The Last Lover

11. VINCENT VISITS THE GAMBLING CITY

In a room in the tall high-rise Vincent imagined the Chinese woman telling him that he should visit the gambling city to figure out a few things about his wife, Lisa. The Chinese woman sat with her back to him. She hadn’t opened her mouth, but Vincent heard her thoughts. They came toward him as language, and so he formed this statement from her present thought.

Lisa had forgotten her birthplace entirely. She spoke incoherently of a grassy lawn. Retired grandmothers sit on the lawn in wicker chairs all in a row. Some read the papers, some nap. In the distance, a long snake slinks along in the deep grass. A silver-haired woman catches sight of the snake. She doesn’t get up. Instead she covers her face with the paper and lies down in her chair.

“But you haven’t spoken of the gambling city’s most important feature,” Vincent interrupted.

“The slot machines?” Lisa’s eyebrows drew together in a line, betraying her ferocity. “I’ve seen many of them in that valley of death. If you go there, you’ll see the blood-red sunsets. I cannot go with you because if I go to that place I won’t be able to return. Poor Vincent, I’m uneasy about letting you go there.”

But Vincent had his mind on the horse-racing tracks. He didn’t take Lisa’s prophecy to heart. Hadn’t she come from that place? And hadn’t she lived outside it for decades? Vincent had always envied his wife’s origins. He thought of them as a legend that was true. He had never told her this, and if she heard him say as much she would be furious. Vincent had only passed by the gambling city once on a train, and had never stayed there. Every night he saw its rose-colored sky in his dreams. The domes of the gambling city appeared so dubious under this sky, so untrue. On a nearby mountainside, the bells of a cathedral tolled. There were no people in his dreams. He felt that the activity in the casinos had nothing to do with people. When he’d first known Lisa, her body’s active, inexhaustible desire astonished him. He’d had so much happiness from it. For many years he’d wanted to explore the source of her vitality, but she kept her mouth closed like a stoppered bottle.

“I only remember that grass lawn. It was a home for the elderly,” Lisa said, unbending. “The other things were like floating clouds, they weren’t important. The selectivity of my memory is very strong.”

“So you also think the casinos are empty?”

“Yes. Although they are full of people, in reality they are empty.”

Vincent and Lisa’s talk led to nothing. In fact, this situation was predictable. Vincent’s company was expanding as before. His luck was so good it was hard to believe. He brought in several aides to develop two subsidiary companies. He asked Lisa whether he should retire. Lisa said people like him couldn’t retire, so he should work up to the end. He thought about what she said and felt it to be correct. She was always right, as if she were his road sign. When she said, “Although they are full of people, in reality they are empty,” Vincent felt as though he wanted to cry.

Recently, Lisa had undergone a transformation. She drifted around in dirty clothes, as if she had lost her awareness of the people surrounding her. But at night she didn’t go outside any more. She slept heavily. One night at midnight, Vincent came home from a bar out on the street and walked into the bedroom. In the dark he felt the air in the room buzzing, weng weng, hurried and nervous, like an air-raid siren. He sat on the bed, collected himself, and clasped one of Lisa’s hands as she slept. The situation didn’t change. He said to himself, “Lisa, Lisa, you are capable of so much.” In the dark Lisa suddenly spoke to him distinctly, “Vincent, after this don’t cross over that little bridge. You have fallen from the bridge into the stream. The river water is shallow, shallow. Your head rests on a rock sticking out of the water, only your clothes are wet.” Vincent turned on the light and discovered that Lisa was still dreaming. She no longer needed to move her body to seek those remote stories. Now she lived inside them, day and night. But he, as before, rose during the night and searched wildly until he wore himself out. Woman, woman, what kind of miracle was she? Had her birth in the gambling city determined everything about her? Sometimes Vincent saw the relationship between them as a race between competitors. This way of thinking even influenced his heart. Recently a stifling sensation grew more evident. But he already understood that no matter how hard he ran, he couldn’t catch up to his wife asleep at home. He was no more than a shadow in the light of a streetlamp; she was a rock within history. Yet she was reluctant to part from him! What for? She didn’t ask about the Rose Clothing Company’s affairs, but Vincent had always felt that the business’s prosperity bore a direct relation to her undertaking in the earth’s deep core. Vincent wanted to comprehend how her desire was brought into being at that core, but his effort was futile.

“Vincent, are you still excavating that gully? There are more and more little fish, little shrimp.”

Once she woke Lisa said this to Vincent, her face filled with the fatigue of her nighttime life. He could see that her rest was painful. He understood that the most active part of her life was now separated from him.

“This unforeseen gain from the stream gives me temporary satisfaction. Darling, I love you.”

“I love you, too, Vincent. But I can’t search on the earth’s surface with you. There are problems emerging in my life. Now I’m on a drilling crew. Don’t you think so?” Her expression was contented. “Have you heard the story of Maria’s long march? She is also on a long march. How strange!”

Vincent had nothing to say. The noise of the air-raid siren disappeared from the bedroom, but his heart still leapt with a peng peng throbbing sound. He’d heard Joe’s insinuating tone when he spoke of Maria’s long march. In his memory it was a kind of sweet punishment since Joe, always stiff in conversation, grew red-faced and excited when he talked about it. Similarly, Vincent could not figure out what Maria’s activity was. But his wife could communicate with Maria, without their actually meeting. Everything was changing. Even this morning, he could no longer enjoy that strange territory with Lisa through the intercourse of their bodies.

The whistle of the train entering the station woke Vincent. He walked out onto the platform with no plan in mind. He left the station alone and discovered himself in a small rural town. The town had only one road, thinly dotted on both sides with shops and the residents’ houses. As it was early in the morning, not a single person was out on the street. He thought, This is what the gambling city is like. Where were the casinos? He turned his gaze toward the distant stone mountains beyond the small town and saw low-hanging clouds covering their summits. He stood for a good while until a black woman, a street cleaner, appeared. The woman looked just like the street cleaner in his own city. She waved her broom, sweeping little by little over in his direction. The closer she came, the more Vincent felt that she was just like the beautiful street cleaner he’d seen so often before. He simply stared. Finally, she swept up right to his feet.

When her broom touched Vincent’s leather shoes, he almost jumped.

“Welcome to the gambling city, Grandfather.” The young woman smiled charmingly, showing her appealing teeth.

“Do you recognize me?”

“I’ve seen you on my sister’s street. I knew you would come here.”

“Why?”

“Because everyone comes to the gambling city. This road is covered with traveler’s footprints. They’ve even worn down the granite pavement. Our place here is beautiful, isn’t it? At dusk, it’s like the whole city is filled with rose blooms. . They say a white elephant will come to the city soon.”

There weren’t even many trees in the crude little town. He couldn’t see the scene she spoke of, but the young woman’s description of it enchanted him. What sort of migratory bird was she? He inquired about a hotel. She pointed out a stone building and said that was one, but she urged him not to stay there. She said that once he entered he would turn into a real gambler. After this, she suddenly became upset. Because talking delayed her work, she lowered her head to sweep the ground and didn’t acknowledge Vincent again.

Vincent walked toward the stone building. First he rang the old-fashioned doorbell. It rang for a long time without anyone answering. Then he experimentally pushed the door, without thinking it would actually open. Inside was an empty parlor with a few sofas. Vincent went over and sat down on a sofa, waiting for someone to come. He waited a long time, yet no one came. Was it really a hotel?

Later someone finally came, but it turned out to be the same street cleaner. She had probably swept the entire road.

“Is this your home?” Vincent asked her, perplexed.

“No, this is my hotel, Grandfather. I’ll take you to your room.”

She led him to the rooms below ground. Vincent was a little unhappy, but she said, “In the gambling city, we have to have rooms underground, because of the daily earthquakes.”

They followed the staircase down turn after turn in a spiral. The room he was going to appeared to be buried deep underground.

She turned her head and spoke vivaciously: “There will never be earthquakes down here. This has been proven. I am named Joyner, too. I am my mother’s obedient daughter, and so is my older sister. I never thought you could love this place. All the people who come here come out of love. How else could it be? Or else why would they come?”

Joyner led Vincent into a large room. It was more like a bedroom at home than a hotel suite. The room was messy and smelled of cigarettes. It looked like a room an elderly bachelor might live in. Joyner gave him the key and told him that whenever there was an emergency, he should stay inside the room and not move around. She suddenly turned melancholy, adding to what she’d already said: “If it were any worse it would still only be suffocation; people here don’t have bodily suffering.” She went out in a hurry, shutting the door. A tong tong tong thumping sound followed as she ran upstairs.

Vincent felt that he was entering a murderous trap. He stuck his head outside to look around and saw three tightly shut doors in the hallway. He imagined what was going on behind the doors and suddenly felt afraid. He quickly closed the door, latched it from inside, and then went to shower.

When he’d finished his shower and came out of the bathroom, someone else was sitting in the room. The man had his back to him. Vincent could not see his face, only his brawny neck.

“I’m your neighbor,” he said, “Don’t be concerned. You don’t need to be concerned here.”

“How did you get in?”

He smiled slightly, then answered, “The locks are all for show, there aren’t any rooms that can be locked. You must have thought that only a few people lived in this small town. No, the gamblers all live underground. We drink spring water. Listen, it’s the sound of the spring.”

What Vincent heard was the roar of floodwater. The sound was coming from the bathroom. He instinctively ran into the other room, thinking in confusion that he should shut off a faucet, but there was nothing wrong in the bathroom. When he came out, the man was nowhere to be seen and the door was locked shut, as though he’d never been there.

In exhaustion, Vincent lay down on the bed. He knew he wasn’t in a deep sleep, but rather in a lethargic doze, because he was worried that some emergency would occur. There was a brief moment when he heard the whole floor of people in the underground rooms snoring. Altogether there were eight people — that is to say, in the other three rooms there were eight tenants. Vincent thought the gamblers must be truly happy to be sleeping so soundly. Where were the casinos? He struggled with his drowsy state, wanting to pick out through the thick black smoke the street where Lisa had lived, and wanting to find the dwarf. He walked, all the while asking in a loud voice, “Who? Who?” He thought there was bound to be someone who would come out and answer. But no one did.

When he woke up he saw Joyner, who looked miserable, sitting on the sofa and worrying over her own thoughts.

“Where is the dwarf?” Vincent asked.

“Are you asking about my husband? He never stays at home, he comes and goes between your city and my city, never resting. Grandfather, have you gotten used to the earthquakes?”

“I haven’t felt any earthquakes. There’s only a lot of smoke.”

“That’s an earthquake. You must be anxious? Earthquakes make people anxious. I sit here, thinking about your problems, then I also think of my sister’s situation, and I become more and more pessimistic.”

The expression in her eyes made her look as if she were not of this world.

“Grandfather, you know, my sister and I are both street cleaners. This is the only work we can do. But we love our work! Why? Because when we stand in the street nothing can escape our eyes. You, for example. You got off the train, walked over, and who did you run into? It could only be me. I brought you to my hotel, and you are staying here. Of course this isn’t quite the same as your original travel plans. But now it’s the only thing you can do — stay here underground. You could also go up to the surface, only that wouldn’t result in anything. You already know that it’s a deserted city. This is the privilege of a city’s street cleaner!”

Vincent watched her recover her vivacity, speaking as she gestured with her hands, as if she would jump up from the sofa. He thought, This girl is too lonely.

In the hallway someone was calling her name. She stood up, excited, and walked away, saying, “Surely it’s that old Tom. They can’t organize their lives without me!”

For a while Vincent stood in the room, and then he decided to go to the surface.

As he climbed the stairs he couldn’t open his eyes for the smog and smoke. On every floor he heard the sound of the tenants quarreling behind doors. When he finally reached the street again, he had a feeling of being released from the dark into the sunlight. He thought of Joyner’s always calling him Grandfather. He was suspicious. Could he have gotten so old?

It was nearly noon. There were still no people in the town. In the distance the stone mountains were illuminated by the sun, with an unspeakably bleak air. Vincent reflected that his journey was not at all like what he’d envisaged beforehand. Not only had he not found any answers, his thoughts were even more constricted. He also suspected he had come to the wrong place. Or maybe this wasn’t the gambling city where Lisa was born, but a smaller town near the gambling city? But the spot had been marked clearly on the map at home. A few decades ago Lisa had told him this was the place. It couldn’t be a mistake. Besides, when he was at the train station, hadn’t he seen that copper rooster beside the rails? This rooster was the most important sign, Lisa said. It symbolized the way the gamblers cherished time.

Vincent made a circuit of the street and finally heard a stirring. It was the sound of shattering glass from the window of a gray two-story building. A puff of thick smoke emerged. He thought of the warning about earthquakes and grew nervous. Yet no one ran out from the building. Joyner came over, her hair disheveled, with an angry expression.

“Don’t you see, the people there are slowly dying! How can you be so unconcerned?”

A gust of wind swept past, mixed with thick smoke. Vincent sensed that something was about to go wrong.

“Joyner, what do you think I should do? Should I go back home? I can’t understand anything here. I don’t know the history of the gambling city. It’s all Lisa’s fault. .”

He became incoherent. But Joyner sniggered, making his skin crawl.

“Joyner, I’m leaving.”

“No, you can’t leave!” She glared, her eyes wide.

“Why not? I’ll just catch the train, I know where the station is.”

“You can’t leave,” she said again, her tone relaxing. “Because, because of the earthquakes.”

“But I can leave. Look, there’s no effect at all.”

“Fine, go, but you could die. When you get there you’ll be done for.”

“How do you know?”

“You’re right, I don’t know. It’s just a feeling I have.”

Joyner sighed and sat down on a stone bench at the side of the road, blankly staring at the thick smoke pouring from the broken windows. At this, Vincent felt again that he couldn’t leave, at least not for a bit. He said to himself, “Lisa. Oh, Lisa, how come I can’t understand even a little of what is in your heart?” Lisa, who’d been lovely like a flower in her youth, had grown up in this deathly quiet place. Maybe she was born deep underground! Had the city always been like this, or was it made this way by the people here? If it was made this way, what had it been like before?

“Joyner, why are you the only person who comes to the surface? Is everyone in the city underground?”

“It’s because of the earthquakes. You still don’t understand?”

“The earthquakes can’t harm people if they come to the surface, so why do they hide underground?”

“Oh, you don’t get it. You really don’t understand anything. Hasn’t Lisa told you? It is the principle of the gambling city. It will never change. Listen, they’re crying in fear.”

Joyner stirred herself, saying she had to work. Actually, the road was quite clean. There was no one to sully it. She lifted her broom and started to sweep. Vincent understood, she wasn’t sweeping to keep things clean, she was there to receive visitors. Look at her expectant appearance, as if she’s waiting for her boyfriend to appear.

“Joyner, who are you waiting for?”

“For anyone. Wasn’t I waiting for you? Your arrival was my holiday.”

Vincent sensed that she wasn’t happy at his arrival. Her look was always heavy with care. As he and Joyner were speaking, a group of men came out of the two-story building with smoke pouring from it, forty- or fifty-year-old men in their underwear, looking like they hadn’t woken up yet. Joyner flew toward them, raising her broom to strike, rebuking them as she drove them back into the building. At first they grumbled, then fearing her wild, violent look, they obediently went back inside.

Joyner’s face ran with sweat. She spoke to Vincent, as if embarrassed: “Gamblers are always discontent.”

“All these people are in your care?”

“Yes, my youth is wasted on things like this. It’s not worth it, is it? Follow this road to the end, then turn right and you will see Lisa’s home.”

“Lisa’s home! Didn’t her parents die a long time ago?” Vincent was frightened.

“That was only an analogy, it’s how people here look at things. Go, they are waiting for you.”

He hadn’t anticipated that Lisa’s parents would be extremely wealthy. Although her elderly father and mother were seventy or eighty years old, their minds were clear and they looked quite spirited. The large, extravagantly decorated house had a number of servants. At Vincent’s arrival, the old couple was guarded. They kept asking at first when he would be leaving, as though they took him to be a threat. Afterward, when they heard Vincent explain that this was only a short-term visit, they finally relaxed, and accordingly took no interest in him. They would let Vincent do what he liked, and said he could stay at their home as long as he wanted to stay. Then, not waiting for Vincent’s reply, they lay down on the thick cushions of their respective rocking chairs, talking with an old parrot in a birdcage hanging under the chandelier. Vincent couldn’t understand their conversation. It seemed they were debating the question of putting power lines on the stone mountains. It also seemed they were analyzing methods of tracking down criminals on the run. No matter what the old couple said, the old parrot always said, “Very good! Very good! A work of genius! A work of genius!” Vincent suspected that these words of praise were not the only things the ugly bird could say.

Vincent grew tired of listening. He also found a rocking chair to lie down in. There were many of these rocking chairs in the living room. He had just settled into one when he heard the manservant who had been standing at the door say in reproach: “This man doesn’t have the status to lie there.” Vincent found this amusing. A hurried burst from a buzzer rang out in the main hall. The elderly couple got up from their rocking chairs and went to an interior door, then thought of something and stopped again. Vincent’s father-in-law turned back and said to him, “We need to go to the rooms underground. We don’t know if we’ll be able to come back up once we get there. You should do as you please, have fun. We hadn’t imagined you’d come, it’s one of Lisa’s tricks.”

Vincent wanted to tell them he would be leaving soon, but the old couple didn’t want to listen. They hurried each other to the basement rooms. After they left, the servant, who before this had stood unmoving by the door, became animated. He ran over and hung two blankets over the old couple’s rocking chairs, then took down the parrot’s cage and stuffed it into the empty stove that sat in the fireplace. Vincent heard the old parrot shouting abuse: “Villain! Stuck-up fiend!” When he shut the door to the stove, the bird couldn’t be heard. Vincent smelled a strong, acrid tobacco. He turned and saw smoke pouring from the stairway leading to the basement entrance. The servant spoke from behind him:

“Where do you think you can run off to?”

“Are you talking about me?”

“Who else would I be talking about!”

“Why do you dislike me?”

“Because you are a cold-blooded man, never to come here in so many years.”

“But I didn’t know there was anyone here who wanted me to come. Lisa told me her whole family was dead. The gambling city she described was not like this place, either. What’s gone wrong?”

“There’s something wrong with you, of course. You fantasize. You can’t see the essence of things.”

The servant stood there haughtily, and Vincent saw his feet treading on a snake. It was the kind of small striped snake he’d seen at Reagan’s farm. The snake was struggling to reach up and bite his ankles. The servant pulled a dagger from his pants pocket, took off the sheath, looked it up and down, inspecting the edge, then bent over and cut off the snake’s head with a single stroke. The snake, its head and body in two places, wasn’t dead. The head and the body seemed to have an invisible connection between them, and wriggled a retreat in unison to the door. In the wink of an eye they were out of sight. Vincent looked back to the ground and saw that there weren’t even bloodstains left behind.

In the living room the smoke grew thicker. Vincent thought the servant would prevent him from leaving, so he stood without moving in his former place. The servant stooped to light the stove and immediately the sound of cursing flew out. Vincent took advantage of the servant’s inattention to walk out. But the servant did not come after him. What did it mean when he’d said, “Where do you think you can run off to?”

Joyner stood by the road with a serious look. She still awaited visitors, not knowing the direction from which they would come. The street was already swept clean. Vincent looked in her direction, and gazing at this lonely girl, he felt an inexplicable sadness. He thought, perhaps, many years ago, his wife, Lisa, had occupied this girl’s place. In fact, the first time he met Lisa he could see the shadows on her high-colored cheeks. But he would never have thought that she possessed such an implacable heart. Over the decades of married life a few of her secrets were revealed, but if he hadn’t come to her hometown, how much would he have understood about her? Even though he’d come here, how many things about her did he still not understand?

Vincent raised his head and looked off into the distance. The encircling stone mountains spat out thick smoke like live volcanoes. The gray smoke gradually fluttered toward the small town. But it was no volcanic eruption, nor did it feel like an earthquake. Looking around at the nearby buildings, he saw that some oozed smoke, some did not, and none of the people inside came out. Vincent remembered the scene from when he had climbed out of Joyner’s below-ground rooms, thinking to himself, The people had gotten used to breathing within heavy smoke long ago. If he didn’t leave, would the thick smoke occupy every open space? Regardless, he would be unable to get used to it.

Joyner stood coolly by the road, holding her broom. She was looking at the smoke too, her gaze clear, her features pretty. Most likely every traveler who came here was profoundly fascinated by her.

Vincent spoke without making a sound: “Joyner, Joyner, I love you.” But he did not feel this love as a physical love. Why, considering her youth, full of freshness, was he not sexually excited by her? Surely there was something separating them. He worshipfully watched the girl, his mind repeating the question: twenty-eight years ago, how had he and Lisa come to love each other at first sight?

Joyner walked over to him, forcefully grasped his hand, and said, “I must go. What I’m saying is, soon I’ll need to go below again. But Grandfather, what will you do? Look at this smoke, even the trains have stopped. I’ll go underneath, no travelers will be coming, either on the train or by foot. Lisa’s parents love you so much, why don’t you go to their home?”

“Really? They love me? Why don’t I sense it?”

“Because you’ve become unfeeling. Listen, no one here would let an outsider into the house because it’s too dangerous. You are one of their family, so they let you stay at their home. For years they’ve been chattering away, saying, Supposing you came, they would save your life. So go to their home.”

Joyner disappeared into the gray building. In Vincent’s eyes, the small town became a genuinely bleak, desolate place, and that smoke, already slowly assembled, was now descending. Perhaps he could only obey what Joyner said. Perhaps at his wife’s parents’ house he wouldn’t be in danger.

Against his will, Vincent stepped again through the door of the large house.

“This isn’t a hotel, where you can come and go as you please,” the servant said. He stood in his place as before.

Smoke still oozed from the mouth of the stairs. Yet the smoke didn’t gush toward him, but rather took a turn and exited through an open window, as if something were guiding it. In a panic Vincent saw that outside there were rolling billows of smoke everywhere. Visibility was not even two or three meters. Because the doors and windows were shut tight, there was still no smoke where he and the manservant stood. The servant’s voice sounded in his ears:

“Only the people whose desire for these earthquakes is strong can enjoy them.”

That was to say, Lisa’s parents were underground “enjoying,” Joyner and her tenants were also “enjoying” this. In that place with no sun, an air-thinned place, flooded with stifling smoke. .

He lay face up in a reclining chair, watching the magnificent, stately chandelier extend down from the ceiling. Near his ear someone was mocking him, saying he was a miser. Vincent sat up and looked around. Who was speaking?

“It’s me, I’m Lisa’s uncle!” The voice came from the open stove.

The parrot reached its head out. Evil words flowed from its mouth. It said Vincent didn’t have a single redeeming quality. Vincent felt suspicious: why didn’t it fly out? Even if it had lost its ability to fly it still could run away, and no one would block it. At the moment the servant wasn’t even looking this way, he was facing the mirror to pluck the whiskers on his lower jaw with a metal clip! But the parrot didn’t emerge, he only cursed like a gossiping woman.

“If you are Lisa’s uncle, then we are related. Why are you cursing at me?” Vincent spoke with sincerity. He wanted to see the bird leave the fireplace.

But the parrot ducked inside and cursed even more ferociously, its wings fanning the charcoal dust inside so it poured from the stove door. Vincent didn’t know why its most frequent imprecation was “Exploiting usurer!”

Vincent was just going over to the stove door to ask what this meant when he saw the servant race over, throw a large piece of burning firewood into the stove, and shut the door. Through the glass of the door he could see the parrot extinguishing the flames with its wings. The smoke inside obscured everything and he only heard its flapping, pu tong, pu tong. He could also faintly make out a shriek like an infant’s.

Vincent’s body broke out in goose bumps. He turned to face the servant’s evil smile.

“Is it dead?”

“It can’t die. It is a long-life parrot. It was here ages ago, when playing the slot machines was popular.”

“Where are the slot machines now?

“They are all buried between the walls of the underground rooms. Those props aren’t necessary any more. I won’t go around in circles with you, I’ll tell you everything: I am your rival in love.”

“Lisa?”

“Yes. What a marvelous woman, burning between your legs.”

Vincent furrowed his brow in disgust, which his adversary swiftly detected.

“You came here, but what use is it?” He stuck out his chin proudly. “You will never reach her heart because you don’t understand the kind of woman she is. Look, she has such worthy parents! Even our parrot looks down on you.”

“But I’ve already come here, and now I should leave?”

“Leave, this is the morality of people like you: you don’t stay anywhere long, only in hotels, you have no home. Poor Lisa, she must regret you.”

“I think Lisa has forgotten you.” Vincent pricked him with this sentence.

“Maybe. I’ve heard that people who leave here lose their memories.”

The servant was silent, thinking of his own problems. The parrot came to life again, walking back and forth in the smoke cloud with an apprehensive look.

Vincent walked over and opened the door of the stove. The parrot ran out all at once and jumped onto his shoulder. Now not only did it cease cursing, it also appeared attached to him, tightly holding his shoulder. Vincent sat in a reclining chair, and it jumped onto his knee. It looked serenely at him with its somewhat bleary old eyes. Vincent suddenly felt the bird’s charm, but he couldn’t say what sort of charm it was. He saw the servant looking himself over in the mirror. His mood seemed low, and he kept making grimaces in the mirror as if he were trying to adjust his mood.

“Vincent, Lisa has forgotten all about you.” The parrot imitated his voice.

“Are you lonely, Uncle?”

“Is Vincent lonely? If he’s lonely he should go practice his usury.”

Vincent listened to what it said and laughed out loud. At this the parrot laughed, too. The sound of the parrot’s laugh stopped Vincent’s short. It was like the laugh of a ghost in an ancient tomb. The parrot laughed and laughed, its wings held straight up, as if it were possessed. Vincent was going to push it down off his knee when the servant turned toward him, as though he could see into Vincent’s thoughts, with a cold, derisive expression; but the parrot suddenly shut its mouth.

“Why does it always say I’m a usurer?” Vincent asked the servant.

“Because in the gambling city we all have usury in our bones. Look at yourself, whoever makes you unhappy you push away. We look down on this kind of behavior.”

When he said this, the parrot also stared at Vincent, and its bleary eyes suddenly shot out a cold light. It seemed to see through to Vincent’s organs and its claws broke through Vincent’s pants, catching his flesh. Vincent felt he must say something right away, and what he said was “Joyner.”

The parrot was satisfied. It loosed its claws, jumped down onto the floor, and flew from the floor up onto the servant’s shoulder.

“Joyner is the gatekeeper to the gambling city. After you go back from here, even if you lose your memory completely, you will still remember how she looked resting on her broom, standing in a cloud of smoke,” the servant said.

“I wish for that, too.” Vincent agreed from his heart.

He looked out at the window. The smoke outside was already dispersing. The sky broke through with a color pleasing to the eyes and the heart, like the colors of the frigid morning of a clear day, but even more beautiful than this, a beauty that didn’t seem real. The gloom in Vincent’s heart quietly receded. He walked to the stairway beyond the door and heard a nightingale singing. How could there be a nightingale in this sunny sky? In the garden opposite the house, a red apple fell from a tree laden with fruit. The apple didn’t fall directly, but rather gradually drifted in the air before gently falling on the grass, where it lay like a miracle, giving off a red light.

“In fact, it’s the middle of the night,” the servant said lightly. He had also come outside. “Listen, your train is here.”

Vincent heard the sound of a train entering the station.

“So I need to hurry? But I still want to see Lisa’s parents.”

“Don’t worry, the train is stopped at the station waiting for you to make up your mind. But I don’t think you need to see Lisa’s parents. They are still underground, dreaming happy dreams. No need to deprive them of the happiness of their old age. Go see Joyner.”

Vincent thought it was certainly out of envy that the servant didn’t want him to see his father- and mother-in-law. However, now he wanted to see Joyner even more. He imagined the scene of himself and the young woman standing under that beautiful apple tree “spilling words from their hearts,” and he grew a little impatient. And so he took his leave of the servant and the parrot on the servant’s shoulder, and walked to Joyner’s hotel. In the distance the stone mountains had stopped belching smoke and looked solemn in appearance. Before, Lisa had told him, the gambling city was small, only as big as a stone in a slingshot, but the residents had numbered several hundred thousand. The street was so crowded with pedestrians they could all smell each other’s skin. In the casinos people were soaked in sweat. What led to the population’s disappearance and their collective evacuation? What hidden nucleus was everything he saw above-ground and underground revealing to him?

“Joyner, I love you.”

“Vincent, I love you, too. Ten years ago I fell in love with you. On that day you stood at the main gate of the Rose Clothing Company. My mother and I were shopping for clothes in the store opposite, and I took your measure carefully through the glass windows.”

“Nonsense, how old were you then?”

“I was as old then as I am now. You still haven’t realized, time stagnates here. So when I saw you this time, your aged appearance surprised me. That’s why I called you Grandfather.”

They spilled words from their hearts to each other. But the place they were standing was not under the apple tree. It was in a small room in the building where the cleaning tools were kept. The air in the room wasn’t good, with the smoke from the basement seeping through wide cracks in the doors. Vincent choked and coughed. He couldn’t open his eyes. When Joyner gently gripped his hand, an unfamiliar excitement rushed from his heart, a kind of feeling he’d never experienced with a woman’s body, one that eliminated his lust for sex. Was it because Joyner called him Grandfather that his lust for her changed in this way? No, that wasn’t it. The problem was with Joyner’s body. From the start, Vincent had felt that this beautiful woman had nothing directly to do with sex. But how could he not love a woman like her? She was so beautiful and so affectionate.

“Joyner, I don’t want to leave you, but I can’t stand the smoke clouds anymore, I can’t breathe. What should I do? I think if I leave your side now my life will become a stretch of darkness.”

“Oh, no, it won’t be like that. Go, Grandfather. If you leave you can always remember me. Go to where Lisa is, that is your normal life. But my life is also a normal life, don’t you think? The gamblers always lead happy lives. Production and consumption proceed underground, and for many, many years we have been content. Your palms are so hot. That time when I first saw you, I assumed your palms would be hot. You’re a warm-hearted man — how else could my younger sister Lisa fall in love with you?”

Vincent felt dizzy, that he had to go outside or he would fall to the floor. He wanted Joyner to come with him, but she was determined to stay inside the darkened room. He could only go out by himself. He walked into the living room, where there was no smoke, and had a fit of violent coughing. It seemed as though he would cough his organs inside out. When nausea overwhelmed him, nothing remained of his passion. He understood: he could not love within the poisonous smoke. This was why the parrot called him a usurer. How was this underground production and consumption mechanism operated? “Without entering the tiger’s den, you can’t catch the tiger’s cub”—and since he couldn’t breathe within the poisonous smoke, he had no chance of answering this question. Perhaps Lisa had agreed to his coming here in order to make him see where his own limitations lay.

He left Joyner’s hotel, reached the garden at the center of the street, and sat down. Various species of bird drifted in the pure air. The birds weren’t flying in a straight line or spreading open their wings, but were simply floating in the air, as if drifting with a tide, in a curvilinear motion. “The birds of the gambling city,” Vincent sighed. He thought of the damp crows that dropped onto the steps of his house. Just at this moment the train whistle sounded, as if pressing him on. He suddenly remembered he’d left his luggage at Joyner’s hotel, but he decided not to go back. It was better to return home at once.

At the end of the platform he could see the back of a woman wearing a skirt. She looked much like Lisa. He walked over to her, the woman turned around, and it really was Lisa. She was holding a leather suitcase in her hand.

“So you’ve come, too,” Vincent said resentfully.

“Yes, I was just at my parents’ house, in the underground rooms. Are you disappointed by my hometown?”

“No, I love this place.”

“Then let’s go to the underground rooms together.”

“No, I’m not going back to the underground rooms, let’s go back to our home. When night comes, I will search again, with you, and maybe we’ll find the real casinos, the kind with slot machines.”

A dove floated in front of them, followed immediately by a second one, a third, a fourth, peacefully moving past.

“I didn’t think there’d be doves here,” Vincent mumbled to himself.

“When I was little, the travelers who came from outside called this the land of doves. At that time, the entire sky was filled with doves flying back and forth in the rose-colored evening clouds. It’s a pity you haven’t seen this spectacle.”

“So are doves the image of the gambling city’s soul?”

“They probably are. At midnight, a dove sits on the shoulder of every person who comes out of a casino.”

Long after the train started moving, Vincent and Lisa watched the doves outside the rail cars. Vincent couldn’t figure out whether he’d stayed at the gambling city for one day or three because the sun had never set. Judging by his senses, it felt as though more than a day had passed. Yet in this elongated day he had only eaten one meal in Joyner’s underground rooms. Now he understood why the slot machines were hidden in the walls and no longer played — in this region where nothing set apart the day and the night, the stimulation of the slot machines was of no use.

Lisa stared in a daze at the doves outside. Her heart was steeped in a recollection of happiness. Vincent had entered her past life at last. This illustrated the depth of love in their marriage. But her past was not limited to one kind of life, and this was something Vincent probably wasn’t aware of. She had spoken to him of herself before, but what she spoke of was another of her lives. It wasn’t fabricated. But now Vincent might believe that she had invented everything she’d told him before. Thinking this over, she grew faintly uneasy again. She leaned on Vincent’s shoulder, holding his hand, and gently asked:

“Vincent?”

“Oh, Lisa! How could someone like you grow old? I know the mystery of why you are always young — a nightingale sings in your heart. My heart has no nightingale, so I cannot enter those underground rooms. Is that right? What your parrot said was right, I really am a shameless usurer.”

Lisa was reassured. It appeared Vincent didn’t intend to investigate her at all. He still had enough adaptability. He was so adaptable that Lisa still worried about not being able to predict his next step. A long time ago she had jokingly called him “mercury.” The impulse like a riddle in the depths of his heart was, to her, truly like mercury. There would always be a day when, because of this ungraspable poison, she would lose her life.

“Vincent?”

“Lisa, where did the people in the train all go to?”

“There wasn’t anyone in the compartment. This train came specially to meet us. Look, the doves disappeared. Outside it’s really night. Vincent, your whole body is cold.”

“I feel like I’m spinning.”

In his dizziness Vincent held Lisa’s hand tightly, but what he held was only a hand. The owner of the hand was gradually moving away from him, and the hand gradually grew icy. In his drowsy state he sensed someone enter the train car and say to Lisa, “Snow is falling outside. This weather is an anomaly.” Lisa gave an earsplitting laugh, clearly fake, then she and the person left together. Someone said in his ear, “Mister, where are you going?” “The Rose Clothing Company.” He struggled to name this, the only place he could think of, his voice thin like a mosquito’s whine. “Oh, so you are the usurer!” The man laughed an ear-piercing laugh, like Lisa’s. Then he sat beside him. After a long while Vincent’s eyes finally recovered their sight. He looked to the right and discovered there was actually no one there, only a cap placed on the seat. Maybe the man had gone to the toilet?

He stood to go find Lisa, walking from one train car to another. He felt as if the train he rode were passing through the dark toward the dawn. The carriages he walked through were all empty. Where was Lisa hiding? Finally he reached the tail end of the train, and Lisa was there at the back, curled up asleep in the last row of seats. When Vincent stepped in front of her, she opened her tired eyes in the faint lamplight. Vincent thought her eyes were beautiful! She made a sign for Vincent to draw near her, and he squatted down.

“That year I took the train away from the gambling city, it was the third day after my mother died. The gambling debt she owed was too great. She died of terror.”

“The old woman in that large house wasn’t your mother?”

“Of course she was. Even I have died many times.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You’ll get used to this sort of thing. Can you hear that? Outside it really is snowing. The places we’re passing are all covered in snow, the same as that year.”

Vincent could hear only the sound of the wheels of the train. He wondered what kind of hearing Lisa possessed. She shut her eyes as if she were going back to sleep. The underground rooms of her hometown seemed to have cost her almost all her energy. Now he was with her on this train, and the train connected the past and the future. What was the future like? Did the dwarf who came to their house in the middle of the night know the answer to this question? Vincent remembered how he and the dwarf had gotten drunk in the kitchen. The two of them climbed from the attic onto the roof. As they sat on the roof, a flock of bats brushed past their cheeks. It was then that the dwarf told him about the gambling city encircled by unbroken stone mountains and its rose-red sky. He said to Vincent, “It’s a truly peaceful scene. No one would think of leaving that place. The stone mountains are only a picture: no one can really pass over them. The train connecting to the outside was something that came later. The train passes through long tunnels before reaching the city. The dark deep tunnels are like a passageway to death.”

At first he wanted to ask Lisa why she had left her hometown. But then he remembered Lisa had explained this before, so he didn’t ask. She wasn’t the only person to leave. Wasn’t there also the dwarf? The people of the gambling city had probably all left for some shared reason.

At daybreak the train conductor finally appeared. He was a fat man who yawned constantly.

“I dreamt of a large snowfall. It’s absurd, how could there be snow now?”

He seemed to solicit the couple’s opinion. Vincent smelled alcohol on him.

“When you live in a lonely town like this, how can you not depend on drinking to pass the time?” He kept speaking, as if uncomfortable, and as if he wanted to spill words from his heart toward them. He invited them to his conductor’s office to sit for a while, because in half an hour the train would reach the station. He didn’t want his guests to lack an impression of his train.

When he opened the door of his “office,” Vincent and Lisa were surprised. The tiny room was just one meter square, with a small student desk attached to a metal chair. If anyone sat there for a long time it would be painful, let alone someone as fat as the conductor, who would have trouble squeezing into the seat. They didn’t understand. Why was the conductor’s office designed like this when it was such a spacious train?

The conductor seemed to have guessed their thoughts. He raised one leg, squeezed behind the desk, and sat down in an extremely painful posture, his stomach tightly propped on the desk drawer. He asked Vincent to give him the liquor bottle. A half-bottle of brandy sat on a separate shelf. The conductor greedily emptied it, drinking straight from the bottle. He threw it away, bent over the desk, and went to sleep. Lisa said to Vincent: “The train can indeed be called a lonely town, but why did he want us to see how he dreamed? He’s a strange man.”

“It’s possible this is how he lives his life. We happened to become the landscape of his world.”

When he said these words, Lisa stared at him for a moment. He couldn’t say whether she approved of what he said or disagreed. The train had already entered the station. They surveyed the conductor and decided he had no intention of waking. Although he looked uncomfortable leaning there, he certainly slept soundly.

That day Vincent and Lisa sat in the garden for a long time. The sun was scorching. The scent of the green grass made them drowsy. He told Lisa that there were a few things he was now unsure of. He couldn’t tell whether he should go to work. Maybe he should become a train conductor, or something like that? But he wouldn’t like that journeying kind of life, and even more he didn’t like loneliness. Yet he felt his career was now a yoke around his neck, because there were things in this world that still held interest for him, things he was unable to pursue. He chattered on. What he talked about seemed to have been suppressed for decades. The more he spoke the more direct his gaze grew, and the more he felt himself near but not touching on reality; but still he couldn’t stop.

Lisa let him talk at first, looking absentminded. Her large brown eyes watching him appeared so remote it was as if he were a passing stranger.

“Vincent, when I picked brake ferns in the gully, where were you hiding?” she mumbled.

Vincent was surprised and shut his mouth.

Lisa made several odd gestures with her hands, appearing nervous. Vincent sensed that she was communicating with someone. With whom? There was not a single person in the vicinity.

“Vincent, I want to leave,” she spoke again, her face turned elsewhere. “Every day I go to the same places. But why do you complain? I think you are complaining.”

Yet she didn’t move. She still sat there, staring into space. Later on she finally stood, circled around the stone table, and placed her hands on Vincent’s shoulders, saying, “I’ve finally remembered. It isn’t Maria going on the long march at night, it’s me. Look how forgetful I am. You don’t need to change jobs. It won’t affect your pursuing those other things.”

“I remember your going on the long march at night, too, but you said it was Maria!”

“The delusion probably emerged when I was in her rose garden. Now, when I’m speaking with you in this garden, I’m already gone, I’ve left. You see my shadow receding? Along with the cook’s.”

Vincent reached out his arms to embrace Lisa. The woman sat in his embrace as calmly as a kitten. He heard a strange noise. He listened carefully and made out the sound of galloping horse’s hooves, with the sound of people yelling pressed in between.

“Darling, where do you think you can run off to?” he asked, kissing her ear.

“I am changing my habit of going on journeys at night.” She stifled a laugh.

“Lisa, you’re so light. Is this you? I saw the gambling city under the sun. It looked like it was coming toward us. Lisa, is this you?”

“It’s me, darling. You can’t forget the city, because it will always be in the depths of your heart.”

They were talking in this mad way, and at the doorway of their house Joe, his features strained, was looking for Vincent. He had an emergency to report to him. The cook told Joe that the house’s owner and his wife had already returned and were both in the garden. Joe walked into a large garden so overgrown even the path was obscured, but he didn’t see the two of them. He saw doves. The white breed of doves, hidden in the thick grass. They were everywhere, making a lovely cooing. Joe was released from his anxiety. He felt no need to be nervous, and thought that spending an afternoon here wouldn’t be too bad. A few nights before he’d passed through a street-corner garden and seen Vincent sitting on a bench drinking, worries written all over his face. He had come here to find Vincent and discuss a problem from work, but he’d already forgotten what he’d wanted to talk about. He vaguely remembered that it had something to do with an improvement to the style of the clothing. Now he was afraid of meeting Vincent, because he couldn’t say what had brought him here. Joe squatted in the grass, listening carefully to the doves’ coos. It was a few days since he had seen his boss. Joe wondered whether he himself still hoped to leave. If he hoped to leave the clothing company, why was he still laboring body and soul at the company’s work? It had already developed into a giant corporation. Opportunities increased, and Joe’s salary grew larger. Maria had renewed her habit of buying jewelry. In the midst of his pressing business at work, Joe continued his frequent reading. And so sometimes, when talking about work, he used literary language. Encountering this, his customers often nodded their heads to show complete understanding. What kind of people were his customers? He heard Vincent and Lisa’s voices. They were walking past the other side of the peach tree beside him.

“How could you breathe in the underground rooms? I can’t think of how. Could you teach me?” Vincent said.

“Vincent, dear, it is called summoning demons. I don’t want to fill our everyday life with earthquakes.”

Through the branches of the peach tree Joe saw Lisa’s gorgeous skirt. The couple was walking toward the house. The cooing of the doves, the blue sky, and the green trees made one reluctant to leave the place. Joe sat down, taking out a novel from his briefcase. A train appeared in the chapters he read. One of the train’s cars had no people in it, only two shadows showing on the glass window. The train conductor, a fat old man, came over to explain: “This is a newly implemented experiment, to see whether this special journey is possible. The two people who founded the Rose Clothing Company in the city belong to an elite class of people.” Joe didn’t like the tone of this description: it was oily and shifty. What elite class of people? Vincent wasn’t that kind of man. Joe suddenly realized, How could things taking place in reality be written in the book? He looked again at the book’s cover, where there was a picture of a bee along with the title in italics: The Heroic Long March. At this moment two real bees fell onto the page of the book. They were both comatose, one a worker bee and the other a drone, hopelessly moving their legs. Was Vincent passing information to him? He cautiously moved the bees onto a blade of grass, thinking of everything Lisa had said about the earthquakes. Yesterday there had been a real earthquake in his square. The statue in the center had toppled over a little at a time. Spring water rushed from the well. With a nameless impulse he ran to the well, wanting to see his own face. But he couldn’t lean into it because he was drenched by a small waterfall, and he couldn’t keep his footing because of the vibrations from every direction.

The couple floated in the air, walking as they talked, then fluttered into the large house. The door quietly shut behind them, then quietly opened again. The cook, a woman, put her head out. Joe stood up, clapping the dust from his clothes, and walked toward the cook. He wasn’t sure what he could do to appear natural.

“I remember the cook they hired before was a man. If his employer lay drunk on the ground, the cook would carry him inside.” Once he opened his mouth, this is what Joe said.

The cook didn’t say a word. She looked at him briefly, then let him enter the building.

He had just sat down on the sofa in the spacious hall when husband and wife came to greet him.

Although they welcomed him warmly, Joe sensed that their thoughts weren’t inside the house. He could tell this from their drifting expressions.

“Joe has come to settle accounts with us,” Vincent joked.

Joe heard this with surprise. He thought, Was a foundational change coming to the Rose Clothing Company? The empty hall gave him an eerie feeling. Where had the original furniture gone? Vincent didn’t ask why Joe was there, but thought it natural that he was. Later on Vincent invited Joe to go for a drink at a restaurant down the street. Joe said that if he drank before the sky was even dark, fear would fill his heart. Vincent laughed aloud, a skin-crawling laugh. Then he pulled Joe into the street by main force. Joe was a moderate man and not willing to oppose his boss. So although he hated the way Vincent went about it, he was compelled to go along.

In the car, Vincent told Joe his trip had left him uptight and he wanted to get drunk. At home if he drank too much Lisa would interfere, so he pretended to take Joe out for a drink. He really just wanted Joe to accompany him. He didn’t have to drink. When Vincent said this, his voice became loud and piercing, like a parrot’s, like an old parrot’s. His brow twisted, revealing his ferocity.

Because it was afternoon there was no one in the restaurant, but the door was open and a single bottle sat on a single table. Vincent uncorked it and drank a few large gulps straight from its mouth. He then turned and told Joe that he wanted to go below. Joe asked him below where, and he replied that he meant the underground rooms.

“You’re coming, too?” Joe agreed.

The underground room was full of wine bottles. People lay on the ground every which way, and appeared to be asleep. Joe saw a small door beside the liquor cabinet and couldn’t help reaching out a hand to push it open.

“You will get free if you leave this place.” Vincent seemed to smile. “You will make up your mind eventually.”

Before Joe’s eyes appeared the back garden of his own home. A ghostly woman wearing a kimono stood in the garden.

“Maria!” he shouted.

A strange man walked out of the building. Glancing back, Joe saw that the door to the basement was already shut. Joe scanned the walls for signs of rain, but there were none. Whose house was so like his own?

The woman said to the man, “I’m going to the square.”

She finished this sentence and the sky grew dark. The man and the woman, one after the other, left the garden.