Can Xue - The Last Lover

Then her expression grew sleepy as she entered a kind of hallucination. She wanted him to come to her home at nightfall.

“At that time the magnolia tree at the door of the house will be in bloom. Your father will stand underneath the tree.”

“Amei!” Daniel shouted, shaking her.

But she didn’t hear. She slid out of his hands like a fish.

“Come at six o’clock,” she said.

When Daniel stopped digging, his whole body began to tremble. There was no magnolia tree at the doorway of Amei’s house. What metaphor was she speaking in? His sweat flickered in the sunlight. He felt that he was so young, so ignorant, while Amei, her body attached to an ancient spirit, had seen through him long ago.

He saw his mother put her head out at the kitchen window. Her face was covered with wrinkles like knife cuts and her gaze had the air of a tomb. How could she look like this, when she was with her lover? Daniel had just seen her lover. He was a glutton, ready to eat everything in the refrigerator. As the man ate, Daniel’s mother and Lisa cowered into their own meditations.

A little past nightfall, when the sky was almost black, Daniel finally went to Amei’s house. The lights were unlit and the door tightly shut. It seemed that all were sleeping. He stood on the broad stairs and knocked rhythmically on the wooden door.

Cursing came from inside. It was Amei’s mother. She thought it was punks making trouble out on the street.

Then Amei came in a flurry to open the door.

“How could you come so late? It’s terrible, the magnolia blooms all withered.”

A strange sound came from her throat. The sky grew dark in an instant. Daniel thought the girl might disappear into the dark at any moment. He followed her closely as she went inside.

“Amei, Amei, you can’t abandon me!”

He heard his own piteous voice. In the dark the arrangement of Amei’s house was entirely different. He’d already walked far in behind her, but Amei still walked on ahead. Daniel remembered that the bedroom where Amei and her older sister slept was through the living room and down a small hallway, but where were they going now?

“Daniel, close your eyes. You will see a lamp in the rainforest.” Amei’s voice came from a distant place.

Now Daniel’s surroundings were pure dark. He was slightly nauseated. He did not know how to proceed, but in short order Amei’s voice came from in front of him, and he had to follow it.

“Now you’ve reached the outer edge of the rainforest. Do you smell the mist? That’s also the smell of your father’s body, so you must be used to it, ever since you were little.” She chuckled, ge ge .

Daniel heard vague cursing somewhere. It was Amei’s parents. They made him very uneasy.

“Your father has walked out of the rainforest. Didn’t you know this? That place is in the East. It is our native place, us two. Listen, it’s raining again there. Everything is growing.”

Generally, what appeared in Maria’s mind were always pictures, and very seldom words. But that morning when she lay on the bed, her eyes open and watching the waving curtains, a paragraph caught her by surprise.

“The traveler stands at the end of the bridge, the muddy yellow river water churning under his feet. He hears the distant call of wild geese. In his pocket he carries three silver coins, jangling, ding ling ding ling . The sounds of these strange things make him nervous, they make his body stiffen. When he can’t go on, a vineyard appears before his eyes. ‘Ah, wild geese,’ he says, but not aloud. Someone pushes him and he bounces, like a rag blown in the wind, crosses over the barrier, and falls into the river. When he’s still in the air he thinks: ‘Who is pushing me?’ Three silver coins scatter from his pocket, disappearing in the warm sunlight that illuminates everything.”

She considered as she dressed: could “he” be Joe? Could the bridge be Luding Bridge? But Joe hadn’t gone to China, he had gone to Country C. Ever since Joe brought home that book with only one page, Maria knew that a turning point in their lives had already been reached. Joe had put it in the refrigerator, telling her that he wanted to freeze the boiling din inside the book. Otherwise, if he put it on the bookcase, it would bother him until his mind became uneasy. When he did this Joe wore his usual conservative look, but Maria thought her husband was like a child.

She went into the workroom to look at the tapestry she’d woven yesterday. Yesterday she wove and wove, so vexed she almost cried. Every time the loom sounded it seemed to be saying, “Why can’t you understand?” So now she first shut her eyes for half a minute, then suddenly opened them again. Those lines knit from lambswool were still lines, and no pattern protruded. Suddenly she discovered a small hole. She leaned in and saw two or three other holes. It looked like moths. Probably the newly bought knitting wool hadn’t been processed correctly. She lightly smoothed it with her hand, and the knit lines surrounding the holes began to loosen and spread. Before her eyes, like a domino effect, the fabric was reduced within a short space of time to a pile of wool threads. An indignant shout came from inside the walls. Maria’s head felt dizzy. “Joe, my head feels dizzy,” she said as she sat down on the floor.

Someone helped her into a rocking chair. It was Daniel. The odor of his body was like an early morning mist in a forest.

“Where did you come from, Daniel?”

“Amei and I went to Vietnam. We reached the village of butterflies,” he said excitedly.

He fell silent. After a while he finally spoke again.

“I love you, Mother. You’re truly admirable.”

Maria’s eyes went dark. She said: “Did you see my fabric? Don’t be discouraged. Things are much better than you think they are. I, I saw Luding Bridge!”

She grasped a pile of the tangled wool threads and put them to her nose to smell them. The threads inside began to smoke. Daniel wrested the wool from her, threw it to the ground, and stomped on it a few times.

Daniel saw the stories swimming in his mother’s eyes. The stories called up once again in his heart the circumstances of the evening of August 15. On that night, the two of them stood on the stairs, leaning against a wall. A low ni nan chirping came from inside the walls. The Swiss watch on Daniel’s wrist made zheng zheng clanking metallic noises. His mother’s strong neck crooked to one side, her head leaning on his shoulder, and the moonlight swam swiftly under the osmanthus tree. For many years the walls of this house had tied Daniel’s heart down firmly, and his wanting to throw them off was futile.

Without intention, Maria’s gaze swept across the walls. She saw the two tapestries on the wall in their wooden frames fluctuating rapidly. Designs of mountains, reefs, solitary islands, and geese appeared in alternation. Maria’s eyes were heavy with sleep, and they filled with tears.

“Do you like the women here, Joe?” Kim asked him once again. The two of them sat in a teahouse where they had a full view of the snowcapped mountains.

“I don’t know. They’re not much like what I expected. What is her name?”

“Xima Meilian. All the women here are named Xima Meilian.”

“When I was at home, I saw an especially beautiful Eastern woman. Did she come from here?”

Downstairs someone called for Kim. He leaned over to listen carefully, seeming a bit nervous.

The man came upstairs as he called. It was the old fellow who sold silver goods. He stood by the table, glancing with eyes full of hate at Joe, who was drinking tea. His ornaments struck one another with a pleasant sound.

Kim approached the old fellow, the two of them speaking the local tongue.