Can Xue - The Last Lover

Today when he was selling fruit, Daniel had recruited another customer. It was a disabled man, with a handsome face and a golden beard on that face. He lived in the middle part of the street in a white house. The family was wealthy. His wheelchair stopped in front of the shop. He was only looking around, not buying any fruit, as if he were waiting for Daniel to come out and speak with him. Daniel went over, and they quickly struck up a conversation.

This young man, Nick, appeared to have a violent temper. He spoke incoherently, one hand waving back and forth as though he were having an argument with someone. It cost Daniel great effort to understand that, in fact, Nick was an insomniac. He stayed out in his family’s garden all night long. But the layout of the garden drove him mad. He’d made up his mind to ask someone to help him disrupt it. For a long time, he had dreamed of a stretch of uncultivated land and the full wheel of the moon slowly rising there. He hoped Daniel could help him realize this dream.

The impression Daniel had of Nick’s house was of a white building which could be seen from the street. It was a long, four-story building, taking up almost a quarter of the block. Because the white edifice beyond the iron fence was so close to the street, and so immense, Daniel had never thought of there being a garden behind it. As to the garden, he had in fact heard Maria speak of it. But he had never seen it with his own eyes. Maria had told him that Nick’s family were old residents of the area. The family business was large, its foundations deep. But since the middle of the last century the family had been in decline. She didn’t know why. Its members had dispersed, and now at the house there remained only Nick, who was disabled, an old grandfather, a cook, and an old servant who had something wrong with his eyes. The building contained more than a hundred rooms. It was a long walk from the east end to the west end. A city census taker once went to their house, a young man, who passed back and forth through the building. He said that he’d looked into all the rooms and was positive no one from the household was there. Where were they actually living?

Daniel accompanied Nick through his family’s house and reached an enormous brown transparent tent. He had never in his life seen such a large tent, like a small square inside. Moreover, the tent was constructed of a material he had never seen before: it was neither cloth nor plastic, but was almost like a transparent animal membrane. Yet he couldn’t think of what animal had this kind of membrane. There was an orange hot air balloon in the center of the tent. Stepping closer to look, he saw pots of nearly dead orchids in the basket under the balloon.

“This is my family’s garden.” As soon as Nick spoke, a weng weng buzzing sounded from every direction.

Daniel turned back and discovered Nick’s wheelchair floating in the air and, further, that the head of the man sitting in the wheelchair hung down, that his handsome face was grayish, and the corners of his mouth drooped in an unsightly way. It seemed he had taken ill.

“Nick!” Daniel called out anxiously, and was soon frightened by the noise he raised. All around was a sound like the constant breaking of glass windows, and the hot air balloon began gradually to shift.

Daniel wanted to retreat from this unsettling place, but at the entrance where they had come in he saw a fiend, a man in his prime, who stood holding a large hatchet.

“Where should I work?” he mustered up the courage to ask. At once he felt a pain in his eardrums, as if they’d been punctured.

Nick’s wheelchair moved in a circle through the air inside the tent. As it rose higher and higher, his voice carried down from overhead: “Start with the mud under your feet. It’s grown over with Euphrates poplar.”

Daniel climbed into the hot air balloon. The balloon leapt into the air, and before long it rushed out through a gap in the tent. It didn’t rise very high, however, always traveling along at five or six meters up, and never leaving Nick’s residence. Daniel saw the enormous tent bulging and shrinking like a frog’s belly, and heard Nick shouting from inside. Under the blue sky, Nick’s household did seem a bit unusual. Daniel had always believed his own to be the strangest house, and had never imagined this kind of situation. He forgot his original reason for coming.

Someone suddenly began speaking from a partition underneath the basket of the hot air balloon. Daniel leaned on the seam to look underneath, and saw two people on the level below the basket. They were very old men, with wrinkles like rock fissures on their faces. One was sleeping, the other wrapped in his thoughts.

“Hello,” Daniel said, knocking on the partition. “Are you the owners of this house? Can you tell me where your garden is? I need to get to work! I can’t fly back and forth in the air all day!”

Despite this long string of words, the old man, as he woke, only watched him guardedly and shrank back. He seemed to be trying to make his body appear as small as possible.

“Please, tell me, are you the owner?” Daniel roared.

The old man stood up, trembling and rustling, and with effort spat out the words:

“No need to shout. . danger. . cliff. .”

The basket collided violently with something. Daniel’s vision went dark. He got up and sat on a wooden chair. The hot air balloon still wheeled in the sky over the house. Daniel suddenly understood that this family spent the better part of their time in the hanging basket. This is why the city census taker had been unable to find them.

So why had Nick employed him to take care of the garden? Up till now he hadn’t seen even the shadow of a garden. Aside from the large building, their residence consisted of only the enormous tent in the back and this unused space outside the tent. Perhaps the tent really was Nick’s family’s garden, and all the objects in it were things Daniel couldn’t see. He couldn’t see them because he was not as perceptive as Nick. Before Daniel’s eyes appeared the image of Nick’s wheelchair hovering inside the tent at around midnight. This was the anxious insomnia of which Nick had spoken. Now Daniel discovered a marvel: the bowls of orchids unexpectedly burst into full bloom. He counted twelve flowers, and also a few buds ready to blossom. Looking at them, Daniel couldn’t help thinking, Did Nick intend him to care for the flowers in midair? Daniel did not like the feeling of suspension. He also could not think of how his work would progress in that kind of environment, where he couldn’t even sit stably. As for the two old men under the partition, could they really believe that the hot air balloon was safer than the inside of the house?

Someone below was shouting. It was Nick, who’d reached the open space, waving his arms for Daniel to come down.

“Jump down, jump quickly! The balloon will explode!” His face was white.

Daniel heard a buzz, weng , in his head. He climbed over the side of the basket, closed his eyes, and toppled down.

Everything was fine. He fell on the mud, without any injuries. The earth of the open plot was soft.

“You’ve crushed a whole patch of violets!” Nick said.

Daniel discovered a knife wound on Nick’s face. It was still bleeding. He let out a cry.

“It’s nothing,” Nick said. “It’s from wrestling with the cook. This sort of thing is unavoidable. I wanted you to come down because the hot air balloon isn’t able to bear too much weight. But it doesn’t descend when you want it to, either, so you’re forced to jump out. It’s the same for me: entering the tent is easy, leaving the tent is hard. I have to fight with the cook. He’s cut my wheelchair to pieces. You may find it strange: why do I want to have a garden inside the tent? It’s to treat insomnia! I push the wheelchair along, traveling back and forth in midair, the nerves of my cranium get a rest, and the long, long night passes. There are several trees that have grown too tall and block my path, but that’s no problem. Every time I encounter an obstacle, I become more agile. But I’m not satisfied with the grass and flowers of the garden below — always the same varieties, and all clear from a glance. I want transformation. You can help me, right? Daniel, I tell you, in the garden just a moment ago, I thought I would never wake up again. That way I wouldn’t have insomnia. But I’m still unresigned; I cried out.”