Can Xue - The Last Lover

Many years ago, in a small coffee shop in a poor neighborhood, Lisa had stared at the thick black shadow behind Vincent, lightly repeating: “Vincent, Vincent, I love you.” The proprietor had come over with a strange look and asked Lisa, “Does this man live in a forest?”

“I am slowly changing into a tiger,” Vincent answered for her.

When Vincent saw her onto the road back to her apartment, she did not walk beside him, but fell behind a little, stepping on the black shadow behind him. At the same time she made up her mind not to return to the apartment but to go to Vincent’s hotel. .

Now they lay side by side on the bed, and Vincent recalled this occurrence. Lisa asked him whether he was changing into a tiger. Vincent said yes. He also said he really did have the feeling of living in a forest. He started to speak to Lisa about what had happened on the farm. Accompanying his narrative, what Lisa discovered before her eyes was not the rubber tree plantation but rather a vast and borderless desert. The sand blown by the wind blotted out the sky. Without knowing how, Lisa realized that the feeling this desert gave her was the same feeling as the rubber tree plantation. She was stirred once more with the excitement of her whole body catching fire under the scorching sun. The suffocating sand and dust left her no way to draw near. Vincent handed the broken arm to her again.

She made an effort to distinguish the lines on the palm, but it was no good. Blood was already dripping down and sticking to everything. She had to bathe. .

Maria said to Lisa, “You are Vincent’s future. It isn’t him disappearing in the night, it’s you. You are the sound of nature, traveling without hindrance.”

As Maria spoke, one of the African cats stared at Lisa guardedly. She saw that its tail was discharging electric sparks. In the sunlight a pi pa crackle issued from the rosebushes. Plainly they were on fire, only the flames couldn’t be seen. Lisa mused that Maria had changed her house into the rubber tree plantation. This woman was capable of so much. What was her future? Lisa opened her mouth, wanting to ask her, but the question didn’t come out.

“My future is Joe, of course,” Maria said, smiling. “One day he will journey to some country in the East and settle there forever.”

“That East is you then?” Lisa asked in confusion.

“Ah, that is a difficult question to answer!”

Maria walked into the room where the loom was set up. Lisa sat at her side. She heard the loom continuously repeating a word: “Joe, Joe, Joe. .” Maria’s agile hands wove a fluctuating design. It was impossible to name its shape: it could be called a whirlpool, or a snowy mountain, or even a square without edges.

“Joe said he was going to the north on business. How could I believe him?” she stopped.

“Yes, who can even believe her own heart?” Lisa echoed her.

Seeing the beautiful wool, there floated up in her mind the red sun of an early morning in the gambling city, where sprouting seeds, exhausted from a long night of breaking through, struggled out. Under the red sun there were human shapes like dewdrops. Her parents were two of those dewdrops. She couldn’t remain seated. She stood up and took her leave. At that moment Maria hurriedly tugged at her, pursing her lips and signaling, but Lisa didn’t understand. She didn’t know why all of a sudden she threw off Maria and ran to the door. With shock she saw tall, thin Daniel making love to a small young woman among the rosebushes.

She rushed out the front door and ran far away, as if she’d committed a crime.

“What a beautiful day!” she said to herself.

“All along you thought we were Vietnamese. Actually, we are from the ancient country Z, where our palaces have red walls and green tiles, and white hares run all over the gardens. There may be an emperor wearing a long satin robe of sapphire blue, but no one has seen him. My home is several thousand li from the capital city. I can’t say exactly how far, because none of us has ever been to the capital.”

The girl told Daniel these things in an arrogant tone. She said her name was “Amei,” but she also said that all the girls of Country Z were named Amei. This was rather convenient. Once you heard the name you would know where they came from.

Amei stood naked among the flowering shrubs, her smooth body glistening under the flickering sunlight. Only the triangle between her legs was a shiny black. She greedily stretched out her long, thin arms, as if she wanted to fly away.

“Amei! Amei!” Daniel rushed in alarm to put on his clothes, tugging at one of her arms.

He stooped to pick up her skirt and give it to her, but she hit him, knocking him to the ground.

She stood with her arms akimbo, squinting at the sky. Daniel, however, thought she was like a hydrogen balloon rising upward. And so he embraced her body in his arms.

“I saw a camel carrying our village on its back. Wherever the camel stopped, we landed there and put down roots. Daniel, have you ever ridden a camel before?”

“No, I haven’t. My dear, I love you,” Daniel murmured, kissing the hollow at the nape of the girl’s neck.

“I love you, too, Daniel. But I must fly away soon. Your country has no camels, and you cannot look out on the landscape from high places. I can’t stay here without moving. Look, your mother is coming.”

Daniel released her, and turning toward the house he saw Maria walking down the stairs. When he turned back around, Amei was already gone. A white thread ran across the crystalline sky. Daniel was terribly annoyed. He wondered, staring at the ground, where her clothes had gone.

Maria did not come over. She returned inside, where she was working. Daniel didn’t want his mother to see him looking like this, so he quietly slipped out of the yard.

Daniel returned to the house of the Russian woman, Zhenya. Zhenya was Maria’s friend, a fat, fiery-hearted widow. She let Daniel live on the second floor of her home in a small room with a window facing the sea. Zhenya sold fruit to make a living, and her house was her storefront. Daniel also helped her at this trade. His own business began with Zhenya’s customers, because among the people living nearby every house had its own garden, and all needed care. Zhenya said she was forty, but Daniel believed she was at least fifty-three.

Zhenya sat in the shadow of the fruit baskets, sunk in thought.

“Zhenya, do you have a fiancé?” Daniel asked her.

“Oh, yes. He’s in Siberia. We haven’t seen each other for twenty years. He doesn’t even have a telephone there, so we pass information through business groups as they come and go. Young man, why do you ask about this?”

“How do you two address the question of sex?” Daniel’s face reddened, but fortunately the light in the room was dim, and Zhenya did not raise her head to look at him.

“That is a secret between the two of us, one we can’t tell other people.”

“Do you still intend to get married?”

“Of course! Otherwise what am I doing all this hard work for? He hasn’t come to see me once, and I have never once been to see him. See how we toil!”

“Do you plan to make money and then go to Siberia?”

“That is impossible!” She stood in surprise, looking at Daniel. “How can you speak of money? A little business like this can’t make money. He was very clear on this point. .”

Daniel lowered his head in concern. He felt as if he were living inside an unsolved mystery. Zhenya was like a bread oven, hot from head to toe, and her days were so difficult! Even so, what in essence distinguished those two from people like Amei and himself, who were so near, meeting daily? Like his father, such an able, a talented man. . He thought this and then stopped, because he respected his father too much. At present Daniel had five customers. He planned to expand to ten customers, so he would be much too busy. He liked working in the gardens and he knew that the garden of every house held its own secrets. And if you didn’t go there to work, you would never know these secrets. This was the kind of thing Daniel had observed since he was young, and so, in the end, he chose the profession of gardening. In his own home, it was only his father who didn’t understand this secret. His thoughts lay in other places.