Can Xue - The Last Lover

“So you two are lovers,” Maria said dryly.

“I became his mistress because I was afraid. You don’t know, Maria, how hard my life is. During the day, I go to each home and comfort the suffering people. Then I also have to take care of the tortoises and receive guests from distant places like yourself. I’m so busy, and yet I don’t mind. But the night comes, when everything changes. Every night I go mad. Some nights, I think I’ve changed into a goat — I ate up a whole patch of the grass at the doorway! In the morning I was in such anguish that I wished I were dead. Then Qing came. He stood under the starlight, and under his gaze, like a wolf’s, I became tranquil. So the two of us, neither with a home to return to, fell in together. Don’t believe that I think well of him. Most of the time, he is my enemy.”

The enthusiasm suddenly faded from Wula’s eyes, replaced with an emerging desolation. She proposed taking Maria to tour the village.

“You will see a sight familiar to you.” She smiled ingratiatingly.

They ate some bread and then went out. Qing, who stood at the door smoking, stared at Maria, which made her whole body tremble, her face burn.

“No one can resist his charm,” Wula said proudly, tossing her hair.

They swiftly entered the dense bamboo forest. Although it was summer, Maria felt eerily cold. She kept breaking out in goose bumps, and regretted not dressing more warmly. It grew colder and colder, and her whole body shivered and shook.

“Wula, how do you know things about me?”

“We’ve had a connection for a long time. So for the past few years I’ve been sending you travel brochures.”

Wula had not answered her question. Maria hoped they soon would reach a house where they could warm up for a bit. She thought the huge, towering bamboos were changing into icicles. If she kept on walking she would be stiff with cold. She looked at Wula by her side. The woman’s face was ruddy and she was not feeling the cold even a little. Maria finally saw an earthen house. A dirty boy, his face plastered with mud, sat at the doorway to the house. He was stirring up the sewer water with a stick. Wula said they would go in to sit for a bit, and Maria immediately agreed. The boy slapped the dirty water with the stick so it splashed onto Maria’s pants. Maria heard Wula call him a good boy.

On entering the house she warmed up a little. Inside three people were lying down, all in one room but on three cots. It didn’t seem like a home. It was like a makeshift hotel. The three of them were not asleep. They stared, eyes wide, at the ceiling. The two older ones were the owners of the house, it seemed, and the other was a middle-aged woman. This woman’s expression was one of sorrow. Her thin, bony hand dug at the metal rods on the side of the bed, nervously twitching. The two older people were comparatively quiet, their bodies covered by the same kind of thin quilt, with a blue background and gold flowers, that had covered Maria. They almost did not move.

Wula squatted by the bed, talking to the middle-aged woman in a near whisper. Maria struggled to hear her. As Wula spoke the woman’s nervousness lightened and the hand digging tautly at the bed’s iron rods loosened. After a time, Maria saw her face suddenly reveal the shyness of a young girl. She heaved a sigh and sat up in her bed. As she sat up, the two old people in their own beds raised their bodies slightly, in unison, reproaching her with a glare, as though she had just done something unseemly. The three of them faced each other awkwardly.

“Lila, this is Maria, the woman I told you about. Wasn’t there something you wanted to ask her? Look, she came herself.” Wula broke the impasse.

Lila, as if she were freed of a heavy burden, dressed and went outside with Wula.

The three of them stood by the doorway talking. Maria discovered that when she left the house Lila became youthful and vivacious. She no longer looked like a middle-aged woman but rather like someone about twenty years old; her brown hair also had life in it. She caught Maria’s hand, and said impatiently:

“Maria, Auntie Maria! Are you really from that place? Can you tell me about what happened forty years ago in the locksmith’s workshop? Oh, please don’t be offended. That event is like an enormous rock pressing on my heart. God, there’s something wrong with my throat, I can’t speak. . Wula! Wula. .”

Her face swelled, turning red. Wula helped, obligingly thumping her on the back and comforting her, saying, “Don’t worry, don’t worry. Maria is here. She can tell you everything.”

“What happened in the locksmith’s workshop forty years ago was a murder that was desired by both parties,” Maria said, carefully and cautiously. “So you really are the locksmith’s daughter?”

When Lila heard this her face brightened. She made several “ah” sounds in surprise.

“Then Nick, the one who’s lame, he’s still there? That demon?” she asked, gnashing her teeth in rage.

“He’s still there, but he didn’t do this. Your father was a man who knew his own mind.”

“I know,” Lila quietly agreed, her gaze suddenly distracted.

“Before long, Lila came to North Island, and became the daughter-in-law of this family!” Wula said in a loud, celebratory voice. She raised one hand and made a strange gesture.

A gust of wind scraped past. Goose bumps covered Maria’s body again. She couldn’t hold back her complaint: “It’s so cold here.”

Lila and Wula smiled at her when she said this. Wula explained: “You aren’t used to the weather yet. Here, our hearts each hold a ball of fire. If you want us to live like people in other places, that’s difficult. To tell the truth, Qing couldn’t deprive us of our right to farm all by himself. It is we ourselves who demanded it. The Qing family only saw through to the villagers’ natural instincts, that’s all.”

As Wula spoke, Lila leaned against her, looking as if she couldn’t bear to be parted from her.

A shout came from inside the building, a denunciation. Lila’s face changed color and she rushed back inside.

Wula explained: “The two old people protect Lila. If it weren’t for them, I’m afraid she wouldn’t have lived to today. After her father died, she simply didn’t want to live.”

“Is her husband here?”

“That’s a peculiar thing. No one has met her husband. He is a shadow, even Lila hasn’t seen him. He only lives in the recollection of the old couple. Lila heard their story, was deeply moved by it, and stayed on with the family.”

Maria felt a pair of eyes staring at her from the depths of the bamboo forest. The expression in these eyes was familiar to her. But just when she was about to see who it was, the person disappeared. She wrinkled her brow in an effort to recall who it was. Wula also looked in that direction, as if lost in thought.

“If you don’t mind the cold, I will take you to Grandmother’s. She lives alone in the depths of the bamboo forest. There’s a small brook at her door. She is the only one in the whole village who doesn’t raise tortoises.”

“Is she your grandmother?”

“No, she is everyone’s grandmother. They say she’s almost a hundred, but she’s still pretty nimble on her feet.”

“I’d like to see her.”

Wula made Maria walk faster, saying that this way their bodies would give off more heat. They’d walked for a while when the road before their eyes disappeared and they had to wind in and out among the bamboo. Maria became dizzy, but Wula grew energetic. If she hadn’t had to slow her steps to accommodate Maria, she could have walked as swiftly as the wind through the thick bamboo groves. At the moment Maria grew so tired she was about to fall down, Wula stopped.