Can Xue - The Last Lover

“Did Daniel go to work?”

“So you know everything after all.”

“Of course. Doesn’t he know everything about me, too? He’s an ambitious young man. I just lived through an earthquake, damn it.”

“Daniel and I saw. You were shaking with fear. But we couldn’t have helped you, could we?”

A turkey was arranged on the table. Maria’s face appeared almost bewitching in the rising steam, her cheekbones almost like two red halos. Joe couldn’t make out her expression. It was as if she were covered by a membrane.

He had just finished eating and put down his chopsticks when an uninvited guest entered his yard. The man’s head was wrapped in a turban. He seemed travel-weary. Maria told Joe that the man was his driver. Joe recognized the familiar face. It brought to mind the time he’d stayed for a night and day in the north at Mr. Kim’s home. But when had Maria come to know the driver?

“I arrived a number of days ago, and I’ve been staying in the basement of the restaurant. You’ve seen me, you haven’t recognized me, and you’ve walked away from me. At the time I was drunk, down on the ground, but one of my eyes was always open.”

Maria called to him to put down the canvas bag he carried on his back, but he didn’t, standing in the doorway instead.

“Mr. Kim wants you to come and relive old dreams with him,” the driver said to Joe.

A vast pastureland floated up in Joe’s mind, the mountain peaks piled with snow and the eccentric owner of the house halfway up a mountain. The driver stood in front of him without moving. His face under his turban was extremely handsome in the evening glow. Joe was drawn in by him, thinking that in the city one very seldom met a good-looking man like this one. Was he the descendant of a warrior from ancient times? But when Joe had first met him on the pasture-land, he hadn’t been handsome. Maria’s eyes were fixed on the man. Joe remembered that she and this fellow had already been in contact, and jealousy unbidden leapt up in his heart. She, and him, and also Kim, what sort of connection did they share?

“How would I relive old dreams?” he asked.

“You’re already reliving old dreams.” His eyes were smiling.

“But I don’t understand.” Joe felt his whole body go hot and dry.

“I’ll go now.”

He walked from the yard, through the main gate, and disappeared into the golden sunset. Maria’s face glowed.

Joe couldn’t stay sitting at home. He went outside. He walked aimlessly and unconsciously reached the small bookstore, where he saw the fearsome shopkeeper. People came and went in the shop. With the dim lamplight, the people coming in all appeared furtive, but the bookstore owner sat haughtily on a high stool at the entrance. Over many years, Joe had bought many fine books here. Yet before it had been an ordinary little bookstore, doing a lackluster business. Who would have thought such a bookshop could survive in the city for so many years? Joe suspected that the bookstore owner might rely on an occasional shady transaction to support his livelihood. Joe had never spoken with the bookstore owner, who wouldn’t cater to people, as if he really were someone important. Nevertheless, his shop contained some truly interesting books.

Today was a little strange. After Joe entered the shop, the electricity suddenly shut off. He was shoved back and forth, and a bookcase was knocked over. All the books fell out. The bookstore owner cursed in the dark. Fortunately the lights were soon restored.

“Wherever you go, there are earthquakes,” the bookstore owner said, gathering the books.

Joe helped, thinking to himself, How did he know? After the books were gathered up, he was too embarrassed to stay and left the shop. But the bookstore owner called him back. From under his buttocks he drew out the book he was sitting on and handed it to Joe, saying it was especially for him. Joe’s heart pounded. He hid behind a bookcase, opened the book, and saw a portrait of Kim. But it wasn’t Kim. Another man’s name was written underneath the portrait. He read from the introduction. The introduction said that in the book the author described the minutiae of his entire life. It also contained an extensive daily record. “Because someone is willing to publish it, I wrote everything without scruple,” the author wrote derisively. Reading up to that point, Joe resolved to buy the book. The bookstore owner wasn’t willing to accept money for it. He said the book was left by the author with instructions to give it to Joe as a gift.

“The author came?” Joe was disturbed.

“He didn’t come himself, he sent his underling. Look, he’s sitting over there.”

In the obscure light, Joe saw the driver’s handsome face. He was browsing through a book in a corner. Joe’s heart palpitated. He thought, “It really is still him.”

“Sometimes the people one meets by chance were already by one’s side.” The owner finished this sentence after he returned to his high stool, recovering his haughty look.

Joe thought the driver was smiling at him, but evidently he didn’t want Joe to disturb him. He seemed to be looking for a book. Joe left the shop. In the light of the streetlamp, he couldn’t help opening the book again, and so he saw the photograph of Kim a second time. When he’d calmed down, he discovered that the man wasn’t Kim after all. It was only someone whose face had a similar shape. The man’s expression was cold and stern, even a little cruel. Joe didn’t like cruel men. But wasn’t Kim a bit cruel? Joe thought this strange: he rather liked Kim. A fellow who could write down his personal secrets in a book this thick, and who moreover wanted to give the book to him. Joe shivered, although he wasn’t cold. So this driver, was he the driver he’d met at Kim’s? Perhaps this book was what he called “reliving old dreams.” But the man in the picture didn’t really look like Kim. Even the color of his hair was different: Kim had black hair, black like a crow’s wings, and this man’s hair was a lighter color.

Then Joe thought: Could he write a book like this himself? If someone would publish it, would he write all the trivial things that happened in his life into a book? This way of thinking stemmed from a kind of avarice. Joe wasn’t sure whether he would be able to do it. He honestly disliked the countenance of the man in the picture. Pondering this question, he carelessly ran into someone’s back. It was a black woman, the beautiful street cleaner.

“Good evening! Why are you reading in the street, sir?” she asked cheerfully.

“Excuse me.” Joe’s face and ears suddenly reddened.

“This time of day is so beautiful, especially in the bookshops where the light is dim. Don’t you think so?”

“Yes, yes, you are so beautiful, that’s how it is.” He spoke at random.

The woman walked away, smiling. Joe saw his own awkward, distracted look in the shop window. He clamped the book under his arm and hurriedly walked toward home. Without intending to watch him, he saw the driver leave the bookshop and go in a different direction.

“But in the evening the world outside is glorious. Why do you always stay in your study?”

Maria reproached him. What for? He carried this question back to the study. He was eager to know what sort of thing this author’s “reliving old dreams” was, and whether it had anything to do with the web of stories he’d been constructing over the years. Because a man with a face like this one couldn’t have given him the book without a motive. The opening of the book was the man’s self-introduction. It seemed affected:

I was born in a mountain village of a small country in the East. The impression of this country in the mind of the average person is of an extremely cold place, where the long winters are insufferably dull. The reality of the matter is not like this at all. People there have extremely warm dispositions. The ivory snow of the mountain range is our paradise. There are numerous ice caves in the mountains, dug out by generations of tenacious labor. In fact, I was born in one of these ice caves .