Can Xue - The Last Lover

He returned to the trailer, unable to lift his spirits, lay down, and shut his eyes to its stinking odor.

“Mr. Reagan, I will start my job today.” The forest keeper’s voice came from inside the trailer.

“You?”

“Of course Jin Xia didn’t tell you, that bastard!” He clapped the trailer window so hard it rang.

“He said it would be a monk.”

“I used to be a monk. That bastard, playing tricks on us!”

“Come in and talk.”

“No, I need to get to work. Mr. Reagan, yesterday I dreamed I saw our farm extending to the eastern seacoast. Jin Xia had great momentum.”

Reagan shut his eyes and reflected for a long time, but he was unable to think of the forest keeper being the manager of the farm. In these past few years, everyone viewed him as a dirty, strange old man who lived alone on the undeveloped land. In these years there were countless times when Reagan had burst with the impulse to speak with him, but once he got to the keeper’s door he was held back by dread. How was Reagan not a plunderer? This stretch of earth was formerly a wilderness. The forest keeper’s family had lived here for generations, and the forest keeper was the only descendent of that clan. Naturally he saw this land as his. Now Reagan had transformed the land into a farm and him into a forest keeper. Who knew what grudge he might still harbor in his heart? Looking in through the broken door, Reagan always saw a snow-white triple-edged scraping knife lying out on the table.

How many years might this old man have been matching his strength with Reagan’s in the dark? There were many times when Reagan had heard that the forest keeper would die soon, or was at his last breath. Apparently this was all a smokescreen. It was as if this strange man controlled everything here from a place deep in the earth, and was now, finally, bit by bit, encroaching, retaking the things that belonged to him. Jin Xia’s sham expansion was no more than a means to divert Reagan’s attention. Damn Jin Xia. Where had he come from? What was he doing? Reagan thought back, but his first meeting with Jin Xia was always a blank. He couldn’t recall anything. It seemed to have been in some underground walkway in City B; it also seemed to have been at home in the kitchen, at midnight, when he went to fetch brandy. Had he invited Jin Xia to work on the farm, or was it Jin Xia who wanted to come? Or was there some third party who introduced him for the job? Reagan no longer retained the slightest impression. His distinct memories all came after Jin Xia started at the farm, and these were all connected to the wooden house on the mountainside that was eaten through by termites. Now he decided that, very possibly, this was a scheme plotted out a long time ago, a conspiracy relating to some few ancient, untraceable wishes. Even his driver, that young fellow, played a role. From the beginning it was like this. . And Ali? At this thought, Reagan felt like a drowning man, like that girl, except he didn’t wear a work uniform and could get to the water’s surface to breathe.

Ali quietly came into the trailer. She was making him breakfast. Reagan, trusting to his luck, thought that maybe nothing had happened. She was so serene!

“The new manager does not intend to move. He will still live in his old cabin.”

Ali finally spoke the fearful truth. Was this possible?

He must open his eyes, must get out of bed. The world had not disappeared in front of him. He saw a drenched crow plunge from the window into his trailer, dropping into the washbasin. A warm, damp animal smell spread everywhere inside the trailer. The bird’s half-shut eyes seemed to stare at him. Ali ever so carefully cupped the injured bird (perhaps it was not injured) in her hands, stepped down from the trailer, and walked it to a growth of grass, where she put it down. She kept saying, “Little fellow, little fellow, you’re so rash!”

“Mr. Reagan, you should get moving!” she said when she left.

When he stuck his head out the window, the violent sunlight temporarily blinded him.

Ida left her own small house and came there. Now she saw him clearly. He didn’t look like a farm owner any more, only like a man who was down and out. He was extremely thin, so thin that his old clothing appeared empty on his body. The trailer was behind him, and the black-clad woman’s skirt flashed behind the trailer. What was that woman doing hiding there? Two days earlier Ida had seen that Jin Xia’s wooden house had completely caved in. A few wild dogs moved around in the ruins. She didn’t know where the family had gone.

She thought, “Today the sky is green. It’s so strange, how is the sky green first thing in the morning?” The road she’d taken passed through the rubber tree plantation. There was not a single worker there.

Mr. Reagan evidently saw her, but his expression was hollow. He had sunk into distraction. “Mr. Reagan!” Ida called out in an exploratory way. The woman behind the trailer was nowhere to be seen. Ida ran over to look, but there was no one behind the trailer. She looked back inside the trailer, but she saw only Ali sweeping.

“Ida, what are you looking at? Everything has changed now.” Ali spoke without raising her head.

“I’m still not used to it. Can you teach me, Mother?”

“You don’t need me to teach you. Isn’t this what you hoped for all along? Try calling him again, I think he will answer. He answered you before, but you didn’t hear.”

Ida called to Reagan again. Her voice was rending and shrill. Suddenly she felt that there was nowhere to hide, and she ran away, cradling her head. She ran to the lake and then through the groves of trees, running until her eyes went black and she fell to the ground. She indistinctly remembered falling on a space of open ground.

“You run back and forth, but it’s still the same piece of land. The young lady’s heart is like the morning dew.”

Ida heard the forest keeper close by. He was wearing the same clothing and leg wraps. He hugged a wild pheasant to his chest.

“Mr. Reagan handed over the farm to me. I want to change it into a territory of the night. Ida, your eyesight is so good at night. You will have a place to develop your talents.”

His voice came through his beard with a weng weng droning. He’d already grown a beard.

“With the first light of morning, I saw Ida running toward me. My heart was truly moved.” His snow-white brand-new beard shook.

“But I didn’t. . Oh, the sky this morning was so beautiful. Where did our convoy go? Doesn’t it usually travel along this road?”

Some object in her heart revived. She felt herself eager to do something. She stood up and stretched her body out, appraising the forest keeper’s cabin.

The forest keeper laughed heartily and said in a loud voice: “Convoy! Convoy. . There’s no convoy any more, dear, only a pack of wolves tearing through the wilderness.”

But at noon large crowds of workers appeared on the road. To the south there was a road-repair bulldozer pushing earth. The forest keeper stood underneath the machine giving orders. Ida knew he wanted to construct a new road. This was the pack of wolves he talked about — those workers. Among the workers were both new hands and old hands. Ida asked one of the young men where they lived. He said by the sea. They slept on the beach under the open sky. He also said their manner of living now was “better than we ever imagined.” Ida saw that he was holding a pheasant in his arms and asked what he was going to do with it. He said he was going to domesticate pheasants. “Everyone’s job will change. This is what the new manager says.”

Ida thought of Reagan’s unfavorable situation. One moment she thought it was the end, but the next moment she thought it was a turning point. As if in a trance, she came to the seaside. A breeze was blowing and the fish smell of the water excited her. There were many people on the beach with their bodies buried in the sand. She approached them and chose a stretch of sand to sit on. She began to bury herself. The middle-aged woman next to her said that lying like this you could hide from a landslide, and you could also speak directly with your ancestors. “You are crushing my hand,” she complained. Ida thought this was odd, because the woman was more than two meters away. How could her hand be underneath Ida’s body?