Can Xue - The Last Lover

He left Joyner’s hotel, reached the garden at the center of the street, and sat down. Various species of bird drifted in the pure air. The birds weren’t flying in a straight line or spreading open their wings, but were simply floating in the air, as if drifting with a tide, in a curvilinear motion. “The birds of the gambling city,” Vincent sighed. He thought of the damp crows that dropped onto the steps of his house. Just at this moment the train whistle sounded, as if pressing him on. He suddenly remembered he’d left his luggage at Joyner’s hotel, but he decided not to go back. It was better to return home at once.

At the end of the platform he could see the back of a woman wearing a skirt. She looked much like Lisa. He walked over to her, the woman turned around, and it really was Lisa. She was holding a leather suitcase in her hand.

“So you’ve come, too,” Vincent said resentfully.

“Yes, I was just at my parents’ house, in the underground rooms. Are you disappointed by my hometown?”

“No, I love this place.”

“Then let’s go to the underground rooms together.”

“No, I’m not going back to the underground rooms, let’s go back to our home. When night comes, I will search again, with you, and maybe we’ll find the real casinos, the kind with slot machines.”

A dove floated in front of them, followed immediately by a second one, a third, a fourth, peacefully moving past.

“I didn’t think there’d be doves here,” Vincent mumbled to himself.

“When I was little, the travelers who came from outside called this the land of doves. At that time, the entire sky was filled with doves flying back and forth in the rose-colored evening clouds. It’s a pity you haven’t seen this spectacle.”

“So are doves the image of the gambling city’s soul?”

“They probably are. At midnight, a dove sits on the shoulder of every person who comes out of a casino.”

Long after the train started moving, Vincent and Lisa watched the doves outside the rail cars. Vincent couldn’t figure out whether he’d stayed at the gambling city for one day or three because the sun had never set. Judging by his senses, it felt as though more than a day had passed. Yet in this elongated day he had only eaten one meal in Joyner’s underground rooms. Now he understood why the slot machines were hidden in the walls and no longer played — in this region where nothing set apart the day and the night, the stimulation of the slot machines was of no use.

Lisa stared in a daze at the doves outside. Her heart was steeped in a recollection of happiness. Vincent had entered her past life at last. This illustrated the depth of love in their marriage. But her past was not limited to one kind of life, and this was something Vincent probably wasn’t aware of. She had spoken to him of herself before, but what she spoke of was another of her lives. It wasn’t fabricated. But now Vincent might believe that she had invented everything she’d told him before. Thinking this over, she grew faintly uneasy again. She leaned on Vincent’s shoulder, holding his hand, and gently asked:

“Vincent?”

“Oh, Lisa! How could someone like you grow old? I know the mystery of why you are always young — a nightingale sings in your heart. My heart has no nightingale, so I cannot enter those underground rooms. Is that right? What your parrot said was right, I really am a shameless usurer.”

Lisa was reassured. It appeared Vincent didn’t intend to investigate her at all. He still had enough adaptability. He was so adaptable that Lisa still worried about not being able to predict his next step. A long time ago she had jokingly called him “mercury.” The impulse like a riddle in the depths of his heart was, to her, truly like mercury. There would always be a day when, because of this ungraspable poison, she would lose her life.

“Vincent?”

“Lisa, where did the people in the train all go to?”

“There wasn’t anyone in the compartment. This train came specially to meet us. Look, the doves disappeared. Outside it’s really night. Vincent, your whole body is cold.”

“I feel like I’m spinning.”

In his dizziness Vincent held Lisa’s hand tightly, but what he held was only a hand. The owner of the hand was gradually moving away from him, and the hand gradually grew icy. In his drowsy state he sensed someone enter the train car and say to Lisa, “Snow is falling outside. This weather is an anomaly.” Lisa gave an earsplitting laugh, clearly fake, then she and the person left together. Someone said in his ear, “Mister, where are you going?” “The Rose Clothing Company.” He struggled to name this, the only place he could think of, his voice thin like a mosquito’s whine. “Oh, so you are the usurer!” The man laughed an ear-piercing laugh, like Lisa’s. Then he sat beside him. After a long while Vincent’s eyes finally recovered their sight. He looked to the right and discovered there was actually no one there, only a cap placed on the seat. Maybe the man had gone to the toilet?

He stood to go find Lisa, walking from one train car to another. He felt as if the train he rode were passing through the dark toward the dawn. The carriages he walked through were all empty. Where was Lisa hiding? Finally he reached the tail end of the train, and Lisa was there at the back, curled up asleep in the last row of seats. When Vincent stepped in front of her, she opened her tired eyes in the faint lamplight. Vincent thought her eyes were beautiful! She made a sign for Vincent to draw near her, and he squatted down.

“That year I took the train away from the gambling city, it was the third day after my mother died. The gambling debt she owed was too great. She died of terror.”

“The old woman in that large house wasn’t your mother?”

“Of course she was. Even I have died many times.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You’ll get used to this sort of thing. Can you hear that? Outside it really is snowing. The places we’re passing are all covered in snow, the same as that year.”

Vincent could hear only the sound of the wheels of the train. He wondered what kind of hearing Lisa possessed. She shut her eyes as if she were going back to sleep. The underground rooms of her hometown seemed to have cost her almost all her energy. Now he was with her on this train, and the train connected the past and the future. What was the future like? Did the dwarf who came to their house in the middle of the night know the answer to this question? Vincent remembered how he and the dwarf had gotten drunk in the kitchen. The two of them climbed from the attic onto the roof. As they sat on the roof, a flock of bats brushed past their cheeks. It was then that the dwarf told him about the gambling city encircled by unbroken stone mountains and its rose-red sky. He said to Vincent, “It’s a truly peaceful scene. No one would think of leaving that place. The stone mountains are only a picture: no one can really pass over them. The train connecting to the outside was something that came later. The train passes through long tunnels before reaching the city. The dark deep tunnels are like a passageway to death.”

At first he wanted to ask Lisa why she had left her hometown. But then he remembered Lisa had explained this before, so he didn’t ask. She wasn’t the only person to leave. Wasn’t there also the dwarf? The people of the gambling city had probably all left for some shared reason.

At daybreak the train conductor finally appeared. He was a fat man who yawned constantly.

“I dreamt of a large snowfall. It’s absurd, how could there be snow now?”

He seemed to solicit the couple’s opinion. Vincent smelled alcohol on him.

“When you live in a lonely town like this, how can you not depend on drinking to pass the time?” He kept speaking, as if uncomfortable, and as if he wanted to spill words from his heart toward them. He invited them to his conductor’s office to sit for a while, because in half an hour the train would reach the station. He didn’t want his guests to lack an impression of his train.