Can Xue - The Last Lover

Liang let out a ringing laugh, playing in the dark with her mice.

Reagan came out from behind the tree trunk and walked toward the two girls. He felt as if he were swimming. The effect of the earth’s gravity on him was reduced until it was miniscule.

“Girls, girls!” he said weakly, his voice like a cicada call.

“Is it better to change into a bird, or into a tree?” Lara responded to him with this question.

He couldn’t walk. He sat down right there on the spot. He heard a section of the broken-off wall collapse. But rather than collapsing altogether, it fell down brick by brick, as though someone were knocking on it. He doubted whether he was sitting on the ground, because he couldn’t feel the soil, only handfuls of dry leaves. He became very light, so light the leaves failed to crackle into pieces underneath his body.

“Is this that powerful man our boss? His body is breaking apart like pieces of tile.”

It was still Lara who spoke. Her mocking tone made Reagan feel there was nowhere to hide himself away. He wondered how she could treat her own boss like this. She was caustic. He couldn’t help feeling over his body to make certain he hadn’t broken into pieces.

Liang was still laughing. He didn’t know whether she was laughing at him or at Lara. Perhaps her laughter had nothing to do with the two of them.

The day a rainstorm collapsed the multistory building, Reagan had seen Liang searching for her mice in the rubble of the broken walls. Her movements were like lightning in the sky. Whenever her hands touched the small animals, they became obediently still so she could lift them one after another to carry in her apron. The sight moved Reagan greatly. He meant to commend this girl, but afterward he forgot about it because he was busy finding accommodation for all the people who’d lost their homes. There were many mice on the farm, but Reagan’s attention rarely focused on these recluses as they traveled back and forth. Liang appeared to be someone who had a purpose, and perhaps her schemes ran deep. Every person here had schemes that ran deep, including the one who’d drowned.

“Girls, girls.” His voice had no strength.

“My mice, my mice!” Liang, who hadn’t spoken all along, suddenly shouted, then wailed with heart-tearing, lung-rending grief. The sound cut open the silence of the night air.

Reagan hung his head, repeating silently to himself: “Disappear, disappear.” He saw his boat and a black river, so he went aboard, entered the cabin, and lay down in its narrow space. . His hand explored underneath him, catching handful after handful of leaves, leaves he couldn’t twist into pieces. Liang’s voice grew more and more distant and finally couldn’t be heard. A wild wind, its direction uncertain, blew across the surface of the river.

At daybreak the two girls finally came over. They saw Reagan’s body buried in thick layers of leaves from the tree. His mouth was also stuffed full of leaves. His figure looked like a corpse.

“Our boss is pursuing pleasures of the mind,” Lara said. “Look how content he is. I had a grandfather whose body was set into an earthen wall when he neared the end of his days. Other people believed he was suffering, but really it was pleasure.”

At night Ida slept under the banyan tree, and during the day she drifted around the farm. One night she got up because she couldn’t sleep, and without realizing it walked to the eastern slope of the mountain. There was a half-collapsed wooden house on the hillside. Ida knew the family of the farm manager Jin Xia lived there. Ida had known for some time that the house was eaten through by termites, and now, it seemed, one side had finally fallen in. In the several rooms that had not collapsed the lamps were lit. The inhibited howl of a wolf came from inside. The shapes of two people scurried in front of the window. What was the family busy with in the middle of the night?

That wolf’s howl abruptly began again, a sound loud enough for the deaf to hear. Ida felt the ground under her feet vibrating slightly. Immediately afterward a window opened and a dark shadow flew out, landing on the ground. Ida simply stared. It was Jin Xia’s older son, the one who cared for the wolf. The boy came over to Ida.

“They will kill someone,” he told Ida, pointing to the window. “The wolf is chained, but even an iron chain can’t hold it. Mama puts the blame on me, and now the whole family wants to kill me.”

“Where will you run away to?” Ida was troubled.

“Yes, where will I run away to?”

The youth wrung his hands. The green light shooting from his eyes terrified Ida. She sensed that although he was shy, he was a bit like the chained wolf. Was it possible that he did change into a wolf, and that was why his family wanted to kill him? When she looked at the window again, the lamps were already out. Inside all was quiet.

“What will you do?” Ida asked him.

“Hey,” he was suddenly relaxed. “I will sleep in the forest near here. I’m already used to it. Father told me to raise the wolf. I was taking care of it before I’d been on the farm very long. In the end they wanted to force me to leave. My wolf ran into the house and it collapsed. It was my fault. But I worry about my little brother. Father might also order him to take care of the wolf. My brother is weak, he’d be done for.”

“Don’t worry too much, he can change,” Ida said, to comfort him.

“Maybe. What good is it to worry?” The young boy was suddenly impatient. He walked off by himself into the bushes.

The wind blew as Ida continued to climb up the mountain. Something tripped her, and she almost fell down.

“Manager Jin Xia! Why are you here?”

“I’m looking for my son. I want to catch him and bring him back. The boy’s very destructive, and I’m afraid something will happen.”

“I think not. Just now he was fine.”

Ida and Jin Xia stood side by side next to a rock projecting out of the ground. The moon hid behind the clouds. Dark surrounded them. Jin Xia lit a cigarette with his lighter. “Mr. Jin Xia, do you think your son should grow up like a wolf?”

“Yes, but he has to be fastened with an iron chain.”

“It’s too cruel.”

Jin Xia laughed piercingly. That green light shone in his eyes. “People here are all like this, right?”

When Ida lowered her head tears fell down. She left him, her spirits low, and walked back down the slope.

The sky began to lighten with morning haze, the lake water in distant places shone with white light, and birds sang on the mountainside. Some object in Ida’s heart was also little by little reviving. Was this the farm where she’d lived before? Why didn’t anyone work? In several days she hadn’t seen a single person in the rubber trees. Only one day, she saw in the distance an Eastern woman wearing a black skirt, walking alone in the woods. Ida had heard that her companions from work all lived on the mountain slope, but when she went there she didn’t see a single building, or even tents. She had also gone once to Mr. Reagan’s home. The building hadn’t fallen down after all, but it looked like there was no one inside. The jeep parked at the entrance was covered in dust so thick its color couldn’t be seen. Last month, Ida had tried to make up her mind to pass the night in this building. Originally she had planned to enter through the back door in the middle of the night, but Mr. Reagan changed his mind. He told her his home wouldn’t suit her. If she came, he would be hurt. Now he didn’t appear to want this home himself.

She heard people speak of the farm’s boundaries. It seemed the farm had already expanded to the neighboring counties. And their farm, which made up its center, was deadly quiet. The only lively things were those drenched crows. No matter where she walked Ida would run into them. It was also possible that the farm had disbanded and her fellow workers were already returned home. When Ida thought of this, the future turned into a stretch of desolate beach extending all the way to the horizon. Lara had told her that the other workers all lived on the mountainside, but probably she’d said this to keep Ida’s courage up. Not far from where they slept there was a canteen, and a black cook who made food there. All three of them went to the canteen to eat, but they never met any other workers, not once. Behind the canteen there were toilets and showers. All of these appeared to have been finished only recently. There was an employee responsible for sanitation. Canteen, toilets, and showers constituted a small civilized world. Why had Mr. Reagan arranged this strange life for her?