The Last Lover

10. REAGAN’S DIFFICULTIES

“A day without Ida is like a nightmare and like a liberation.” This was what Reagan thought. He stood in the shallow water of the bay, watching the gray-green seawater, experiencing the enchantment of the sea’s fullness and power. The year before, was it merely because she couldn’t shed her cumbersome water-logged garments that a girl had drowned? He climbed to the shore while speculating on this question.

Fifty-year-old Reagan had achieved great success in his business. His rubber tree plantation made a continuous profit, which allowed him to buy up the large farms at its periphery and convert them into rubber tree plantations. Over the past few years, Reagan had gradually withdrawn from strenuous daily tasks and handed over work matters to a capable manager. The manager, Jin Xia, whose nationality was unknown, was an excellent administrator. He ran all Reagan’s business affairs with clarity, without noise or bother, and, what was even more important, as regards the farm’s expansion his every move was with an eye to the future. One night Reagan dreamt that this Eastern man had mastered the secret of turning stones into gold. He held a rod with a head inlaid with gems, and when he pointed to the piece of land where he stood, that land became Reagan’s. Reagan stared for a long time into his narrow, cunning eyes. What he saw in them was not desire itself, but rather a changing form of absence.

“Jin Xia, do you still think Ida will come back?” Reagan was sitting by the sea when he asked this.

“She hasn’t really left. You should know that it’s only a question of perspective.”

Jin Xia’s long, thin body was like a shadow rising from the sea. Reagan always needed to study his speech before he could understand it, and had first taken a liking to him because of this. Jin Xia and his family lived in an old house halfway up a mountain. It was the residence Jin Xia had chosen. He and his wife and their two sons always came and went alone. They didn’t establish close relationships with the workers. At times the loneliness in the bones of this family even made Reagan afraid. He worried that they had thoughts of conspiring to undermine him. But later he would reprove himself for these misgivings. In fact, Jin Xia was his only confidant on the farm. He had poured out to him all of what weighed on his mind. At such times, Jin Xia smoked his cigarettes and seldom interrupted. Reagan wasn’t sure whether he wanted to listen, but he certainly took it all in. For example, just now Reagan had mentioned Ida, and Jin Xia had produced a singular opinion on the spot.

“Will your sons be going to school in the north this fall?” Reagan asked.

“Yes, but they hate to leave the farm!”

“Oh?”

“The two of them made up their minds never to leave the farm in the future.” Jin Xia expelled a mouthful of smoke, his tone growing boastful.

The mountain slope cut through the Chinese banana trees. Jin Xia’s gray wooden house was set underneath a large banyan tree. The banyan was like a fierce-faced guardian spirit. Its enormous roots hung in the air, giving it a domineering aspect. Reagan knew that termites had attacked the wooden house, and it was already an endangered building. But Jin Xia’s family didn’t mind. Perhaps they didn’t have long-term plans. Jin Xia’s wife had a name that was pleasant to hear, a name Reagan had difficulty pronouncing. At present she was putting quilts out to dry in the sun, probably because the house was too damp inside. She nodded haughtily toward Reagan, which served as a greeting.

“Living on the mountainside, you must know what happens on the farm as if you held it in the palm of your hand,” Reagan said, jokingly.

“The truth of the situation is that we have become outsiders.” Jin Xia struck his hand on the table uneasily. “Is it because our family lacks ambition?”

Reagan heard a muffled howl from the inner room and jumped up in surprise.

“You can’t be raising a wolf!” He felt his knees shaking.

“Yes,” Jin Xia said, his expression fleeting, “my sons are raising it. They felt that life here was too superficial, they wanted to do something more stimulating. And then they brought back this little wolf. Don’t be nervous, the wolf’s chained up tightly. Sometimes I’m anxious about their hobby, too. After all, I am their father. Luckily they’ll be going to the north soon. .”

He raised a palm toward the sky as if wanting to make some gesture, but he couldn’t make the gesture with his hand, which stayed awkwardly in the air. He looked more like a bachelor than a father.

Reagan turned to enter the inner room, but at the same time the two children rushed out, blocking him outside. He glanced in and saw the window covered by a black cloth. Nothing inside the room could be seen.

“Uncle, there’s nothing inside!” they said in unison.

The two boys were dressed shabbily and their faces were dirty, completely out of keeping for a well-off family. Reagan observed that they had cunning expressions in their eyes, like their father. At this moment the children’s mother entered. She whispered a few words to the children, who then both looked at Reagan with resentful eyes. It seemed they were interrogating him, asking why he’d come here to upset their lives.

Jin Xia still sat at the table as if nothing had happened.

“These children have no upbringing,” he said, although he seemed to be showing off, not apologizing.

When the wind blew, the wooden walls of the building creaked, zhi ya, so much so that one could sense the building tilting in the wind. Jin Xia shut his eyes slightly, intoxicated by this ominous sound. His short, dark wife seemed not to have heard anything.

The wolf didn’t make a sound, but the two children in the inner room began crying.

“They’ve injured the wolf, they are distressed, too, so they are crying. The little devils!” Jin Xia told Reagan.

But Reagan thought the sound of their crying had something not quite right inside it. Just how it wasn’t right, he couldn’t think of at the moment. Their cries weren’t the cries of small children. Rather, they seemed to contain deliberate and shrewd hinting, transmitting to someone some information difficult to speak aloud. To whom? Reagan didn’t understand the information the sound carried, and felt vexed. He looked at Jin Xia, at his happy, sated appearance. He was at the table arranging six small glasses into a plum flower shape. His long, thin, cigarette-stained fingers revealed his somber inner heart.

“Is your home always. . always as lively as this?” Reagan couldn’t think of a suitable description.

“Yes, I’m very sorry.”

But he still did not appear sorry. This false affectation infuriated Reagan. But was it really affectation? Or maybe he simply had no affectations? His wife was bringing the quilts back in from drying in the sun. She said she feared it would rain. She made trip after trip, mechanically, appearing calm. The two children’s strange crying couldn’t vex her at all.

“At first, I didn’t expect to set up house here. But once I saw this mountain, this banyan, this building, I didn’t want to leave. It’s hard to change your nature. There’s something I want to ask you about, Mr. Reagan. Can you tell me how much area the farm covers? For the past few days I’ve been completely confused by this question.”

“It’s the same for me, Jin Xia. Sometimes I feel our land is limitless; sometimes I also feel that not even the place where I’m standing exists. Should we continue buying land?”

When the sound of the wind stopped, Reagan and Jin Xia walked outside and stood under the banyan tree. As they looked down from the mountainside, their field of vision widened. Over the farm was a stretch of gleaming sunshine. Why had Jin Xia’s wife said it would rain? Reagan’s gaze swept over the rubber trees, arriving at the lake. The land made him feel stifled. He had the impulse to flee — maybe he could leave, as Ida had. Maybe Jin Xia lived here in order to draw back a ways from Reagan’s farm? But why did he so intently help Reagan enlarge his landholdings? Reagan could clearly remember how Jin Xia’s eyes had flashed with a greedy light when he was discussing business. He had no way of knowing the nature of Jin Xia’s delight. Judging from his spare lifestyle, he didn’t care about money. Turning around, Reagan looked back at the house, that enormous termite nest, and an ominous premonition sprang up in his heart. Was it possible he was encountering his life’s evil star? This taciturn man, whose nationality was unknown, and his strange family who lived in this wooden house built by a hunter many years ago, did they use the quiet pose of their lifestyle to influence him? Or was it to negate his existence? What was the meaning of the woman’s arrogance, coming as it did from the depths of her heart?

The two boys stood at the main door watching him, raising small fists against him. Reagan thought that if he went inside again they might rush at him and strike. His gaze moved in the direction of his own home, but how strange, he couldn’t see the building. The spot was bare, except for two electric poles. After a while, his yellow dog ran from somewhere into his field of vision.

“From here you can’t see your house,” Jin Xia said.

Reagan loathed the tone of his voice. He thought that this man had mastered everything of his and was using Reagan’s own influence to eliminate him step by step. His house, everything in the house, had surely been eliminated, because looking toward the farm from this mountainside he could see no people and no buildings.

Depressed, he took his leave of Jin Xia and went down the mountain. He walked far away and turned back to look. He could still see Jin Xia standing under the banyan tree smoking his cigarette. Was he keeping an eye on Reagan? It seemed likely that, in that negating field of vision, Reagan’s own form was also erased. At the thought of being thus “erased” himself, a wave of fear rushed through Reagan’s heart. What kind of person was Jin Xia? Yesterday, Reagan was still telling himself to seize the opportunity, to continue enlarging the farm’s holdings. “Take as much as can be taken,” he’d said almost shamelessly. In fact, he’d also agreed to a large business deal in preparation for extending the rubber tree plantation to the north, near the sea. But seeing Jin Xia, Reagan somehow couldn’t feel reassured. Jin Xia’s tall, slender frame, his peculiar intonation, the gray shirt he wore were altogether too insubstantial. On many occasions Reagan wanted to ask about his nationality. But he only got out half of the question before drawing it back because he thought it was inappropriate. How could he inquire about the origins of someone like Jin Xia?

“Hi, Mr. Reagan!”

It was that girl, the one whose older sister had drowned in the bay. He meant at first to escape after a few perfunctory sentences, but discovered that the small girl looked at him avidly, as though she had something to ask of him. She was also a worker on the farm and wore the heavy work clothes, the uniform manufactured by Vincent, which had undergone improvements. Now there were almost no buttons on the garments and taking them off was extremely easy. Reagan remembered that on the day her sister was buried she had cried until her eyes bled.

“Is there something wrong, child?” he asked affably.

“My sister is an expert swimmer,” she said, watching his eyes.

“Oh?” Reagan was suddenly dizzy.

“Everything on this farm goes to extremes, so does she. Our parents are rich, they’ve separated, they live in villas in the north. Your farm is truly beautiful, Mr. Reagan, too beautiful. My sister says so, too.”

From her way of speaking it seemed her sister was still alive.

Reagan tried his best to think of her sister’s face, but it was always vague. A young lady from a wealthy family who came to the farm to be a worker, and then, one day, wearing thick work clothes, swam into the open water. “Swam into the open water,” this metaphor was too apt. The girl had stood there waiting for him so that she could talk about her sister. But why did she want to discuss her? Was she thinking of her, or sighing with grief? Or perhaps it was envy? Hadn’t someone said that the nature of everyone who came here changed? This girl, too, had changed her nature. Disregarding everything, she lived in her imagination. It appeared that her sister’s death held a kind of enticement for her. Now she probably thought her weeping at the time had been unnecessary.

“Mr. Reagan, I must go. I still want to ask you a question. Do you always stand outside when you’re pondering things?”

“Can my thoughts be seen?” He was at a loss.

“In your shadow, the grass turns yellow. But you don’t know it!” She ran away.

Reagan thought, gratified, that his farm wasn’t a stretch of emptiness. Of course, he could not wholly comprehend what Jin Xia’s intentions were. Even if nothing could be seen when he looked over here from under the banyan tree, once he came down the mountain, he ran into this girl, a girl who lived in the dream of the farm. Her suffering and that of her sister was concrete, it existed, and that dream-chasing sister had carelessly given up her life. To start with he had invited Jin Xia to the farm because of his working spirit. Or, you could say, because of his fanaticism for buying land. But Jin Xia didn’t want to occupy land himself, and the impoverished life he led was difficult to make sense of. Reagan couldn’t say what the fanaticism of his bamboo-like body aimed at. Reagan asked himself, Am I pondering things? The movement of his thoughts was like the turning of a millstone; it was no more than taking the outward appearance of things that happened and reviewing them once again. At root, it didn’t count as real pondering.

Yesterday some people had returned from Vincent’s city and told him they’d seen Ida. During the long, long night, he and Ida had dug their own deep caves, each listening to the sounds made by the other. “Ida, Ida!” he said. A chunk of earth fell down, striking his head. His movements became frenzied. Ida’s movements were methodical, making Reagan think of her composure in escaping from the landslide. He heard her digging reach underneath his feet. And yet Ida was concealing herself at a bar in the city. Even as his farm grew larger, it still could not reach the city where she was.

“Mr. Reagan, Mr. Reagan, the sun is already cruel, come hide in the shade under the trees.”

It was Ali.

“You look so depressed, you should come over and sit with me.”

He walked over mechanically and sat next to her. The cook patted his knee with her rough hand. He turned around, and made a smiling face.

“So many small snakes crawled into the house. It made me think, I’m afraid the day Ida will return is not far off.”

Reagan was unsure what type of person Ali really was, but he realized she wasn’t someone who kept a quiet spirit or checked her passions. Although Ali’s age was advanced, when she sat in the kitchen, thinking deeply, no slight stirring on the farm could escape those aged eyes.

“Ali, do you think I should continue buying land?”

“Of course you should. It can make your heart peaceful, can’t it? Jin Xia understands your ideas best, you can trust him to the last.”

“The last?”

“The last, you, I, we’ll both see it. This morning, for instance, that old lizard came into the building again. Every time he does, a new round of desire rises.”

Martin brought the jeep over. Reagan saw the young man’s entire body, top to bottom, covered in his own clothes. Even the leather shoes on his feet were Reagan’s. How had he grown so impudent? There was another person in the car, the younger sister of the girl who’d drowned. She was dressed up in gaudy clothes.

“Going home, Mr. Reagan?”

“No, I have no home,” he unhappily answered.

“Sit in the dining room with the mad dancing snakes, and you can think things over, same as before.”

The girl’s mocking voice came from inside the car. She turned her head away and didn’t look at Reagan.

“Elaine’s so silly.” Ali’s deep voice was filled with intimations of disapproval.

Ali stood up from the stone bench by degrees. Reagan also stood and got into the car with her. The four of them drove home together.

As Reagan walked up the stairs to his house, a stranger’s unfamiliar voice sounded by his ear:

“Manila, Manila, the floodwaters cover the fields. .”

Reagan felt his legs go soft and he almost sat down on the stairs. He looked in all directions, but there were no unknown people there. Elaine and Martin stood to the side, nervously attentive to him. Evidently they had heard the voice. There was Ali, too, who was measuring him with her eyes.

“Probably some stranger inside the house?” He feigned relaxation, and stretched himself.

“What strangers could be here? Even the snakes are familiar visitors. Some people you think are unfamiliar because you don’t often actually think of them. But they cannot forget you,” Ali said as she went into the kitchen.

When Reagan went upstairs, Martin and Elaine closely tailed him. He walked into the bedroom, and the pair followed him in. Moreover, they immediately took possession of his bed, becoming heedlessly intimate. Reagan was just about to leave when they stopped moving. Martin said:

“Mr. Reagan, you’re not used to looking at young people like us?”

“Please leave, both of you.” He squeezed out these words between his teeth.

Martin got up from the bed with an aggrieved look, mumbling, “I don’t understand you, Mr. Reagan, why do you wrap yourself up so tightly?” Elaine thumped furiously on the mattress and threw a pillow to the ground, then she jumped down from the bed and stepped on it.

As they left, Martin said directly to Reagan’s face: “Even though you’re my boss, I still want to tell you, Mr. Jin Xia has lost all hope in you.”

Reagan walked to the French windows. In his field of vision, Jin Xia’s lodging became a small gray speck in the distance while the farm looked like it had caught fire in the golden sunlight. He picked up the pillow from the floor, put it on the bed, and lay down with his head emptied of thought. His gaze rested on the open door of a cabinet — that bastard Martin had taken almost all the clothes and personal things from inside. Was Martin even his employee, or was he his master? Many years earlier, when Reagan discovered the young fellow taking his clothes, he’d initially been excited. At the time he thought he would influence this youth, but judging from circumstances today it was exactly the opposite. The two of them were challenging him to battle. The sister of the girl who’d died to follow a dream bared the vulgar desire of her body to him, and at the same time she disdained his lack of upbringing. He had seen Martin sitting in his dining room downstairs, his body wrapped in four or five small snakes. The snakes were not encircling him from outside, but had gotten into his body, entering from one side and exiting from another. The youth’s countenance was like that of a man in a coma. After Reagan entered the dining room, the small snakes left Martin’s body and slid away, following the base of the wall. Reagan was greatly surprised. He wanted Ali to guard against this youth.

“Don’t take him to heart,” Ali said. “He drifted here from an impoverished border region. The place where he was born had no material comforts. Everyone worked like convicts. Now he has an advantageous position. But people like him can’t change the bearing of poverty.”

Imagining life in that poverty-stricken border region, imagining this young fellow who, when necessary, let poisonous snakes enter his body, Reagan felt a kind of respect well up in his heart. It was for this reason that later, when Martin time and again took his clothes, Reagan did not object.

Was it possible that the shadowlike Jin Xia could have expectations of him? Jin Xia worked madly, but not to leave his specious mark on the face of the earth. Reagan thought of the collapsing “termite nest” where he lodged, and felt that Jin Xia would stand fast.

One afternoon, after Ida had left, Jin Xia quietly accompanied him to the lake, where they sat for a long time.

“Jin Xia, how large is our farm now?”

“A hundred and sixty square kilometers.”

“I hadn’t imagined it was so large.”

“Taken all together, it’s very large. That’s why Ida left. She wants an honest man, not a shadowy landowner like you.”

“You speak directly. The past few years I feel I’ve become more rarified. Look at that patch of reedy ground ahead. Ida and I made love there. A mouth opened up in the ground, crowds of water snakes poured out and wound around our bodies. My neck was looped tightly, I couldn’t feel the slightest pleasure.”

As Reagan spoke the lake water began to ripple, and he realized the embankment beneath him was also shaking slightly. He couldn’t help being a little worried. But when he stealthily sized up Jin Xia, he saw him writing in a little notebook, his head lowered.

“What are you writing?”

“I’m calculating the surface area of the newly bought farms.”

“You haven’t been listening?”

“I’ve been listening. You often talk about this.”

“But this is the first time I’m telling it to you!” Reagan was disappointed.

“That’s not right, how could it be the first time? You’ve forgotten. I like Ida, too. But without her, what can you do? You are fortunate to have her. I knew early on that Ida was the master of this farm.”

Jin Xia was always able to say the things Reagan most wanted to hear. Reagan called his words “a spirit-enchanting potion.” If it weren’t for Jin Xia, Reagan didn’t know how he could have suffered through such days.

“But she didn’t expect to stay here.”

“Oh, you’re mistaken, Mr. Reagan, you always make this mistake. You forget again, this is Ida, who escaped from the landslide.”

The afternoon sun shone on the lake water, shining on the reeds. An occasional water bird flew past with a sharp cry. The place now seemed incomparably ancient. In Reagan’s mind a fresh memory appeared. In this memory a young Jin Xia carried Reagan’s little brother, running in the wind. His long, thin legs seemed to rise up into the air. He was wearing a strange black-and-white gown, and looked both Chinese and Japanese. Reagan almost let the question leave his mouth: “Jin Xia, where are you really from?” But what he actually asked was: “So how large is the farm?”

“The calculations differ a good deal, Mr. Reagan, sometimes by a multiple. However, this is normal. Surveys of the surface area can’t be depended on, don’t you agree?”

Reagan grew conscious of the reality that his farm could not be measured. He thought Jin Xia might also be conscious of this, so why would he still go to the trouble of taking measurements? One time Reagan woke from a dream and walked into the woods, where he saw his workers, all wearing straw hats, sitting in the moonlight like statues. He passed by these unmoving figures and immediately sensed the plane attained in their minds, one that took the rubber tree forest as its starting point, a limitlessly extending open sky. He rudely called out: “Ida.” Immediately someone answered him, but the voice answering was a man’s. Watching the groups of people like wooden statues, Reagan was afraid. He stepped back to walk out of the woods, wanting to break away from the feeling of stagnation they gave him. But the rubber tree forest was possessed. Even if he turned in a familiar direction, he could not reach the edge of the woods. On that occasion he exhausted himself to the point of collapse.

“Mr. Reagan, as I see it, as the farm grows larger, our hearts grow peaceful.”

Jin Xia stood up, saying he needed to go manage a piece of work. Reagan saw that as he took a branch in the road, two fellows scurried out from the woods and propelled him away. Reagan wanted to shout but couldn’t because he realized the scene taking place before his eyes was false. After a while he gradually recovered a sense of reality. He noticed a stain on his coat. He’d worn this gray-green garment for a long time. Ever since Martin had swept away his clothing, he’d had nothing else to change into. It all seemed so absurd. As the farm grew larger, the work of measuring had more reason to permanently continue. This was Jin Xia’s scheme.

There were small birds — he didn’t know their name — hidden in the clump of reeds. The number of them surprised him. As he passed the spot, small objects like locusts sprang from the grass into the air and flew high up into the clouds. He opened his mouth, making stupid “ah! ah!” sounds. He looked back at the ground, where everywhere was a mass of crows. Clearly the crows had just flown in from somewhere else. Where? From the city? He’d heard someone say that in the city the balcony of every house was packed full with crows, wet dripping crows.

Someone was calling him. It was Ali, panting as she came over. She said he might be drawn into a lawsuit. She’d heard that Jin Xia used improper methods to manage the farm.

“What does he mean to do?” Ali said, as if she were in the dark.

But Reagan saw that she wasn’t really nervous. It seemed she was still looking forward to a certain event. He thought that this was a common mentality of people on the farm, they were all looking forward to a certain event.

“I don’t entirely believe this. Is it a ruse, is he hurting himself to win us over?” Reagan said.

“Yes, is it a ruse?” Ali repeated his words excitedly, a light shining in her eyes.

“Jin Xia is a strange, unpredictable man.”

When Reagan opened the curtains and looked outside, a woman appeared in his field of vision. This happened two days in succession. She was Jin Xia’s wife. On the farm, covered everywhere with wind-blown sand, rumors flew in the air. Already several people had come to tell him rumors about a public sale. Already Jin Xia had avoided Reagan for days. Now his wife was digging in the soil next to the road. What was she digging up? Ali entered.

“She’s already dug a lot of deep pits beside the road. She says she wants to examine the composition of the soil. This woman is a sorceress. I’m not afraid of her husband, I’m only afraid of her. Why would she examine the composition of the soil? She wants to dig down to the roots of things.”

Reagan was surprised and turned around to question her, but Ali had already gone, taking his dirty clothes with her. Ali’s talk made his spine run cold. For many years he’d seen his life as a perfect whole. This outlook was now thoroughly destroyed. Over there, halfway up a mountain, two pairs of eagle eyes observed the farm’s fragile existence. Once they showed their strength, everything would return to a savage era. Despite the distance, the sound of the woman’s digging in the earth still carried to where Reagan stood. She seemed to be digging at the foundation of his house. Even the glass in the windows trembled slightly. Reagan suddenly understood why when he went to her home she acted as if she despised him. Perhaps in her eyes, he was only an idiot. What did she see within layer on layer of soil? Her manner of grabbing tight, of not letting go, left Reagan with an indistinct feeling of hopelessness. He said to himself, over and over, “Ida, Ida, we’re through.”

This family was laying out schemes far in advance. Reagan’s thoughts couldn’t capture what they had planned. His heart leapt madly in his chest, as the hoe she raised resentfully seemed filled with hate, and stroke by stroke dug into his heart. He heard someone outside his door say, “Manila, Manila, waves from the sea flow into the distance.” He ran over to open the door. Ali was standing outside.

“Is something wrong?” he asked her stiffly.

“I was worried that you might need something, so I’ve been waiting here.” Her face seemed to redden, but it might have been the light playing a trick.

“Just now someone was talking outside the door.”

“Impossible, I’m the only one here. Look, am I interfering too much? If she keeps digging like this, won’t she control every last bit of the farm? After all, we are old residents, we should be respected.”

“Why would you concern yourself with what that lunatic does?” he said, ill-temperedly. He closed the door in her face, irritated.

As for Jin Xia, who was addicted to buying land, and his “lunatic,” perhaps they were playing at a two-person comedy. Just now Ali had said “old residents”—was this sarcasm? Reagan wasn’t a true old resident. There was the forest keeper, and before the forest keeper, there were some people — he basically didn’t know anything about them — but only they were the true old residents. Over so many years, Reagan had never run across people like that. To his surprise, he realized that by analyzing the soil’s composition the farm’s history could be known. It was a little like mythology. Why did this family want to seize the farm and hold it? Then there was Ali, who seemed to understand their situation as if she held it in the palm of her hand. Last night someone had walked into his house, someone a bit like the black-clad Eastern woman. But “she” was a young man walking over to face him. He held a round porcelain dish. He’d abruptly smashed the dish to the ground, where it broke into splinters, but made no sound whatsoever. Without knowing how, Reagan formed a kind of attachment to this black-clad youth. He wanted to pour out his feelings to him. The youth turned his white bony face toward Reagan, kicked at the smashed pieces of porcelain with his toes, and did not answer his questions. Reagan understood, he would never get an answer. Looking at this young man, an unusual desire rose in his heart, even more intense than his desire for Ida. This one time, Reagan terrified himself. The young man went outside. He followed but failed to catch him, because the young man strode like the wind. Recalling this event now, Reagan thought, for no reason, that it was actually Jin Xia pretending to be a youth. Although he had looked like an Eastern man, the impression he gave was also of someone of unclear nationality. But during the day, when he faced Jin Xia, Reagan didn’t feel the slightest degree of desire. Jin Xia was certainly not the sort of person to make people desire him, if not to say, he was the sort of person to extinguish desire.

“Look, she’s already found what she wanted. Her pose is so graceful.”

Ali had come in again from somewhere without his noticing. They could see Jin Xia’s wife shouldering her hoe and receding into the distance.

“How did you know this woman wanted something? You don’t know her.”

“In my hometown, there are many people like this. Once I saw this family I was sure they were the same kind of people. They absorb a few things from your body, and they pour a few things into your body. I’m speaking of Jin Xia’s family. Mr. Reagan, from the day they arrived, the farm has been changing, but you haven’t detected it.”

As Ali was speaking her eyes looked to the ground. Reagan thought that surely she knew many more things. There was nothing hidden from this pair of aged eyes. He even suspected Ida’s leaving had something to do with this loyal, faithful old servant. But why did he suspect her loyalty?

With these many contradictions rushing toward him, Reagan made up his mind to flow along with the current.

He stood in the garden wearing pajamas, because the driver Martin had taken all his coats. He turned his face to the autumn sun, figuring that it wasn’t bad to be a child, to be unconcerned, and let this 160-square-kilometer farm return to its age of savagery. He didn’t want to be concerned with the future any more. A few workers walked past. Were they going to work? No, they weren’t going to work, they were playing a part. They each harbored their own ancient story, drifting along on his farm, searching for something.

In a spot where the grass and leaves reflected the light, underneath a palm tree, he saw his mother. His mother’s appearance didn’t show her age and there was no expression on her face. She held knitting in her hand, as if she were making wool socks. The sun shone on her body — wasn’t she too warm? He didn’t dare call out because the sight before his eyes was too fleeting. But his mother raised her head, looking at him inquiringly, as if to say, “Why are you wearing pajamas outside, little boy?”

His bare feet tread on a small snake. It was ice cold.

“Martin, Martin, you’re always wearing my clothes. What are you thinking?”

“Me? I don’t think about anything, I’m unable to think, so I wear your clothes. When I walk outside, I become another Mr. Reagan, and the knots in my heart disappear. I’m a rootless person, I always need to pull on a coat.”

Martin made an exaggerated gesture. Elaine stood to one side covering the smile on her face.

“I think,” she directed her words to Reagan. “I think Martin is like my sister. Someday he will swim into the sea wearing your clothes. . Mr. Reagan, have you noticed that everyone on the farm looks the same? Only people harboring the same thoughts come here.”

“There are two crows in the pockets of my hunting gear.” Martin shrugged, and began to whistle.

Reagan followed the young man with his eyes as he walked, bouncing, into the distance. He was overwhelmed with many thoughts and feelings. The sunlight seemed to press down on his body, thousands of jin heavy. He lowered his head and saw the bottom hem of his pajamas torn and bloodstains on his bare feet. Before dawn, he’d heard the sound of the earth rising and falling, a sha sha sha rustling, like the movements of an enormous python. He’d thought then that the land was traveling away from him, that the crows would not wheel over his head. But now he saw Martin wearing his hunting clothes, saw him embracing the younger sister of the girl who had drowned, and the land came back under his feet. Elaine was not ordinary, either. Sometimes she loafed in front of his house, her eyes staring straight ahead. If he stepped in front of her to say hello, she would jump away, guardedly, reproaching him in a loud voice: “Who are you?”

She had said, “My sister gave me her place, but I’m not grateful for it.”

A train’s steam whistle sounded in the distance, he heard it clearly. Perhaps Ida had returned long ago, and was hiding somewhere. The longing in Reagan’s heart was for the black-clad young man. That different impulse was hard to forget — could he be an incarnation of Ida? The discrepancy in sex didn’t amount to anything. There was a photograph of a young man clipped in Reagan’s sole photo album upstairs. His mother had said it was his older brother, but he had never met this black-clad man.