need a profession?”

“I can help people as a gardener.”

He added sugar to his coffee with assurance, altogether unconcerned about this issue. After becoming a private gardener, he could be like Joe, coming into contact with all different kinds of people. Now Maria realized that her son and his father were the same type of person, and had no fundamental use for the pains she took. Maria also realized that he did not really need to hide from Joe. Joe probably wouldn’t be angry that he had left school. But Daniel didn’t seem to be afraid of Joe’s anger. Rather, he was purposely maintaining an estranged relationship with Joe. What for? Perhaps he didn’t want too much daily contact with his father, but preferred to meet him in some subtle moment and place?

In Maria’s bedroom was a portrait of her father. She’d put the portrait down at the back of a wardrobe, and only when she was getting dressed did she face her father in its dimness. The father’s face in that portrait appeared arrogant, with bright, piercing eyes. Maria found it difficult to counter his look. In the beginning she had hung him on the wall. Later she detected that her father was staring at her, and she unexpectedly lost her competence in life. At this she finally invited the portrait into the wardrobe. The day her father entered the wardrobe was the day she started to weave tapestries. The communication taking place in the dark redoubled her confidence. In reality, her childhood memories relating to her father had practically all disappeared or been wiped out. The vanished father turned into the spiritual support of the father in the portrait. Maria thought: This is the meaning of so-called adulthood. What was a father? A father was a kind of negation, his strict eye making Maria’s life into a string of illogical marvels, and even indirectly affecting Joe’s life. In the night after the day when the roses were blooming like crazy she had seen with her own eyes how Joe, like a crazed man, rushed downstairs, seeming to want to take in the entire courtyard, looking left, looking right, looking everywhere.

Joe had also seen Maria’s portrait of her father, which formerly had been placed in the corner of the living room. Although he had never met her father, Joe said he wasn’t a stranger to his father-in-law. He also said that all the stories he read concerned her father. “You have a legendary father.” Joe made this statement casually, but Maria was greatly shaken. Perhaps it was Joe’s urging that gave her a little faith in this father who did not exist. Maria’s intoxication in daydreams these past few years probably had much to do with the father in the portrait. If even her father could be revived in a fabrication, what couldn’t be fabricated? An elderly neighbor, after seeing her tapestries, said that the design on one of them gave him a feeling “like dropping into an abyss.” Yet he bought that smallish tapestry. Evidently he wished to experience what it was like to drop into an abyss. Deep at night when everyone was silent, her father was able to talk; his speech couldn’t be heard clearly. He seemed to be speaking to her mother, but the talk between them was mixed up with her grandfather’s chatter. Her grandfather and mother’s talk could be heard more clearly. They usually offered her stern criticisms. Maria was already used to such criticism, although she was not used to her father’s vague voice hidden behind it. She would often wonder why she believed she was the daughter of that man. She was also gratified by her relationship with Joe: she’d settled on Joe all at once, but it was because she’d had that kind of father. The composition of the world was truly marvelous.