Can Xue - The Last Lover

Wula entered the room, greeted Maria, and asked whether she’d rested well. Then she stiffened her face and, with her back turned to Qing, asked in a low voice from deep in her chest:

“Is there still something wrong?”

“No,” Qing answered feebly, leaning against the earth wall as though he might faint.

Maria marveled at the way this pylon-like man had turned into a mashed cotton flower.

Wula led Maria by the hand into the bedroom, saying in her ear, “Don’t mind him. He’s here to cause trouble. I was to the east of the village visiting an invalid when someone told me he’d come here, so I hurried back. He hasn’t said anything bad to you?” Maria answered, “No.” Wula said, “He’s a hollow man.” She shut the bedroom door with force, and stuck close to the crack in the door, peering out to see whether Qing had left. She repeated this action for a while because Qing still hadn’t gone. She started heaving sighs. Maria thought that at this moment she seemed at once old and impetuous. It was as if she had a secret hidden deep inside her, a secret of which she could not speak.

“Is Qing a local man?” Maria asked.

“I’m not sure.” Wula waved her arms in vexation. “He says he is, but I don’t see it. How could someone local have a face like his? But you can’t say he isn’t local, either. Many people here watched him grow up. I don’t know why he despises our lives so much!”

Wula was indignant, and her face went red all over. Gnashing her teeth, she added: “He cut off our way of retreat.”

Wula helped Maria turn down the bed, and said to her, “You should rest a while. I still have to go take care of the tortoises.”

But after Maria lay down, Wula wasn’t in a hurry to leave. She sat in a chair in front of the bed and started to tell Maria the story of her village.

“You’ve seen everything. The place has become a wilderness, and it’s continued this way for decades. Before it wasn’t like this at all. Before, this was a foggy region. Back then things were obscure and dim under the sky. People’s temperaments were good, in a rare way. It was a good place for rice paddies, and you’d go outside and see paddy fields. The whole village was a cooperative business. Specialized merchants bought our produce. Our lives were peaceful. Think of it: through the fog, can we ever see clearly where our graves lie?”

After she spoke of these things, Wula was suddenly silent. There was a misty expression in her eyes. As Maria lay there she heard once again a familiar agitation coming from within the walls. Yet it wasn’t the sound of voices. It was as though there were lots of mice scratching around inside. Although she was nodding off, she couldn’t help asking Wula: “And then?”

“And then? After that, a hidden danger erupted in the village. The hidden danger was Qing. Qing’s family was of a particular sort: they wanted to make things very, very clear. Even though they were born here, and grew up here, they were different from the rest of us. You could even say that they are foreigners, I think. For example, with selling grain — we never haggled. But his grandfather had to dispute with the buyers, asking one price and then getting a counteroffer. And as a result fewer and fewer people came to buy, until a part of our grain lay rotting on the ground. But fish and grain were plentiful in the village, and life at that time still went on. With the generation of Qing’s parents the situation grew worse. The strange thing was that everyone wanted to see Qing’s family as leaders. Everyone obeyed the family, probably because of our great inertia. Qing’s parents were shrewd and demanding. Everyone said they laid schemes and plans far ahead. Once this husband and wife were in charge of the village’s affairs, the rice paddies were neglected. This was because the parents insisted there was no reason to do hard manual labor, that we only needed to raise the asking price of the grain and everything would be fine. This tactic worked for the first few years; later it was a catastrophe because the dealers coming to buy grain grew scarce, less than half as many as before. The villagers were suddenly so poor they had to skimp on food and clothes. But that one household still appeared to be happy. Sometimes Qing and his little brother would belt out songs on the threshing floor, singing late into the night without going inside. Qing’s parents both died on the same day. It’s said they ate a poisonous mushroom, and they bled from the eyes, nose, mouth, and ears. Qing and his little brother almost collapsed with grief. After they buried their parents, Qing formally became the head of our village. He was opposed to us planting grain in particular. He had schemes to scare off the grain dealers. Later on he introduced the tortoises from somewhere. Even though no one saw it, I knew he brought these animals because before him there were none here. You noticed his face, of course — isn’t it terrifying? But I’ve gotten used to it. A man with a face like that is capable of changing everything! So now there’s no fog in the village. The sun comes out, and every object is very, very clear. In this environment everyone became ashamed, and then collapsed.”

“Collapsed?” Maria asked, her eyes filled with sleep. She thought she was already dreaming, but she very much wanted to hear the story.

“Yes, collapsed. .” Wula’s voice lowered. “Dejection. . disease, a trouble in the heart. You’re an outsider, you can’t see them, they don’t come out. Some people. . stay hidden inside their rooms until they die. Only Qing saunters around outside, Qing. .”

In her dream Maria’s mood also became one of dejection. She was following a path through an endless forest. The path was dark. Animals made suspicious sounds in the woods. She didn’t know whether they were predators. She was tired, more tired than her heart could sustain, when an idea suddenly occurred to her: was this the village of the dead? At this thought, there were tears in her eyes. It surprised her. She’d never been one to form sentimental ties. How was it possible now? She stopped in her tracks, sat down on the grass, and listened to the calls of the wild animals. They came more and more frequently. She heard her own heart, too, beat twice, then stop once, with the sound of blood rushing through the ventricles. She thought her heart must be wrecked by the damage.

When Maria awoke she smelled the fresh scent of the grass and leaves. She remembered that in her dream she had been pulling up weeds from her own grave mound. Out in the central room Wula was talking to Qing. Waves of sound flowed in, their speech seeming intimate, with even a teasing note. Maria got dressed, made the bed, and then couldn’t decide whether to go out into the hall. But Wula was calling her.

She sat in Qing’s embrace, her pliant body incomparably bewitching. Maria stared blankly. Wula’s bronze-colored hair swept down, plentiful and shining and filling the room with its luster.

“Come have some coffee,” she said to Maria, with composure.

Qing stretched his face out from behind her shapely shoulders and looked mockingly at Maria.

Maria looked at the blue veins protruding from her own hands, so adept for manual work, and felt inferior. Some time passed, and she managed to raise her eyes, letting her gaze rest on the side of Qing’s face that held no expression. That half-face recalled in her a kind of distant memory. She thought of paved granite roads and an elderly jewelry craftsman walking along them.

“She’s bashful,” Qing looked at her steadily.

Probably Wula also thought it was too much. She struggled out from Qing’s embrace and poured coffee for Maria.

Maria noticed that the tortoises in the water vats had all grown quiet. Qing walked outside to smoke. Wula sat down next to Maria.