Qiu Miaojin - Last Words from Montmartre

At 9 p.m., they turned off the lights and lit candles all around the lecture hall, and some dance music drifted out from behind the stage. I hastily gathered my coat, scarf, hat, and backpack so I could escape. I didn’t know half of the French girls there and I didn’t have the nerve to ask anyone to dance. Some girls had already paired off and were making out in the romantic candlelight, making me feel awkward…. Suddenly, Laurence approached me.

Ne partez pas! Vous pourriez danser avec moi? (Don’t go! Will you dance with me?)

Je suis pressée pour voir un ami chinois qui habite près d’ici . (I’ve got to run to see a Chinese friend who lives nearby.)

Il n’y a rien de pressé. Vous avez l’impression très seule. (It can’t be so urgent. You seem so lonely.) As she was speaking, she came closer to me and lightly took my hand, leading me toward the door.

Parce que j’ai un coeur brisé. (Because I have a broken heart.)

I surprised myself by having the courage to trust her from the start. Perhaps it was because I had just finished writing Xu the letter about being “stained” and my inner landscape the night before. Sooner or later I’d have to say it out loud.

Why on earth am I weeping? Is it because of what Xiao Yong said in Tokyo and Laurence last night that made me realize the most fundamental principles in life? My tears are forming fierce resistance within me. I don’t want to mail the letter to Xu anymore. The sky is already growing light over Montmartre as I hesitate, unwilling to waste a trip to the post office to drop the letter into that “outgoing mail” slot. So I’ll leave the letter unfinished, and skip directly to tomorrow’s letter.

MEMORANDUM

At 6:30 in the morning I boiled myself a bowl of instant rice noodles. I added a small piece of French cabbage (the last of three heads of cabbage that Bunny had eaten, and possibly the cause of death), a third of a can of tuna, half a can of mushrooms, an egg, and the leftovers from last night’s sweet-and-sour fish at Yongyao’s restaurant. I stood in the kitchen, washed the pot I’d used to heat the fish, peeled a large cantaloupe, and ate it while leafing through the books that my roommate planned to sell and had left outside the kitchen. Ever since returning from Tokyo, I would often go to Camira’s place for dinner. She’s a close friend and can lift me out of any depression. When she cooked she would often put on an air of authority and say, Cuisiner c’est l’invention! Then she’d mix together whatever random things were left in her refrigerator. I smile when I think how cute she is. Now I’ve begun cooking more too, using her method, blindly mixing together ingredients while murmuring to myself, Cuisiner c’est l’invention! What’s contagious in a friendship is truly frightening.

After I ate my “inventive” rice noodles and cleaned up, I put on my baseball cap and went downstairs to call Yong. It was almost two in the afternoon over there, a seven-hour time difference. I left Tokyo three weeks ago. I had mailed her a letter each week and had been using a fifty-unit phone card to call her every Wednesday or Thursday. At the same time I used a phone card to call my family every Saturday night. Establishing these two sets of “military reinforcements” has made me feel grateful again. I think I really must be changing…. For three years I had stopped corresponding with Yong because we were so far away from each other and had drifted apart. Since moving to France I had rarely called my family as well and instead have spent time and money calling one person only, writing one person only and sending her gifts of all kinds….

After calling Yong I felt a little dazed and walked along rue du Mont Cenis away from Mairie toward Place Albert Kahn. Then I continued down to the flea markets in Porte de Clignancourt in the north of Paris. After a week spent writing a bundle (perhaps the last bundle) of letters to Xu, I was finally able to enjoy the fresh, soft beauty of Montmartre in the morning. Usually I walked straight to the post office in the early morning and then took a shortcut home…. From the square, I turned down rue Duhesme and stopped before the window of a small café to observe my reflection. I took off my cap and glasses so I could appreciate my own expression as I sang an old song…. Only when you grow more gray hairs, and only when your laugh brings more wrinkles to the corners of your mouth…. Am I beautiful? Am I beautiful enough? … After White Whale saw The Suspended Step of the Stork early last April, she told me the scene that left the deepest impression on her. It was the moment when the two great actors Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau meet again. Many years after the politician has vanished, a television journalist discovers him quietly hiding out in a small village on the Greek- Albanian border. Refugees from Albania, Turkey, and Kurdistan populate the village. The journalist brings the politician’s wife to confirm if he is the missing politician or not. With the television cameras fixed on the couple’s reunion, the wife turns to the camera and says: C’est pas lui!

The politician’s wife had told her husband that if there ever came a time when she could no longer see what he was thinking by looking into his eyes, then she could no longer make love to him. After not seeing each other for so long, in the instant they met again on that strange bridge, the woman could no longer look into her husband’s eyes and know what was in his heart. And so, White Whale said to me, C’est pas lui! How terrifying. Many years from now, who will be able to look into my eyes and know that I am myself?

C’est pas lui!

Will this be Xu’s cry of astonishment one day?

MAY 7

CLICHY

Clichy is a pure whiteness like Bunny. It is my home, as well as Xu’s and Bunny’s. Clichy is the first stop on line 13 of the Métro. It is where we built our ideal love. Though I failed, failed miserably. I lost 100 percent of my dreams of marriage and love. I lost the woman of my dreams, and I lost little Bunny, the symbol and extension of my love that we brought back from Pont Neuf.

How I cared for little Bunny.

I’ve never and will never again care for someone the way I cared for our rabbit. This is clear to me. Bunny was one of the happiest things in my life, a riddle revealed.

But I got what I deserved. I made her unhappy in Clichy. I couldn’t stand her not loving me in Clichy. Because she repeatedly wanted to abandon us in Clichy, I turned into a raging beast and wounded her in a fit of insanity…. After I drove her back to Taiwan, she tuned me out with lightning speed and turned her back on me and I returned to Paris alone. She quickly found someone else. I got what I deserved.

Because I’ve never and will never again hurt someone the way I hurt her.

My excessive love was inevitably going to cause harm and lead to my loss. If I couldn’t temper my excessive love for her, then I really can’t bear the pain of her abandoning me. I possibly could if that was the only way to keep me from hurting her. I must accept this fate of being abandoned and betrayed; I must accept my helplessness. There’s no way for me to not lose. There’s nothing I can do for myself.

Once, in Taiwan, I told Xiao Mei, my younger friend from college, how I wrote to five medical research facilities in Paris asking if two ova could produce life using modern technology. Standing outside the University Science Center, Xiao Mei guffawed and said that she would do her best “to develop new technology for me.” I told Yong the same thing in Tokyo, and she became both annoyed and amused, saying to me, “Have you lost your mind thinking about having a child?” Yes, I had never wanted a child and was not fantasizing about raising a daughter who looked like Xu, and only like her. I fantasized about raising a child especially when I was in Clichy and it dawned on me that Xu didn’t love me anymore.