Can Xue - The Last Lover

“Vincent is inside this mound?”

“Not yet, he is still roaming outside. I sit on top of the grave and my heart is at peace.”

Maria raised her head and saw that there were already eight or nine lanterns in their vicinity. The faces all looked familiar. She recognized one of them as a neighbor from her own street. More time passed, and she saw Daniel and Zhenya arriving.

“There’s Maria!” Zhenya said happily to Daniel. “I see the members of your family can hold in their emotions particularly well! Your mother looks positively sedate sitting there.”

Maria couldn’t see Daniel’s face clearly. His body was like a long, thin twig.

“Daniel!” Maria shouted, her heart aching.

Wind blew through the graveyard. Daniel’s voice sounded as if he were inside an urn. She couldn’t hear what he was really saying. Maria saw that her son was shaking his head as hard as he could.

“Daniel, what do you want to say to me?” Maria was disheartened.

“He’s talking about his father.” Zhenya answered for him. “He’s always saying that even I’m affected by him, nearly falling in love with your Joe.”

Maria reached out to embrace Daniel’s long, thin waist, but she was shocked because her son’s back bulged out in a protuberance.

“What is this?” her voice shook.

“It’s Joe,” Zhenya said. “Your son now carries his father everywhere on his back. See, isn’t Daniel much sturdier? He is a grown man.”

Maria took off her son’s shirt, touching his deformed back. Several mad ideas occurred to her. Lisa comforted her, saying, “It’s a good thing, you see, your son’s outstanding.” Daniel grumbled another sentence.

“He says his father is speaking inside him, so we can’t hear him clearly,” Zhenya interpreted again.

Maria relaxed her hand and Daniel immediately hid behind Zhenya’s back. This left Maria almost disconsolate.

Quite a few people had already gathered in the graveyard. Maria smelled a faint odor of horses and even of gunpowder. The people holding lanterns appeared to be going to a temple fair. How could they exude such smells? Zhenya and Daniel vanished into the dark. Lisa said she was going into the army to find someone. She had Maria take her place on the grave mound to avoid missing anything. She walked away as she was speaking.

Now Maria sat alone by herself on the mound. Some small animal pushed underneath her foot. Oh, it was her African cat! The brown striped one. In the dim light she discovered that the cat’s claws were dripping. It was injured, with its right front paw almost cut off. It was unable to transmit electricity. Maria grew extremely anxious. She wanted to bring the cat back home to treat its wound, but she could not break her promise to Lisa. She waited helplessly for Lisa to appear. People were rushing around the graveyard; everywhere there were points of light. Another of Maria’s neighbors passed her, carrying a lantern. Maria called out to the old woman to stop:

“Karen, can you help me find Lisa? It’s urgent.”

“Ha, it’s Joe’s wife here.” Karen’s elderly face smiled. “How can you have time to sit here? It’s urgent for all of us, it’s life and death. We come to the last opportunity, the time is now!”

She raised the lantern to size up Maria’s face. Maria felt the old woman’s eyes like a hawk’s on her. She cowered in fear. And even though it was injured the cat struggled out of her arms. Maria was annoyed and gave the cat a slap. The cat didn’t move after that.

“Just give it up,” Karen’s mouth shriveled. “Who can find anyone on a night like this?”

The old woman walked far away, her back hunched. Maria saw seven or eight women curiously surrounding her to get a look. Probably her speaking with Karen had drawn them over.

“This is Joe’s wife? Oh my!”

“Poor Joe, gone and not returning.”

“He’s not stupid. He can figure things out for himself, that usurer.”

“He is a real pangolin!”

The women, heads close together, mouths to ears, dispersed again like a swarm of wasps.

A premonition grew in Maria’s heart. She felt that something had happened to Joe. What was it? Perhaps he would return home soon? Did he have a grave here too? Just at this moment, Lisa returned. She carried a yellow lantern on a pole. Far away there were joyful shouts:

“Maria! Maria, dear! Joe’s come back! Listen, listen!”

Lisa’s head and Maria’s were close together. They listened carefully. All the neighboring people were surely saying “Joe, Joe, Joe. .” Casting her eyes into the distance, Maria saw them squatting one by one on the grave mounds, placing their lanterns on the tombstones. The graveyard seemed vast and limitless. Lisa said that each one squatted on the grave of his or her “beloved.”

“I want to go back home, my cat is hurt,” Maria said.

Maria passed through the grave mounds hugging the cat. She still heard people saying “Joe, Joe, Joe. .” Warmth sprang from the desolate depths of her heart. She smelled a faint odor of tobacco and the rusty smell from the cables of the iron bridge.

“The forms of the long march are many and varied,” Lisa said, sitting in Maria’s flower garden.

Maria saw that Lisa’s spirits were roused, and she thought of the events of the night. She was distracted.

“Daniel! Daniel! Don’t trample your father’s books!” she stood and shouted.

Daniel’s voice carried down the stairs, muffled. His throat seemed to be squeezed by something. The study windows quivered. Maria sat back down in her chair, disappointed, and continued talking with Lisa about Daniel’s days at middle school. As they spoke a three-legged African cat jumped onto her knee. “Is this happiness or suffering? Is this happiness or suffering?. .” she repeated. The cat trembled nervously on her knee.

“There was a yellow butterfly,” she finally recalled. “At noon, Daniel came back from school. All around it was very quiet. But why did Joe return home at that time? I was staring at a yellow butterfly, my mind brimming with good fortune. Joe opened his mouth wide and called to me, but he couldn’t make a sound. He pointed to the blood running down on Daniel’s forehead. He looked crazed. The yellow butterfly spun in circles and stopped on the top of the stove. See, Lisa, having a son is such a troublesome business.”

While she was speaking, another cat, the yellow-and-white one, came over. Lisa felt her calf tingle, like an electric shock.

“So could the long march take place here?” Maria asked, hesitating.

“Of course. Daniel has already begun.”

That night Maria went to the study because she couldn’t sleep. Although she hadn’t turned on the light, she could see that Joe’s bookcases had turned into a dark forest of books. The books had grown large, one book set next to another vertically on the floor, the pages of the books opening and closing. She couldn’t feel the wall of the room, and so she didn’t know where the light was. Her voice was a little ghastly as she shouted: “Joe? Are you there?” Then she stopped shouting. She felt that Joe was nearby, sitting behind a book, beside a little stream. He had taken off his shoes and stretched his bare feet into the black water. Maria thought, Joe would not leave her again. How good. In the house built on the foundations made by her ancestors, she, Daniel, and Joe, this family, were starting their own long march. They were going to bring back to life those long-ago stories. This would be a fine thing! But she feared her husband’s body was forever disappearing from their home. Daniel, because he couldn’t find his father, was losing his way. It was Daniel who had pushed down all the bookcases. Was he also sitting behind a book now?