Can Xue - The Last Lover

She changed her clothes and went downstairs to eat breakfast.

“Who were you cursing at?”

“I don’t know,” said the cook, A Bing. “I just wanted to curse at someone. There’s such a strong smell of gunpowder in the house.”

“It’s the smell of brimstone.”

“You and Mr. Vincent are at war between yourselves. Am I right?”

“No. He and I are fighting a common battle. How can you get the most basic part wrong?”

“I think it comes to about the same thing. This morning when he was eating breakfast he had blood flowing over his hands.”

Lisa covered a surprised shout with her hand. A Bing walked away, as though nothing had happened.

It was after this that Vincent fell asleep on the grass, behaving awfully. She looked carefully at his hairy wrists, but there were no scars on them. Then Vincent looked at her with lust-filled eyes, hazily saying, “Who are you? Are you a Moroccan?” Lisa shouted into his ear, “I come from the gambling city!” He turned, one side of his face stuck to the messy grass, and said, his voice distinct, “I need a woman of Arab and Japanese descent, or else you won’t be able to see me.” He finished this sentence and snored.

Lisa sought out Joe’s wife, Maria, to talk about the situation. She didn’t know why she needed to find someone to talk to, but since she needed to talk, she had to find Maria. She’d been to Maria’s house, which she secretly called “the playground.” Striding through the wooden gate set in a bamboo fence, she grew dizzy, with the clear feeling of a powerful magnetic field inside the building. That afternoon, drinking coffee among Maria’s rosebushes, Lisa spoke to this woman, who had great wisdom and a cool head, about her own chaotic life. As she was speaking, Lisa realized that the roses had an unusual fragrance. She asked Maria where this variety came from. Maria said they were from a pastureland in the north, and that the flowering plants there were all cultivated in midair.

“I sit at home, but at any time I can see the snow piled on the mountaintops,” Maria said, smiling with a slight squint.

Two cats scurried out from under the low table. Lisa’s whole body tingled.

“Your cats, Maria?” she asked.

But Maria’s silhouette grew dim, and after a bit Lisa could only hear her voice.

“Our long march requires an impetus that doesn’t wear away,” Lisa said hopelessly, in that direction. “Otherwise, on that great overcast river, the iron chains of the bridge will break, hong , with a crash. The whole army will be destroyed, doomed by fate.”

Maria was smiling artificially. Lisa saw that her head and body were completely separated from each other. All at once her hair stood on end and her spine ran cold with fear.

Lisa walked straight to the wooden gate, still hearing Maria’s voice continuing, following her.

This meeting left Lisa with an indelible impression. From then on she regarded Maria as being similar to herself. She often saw Maria’s husband, a short, reticent man, but her impression of Joe was very hard to clarify. Today was the second time this month she’d come here. As for the period when she hadn’t come, it was because she was a little scared.

“Hello, Lisa!”

Maria reached out strong, nimble hands and held her. Her thick gray hair was casually drawn back behind her head and her whole body gave off an inhibiting energy. She said she’d been weaving.

“Amazing!” Lisa said, leafing through the works piled up there. “Maybe you could guide me. I’m looking into these deep, deep whirlpools. My heart becomes a mirror. .”

Abruptly her voice cut off, because she saw an extremely familiar picture. She’d seen this picture many years ago, when she was still a young girl, and in the days following she frequently met with it again. She clearly remembered, on the long march nights, how this picture would repeatedly appear in the dark. What Maria had woven was a scorpion, hidden in a deep clump of grass, a big fellow, faintly visible. This scorpion was red. The lambswool Maria used to knit it was dyed the color of flame.

“I can’t see it clearly. .” Lisa said, stammering, pointing to the picture.

“Oh, that design! It’s nothing, that’s Joe.”

“Joe? Clearly it’s a scorpion!”

“Yes, but it came out of his story, and Joe’s stories are Joe himself. . I can’t explain it. Have you really seen a fire-red scorpion before? I usually like to weave things that have never been seen before, like Joe.”

Lisa believed what Maria said, because she’d never been an affected woman. She asked Maria whether she knew that Joe had a mysterious client in the north.

“I know. But why mysterious?” Maria was a bit alarmed.

“Because the man doesn’t exist. Every year he orders clothing from our company for his workers at the pasture, but when our people make business trips there they discover that it’s an abandoned quarry. He pays for the orders, but the clothes are piled in a warehouse to this day.”

A slight smile floated on Maria’s face.

“Ah, that’s what you’re talking about. That kind of man has no set home. Don’t take him too seriously. And anyway, the company hasn’t taken a loss, right?”

“I guess so. I really want to see him with my own eyes. Your husband is the only one who’s met him.”

Lisa watched this woman who in weaving transformed her husband into a scorpion in the grass. Abruptly, she felt unexpected passageways appear in her mind. Perhaps her long march at night should shift direction; perhaps she should change from expanding outward to becoming still?

Following Maria into the living room, she saw through the French windows a very thin boy wielding a hoe in the courtyard. The boy’s face looked somewhat familiar.

“That is my son, Daniel.”

“Oh!”

That day she sat with Maria in the kitchen. She talked all along about Vincent. Outside it was raining, with the constant sound of drops falling. Daniel often scurried in and out, his clothing soaked through, with a fugitive look. Lisa noticed that the boy made no sound when he walked. Lisa asked Maria what the Rose Clothing Company signified to Vincent. Its immense machinery working day and night seemed somehow separate from him. His world was a different place, at night among the trees in the garden, in the gloomy middle of the night in gardens at street intersections.

“The Rose Clothing Company,” Maria lit a cigarette and spoke slowly, “to someone like Vincent, is everything. Maybe he thinks his life has already run its course.”

“How strange!” Lisa sighed. “In your house nothing is peaceful,” she spoke again.

For Lisa, Maria’s house was a place that made her nervous. In its vicinity all sorts of voices were speaking, every object carried electricity, and then there was the son with the cruel expression. There were also the tapestries with their furtive meanings. But even so this woman was someone Lisa believed she could trust. Were Vincent and the company collecting this type of person? According to Maria’s way of speaking, Vincent’s life had already run its course, and so he began an absurd lifestyle, one without any sense of reality. Then why did she say the Rose Clothing Company was everything to him? Would he take this spectacular, human enterprise and make it into a ghost’s stronghold? Lisa thought of the black-clad Eastern woman on the rubber tree plantation and her whole body broke out in goose bumps.

“The Rose Clothing Company’s business is expanding to the north. Three batches of orders arrived in a row, each from eccentric clients. It was hard to get in touch with them. These days Joe has to spend all his time on business trips.”

Maria’s expression was extremely calm as she spoke. She was not making a large fuss over a small issue. Lisa thought, Maria’s life has long since run its course. She saw now that Maria was like a goddess.