Can Xue - The Last Lover

“Maria! Maria! Are you all right?”

Maria didn’t speak.

Lisa rushed inside and placed her hands on Maria’s shoulders. There was nothing on the light brown tapestry. She heard Maria’s teeth knocking. Her body ran with sweat.

When Joe boarded the plane he saw a woman board as well. He couldn’t see her face because she wore a large straw hat pressed down low. On the gangway, the wind billowed her black skirt. She seemed to hesitate, and suddenly she stood still on the stairs. The fat man behind her pressed her on indignantly. Finally, as if waking up from a dream, she started forward again. “Damn, Irene,” the fat man said.

On entering the cabin the woman disappeared among the seats. Joe suddenly thought, Could the Eastern woman he’d seen at the door of his house and the bookstore owner’s former wife be the same person? Was she named Irene? Or did the fat man call all women “Irene”? He indistinctly remembered the bookstore owner calling his former wife something “__Mei.” He was under the impression that the women of Country C were the ones called “Mei.” Why was Daniel’s Vietnamese girlfriend named Amei, too? After he took his seat, he stood back up and surveyed the entire cabin once more, but he still didn’t see the woman. However, he hadn’t seen her face clearly, either. So how could he find her? He fastened his seatbelt and shut his eyes.

Shit, there was a wasp spinning around his head. Had it come from his office? Would it sting him? Sure enough, it flew nearer and stung his eyelid sharply. Frightened, he felt his entire head go numb. Even his eyes couldn’t shut all the way. He touched his face with effort. It had no sensation. Now he caught sight of the black-clad woman. He couldn’t think of where he’d seen her before, because he couldn’t concentrate.

The woman stood above him. She was speaking to the flight attendant.

“Once people are out of the cabin the freezing wind will bite their faces,” the attendant said.

“I got used to it a long time ago. Every morning I draw water at the side of the brook,” the woman said. “At noon, the grass bakes in the sun, and Mother speaks to me from the balcony. She asks me whether I want a drink of milk.”

“You see this man, his face is swelling so terribly.” The flight attendant pointed to Joe.

He wanted to move his lips into a smile, but they wouldn’t move.

“His wife is a woman named Mei,” the black-clad woman said, indicating him. “This morning, at home, she saw a wolf. It bit her clothing and would not let go. She grew agitated and cried out.”

Joe didn’t understand what she was saying. He felt the entire cabin begin to move. The man sitting on the inside seat stepped over him. People were gathering their luggage one after another.

“The temperature on the ground is 20 degrees below zero Celsius,” the broadcast said.

Waiting until the cabin was empty, Joe at last picked up his luggage and moved outside. He was afraid. Outside the cabin, as expected, a freezing wind blew. It was fortunate Joe’s face had no feeling, only his hands felt a little painful in the cold. He nearly fell down on the stairs. The plane was stopped on the tarmac. Joe saw dazzling snowcapped mountains in every direction, illuminated by the sun, as if on fire. He casually chose a door and pushed it open, walking outside.

Someone took hold of his suitcase. He loosened his hand without noticing, and let the man lift it. The man carrying the suitcase wore a straw hat. Joe couldn’t see his face.

The airport was small, so he walked right out of it. A few men and women were out on the street. These people didn’t mind the cold. They wore peculiar clothing that left their backs bare. The expression on their dark, ruddy faces was solemn. Their hair was worn very long. The man kept in front of him. When the street was almost at an end, he placed the suitcase on the ground, saying: “Now go ahead by yourself. From here you can’t get lost.” He spoke in Joe’s language.

Then he turned and hurried back. Joe stood beside his suitcase and looked back. He saw a crowd of children coming, chasing each other, sweating in the cold sunlight. Suddenly he heard a girl (who was also wearing a robe that showed her bare back) shouting in the language of his country, “Maria! Maria! I’m choking to death!” She gasped painfully, suddenly spat out a mouthful of fresh blood, and squatted down. A large group of children, all ten or older, surrounded her.

Joe suddenly felt unsafe, because he saw many of the children holding daggers in their hands. A few watched him with shining eyes. He lifted his suitcase and casually turned into a shop beside the road. It sold silver ornaments and utensils.

The wolf quickly disappeared from Maria’s design. Maria whistled, trying to call it back. She heard the loud noise Daniel made digging in the yard.

Mother and son bathed in the sunlight, attempting to return to an earlier time. Afterward they went to Joe’s study and saw that all of his bookshelves were overturned. They entered, stepping on the books, and sat among the chaotic piles, talking about what things had been like when Joe was at home. Daniel casually picked up a book, browsed lazily through it, and told Maria about his father’s frame of mind when he’d purchased it.

“How do you know this?” Maria asked, knitting her eyebrows.

“This isn’t difficult, it’s written in the book. Father is like you, a perfectionist.”

Maria thought of Joe talking about business while immersed in his own stories, and nodded her head.

“Mama, why are there so many people who talk inside the walls of our house? I remember from when I was little, they came in one group after another. Are all these people our relatives?”

“Yes, this is a house built on its original foundations. Do you like these people?”

“Sometimes I do feel happy. Especially at the boarding school, when I couldn’t sleep at night, so I talked to myself with my eyes still open. When I spoke children answered me from inside the walls. Are there children who passed away among our relatives?”

“Many. Your father is about to meet a wolf.”

Daniel put the book in his hand in front of his nose and sniffed it, saying, “This is the wolf. It won’t abandon its pursuit. I have seen it twice before.”

Maria asked him if he remembered when they drank tea in the rose garden, and Father spoke with them from the balcony of the study. Maria called this conversation “exchanges in the air.”

Daniel answered that he would never, ever forget, because that was the time he saw a ladder suspended in the air stretching down from the balcony.

“Only Father could have the skill to make the balcony send out a ladder, hanging straight up in the air without leaning on anything.”

“A man like him can also disappear from us entirely, and run off alone to the ancient East.”

After Maria finished this sentence, she felt a familiar disturbance emerging from inside her body. The checkered skirt she wore stretched tight. Her gaze was fixed on the wooden gate at the other side of the yard. A woman wearing a black skirt stood at the gate. This slender woman from an Eastern country always hung around here. Daniel was also looking at the middle-aged woman, his youthful blue eyes aflame with lust. The book in Daniel’s hand fell to the ground, its pages trembling as if wounded. Maria saw an antiquated landscape illustration inside, a picture of a beach. On the beach a fishing net was spread open to dry in the sun. Maria reached to pick up the book but it was electrified. Her hand was struck back. A rending scream made her blood congeal. It was Daniel screaming, his face red from the pressure.

“Daniel, you’re not well?”

“No, this is delight,” he murmured, and walked out the door.