Li Ang - The Lost Garden

Those places were usually splendidly decorated, spacious, high-rise units; it could be in the up-and-coming Eastern District or along declining Zhongshan North Road, even in an old residential area like Wanhua. It took her a while to realize that when he called to tell her where to meet, it depended on where he was having a meeting or doing something work related. He would choose the closest spot to avoid the increasingly heavy traffic in the city and save travel time for himself.

As a man who had made his fortune in real estate, Lin appeared to have already scouted out spots separated by equal distances and reserved them as his pleasure dens in a city he had helped to build. Even after they were married, Yinghong still was not sure how many such units he had reserved in these buildings.

But no matter which district or which floor of a new building it was, he would quickly pick a place where he’d come for daytime sex before dashing off to another meeting or business meal, or he would fall asleep as soon as it was over. It was only at night that he would come to her place, and not always for sex. Just to be able to fall asleep with you in my arms, he whispered to her, with a bashful look.

He arrived at different times. Sometimes at three or four in the morning, after leaving a banquet he had hosted at some drinking establishment. He’d be so drunk he’d slur his words as he told her how he missed her, even though he’d been surrounded by dozens of barmaids who wanted to spend the night with him for a little extra cash.

She was only dimly aware that cool autumn had been replaced by early winter. As the island’s economy experienced exponential growth through international trade, streets in the biggest city, Taipei, were expanded for ten lanes of traffic. In the process of making the city green, a tree called “sudden golden shower” was widely planted along these streets. A typical subtropical tree, it was not tall, with compound leaves that were thin and tender, creating a lovely sea of greenery. With the arrival of early winter, the leaves remained on the trees, while strings of yellow flowers burst onto the tips of the branches. The flowers were light yellow at first, but the cooler the weather got, the more the flowers bloomed, and more golden yellow they turned, until the tree was virtually covered in bright yellow petals. The clusters of flowers looked like a sudden shower of golden raindrops, giving the illusion that the city of nouveaux riches was paved in gold.

In a rapidly developing city that could boast the timely planting of “sudden golden showers,” Yinghong would travel in the Rolls Royce, which was steady as in a dream, on her way to a tryst with Lin Xigeng in a unit located in a high rise somewhere in the city. She would look out the window as the car glided past densely planted sudden golden showers, bathed in the glow of warm winter sunshine. Everything was so brilliantly lit it seemed unreal.

It was also during the seasonal change from cool autumn to cold winter that an unprecedented shift in Taiwan’s real estate market took place. Business owners, using Japan’s economic development as an example, estimated that an increase in real estate value would occur every five to seven years, and assumed that the same was about to happen in Taiwan. How big a jump and for how long, no one could say for sure, considering how Taiwan’s economy had just experienced its first prodigious growth.

Lin’s real estate business was also entering a new era. He worked day and night, gathering nearly every one of Taipei’s competent brokers to talk about possible sales or joint developments with landowners. Accompanying these brokers, who chewed betel nut and wore plastic sandals, he would go to restaurants with bar girls and get so drunk he could barely stand. These people could call to wake him up in the dead of the night or early morning if it was about a piece of beautiful land.

They talked about land as if it were a living thing; in particular, they sounded like they were discussing women, not only using similar terms, but also insinuating something erotic.

“Square and proper, such a pretty piece.”

“Skinny and slender, but with a good style.”

“With land like this, you have to ‘possess’ it right away.”

Lin needed large amounts of cash to buy land and build on it. So he took bank loan officers to bars, where they flirted with the girls and followed the custom of taking them out. Of course, construction company owners who wanted his business, building-material salesmen who wanted to sell him material, and brokerages who wanted to promote the units also frequently invited him to banquets. Everyone did their best to flatter and fawn over him, and they went only to bars or restaurants with girls.

Then Yinghong began to notice the difference in bed.

At first, when she gave in to him after she could no longer put him off, he would spend time kissing and touching to arouse her, which was not new to her, though it still gave her indescribable pleasure. His foreplay, like his professional strokes of genius, frequently brought her unexpected stimulation and increased her sexual appetite.

But when they really got down to business, his actual performance paled in comparison with foreplay, which could be controlled by his wit, experience, and competence. At moments like this, he would look frustrated but would tell her, in his usual boastful tone, that when he was younger, he often had sex with several women in a single night. Sometimes the women were all there together; sometimes one would arrive right after another. There were times when he did not sleep a wink; he had just started his business, and could last nearly an hour with no problem at all. And now?

“Maybe I overdid it when I was young,” he said, dejected, as he continued to please her in his own ways.

He did not want sex with her too often, and, unlike Teddy, he could not keep at it for very long, but Yinghong never felt unfulfilled. Her love for him made his every touch feel like an electric shock; every contact had an effect like fireworks or a lightning strike. Even she was surprised at her ability to adapt, but she was so madly in love that she rarely reflected upon the differences between the two men.

As cool autumn turned into cold winter, endless rain started up again in Taipei, as usual. At its worst, it could rain day and night for weeks on end. It rarely stopped throughout the winter, and sometimes even lasted into late spring, followed by the “plum rains.” These were usually just drizzles, but they went on and on, the raindrops forming a gray curtain to shroud the Taipei Basin. Compared with stirring earthquakes and typhoons, which could level the island, the rain had an everlasting, stubborn quality, a kind of entanglement that would end only in death.

With continuous rain adding to the humidity, the island seemed to be wet everywhere and everything took on a mist. No one noticed how the flowers disappeared from “sudden golden showers” along the roadsides; like their name, they vanished after a sudden shower, leaving behind a verdant canopy that looked even greener in the rain.

I almost immediately sensed the change in him. Now he was always in a hurry and seemed perfunctory, no longer taking time to please me. He still kissed and touched me, but he looked hurried. He would quickly get what he wanted and fall asleep as soon as it was over. Obviously, he too noticed the difference, for he looked abashed and defended himself in a somewhat uncertain tone:

“The doctor told me, three minutes. If I can do it more than three minutes, it’s not premature ejaculation.”

He repeated that to reassure himself, but after a few times he stopped bothering to explain.