Can Xue - The Last Lover

When Maria saw her gray-and-white hair in the mirror, she thought of her old age. She’d never expected that her life when she was elderly would be as active as the present. Many years back she had already planned to pass peaceful waning years in this ancient house.

“Maria, Maria,” she said to herself, “In fact, you aren’t your father’s daughter, and you aren’t any man’s daughter — you are this town’s daughter. This small town has already disappeared, sunk underground, and so your train of thought transfers to underground. You’ve become an unearthed archaeological relic.”

She was imagining herself with her whole body verdigris, sitting among the rosebushes and basking in the sun. Perhaps Daniel saw on her face, on her neck, that copper-green. Daniel was her son, and from the day he was conceived, the small town’s ill wind had brushed his immature cheeks. Maria recalled something that had happened when Daniel was three years old. One day at dawn her son had escaped from her care, walked to the neighbor’s garden, got into the doghouse, and squatted inside, completely still. Maria went mad, embracing her lost but recovered son and wailing and crying. Maria knew Daniel loved her, but his kind of love was too gray, even old, and this pained her heart. She was unsure of whether her son actually loved his father. She felt that the father-son relationship between them was of a rare kind, as was apparent when Daniel could see from a glance the Japanese woman’s kimono inside her tapestry’s whirlpool. This earth holds some people who, although not through language, and not through close association and exchange of emotions, can still, from estranged distance and silence, reach deeper levels of communication. At this point, Maria seemed to see the verdigris of her body giving off a flickering light.

Maria’s short gray hair stood up straight in the mirror. Her expression was apprehensive. Was this, or was it not, some kind of awakening? Would the restlessness that came with the nearing of old age be able to bring her in the end into eternal serenity?

That evening, when Joe was away, Maria turned off all of the lights in the house. On a night like this, even her parents and grandfather were not talking. But she collided with her son in the living room, and was frightened into a cold sweat all over her body.

“I heard you call me, so I came back,” Daniel said.

“I didn’t call you.”

“Maybe you didn’t know you called me. The night is very beautiful, and our house is like a bay laurel. Mama, what do you say, should I follow the path leading to the mountaintop, uphill all the way? The snow piled on the summit is eye-piercing.”

Maria heard her son’s voice shaking. She thought, He truly is a passionate young man.

“Mother, today I helped the Vietnamese family, over on the street where the church is, put their garden in order. After it rained, millions of earthworms gushed out of the ground. The family didn’t react. They stood in the doorway drinking tea.”

“You found a job, child.”

“Where is Vietnam? I was thinking about it while I was hoeing, but I couldn’t think clearly. Just now, when you called me, on the way here I suddenly thought of Vietnam. I saw the family escaping from the rain into darkened houses. Young girls with bare feet, their feet crawling with leeches. . They don’t react to these kinds of things.”

“Daniel, are you in love?”

“I entered a dead-end street. I went mad seeing the earthworms.”

“Daniel, let me touch your face.”

Maria stretched out her hand toward her son, but there was nothing to touch. She knew the Vietnamese family. They’d opened a laundromat; the faces of the adults and children had assured expressions; the girl went to the public school and walked in the street with a careful look, not anything like the girls around here.

Daniel left the house without a sound, like a cat, and Maria was immersed in the complete stillness. After midnight, a hailstorm woke her. That hail fell strangely. Hailstones as large as eggs shot toward her window and fell to the ground. Afterward she used a washbasin to gather them up, enough to fill it. The window of Joe’s bedroom was shut tightly, and the glass had not been shattered. Maria lay down on Joe’s bed, covered with a quilt, her ears full of the sharp call of the mad gale wind. In her mind acts from her and Joe’s shared life swept past. She saw clearly how daily life had shifted underground, how their surface exchanges had changed before her eyes into this mystical relationship. She remembered in early years Joe making a joke to her: “With all your energy, you’re itching to move the jewelry store into your strongbox.” But Joe was also full of energy. This short man, without meaning to, had built up alongside her a fortress to resist the invasions of daily life. But in the passing of months and years, their life inside was eroding little by little, changing into something unrecognizable.

She lay on Joe’s bed. This was the bed he’d slept in for many years since they had moved to separate rooms. Occasionally, Joe came to her room, but for several years she had never been in this bed. She opened her eyes wide, trying to see anything at all, but it was a wasted effort. Only if she closed her eyes did she feel that there were shadows in the room. The smell of Joe’s body could still make her excited, but inside that odor was a poison which could destroy the seething desire in her body. Those few times making love in the past few years didn’t bear looking back on. When she imagined herself a lioness, Joe became a vapor. .

It was only at this moment, on the night of the hailstorm, that Maria’s shapely body finally embraced Joe, tumbling onto that large old bed. She let out a lion’s roar, and from a remote place came a faint echo. This was the night of Maria’s inferno, as the body’s torment freed the spirit from its home.

Lisa, who came from a gambling town, was like sunshine on a summer’s day drying the layers of mold from Vincent’s hidden life. She, who’d lost both parents to the slot machines, with her shining eyes, her loud voice, her coarse, stiff red hair flying in all directions, was like an exploding bomb. She was a consummately skilled administrator, and very few people could manage what she held in her head, the method and keenness. She could make decisions swift as lightning. Many years ago, this daughter of a gambling family had wandered into this small city and fallen in with Vincent. The two of them had established the clothing company together.

She had retired from management of the company when its business was thriving and expanding because she feared the battles of the business world. Its battling reverberated with the lingering sound of her dead parents. From that day forward, she lived inside the enormous shadow of Vincent’s inner world. When she was still young, Lisa came to think of herself as vulgar, and she didn’t intend to change this part of herself. She wore colorful, gaudy clothes, spoke coarsely, and sometimes got drunk. After she married Vincent these traits became slightly restrained, but it wasn’t an alteration in essence. She knew Vincent appreciated her.

Their house had reddish-orange outer walls and was situated behind the trees on a hillside. In front of the house lay an enormous flower garden and lawn, with a light-blue swimming pool like a beautiful jade under the sky. Vincent had designed this wealth-symbolizing residence on an impulse in his youth. The building had four stories. Although its furnishings were contrastingly thrifty, the several oil paintings that hung on its walls were quite valuable. Even so, after they had lived there for a year, they both started to neglect the upkeep of their house. For the sake of privacy they dismissed nearly all the servants, only retaining a cook. The sturdy fellow was also in charge of cleaning the swimming pool and the interior of the house. Fortunately the owners didn’t bring guests home. The garden quickly became an uncultivated plot. All kinds of birds came to make their nests among its overgrown flowers, grass, trees. This, too, lent a peculiar air to the residence. What secrets did the husband and wife keep? For Lisa, their so-called secret was actually a riddle, something that couldn’t be explained but rather was a longing buried away from beginning to end in the depths of their hearts. They both fostered this kind of secret. Especially at periods when business picked up and communication with the outside world became more frequent.