Qiu Miaojin - Last Words from Montmartre

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I feel like you’re going to leave sooner or later. Not the kind of leaving where you run away, but where I’m not really right for you…. Do you know what I mean? That I’m a temporary harbor for you, and all I’ll ever be for you is a temporary harbor. One day you’ll see.

· · ·

I sometimes wonder what having my first love at age twenty-three means. Ever since the first time I resisted the truth after finishing college and then met you and had such a deep and beautiful relationship amid a tumult of conflicting values, I was unprepared to suddenly be propelled into a…. How should I put it? It was as if I needed to know and uphold what I believed in, but what that was wasn’t clear, with issues like human dignity, freedom, compassion, and open-mindedness… and also love, and purity…. Zoë, forget promises. I simply can’t imagine making a home with someone else, raising children with someone else, nor can I imagine ever giving myself so completely to someone else. Nor can I accept your “temporary harbor,” especially after having had such a perfect relationship with you. So if we can no longer be together, perhaps I really will go run an orphanage! So I’ll always have children to love, and I can give them freedom and dignity and tenderness.

· · ·

Starting a new job eases my mind, but a different kind of unease wells up as I confront all the uncertainties and anxieties of my new life, the fear and trepidation. Zoë, will you wait for me? Or will you run before I’m steady on my feet, leaving me on my own to stumble around? Today I sense a new kind of need, like that of a small child who has been sent into the darkness and must ask for directions, hoping that someone will be waiting at the glow at the mouth of the cave, yet I know deep inside one ultimately must depend on oneself. But that hand! The hand outstretched at the mouth of the cave offering direction, offering solace in confronting the darkness, such needed solace.

· · ·

I trust you. Before I realized certain things I had already been through so much with you. When I suddenly knew I trusted you, I also knew I would trust you forever, regardless of your promises of fidelity, or of love. I trust you, yes, I will trust you. I faintly sense that this “trust” relates to my conviction that I won’t ever change much, even if you were to leave me. If the day comes when you fall in love with someone else and don’t love me anymore, I might shut down and shrivel up and die, but I would not turn into a monster, because I would still trust you — the past, present, and future “you.” Do you see the cause-and-effect relationship between change and trust?

Good night, my Zoë with the wild hair standing on end against the violet. Love you. Trust you.

· · ·

I felt relief after our phone call. A shadow still looms but I can fake calm for a while to endure. I’m really afraid. Please forgive me if I’m pedantic and weak. “Defeated” is the word you used that hit me hardest. I’m always such a lost lamb. You’ve mended the fence, but I can’t see on the same level as you. I wrote a letter full of playful apologies, apologizing for loving you, apologizing for you loving me, apologizing for your commitment to never turn back, apologizing for your pristine and expansive new life; I apologized for my sentence structure, my language, and for my writing style, as well as my inability to take responsibility…. I apologized to the books you left for me that were all open and staring askance at me, and apologized for hating myself for always apologizing, and then tore up the apology. Only from you can I demand the will to live, so I now have before me a pile of colorful phone cards.

I sat for more than half an hour on the curb near the bus stop waiting for it to get light in Paris and a little girl passed me twice and turned to smile at me twice. It was like being hugged. I wanted to thank her for giving me the courage to call you.

Yesterday I was thinking that love is so painful, that my tightly folded feelings were only allowed to unfold when you and I were in the same space together, or if we were writing letters to each other. That’s why I said I apologized for my love for you. I really want to fight for a patch of heaven and earth that stretches its branches and unfurls its leaves, this nourishment from heaven and earth would heal your pain. I want to grow stronger, Zoë. Help me, give me another chance.

Good morning, Zoë, I am so ashamed that my love has not reached you. Send me your smile.

(The Golden Age of Oaths II: Xu is in Taipei, Zoë is in Paris)

Can’t help falling in love.

Wise men say only fools rush in,

But I can’t help falling in love with you.

Shall I stay? Would it be a sin?

If I can’t help falling in love with you.

Like a river flows surely to the sea,

Darling so it goes,

Some things are meant to be.

Take my hand, take my whole life, too.

For I can’t help falling in love with you.

Riding the clutch in tears until a phone call, an apology, and a way to shift into neutral unnoticed….

· · ·

Raining really hard in Taipei tonight; cold and empty and peaceful in my room. I didn’t want to turn on some music, afraid that even the slightest movement, even writing a letter, would trigger a collapse. Dreading movement, I want to hibernate.

Changes in the weather are terrifying. I ask again, Why weather?

You returned then left again. For the next six months I’ll have no respite, only a synchronic obliteration.

I concentrate and my heart swings, unsettled, if only I were to lean my head against your chest….

· · ·

Let’s not separate like this, okay? I can’t even imagine that enduring the next six months will depend entirely on two minutes and thirty-five seconds a week of phone calls. And that you’re facing so many difficulties and I can’t be by your side, nor console you with words when you need them. Cruel torture!

· · ·

You and Piggy stick together now, you hear! I heard you had received Piggy in the afternoon when I was at work, and I wanted to scream and shout with relief and thank the postal services of Taiwan and France for delivering Piggy to Zoë in three days so that she could have someone to keep her company so soon (Piggy can count as half a person). The night before I sent her out, I sat her down in front of me while I wrote your letter, thinking how she’d keep you company just like this and look after you for me (her eyes and nose are functional). I feel like I already took over her body with my own body with the hope that she would keep close company. Piggy is a curly-tailed pig! You didn’t even notice her tail…. She and I are both a little sad.

· · ·

The melody of the waltz still tumbled around in my head after the last encores of the philharmonic, and I walked alone on the broad red-tile sidewalk outside the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, thinking how romantic it would be if I kissed you here. I forced myself to attend three concerts and see five movies in November, on my own like this, walking down the street, my nose tingling, tears imminent. The shadow of us was on every corner! At 10:15 I caught a beat-up bus. The men sitting on either side of me reeked of sweat. From far away I could hear a graduate student going on and on in a stammering voice, a stammer that caught my attention, painful memories of you poured steadily forth, the sad, empty phone call that broke my heart. A sinking ship and there’s only one lifeboat, only one life can be saved, and the man begs the woman to go, but the woman won’t go! The woman won’t go!

I won’t let you go. I will try my best to get stronger and so you have no right to grow weak. How could you bear to destroy me? Sitting at the makeup counter, face tilted slightly, shimmering rays of light shining in through the windows to your cheeks, and then a skull’s visage appears in the mirror, its deep-set eye sockets and sunken cheeks and dark complexion…. I won’t allow myself to weaken, don’t worry. Zoë would say that I am her will to live, right? And how can one undermine one’s own will to live?