Can Xue - The Last Lover

“Mr. Reagan isn’t ill.”

“Of course he isn’t. How could he be ill? He decides things for himself.”

“Should I go back and send the car to get you? You look tired.”

“No, no, no. Look, the sun will set behind the mountains soon. I’ll just sit off to the side for a bit, under the Chinese banana tree. I’d like to see the evening in this place. A long time ago I heard that the sky here is green at night. I think this must be true. Ah, the sun’s going behind the mountain, thank heaven.”

After Ali left, the sun set behind the mountain. Vincent closed his eyes and meditated quietly in the shadow of the banana trees. He had come here chasing a woman from a dream. She had taken a red flower — he couldn’t say what it was called — from her head, and placed it under his nose so he could smell it. Then she told him it was “plucked from the farthest south, a place called the Cape.” When he woke Vincent pondered for a while before determining that the black-clad woman in his dream came from his client Reagan’s farm. Out of curiosity he had once looked on a map to find the location of the farm. In the city, Vincent and the woman were “transported” by an overwhelming night together in a shabby hotel. Lying on a simple, crude bed, half-awake, she had brought him to climax again and again. The strange thing was that the woman was just a figure. There was no body belonging to her. When Vincent eagerly embraced her, as he entered her from underneath, she began to move, but her body itself had no weight to it. The climax she finally brought Vincent to was vigorous but extremely barren. Each time it was like this. It almost drove Vincent mad, because this strange kind of climax failed to bring him release: his desire could not subside and instead surged higher. For an entire night he existed on the terrace of climax. The Eastern woman was silent, tractable, and tantalizing. Vincent realized that the woman, whose age was impossible to fix with much certainty, held the dominating position in these sexual activities. At daybreak he lay on the bed, exhausted and worn out, as the woman quietly shut the door and left. Afterward Lisa saw him lying in front of their house behaving in a revolting manner. He’d never been able to decide whether he’d actually been in a shabby hotel and had a sexual experience that left his bones weak. The woman had come looking for him several times since, dressed in black, her face indistinct. Vincent had grasped her hand, but there was nothing for him to hold but empty air. Besides, she came secretly and left secretly, and never spent another “transporting” night with him. So Vincent suspected that even the one time hadn’t been real. Now tomorrow would be his sixtieth birthday. Vincent was inwardly startled by the desire in his body: this was the first time in many years that he knew it as a lurking beast.

The sky gradually darkened, and the wind carried a touch of coolness. Vincent heard the sound of voices. It was two girls walking along the path. One was local, and the other was a brown-skinned Southeast Asian, with a delicate frame and very long arms. And behind the Southeast Asian girl, a woman dressed in black followed closely. Vincent was struck to the heart. But it appeared that the two girls hadn’t detected the woman behind them. They were bent over at the waist, searching for something on the ground.

Vincent stood and greeted them. The girls replied with ambiguous sounds, too absorbed in their own activity to notice him much. Just as they were exchanging this question and answer, the black-clad woman disappeared like a shadow. Vincent stretched his arms out toward the place where she’d been standing, but there was nothing for his arms to enclose.

When Vincent entered Reagan’s house, Reagan had already come downstairs, alert and refreshed. They greeted each other in the living room. As the two men embraced Vincent noticed his old friend’s vigor. As a matter of fact, Vincent had met this old friend only twice before, ten years ago on a bench in a park. He didn’t know how it happened that the two strangers greeted each other without any reason to do so. They had discussed the deep blackish-green lake in front of them. The second day they both went back to the park, continuing their conversation. And after that they hadn’t met again. Vincent knew about it when Reagan signed a contract with his company and later became a regular client. Nonetheless, he had never since tried to meet him face to face, or even mentioned to Joe that he knew Reagan. Over the many years, this old friend became a shadow in his memory. At least until the black-clad woman from his dream offered him a scent of Reagan’s farm, and the past events suddenly revived.

At Reagan’s home Vincent ate a meal and showered, then sat on the roomy sofa and chatted for a while. Reagan spoke of a poisonous species of striped snake, even taking out a picture to show him and warning him to take extra care when walking outside. Vincent didn’t notice the snake in the thick growth of grass — he saw only the image of the black-clad woman next to the snake. At the sight of her back his heart throbbed with terror and he almost let the photograph drop to the floor.

“She’s someone you know. I’ve heard her speak of you.” Reagan glanced at him attentively.

Vincent withdrew his gaze in discomfort and stared instead at the gray-papered walls, at a loss.

On the roomy bed in the guest room Vincent rolled back and forth, unable to sleep. Although the room had an air conditioner and remained cool, his heart churned alongside the waves of heat in the dark beyond the room. It was a long night of surging desire, somewhat like that amorous encounter in the shabby hotel. But there was no one else there.

Reagan had said, “She’s already gone.” What did that mean? That she’d died, or that she’d gone away? His tone of voice hadn’t been sorrowful. Perhaps gone with respect to her was a commonplace. Perhaps she was always coming and going from these tropical regions, and only occasionally stopped over in the city where he lived? He’d tried to guess her nationality. At times he thought she was Arab, at times he thought she was Indian, but there was no way to settle this. Yet at this present moment he realized that for her nationality was entirely meaningless. Before he’d gone to sleep, the woman who’d made the bed for him, Ali, told him that his wife, Lisa, had already come to the farm during the day. Now he fancied that Lisa’s body was everywhere, but there was still no way to expend his desire. Was it more like Lisa or that woman to come and go like a ghost?

After the old clock struck one, Vincent noticed the bedroom wall receding. He remembered that he was on the ground floor. It was possible that he was already sleeping among the rubber trees. He made up his mind: if the striped snakes crawled into the bed, he would play a sex game with them. That would thoroughly change his disposition. He opened his legs to welcome those lascivious small objects; he almost let out a groan.

“Does our guest need anything?” Ali’s aged voice rang out from beyond the door.

Vincent heard her turn on the light in the hallway. She must have stayed outside his door. He wondered what whim had sent him rushing off to spend the night in this place. Was it merely because of the woman in his dream? He wasn’t the sort of man to have affairs. The Arab woman had broken into his life by chance. Originally he’d thought he would be bound to forget about it afterward, but he was unable to.

He got out of bed, opened the door, and saw Ali sitting on a chair in the corridor.

“You’re not sleeping, Mother?”

“Me? I keep watch at night, to stop all of you from running all over the place. Who understands things here? Maybe not even Mr. Reagan.”