Qiu Miaojin - Last Words from Montmartre

Yong,

The only person I ever gave myself to completely has betrayed me. Her name is Xu. Even Bunny (the crystallization of our three years of marriage, whom she left with me in Paris to keep me company) departed this world suddenly, and all of this happened within the space of forty-five days. Now Bunny’s cold body is resting peacefully near my pillow, and the little stuffed pig that Xu sent me is resting against Bunny’s body. All last night I cried silently under the covers, holding Bunny’s pure white corpse in my arms.

Yong,

My sorrow, my day upon day and night upon night of relentless grief is not for the mess the world is in, and it’s not for my own mortality; it’s for my delicate heart and the wounds it has had to endure. I grieve for all the suffering it has endured. I agonize over all that I have given to others and to the world, even as I’ve failed to live better myself. It’s not the world’s fault; it’s my fragile heart’s fault. We’re not exempt from the world’s injury, so we are doomed to suffer spiritual illness over time.

Yong,

Like you, I have an ideal love that can’t be realized. I devoted myself to someone completely, but it was something the world couldn’t accept. My devotion was so minor in the world that it was hardly worth mentioning; it was a joke. How could this fail to wound the delicate heart? Yong, let there be no more mutual hurt in the world, all right? Can’t we just stop playing these hurtful games altogether?

Yong,

I don’t want to fabricate a perfect love anymore. I just want to live a little better. To not be hurt anymore, and to not hurt others. I don’t like it that there’s so much wounding in the world. If there persists in being so much wounding in the world, I don’t want to live in it. My need for true love isn’t so important now. The important thing is to lead a life where no one can wound me anymore.

Yong,

You’re someone I now trust and feel close to. But how can my sorrow ever end when I’m so alone here? Even if I were to reconcile with everyone in the world I’ve ever hurt and who’s hurt me, would my sorrow end? Why is there so much hurt in the world? My soul has already endured so much wounding. Can it sustain more? How can it assimilate so many wounds? Will it be able to assimilate the wounds and then move on and make a fresh start?

Yong,

Maybe the world has always been the same, maybe it has always crushed to bits anything you hoped it would not crush. But it’s not the world’s fault, it’s still the same world that keeps crushing down. It’s not the world’s fault, it’s just that I’ve been wounded; can I really assimilate all these wounds? If I can’t assimilate them, then the wounds will stay open. Can my sorrow and my wounds be released, can they be consoled? At my core, can I really accept these things about life and grow stronger?

Yong,

With you standing by my side I am not alone. You lead your life just like I do. You understand my life and love me deeply. But don’t I have to change? I don’t know how I’ll change. I want to become someone else. This is the single best thing I could do for myself. I know that I have to change my identity, live under an assumed name. I have to cry. I have to live by transforming myself into someone else.

Yong,

I don’t long for an eternal, perfect love anymore. It’s not that I have stopped believing in it. The two times in my life I could’ve had eternal, perfect love both wilted on the vine. I’ve ripened, wilted, fallen. Yong, I’ve burned completely, I’ve already bloomed fully. The first wilted because I was still too immature and missed my chance, and the second wilted prematurely because I was overripe. But even if I only blossomed for a split second, I blossomed fully. Now all I have left to do is to accept and face the facts about these two crippled loves. Because I am still alive….

APRIL 27

Xu,

It is now three in the morning on April 27, 1995. It is nine o’clock in the morning for you in Taiwan. Bunny died at midnight on the twenty-sixth, so it has been twenty-seven hours since Bunny’s death. I haven’t buried the body yet. It’s still in the tiny coffin here, keeping me company in my room. On your advice I didn’t throw Bunny into the Seine. I will find Bunny a little grave site. I still haven’t found the right place.

For twenty-seven hours all I’ve done is lie here in bed, as if keeping vigil while Bunny dies all over again. I’ve shut myself in my room to indulge in thoughts of you and Bunny. For more than a month now I haven’t been able to think about you without feeling wounded and resentful because needing or desiring you would hurt even worse, nor have I been able to pour my heart out to you in writing like I used to, because as I’ve told you, the letters I write to you are themselves a fierce form of desire….

I’ve made up my mind not to let Bunny die in vain. I want Bunny’s death to mean something. Otherwise I won’t survive it, I won’t be able to handle it, I won’t be able to go on living. I tell myself that maybe I’ll write Bunny a book and stop recounting things to you and thus shut away our love… or that I’ll keep loving you, for Bunny, loving you unconditionally, and keep writing you another set of letters like the ones I wrote to you at the end of that year, a perfectly unrestrained symmetry of words smoldering with love.

In one heartbeat I’ve addressed thirty envelopes. These are the letters I will write to you this month. I want to concentrate the way I did at the end of last year and write you letters again.

I envy you. I envy that you are loved completely by a beautiful soul, and that this love can still grow, still adapt, that it can recover from catastrophe, still vital and capable of giving birth to new things.

Please don’t feel burdened by this. It’s just that I still have so much to give; I want to give you everything there is to give. The sweet juice has yet to be completely squeezed from the fruit. All the hurt has not yet severed the cord I’ve tied to your body, so I’ve returned to your side to sing for you. You nearly severed it, but a gossamer filament is still suspended there. I don’t know when you’ll make the final, lethal cut, but before that happens I will cling to you and sing with all my heart.