Can Xue - The Last Lover

Ida walked to the half-wall of piled-up debris and saw their small single beds spread with clean white sheets. The two girls were both orphans, and Ida knew nothing could happen that would surprise them. Reagan’s farm had another name, “the orphanage,” because a large part of the staff were orphans.

“Ida’s come back,” Lara raised her head. “Look, we have to sleep out in the open now. Liang and I have already gotten used to it. Will you be able to? Mr. Reagan tore down the building. His own home is torn down, too.”

“How did he tear it down?”

“It’s unclear. We were sitting inside when a thunderclap blew us to the ground beneath the building. It toppled backward before our eyes. Everyone heard the farm owner howling in the thunder. We think he did this in order to seek a better life. We should be patient.”

It was only Lara who spoke. Liang stood stooped over the head of the bed playing with several white mice. She appeared to be training them to stand on their hind legs. Her mouth made a si si hissing, like a snake.

“They are survivors from the disaster. Liang wants them to work miracles,” Lara explained off to the side. “When it rains, we prop up a tiny canvas tent. .”

Ida felt that when she said “prop up a tiny canvas tent” her voice was filled with a certain bitterly sad memory. The mice started squeaking, chi chi , as if echoing Lara’s speech.

“Ida, sit down.” Liang was calling to her.

Ida sat on Liang’s bed and saw the mice make their way into Liang’s arms. It was completely dark. Fortunately Ida’s eyes could see everything clearly in the dark. But her two friends didn’t possess her special eyesight. Ida thought of how in this rolling dark world, they were so lonely.

“Lara, where did all the other workers go?”

“They went to the mountainside and built a log cabin. Mr. Reagan wanted us to stay here.”

“Stay here and do what?”

“Wait for you to come back. Look, there’s another cot over there, that’s your bed.”

Ida followed the direction she pointed in, and to her great surprise she really did see a small white speck.

“Since you left, Mr. Reagan comes every day to change your sheets. We mock him, but he doesn’t get angry.”

Ida walked over to her cot. The bed abutted the trunk of a large banyan tree. When she spread out the quilt and lay down with her head on the pillow, the crown of the banyan hung down, protecting her. She shut her eyes and saw a calm, beautiful beach, the sea, and seagulls. A gentle breeze blew. Her dead friend appeared with a solemn face in the shallow part of the water. She was still wearing that work uniform. She was undoing the buttons on her chest but none of them would open. Her long, thin, agile fingers moved rapidly up and down. Ida sighed: “Oh Reagan, Reagan, how could you have ordered such unlucky uniforms for us?” A large flock of seagulls flew up, then dropped again near her friend. She was still undoing buttons, and above her the sun blazed down. Liang was also there, playing with her mice. Now she laughed cheerfully, and Lara was at her side, screaming. Ida’s mood became calmer. For the first time in many days she entered a deep sleep.

She dreamed of rubber trees. She didn’t know how, but the rubber trees grew on the mountain slope, and the farm looked as it had when it was still undeveloped. There were lotus pods in the lake and wild ducks drifted on it. The sun, unexpectedly, was black. “If the rubber trees are transplanted, their survival rate will be very low,” she said to Mr. Reagan. Mr. Reagan was panting inside her. She struggled to open her eyes in her dream and saw the crows she hadn’t seen for so long filling the sky. They flapped their wings and drops of water fell on her face. It was those soggy wet crows. They crossed through time and flew to the past. In tiny increments, her desire became a remotely ancient memory, in the process of reviving. This kind of desire lost its previous violent nature and came to resemble a silkworm’s thread, both disarrayed and distinct. Now she reached the deepest place inside Reagan’s body.

“Who’s crying?” Ida asked.

“I am,” Reagan said in the dark.

He stood behind the tree and spoke with Ida between the tree trunks.

“Ali and I live on a boat now, a sea vessel. In dreams, our boat reaches different places all over the world. One day I saw Ali eating durian fruit, and I asked her where she got it. She said it was from Malaysia. Then she asked me, ‘Last night we got off the boat there, and stayed for a long time in a garden shaped like a triangle. Have you forgotten all about it?’”

“These past days I’ve lived at a bar, in a tower in the air. There are two bedrooms. The owner’s daughter and I each had a room. Downstairs a group of musicians played folk music from the countryside the whole day long. There was no staircase to go downstairs, so we depended entirely on our thoughts to move up and down. They were unforgettable days.”

The sky wasn’t light yet, so Ida was still lying down. She tried as hard as she could to return to her dreamscape and converse with Reagan. She collected her thoughts by thinking of a tiny black door, and longed to hear its slight zhi ya creak. Owing to this excessive effort, she couldn’t tell later whether she had actually been dreaming. She felt her mouth saying “ah, ah, ah.” No matter what speech she came out with, it all turned into this “ah,” and that small black door was in a place nearby, half-open, with a beautiful peacock passing in and out.

“On breezy nights I lie on the deck listening to the whales swimming. There is a shark that lives there, and when it arrives the whales grow restless. On the shore someone says, ‘Is this the village of fruit?’ Then a burst of running footsteps.”

“We, the bar owner’s daughter and I, later reached the point where we didn’t want to get out of bed. We slept in the air. Gradually, the music downstairs changed into a dirge. The room was filled with women and elderly people dressed in mourning. Once someone led in a dog yapping wang wang .”

Reagan saw that Ida didn’t move when she spoke. He couldn’t make out the face of the person under the quilt. He constantly suspected that Ida’s body had already disappeared because the voice he heard sounded like it played from a tape recorder. Had Ida come, and now the sky would not grow light? Lara and Liang were lighting oil lamps. Reagan thought that the two girls seemed a little nervous, as though they were waiting for something to happen. The banyan’s aerial root swayed above him with a ge ge creak, like the sound of a skeleton in a dissection room. He thought that maybe after Ida awoke she wouldn’t remember that he and she had talked. This kind of misapprehension would be the pattern of their contacts after this.

Reagan didn’t remember when he’d begun to change into a ragged drifter. He wore clothes that gave off the sour smell of sweat, and passed through the crows that crowded together. These drenched birds sometimes attacked him, leaving his body covered in droppings, but he didn’t care about such things any more. If he saw any strange girl whatever on the farm he would go over and interrogate her, until people found him detestable.

Beautiful Ida was lying under the banyan tree, and Reagan hid behind its thick trunk, giving off a stink from head to foot. They were separated into two worlds, carrying on this strange kind of intercourse. Reagan felt that this woman had taken away all the vigor and weight of his body. He was as light as a mayfly now. His body rose and fell with currents of air.

“Is it better to change into a bird, or into a tree?” Lara asked from off to the side in a loud voice.