Can Xue - The Last Lover

“Seabed, seabed!” the woman said to him from the window, blowing out air with her mouth.

“Dear, come here!” Reagan called.

Futile thirsting tormented him. Inside the trailer the evil odor grew thicker. Reagan was astonished: how could a quiet, lithe woman like her enjoy the odor inside? She stopped by as if it were merely the smell which drew her there. An enormous whale skeleton appeared in Reagan’s mind. A few pieces of rotting meat stained the skeleton. A tsunami was pushing this prop, spinning it around.

He sat up with an effort and saw the woman leave the window and walk into a patch of forest that was billowing with smoke.

“Ida.” He strained to say these two syllables then returned to the sofa bed.

The farm’s territory was reaching into the far distance under the cover of darkness. The enormity of its scale drove Reagan mad. Now he entered Jin Xia’s insane path of thought, changing into a crow circling in the sky over the loess, with no way to alight. He meant to set a boundary, but this intention became an obsession over a vain dream. Thirst, hunger, fear — he flew in rings, flew on diagonal paths, then made a spiral descent. He thought that perhaps he had stayed at the same spot and was not really moving around. At one moment he glimpsed a breakwater, and thought mistakenly that it was the border. But it wasn’t a sea beyond the breakwater, it was a field of maize extending beyond the horizon — a test site for launching Jin Xia’s experiments in diversified production.

When the sky was barely light he heard Jin Xia talking to someone. Apparently it was a police officer questioning Jin Xia about the issue of buying land. Jin Xia stuttered and his voice trembled. He would say something and then immediately deny it. Reagan guessed that he was already white in the face, his forehead sweating.

Reagan walked to the window and glanced outside to discover one man there, Jin Xia, standing under the tree and staring into space.

“Jin Xia, who were you just speaking with?”

“Oh, no one. I was talking to myself,” he said awkwardly.

“Talking to yourself? Then why is there a rumor going around saying you take bribes?”

“Mr. Reagan, I tell you, I started the rumor myself.”

“Oh!”

Reagan was greatly surprised and didn’t speak for what seemed like half a day. Crows cawed suddenly in the trees. A whiteness appeared in his brain. In the trailer the stench had disappeared, but his keyed-up nerves still could not relax. What Jin Xia described, too, exceeded Reagan’s anticipation. He thought of the wolf Jin Xia was raising, his house eaten through by termites and half of it in rubble, his wife’s edema dripping water, his older son drifting around like a wild wolf. . Reagan stepped out of the trailer. He wanted to speak with Jin Xia.

“Jin Xia, how many years is it since you came here from your original home?”

“Me? Oh, let me tell you, I don’t have a native home. I was born on the road, and after that I was always on the road, in a troop on the march. . Look at me, do I look like someone who has a native home?”

As he spoke he stared into the distance. Reagan followed the line of his sight and saw a hawk drop slantingly through the air, at first managing to hold itself aloft, then plunging into the lake.

“I have no native home,” he said again. “Your driver Martin knows all about this.”

“Martin?”

“Yes. I met Martin at a picnic — a young man who took care in his dress, with an elegant manner. It was at his suggestion that I came to your farm. At that time I was enjoying successful promotion in my career. Martin said I should come here, where I would have a place to exercise my talents. He also called your farm ‘a wasteland.’ An intelligent young fellow. The scenery here is especially beautiful, particularly the green sky. It makes me enlarge my outlook.”

After a while, Jin Xia told Reagan he needed to go.

“Going back home?”

“No, to make the whole world my home. My family will leave at night when it’s dark. I already found someone to replace me. He was formerly a monk.”

“I’m very surprised.”

Reagan passed another night without sleep. He was at the lake, sitting on the small bench fishing. The boy sat on the ground at his side.

“Little Wolf, will you be leaving?”

“Yes, Uncle Reagan. Aren’t I saying good-bye to them now?”

“To whom?”

“Them, the leeches in the water ditch. I’m good friends with them. Once every week I let them drink blood from my leg. Look!”

He smoothed his pants leg, showing Reagan his slightly swollen and inflamed calf.

“I love you, Little Wolf. Are you really going to leave?”

“I really am going to leave, Uncle Reagan. Dad says we won’t come back again. My heart’s already flown to that place far away in the mountains. I heard all the buildings there hang from the cliffs. My dad is a hero, isn’t he?”

“Yes. Is your wolf going with you?”

“Hmm.”

His mood darkened. He kept kicking the small bench where Reagan sat until he could no longer fish. Reagan didn’t know why the boy was so unhappy. Maybe he shouldn’t have brought up that wolf. He’d never understood why Jin Xia had lamed the wolf. He packed up his fishing rod and sat down on the ground with the child, holding his little hand, wanting to speak with him. The child’s hand was extremely skinny. It gave Reagan an unusual feeling. He remembered the child had been eating and sleeping out of doors all these days.

“Uncle Reagan, will I die?”

“No, you won’t. You are a child.”

“Children can die, too. I was just thinking about the buildings hanging from the cliffs. When our wolf starts to howl, the buildings might fall down. Last time when most of our house collapsed it was the wolf that did it. It wasn’t the rainstorm at all. My dad told everyone it was the rainstorm. He was fooling people. Uncle Reagan, do you think I should go? I want to stay on the farm with my wolf. I already found a good place over there in the forest. I could put up a house and live there with it. I wouldn’t have to live in that termite nest any more. But I also wonder if living on a cliff would be more interesting, only if you don’t fall in. I think and think, and I can’t make up my mind. I’m still a child, I don’t want to die. My dad is a hero.”

Reagan pityingly rubbed the child’s small hand, although in his heart he understood that the child needed no pity.

“Little Wolf, you don’t have to go. You could live here with me in the forest. What do you think? In the future you would grow up to be like your father and come help me manage the farm.”

“Things are good here, but I also want to go live on the cliffs. Uncle Reagan, what do you think I should do?” He looked seriously at Reagan.

Under the moonlight Reagan thought his eyes looked like two deep caves, as if there were no eyeballs in the sockets. A feeling of cold scudded across Reagan’s heart, and for a moment he couldn’t speak. Someone swam by in the lake with a noisy gurgling, hua hua . Reagan could tell it was someone else, not Ida. Ida was rhythmical, while this person slapped the water carelessly, almost willfully. “It’s the forest keeper,” Little Wolf told him.

The forest keeper came ashore naked. His clothing was on the bank, and he walked over to dress. The old man’s silhouette looked strong and healthy, not at all like his downtrodden appearance in the daytime. Reagan thought: Maybe the forest keeper believes this lake and farm both belong to him? Look how confident he is. His movements are so poised. Little Wolf suddenly ran over and hugged the forest keeper. The pair walked away, speaking warmly in whispers.

Without blinking Reagan watched their old and young figures as they left. A kind of regret sprung up in his heart. Without knowing why, he sensed that the forest keeper was the true owner of this land. Every tree and blade of grass was probably in his dreams, and this child was a free bird flying back and forth. It was said that the forest keeper’s family had lived here for many generations. Formerly it was a true wilderness. Suddenly, the silhouette of a deer appeared within Reagan’s view. The deer were on the opposite bank, a great herd of them. He had never heard of there being deer in these mountains. What sort of monk had Jin Xia hired to replace himself as the manager of such a large farm? Seeing the deer suddenly emerge from lower ground on the opposite shore, Reagan felt that the future was uncertain. At this very moment Jin Xia might have already packed his bags.