The Last Lover

13. JOE ARRIVES IN THE EAST

“Maria, Joe’s gone to the airport,” Lisa said as soon as she came in.

“Did he bring that book?” Maria had not moved her eyes away from the loom. She was following an image in the recesses of its pattern, her face flushed.

Lisa shot up from her chair as soon as she sat down. She felt Maria’s sorcery growing stronger. Someday this house would be the residence of a demon. When she walked around the room she felt the soles of her feet tingling on the floor. The voices coming from inside the walls brimmed with menace.

“Was the book he brought his map?” Lisa asked.

“Yes, he’s going to the country of poppy flowers. It’s very beautiful. But is it really what he has desired for so long? I’m not too sure.”

“He’s a mild-tempered demon.”

Lisa couldn’t stand still inside the house. Her heart was under attack. She ran into the yard and stood gasping among the shrubs. The sunlight made a weng weng drone, and the loom inside the house still shuttled evenly.

Maria stopped the work under her hands, glanced at the empty chair beside her, and called out once, “Lisa.”

Just at this moment the same image floated to the surface. It was a swiftly moving black wolf. Maria blinked her eyes and it disappeared, but she heard it give a long howl.

Lisa made a sign at the window, saying, “I can’t come in. You are too severe, my heart can’t endure it.”

“It’s because I am retracing Joe’s journey. Tonight he will stay on a plateau, where there are wolves.”

“Oh, and so your heart is full of expectations for him. If troops march there at night, what will it be like?”

Lisa raised her head and saw sparks exploding from the walls with a pa pa crackling. She hastily moved back a few steps. She tripped over a gladiolus, knocking against its sharp spike, and her face oozed blood. The two cats ran over from behind her, their bodies giving off electric sparks, pa pa. In her mind the scene of a trek on the plateaus appeared — soles rubbed to bleeding by boots and deep gullies swaying with white flowers. She wanted to leave, but she heard Maria screaming from the house. She rushed to the window and looked all around inside. She saw Maria staring at the unfinished tapestry, trembling.

“Maria! Maria! Are you all right?”

Maria didn’t speak.

Lisa rushed inside and placed her hands on Maria’s shoulders. There was nothing on the light brown tapestry. She heard Maria’s teeth knocking. Her body ran with sweat.

When Joe boarded the plane he saw a woman board as well. He couldn’t see her face because she wore a large straw hat pressed down low. On the gangway, the wind billowed her black skirt. She seemed to hesitate, and suddenly she stood still on the stairs. The fat man behind her pressed her on indignantly. Finally, as if waking up from a dream, she started forward again. “Damn, Irene,” the fat man said.

On entering the cabin the woman disappeared among the seats. Joe suddenly thought, Could the Eastern woman he’d seen at the door of his house and the bookstore owner’s former wife be the same person? Was she named Irene? Or did the fat man call all women “Irene”? He indistinctly remembered the bookstore owner calling his former wife something “__Mei.” He was under the impression that the women of Country C were the ones called “Mei.” Why was Daniel’s Vietnamese girlfriend named Amei, too? After he took his seat, he stood back up and surveyed the entire cabin once more, but he still didn’t see the woman. However, he hadn’t seen her face clearly, either. So how could he find her? He fastened his seatbelt and shut his eyes.

Shit, there was a wasp spinning around his head. Had it come from his office? Would it sting him? Sure enough, it flew nearer and stung his eyelid sharply. Frightened, he felt his entire head go numb. Even his eyes couldn’t shut all the way. He touched his face with effort. It had no sensation. Now he caught sight of the black-clad woman. He couldn’t think of where he’d seen her before, because he couldn’t concentrate.

The woman stood above him. She was speaking to the flight attendant.

“Once people are out of the cabin the freezing wind will bite their faces,” the attendant said.

“I got used to it a long time ago. Every morning I draw water at the side of the brook,” the woman said. “At noon, the grass bakes in the sun, and Mother speaks to me from the balcony. She asks me whether I want a drink of milk.”

“You see this man, his face is swelling so terribly.” The flight attendant pointed to Joe.

He wanted to move his lips into a smile, but they wouldn’t move.

“His wife is a woman named Mei,” the black-clad woman said, indicating him. “This morning, at home, she saw a wolf. It bit her clothing and would not let go. She grew agitated and cried out.”

Joe didn’t understand what she was saying. He felt the entire cabin begin to move. The man sitting on the inside seat stepped over him. People were gathering their luggage one after another.

“The temperature on the ground is 20 degrees below zero Celsius,” the broadcast said.

Waiting until the cabin was empty, Joe at last picked up his luggage and moved outside. He was afraid. Outside the cabin, as expected, a freezing wind blew. It was fortunate Joe’s face had no feeling, only his hands felt a little painful in the cold. He nearly fell down on the stairs. The plane was stopped on the tarmac. Joe saw dazzling snowcapped mountains in every direction, illuminated by the sun, as if on fire. He casually chose a door and pushed it open, walking outside.

Someone took hold of his suitcase. He loosened his hand without noticing, and let the man lift it. The man carrying the suitcase wore a straw hat. Joe couldn’t see his face.

The airport was small, so he walked right out of it. A few men and women were out on the street. These people didn’t mind the cold. They wore peculiar clothing that left their backs bare. The expression on their dark, ruddy faces was solemn. Their hair was worn very long. The man kept in front of him. When the street was almost at an end, he placed the suitcase on the ground, saying: “Now go ahead by yourself. From here you can’t get lost.” He spoke in Joe’s language.

Then he turned and hurried back. Joe stood beside his suitcase and looked back. He saw a crowd of children coming, chasing each other, sweating in the cold sunlight. Suddenly he heard a girl (who was also wearing a robe that showed her bare back) shouting in the language of his country, “Maria! Maria! I’m choking to death!” She gasped painfully, suddenly spat out a mouthful of fresh blood, and squatted down. A large group of children, all ten or older, surrounded her.

Joe suddenly felt unsafe, because he saw many of the children holding daggers in their hands. A few watched him with shining eyes. He lifted his suitcase and casually turned into a shop beside the road. It sold silver ornaments and utensils.

The wolf quickly disappeared from Maria’s design. Maria whistled, trying to call it back. She heard the loud noise Daniel made digging in the yard.

Mother and son bathed in the sunlight, attempting to return to an earlier time. Afterward they went to Joe’s study and saw that all of his bookshelves were overturned. They entered, stepping on the books, and sat among the chaotic piles, talking about what things had been like when Joe was at home. Daniel casually picked up a book, browsed lazily through it, and told Maria about his father’s frame of mind when he’d purchased it.

“How do you know this?” Maria asked, knitting her eyebrows.

“This isn’t difficult, it’s written in the book. Father is like you, a perfectionist.”

Maria thought of Joe talking about business while immersed in his own stories, and nodded her head.

“Mama, why are there so many people who talk inside the walls of our house? I remember from when I was little, they came in one group after another. Are all these people our relatives?”

“Yes, this is a house built on its original foundations. Do you like these people?”

“Sometimes I do feel happy. Especially at the boarding school, when I couldn’t sleep at night, so I talked to myself with my eyes still open. When I spoke children answered me from inside the walls. Are there children who passed away among our relatives?”

“Many. Your father is about to meet a wolf.”

Daniel put the book in his hand in front of his nose and sniffed it, saying, “This is the wolf. It won’t abandon its pursuit. I have seen it twice before.”

Maria asked him if he remembered when they drank tea in the rose garden, and Father spoke with them from the balcony of the study. Maria called this conversation “exchanges in the air.”

Daniel answered that he would never, ever forget, because that was the time he saw a ladder suspended in the air stretching down from the balcony.

“Only Father could have the skill to make the balcony send out a ladder, hanging straight up in the air without leaning on anything.”

“A man like him can also disappear from us entirely, and run off alone to the ancient East.”

After Maria finished this sentence, she felt a familiar disturbance emerging from inside her body. The checkered skirt she wore stretched tight. Her gaze was fixed on the wooden gate at the other side of the yard. A woman wearing a black skirt stood at the gate. This slender woman from an Eastern country always hung around here. Daniel was also looking at the middle-aged woman, his youthful blue eyes aflame with lust. The book in Daniel’s hand fell to the ground, its pages trembling as if wounded. Maria saw an antiquated landscape illustration inside, a picture of a beach. On the beach a fishing net was spread open to dry in the sun. Maria reached to pick up the book but it was electrified. Her hand was struck back. A rending scream made her blood congeal. It was Daniel screaming, his face red from the pressure.

“Daniel, you’re not well?”

“No, this is delight,” he murmured, and walked out the door.

Looking down from the balcony, Maria saw Daniel, covering half his face with a straw hat, brush past the woman’s body and run out. She could hear his elastic steps ringing on the road. The woman seemed to have no awareness of Daniel. She was there waiting for someone. Maria pitied her son. She shut the door leading to the balcony, drew the curtains, and stayed alone in the shadows thinking deeply. She wanted to whistle, and so she started to whistle, gently, a little like a cricket in the dark. Underfoot the mess of spread-out books started to shake their pages, becoming fan-shaped, but there was no wind in the house. Maria knew these were the original source of Joe’s square, from which his stories extended, becoming a limitless web of stories. Now he had abandoned all this and become the story himself.

In the electromagnetic field of the books Maria began to recollect her life with Joe. She remembered that Joe was afraid of her grandfather, even after Grandfather had been dead many years. Since the house had been built on an ancient foundation, her grandfather’s image occasionally appeared on the walls, most often at noon, when there was sun. Maria, in order not to frighten Joe, pretended not to see it, but she knew Joe saw. He didn’t dodge away, but rather stared intently at the wall. Maria understood that he longed for this kind of fear. In her adolescence, her grandfather always sat inside the house and seldom went out. One time Maria bolted in and saw Grandfather dancing to soft music, his legs, stiff from arthritis, now flexible. His arms spread wide, embracing an imagined woman. “Grandfather, who are you dancing with?” “With her,” he answered briefly, falling into an armchair in disappointment, painfully panting. Maria knew this “her” wasn’t her grandmother, because Grandmother didn’t dance. Of course it wasn’t some other woman either, because Grandfather never met women socially. Who was she then? For several decades Maria thought about this question. Now that Joe had left, Maria felt it had a prospect of solution. After her grandfather was buried she’d searched the house from top to bottom for that recording, but she could not find it. Perhaps there was no recording after all? That music? Was it no more than their hallucination?

Joe had heard the music when he arrived at her home. Grandfather seemed pleased with Joe, but he couldn’t say so. Instead he said he hoped Maria would stay away from this kind of man. Maria asked him why. He said there was no why. He also said he hoped she wouldn’t live at home after she married. “The origin of our family line is too ancient.” Young, energetic Maria didn’t understand what her grandfather was saying. And it wasn’t long before he passed away.

One night, when she and Joe were tired from lovemaking, she fell into a deep sleep. But at midnight she was roused by that music playing in the darkened house.

“Joe, are you dancing?” Maria felt suddenly confused and upset.

“No, I was watching, darling. Your family is so magical. I was wondering, am I your family’s lost son?”

So many years later, this “lost son” had left the home once again. At the moment Maria felt gratified and a little worried. After all, she and Joe had never gone to such a place before. But she also reflected that earlier, before Joe had even arrived, she hadn’t known he existed. Maria stood up from among the books, the haze in her heart dispersing little by little. It was almost as if she really had returned to former days.

“Oh, sir, you came so soon. We’ve had no time free the past few days.” A young boy wearing a long gown walked from the interior of the shop over to where Joe stood, sizing him up from head to toe.

Joe’s surprise can be imagined: he spoke the language of Joe’s country.

The boy started to laugh, and led him toward the interior, saying: “My father is one of your people. He always talks with me about your affairs. Father is very lonely.”

In the back there was an enormous, dark room. The boy lit a small oil lamp. Joe saw a spacious carved bed hung with linen mosquito netting. Someone apparently lay inside the netting. In a soft voice Joe asked the boy whether it was his father in there. The boy stuck closely to Joe, his nude back rubbing against him, as if he were afraid of something.

“No, my father is here, look!”

He pulled Joe over to the table and uncovered the lid of a bronze incense burner, scooping the bone ashes inside with his small hands.

“My father’s name is Kim. He lived over where you come from, and I grew up there. This year I’m thirteen years old.”

“He owns the pastureland?”

“Yes, I brought Father back by myself,” he said proudly. “He always says the bosom of the snowy mountains is his home. I never met someone who thought of home so much. Do you want to listen to him speak?”

Joe put his ear to the bronze censer, but what he heard was only the moan of the man inside the netting.

The boy waved the censer. The moans of the man inside the netting were worse. The more the boy shook the incense burner, the fiercer the moans. Bone ashes spilled out of the censer. Joe asked the boy who was inside the mosquito net. He said it was a passerby who’d walked in and gotten inside the netting.

“Sir, can you help me?”

“Help you do what?”

“There’s a large oven over there. It’s lit. Hold onto me, throw me into the oven, and wait until I’ve turned to ashes. Then you can scoop me out and put me into the censer.”

He led Joe to a door and kicked it open. Joe saw a blazing coal fire. A wave of heat attacked him and he drew back. The boy laughed piercingly.

“Coward, coward. Here, drink some of this scented tea.”

He gave Joe an enormous cup. Joe drank a mouthful and was choked so fiercely he couldn’t stop coughing. It felt as if his throat were being cut apart by knives. With difficulty he finally controlled the cough. Insane ideas sprang up in his mind.

“If you don’t drink the tea, how will you climb the snow-covered mountain?” The boy put on the manner of an adult, his voice becoming melancholy. “I will go into the furnace anyway. But I worry about you, what you will do alone.”

Joe didn’t dare open his mouth. He thought that if he opened it blood would come out. His mouth was already filled with the taste of blood. The man inside the netting grew enraged and began to curse and roar. The boy wanted Joe to go outside. He said it wasn’t safe in the room, and since Joe couldn’t help him he would finish the task himself. He wanted Joe to go through the door and walk always toward the east, because “underneath the sun nothing can go wrong.” When Joe passed by the large bed he smelled a strange fragrance, and another like the smell of a forest. His steps drew to a stop as if pulled by magnets and he stood still. “I didn’t think you were interested in this,” the boy said. He urged him to look inside the netting. Joe raised the netting, and the smell of mushrooms, of pine needles and of spring water blew against his face. A man lay inside the mosquito netting, or, more precisely, half of a man.

He was naked, with a seam dividing the center of his body. The left side was a normal man’s body; the entire right side was rotting, the skin turned to a blackish-green with spots on it, and with mold growing on the spots. His enormous penis was erect. It was especially offensive to look at — one side black, one side red, on the scrotum where the testicle should be was a festering hole. He stared at Joe, not feeling the slightest shame at his nakedness. Joe heard him say several sentences — perhaps it was the local language, he didn’t understand it. The boy crawled onto the bed, and he said in Joe’s ear, “This year he is 103 years old. He isn’t a passerby, he is the spirit of the earth for this region. His power is great.”

The fragrance of wildflowers assaulted Joe’s nostrils, and he sighed, saying, “I never thought, I never imagined.”

That man raised the good hand on his left side and grabbed his right armpit. Flies tore crazily around the netting. His armpit was an abscess. Numerous flies sucked on the inside.

The boy, with a wild expression of joy, crawled over, lightly fondling the putrid leg from the foot all the way up toward the penis, where he stopped, kissing the putrid hole in infatuation, stretching his tongue to lick it. Inside the netting there was an indistinct sound of running spring water. The man, fondling the boy’s naked back, moaned comfortably.

The boy turned his head to glance at Joe, saying, “Quick, get out! The lamp’s tipped over and started a fire!”

Joe felt in the dark to the outer room. When he reached the shop front, the netting and the wooden bed had already kindled into a huge blaze. He heard the boy stamping his feet on the bed and yelling at him to get out quickly.

A number of people had already collected on the street. All were wearing the dress that exposed the back. This kind of clothing made them appear very easy and natural, especially when the wind lifted the lower hems and they looked like so many hawks. Now these people all stood surveying the fire in the silver shop from the street, excitedly craning their necks and sniffing the strange fragrance in the air. No one noticed Joe. Among them was a woman with one breast exposed who was especially beautiful. She lifted an arm, seeming to greet the people inside the silver shop. The fire grew larger, and poisonous smoke rushed into the street. Everyone began to cough violently. Joe hid far away, avoiding the smoke cloud. He saw all of them stooping to the ground to vomit, or they might have been spitting out blood.

The man who’d helped pick up his luggage at the airport appeared again.

“I said you wouldn’t get lost and you didn’t! My name is Kim.”

He picked up Joe’s suitcase, swayed a few times, and asked: “What’s in your suitcase?”

Joe answered that it was clothing and toiletries.

“Very good. You are frugal. Come with me to King Street.”

Joe tailed him as he turned onto a wide gravel road. In Joe’s eyes, from behind Kim looked solemn and mournful. It seemed there were many stories inside him, stories that exceeded Joe’s experience. All the people and things of this place had nothing whatsoever to do with the web of his past stories, with that square. With his mind occupied, he ran into someone. It was a local man, who pushed Joe away and continued to walk ahead. He wore only a thin green robe, his feet bare, and he walked along the road airily. Joe looked again at the stone road full of local people, all wearing thin robes, with bare feet, slowly, airily moving about. The man named Kim turned his head and said to Joe:

“These people all smoke opium. Every person’s heart holds a ball of fire. Have you seen the flower gardens? The poppies in them are their lifeblood. A cold place like this doesn’t grow poppies natively, but there are hot springs in the gardens, and the enormous ground heat changes the temperature. The poppies grow lush in those areas.”

Joe didn’t see anything because only businesses lined the two sides of the road. He thought, Perhaps this man named Kim smokes opium and is recounting his hallucinations.

“Where do you plan to stay? A hotel or the poppy plantation?”

“The poppy plantation,” he blurted.

The man named Kim stopped by a low iron gate, saying, “You’re already there.”

He pushed open the door. Inside was a deserted compound. After a while, a side door opened on the courtyard’s right side. A man with an ardent expression walked toward Joe. He reached out both hands, grasping Joe’s hands firmly.

The man’s mouth spit out a string of the local language. His gaze was firmly set on Joe, as if he wanted to remember his features. Joe thought sadly that he had no distinctive features — what could be remembered? Suddenly the man left Joe aside, walked off and sat down in the mud. He was thinking deeply.

Kim said in Joe’s ear: “This man is an opium smoker, too. Stay here with him.”

As Kim went out, he locked the gate of the courtyard from the outside. Joe at once grew nervous.

He leaned his suitcase against the wall, sat down, leaned his back on the suitcase, and from that spot observed the local man sitting opposite. He was a little weary, and his eyes soon grew dim. In a drowsy state he saw the man slowly stand up and move as if he were swimming in front of him, holding a bunch of poppies in his hand. The man was just opening his mouth when there was a confused sound at the courtyard gate. A terrified expression appeared in his eyes, and he threw the flowers to the ground. He seemed dejected. He put a hand into his clothing and felt around, as if he were stroking the painful region of his heart. Joe kept a concerned eye on him.

He stood in front of Joe, watching the wall beyond Joe as if absorbed in his thoughts. Joe looked up at him from below, curious about the hand always fumbling in his clothing. That weathered hand was very focused, but also a little hesitating. It seemed he was exploring a method to dig out his own heart. Joe waited.

“Oh, oh!” he said. He drew out a coldly glittering dagger from his chest.

Joe stared.

The man tested the knife point with his thumb, then squatted down, looking into Joe’s eyes as if seeking his opinion. Joe felt a numbing chill in his neck. He involuntarily nodded his head. His last thought was: Why do people who smoke opium also have murderous impulses? But his judgment was mistaken. The man threw away the knife, stood up, and left him.

Joe fixed his eyes on the blood on the floor. Was it his blood? He touched his neck; it was fine. So it must be that local man’s blood. Joe picked up the dagger from the ground and looked it up and down, yet did not discover any blood on the knife. Someone above him was speaking.

“This kind of bleeding is unconscious.”

It was the man named Kim, who’d come back in. Joe saw that the courtyard gate was wide open and there was a rush of people outside. They all peered in, but why didn’t they enter?

“Let me look at the knife,” said the man named Kim.

He accepted the knife, pointed it to the heart in his chest and pushed it in. Then he knelt down, motioning to Joe with his eyes, asking him to help pull out the knife.

Joe’s hands shook severely, but once he held the knife fast he immediately gained strength. He grasped the knife handle, agitated it a bit, then pulled the knife out. Kim looked gratefully at Joe. Blood gushed from the wound, but stopped in a short while. He covered the wound with his clothing. A row started outside the gate.

“This poppy garden is where our ancestors dreamed. People today, even though they smoke opium, cannot enter that territory. Someone who has the wrong intentions, like me, tries to achieve that end by slaughter, but blood cannot conquer those noble hearts. The result is predestined.”

Joe saw Kim’s face become extraordinarily white and fill with deep pain. He grabbed the yellow mud wall that circled the courtyard as hard as he could. Clay lumps fell in pieces to the foot of the wall. The row grew louder, as if the people all wanted to come in, but something blocked them. What was it?

“Where did the man go who was just here?” Joe asked.

“He’s a fearless bastard. I’ve seen him swallow a knife with my own eyes. But even that is a futile effort. For many months he’s stayed inside this poppy garden. According to him, no one comes out to drive him away, but no one admits him either. Opium’s effect is mysterious. He draws support from it to survive these days of despair.”

“What does he want to do inside the garden? Or is he waiting for something to come out?”

“No, it’s not that. He only wants to become a worker in the poppy garden. This way the source of opium won’t be a problem for him. His lazing around here will become an accomplished fact. How shameful!”

Joe could now carefully size up Kim. This Kim and the pasture owner Kim bore no resemblance to each other. The pasture owner had a northerner’s imposing high-bridged nose, and this one had a flat face, roughly drawn. His nose was only two holes. But why was their speech so similar? They spoke like twins, and even their gestures were exactly the same. Joe remembered the Korean Kim who lived halfway up a mountain and a warm emotion sprung up in his heart. Because of his fond memory, he clung to this flat-featured Kim in front of him. He wanted to spill out words from his heart.

An old man was pushed into the courtyard by the clamoring people outside the gate. He was blind and wore dark glasses, and he carried a walking cane. He appeared very timid, taking great caution in touching the cane to the ground.

“The rays of light from the snowcapped mountains stabbed him blind.” Kim’s voice was dry.

“Does he also smoke opium?”

“Of course. If he didn’t, how would he dare enter the courtyard?”

The wind sent the odor of the old man’s body over. It was a dizzying, evil stench. He shuffled to the extreme end of the courtyard’s circling wall. His gait looked like he might collapse and tumble to the ground at any moment.

The old man sat at the base of the wall. His feet showed from inside his robe. One was a fake foot made of wood. He took off his sunglasses, and Joe saw two deep eye sockets.

“Why doesn’t he stay here with us?” Joe asked.

“This man loves cleanliness. He fears even a touch of foul odor on his body. Just now when he entered, he probably smelled a stranger in the courtyard — you came from far away, and you haven’t show-ered — so he skirted us and walked over to that side. This old man is known for keeping himself clean and out of the muck. Look, one leaves and another enters.” He meant the man who’d just left, and the old man who’d arrived.

Joe listened and nodded, and all at once began to feel himself inferior. He wanted to ask Kim if he could help him get opium. Then he felt it wasn’t a suitable occasion for this question, because he was an outsider.

“I’m afraid the old man won’t leave now. In that case, you’d better leave for a while. He can’t stand you. Look how impatient he is, he’s digging holes in the ground with his cane. He wants to monopolize the poppy garden. That way he can return to the beautiful scenery of the snowcapped mountains.”

“Beautiful scenery of the snowcapped mountains? Weren’t his eyes blinded by light from the mountains?”

“Yes and no. How can I put it? He reached a place where ice and snow were everywhere, and the landscape made him go mad. In order to forever keep that landscape in his mind, he blinded himself. Of course, I’m not sure if his mind is actually filled now with the light of those snowy mountains. Or if it’s a stretch of pitch darkness. See how much he’s suffering? It’s because we are here. We should go.”

Kim lifted Joe’s suitcase without explaining further and walked outside.

One by one the people blocking the door gave way to Joe and Kim. A few of them lay down on the ground in fright. What were they afraid of? They lay prone on the ground and covered their faces with their hands.

“Do you like the women here?”

They stopped at the doorway of a bar, where Kim asked this question.

“I don’t know. I haven’t examined them. And I’m dirty, it’s no time to think about that kind of thing.” Joe felt himself speaking without logic. He didn’t even know what he was saying.

“How can you be dirty? Didn’t you just shower at the poppy gardens?”

Joe didn’t understand. He raised his head and saw the signboard for the bar. He didn’t recognize the blood-red script, but he felt that the red color was like a false display of power.

“Why is it so red?” He unconsciously spoke aloud.

“Hmm.”

They went in. There was no one inside.

They had just sat down when they heard a hair-raising, bone-chilling scream from the inner room, followed by restrained weeping. It was a woman.

“It’s sexual repression.” Kim lifted his liquor bowl and drank a mouthful. “For a year already, everyone has suppressed their desire. Do you want to see her? She’s waiting for you to go in.”

Joe uneasily made an “ah” sound, and his face reddened. He saw Kim curl his lip in disdain, and avoided his glance in shame.

The door creaked with a zhi ya sound as a woman appeared. She was young, her body naked, her long hair worn to her waist. Her nipples were erect, and she watched Joe with eyes like a wolf’s. Fortunately she swiftly went back inside. Otherwise Joe wouldn’t have been able to sit still.

“I’m so ashamed. .” Joe spoke haltingly. He wanted to say something to Kim, but Kim was nowhere to be seen.

Joe was enlivened. He stood up and went inside.

The woman lay on a felt cloth, as red as orangutan blood. She was moaning. She saw Joe approach her in the dim light and made signs for him to strip off his clothes. Joe complied. There was a deep riverbed, with a crowd of snakes dancing madly. The snakes entered into their bodies without friction and came out again from another side. In a state near to unconsciousness, Joe saw the woman, indistinct, above him. She put a dagger, flickering in the cold light, into his hand, and with infinite tenderness pressed it down on her wild breasts. Joe subconsciously took the dagger and cut into her left breast. His last thought was: how could there be waves in the deep, dry riverbed?

Maria was weaving the largest of her patternless tapestries. She felt some object about to bulge out from the weaving on which she concentrated her mind. Lisa had already quietly entered, and stood behind her.

“The entire Rose Clothing Company is in chaos.” She spoke gently.

“Oh!” Maria shut her eyes. The hallucination disappeared from her memory. The room was deserted. She smelled something burning, so she jumped up and ran to the kitchen, with Lisa following her closely.

That cat ran through the door shrieking. Its fur was all burned away.

“Look, it opened the stove,” Maria said anxiously.

Together they cleaned up the kitchen, sat down, and ate a chocolate cake. Maria stroked the burned cat. Its brown fur fell in pieces to the floor. Its eyes were bleary. Only Maria knew how much it suffered because it missed its old home in Africa. When people brought it here, it was only as big as a mouse. But Maria knew its body was filled with memories of burning heat.

Lisa told Maria that last night on the long march she reached Luding Bridge, the iron cable bridge in Chinese Tibet. She stepped onto the bridge, and cold wind spun up from the abyss. An idea appeared in her mind: if she came across Joe in Tibet, surely she would bring back a message for Maria. But she was trapped on the bridge the entire night.

“Is the day when two dreams will meet still as far away as before?” Her voice was contained within the kitchen.

Maria raised her head and saw the handsome driver standing next to the refrigerator, looking absentminded. He grabbed the chocolate cake and put it in his mouth, eating as he said, “This is for me? This is for me? Why can’t I taste it?” He ate an entire large pan. Cake crumbs covered his face.

“Eating cake cannot solve his problems.” Lisa watched him sympathetically.

He heard what Lisa said and nodded.

Daniel dug up earth in the yard. He’d gotten poppies from his girlfriend Amei’s family. He wanted to plant them in all corners. Yesterday Amei told him that if he napped among the poppy flowers a book would spread open in the sky. Daniel asked her when she’d seen that book. She said it was aboard the ship on the way to Country A, and then afterward she’d seen it twice more. She also said that the book was not used for reading, because its pages were filled with revolving lotuses. Eyes could never endure it. Daniel was enthralled by the scene she described, and immediately asked her for poppy seeds. When Amei gave him the seeds she joked: “Daniel will run into his father.”

Then her expression grew sleepy as she entered a kind of hallucination. She wanted him to come to her home at nightfall.

“At that time the magnolia tree at the door of the house will be in bloom. Your father will stand underneath the tree.”

“Amei!” Daniel shouted, shaking her.

But she didn’t hear. She slid out of his hands like a fish.

“Come at six o’clock,” she said.

When Daniel stopped digging, his whole body began to tremble. There was no magnolia tree at the doorway of Amei’s house. What metaphor was she speaking in? His sweat flickered in the sunlight. He felt that he was so young, so ignorant, while Amei, her body attached to an ancient spirit, had seen through him long ago.

He saw his mother put her head out at the kitchen window. Her face was covered with wrinkles like knife cuts and her gaze had the air of a tomb. How could she look like this, when she was with her lover? Daniel had just seen her lover. He was a glutton, ready to eat everything in the refrigerator. As the man ate, Daniel’s mother and Lisa cowered into their own meditations.

A little past nightfall, when the sky was almost black, Daniel finally went to Amei’s house. The lights were unlit and the door tightly shut. It seemed that all were sleeping. He stood on the broad stairs and knocked rhythmically on the wooden door.

Cursing came from inside. It was Amei’s mother. She thought it was punks making trouble out on the street.

Then Amei came in a flurry to open the door.

“How could you come so late? It’s terrible, the magnolia blooms all withered.”

A strange sound came from her throat. The sky grew dark in an instant. Daniel thought the girl might disappear into the dark at any moment. He followed her closely as she went inside.

“Amei, Amei, you can’t abandon me!”

He heard his own piteous voice. In the dark the arrangement of Amei’s house was entirely different. He’d already walked far in behind her, but Amei still walked on ahead. Daniel remembered that the bedroom where Amei and her older sister slept was through the living room and down a small hallway, but where were they going now?

“Daniel, close your eyes. You will see a lamp in the rainforest.” Amei’s voice came from a distant place.

Now Daniel’s surroundings were pure dark. He was slightly nauseated. He did not know how to proceed, but in short order Amei’s voice came from in front of him, and he had to follow it.

“Now you’ve reached the outer edge of the rainforest. Do you smell the mist? That’s also the smell of your father’s body, so you must be used to it, ever since you were little.” She chuckled, ge ge.

Daniel heard vague cursing somewhere. It was Amei’s parents. They made him very uneasy.

“Your father has walked out of the rainforest. Didn’t you know this? That place is in the East. It is our native place, us two. Listen, it’s raining again there. Everything is growing.”

Generally, what appeared in Maria’s mind were always pictures, and very seldom words. But that morning when she lay on the bed, her eyes open and watching the waving curtains, a paragraph caught her by surprise.

“The traveler stands at the end of the bridge, the muddy yellow river water churning under his feet. He hears the distant call of wild geese. In his pocket he carries three silver coins, jangling, ding ling ding ling. The sounds of these strange things make him nervous, they make his body stiffen. When he can’t go on, a vineyard appears before his eyes. ‘Ah, wild geese,’ he says, but not aloud. Someone pushes him and he bounces, like a rag blown in the wind, crosses over the barrier, and falls into the river. When he’s still in the air he thinks: ‘Who is pushing me?’ Three silver coins scatter from his pocket, disappearing in the warm sunlight that illuminates everything.”

She considered as she dressed: could “he” be Joe? Could the bridge be Luding Bridge? But Joe hadn’t gone to China, he had gone to Country C. Ever since Joe brought home that book with only one page, Maria knew that a turning point in their lives had already been reached. Joe had put it in the refrigerator, telling her that he wanted to freeze the boiling din inside the book. Otherwise, if he put it on the bookcase, it would bother him until his mind became uneasy. When he did this Joe wore his usual conservative look, but Maria thought her husband was like a child.

She went into the workroom to look at the tapestry she’d woven yesterday. Yesterday she wove and wove, so vexed she almost cried. Every time the loom sounded it seemed to be saying, “Why can’t you understand?” So now she first shut her eyes for half a minute, then suddenly opened them again. Those lines knit from lambswool were still lines, and no pattern protruded. Suddenly she discovered a small hole. She leaned in and saw two or three other holes. It looked like moths. Probably the newly bought knitting wool hadn’t been processed correctly. She lightly smoothed it with her hand, and the knit lines surrounding the holes began to loosen and spread. Before her eyes, like a domino effect, the fabric was reduced within a short space of time to a pile of wool threads. An indignant shout came from inside the walls. Maria’s head felt dizzy. “Joe, my head feels dizzy,” she said as she sat down on the floor.

Someone helped her into a rocking chair. It was Daniel. The odor of his body was like an early morning mist in a forest.

“Where did you come from, Daniel?”

“Amei and I went to Vietnam. We reached the village of butterflies,” he said excitedly.

He fell silent. After a while he finally spoke again.

“I love you, Mother. You’re truly admirable.”

Maria’s eyes went dark. She said: “Did you see my fabric? Don’t be discouraged. Things are much better than you think they are. I, I saw Luding Bridge!”

She grasped a pile of the tangled wool threads and put them to her nose to smell them. The threads inside began to smoke. Daniel wrested the wool from her, threw it to the ground, and stomped on it a few times.

Daniel saw the stories swimming in his mother’s eyes. The stories called up once again in his heart the circumstances of the evening of August 15. On that night, the two of them stood on the stairs, leaning against a wall. A low ni nan chirping came from inside the walls. The Swiss watch on Daniel’s wrist made zheng zheng clanking metallic noises. His mother’s strong neck crooked to one side, her head leaning on his shoulder, and the moonlight swam swiftly under the osmanthus tree. For many years the walls of this house had tied Daniel’s heart down firmly, and his wanting to throw them off was futile.

Without intention, Maria’s gaze swept across the walls. She saw the two tapestries on the wall in their wooden frames fluctuating rapidly. Designs of mountains, reefs, solitary islands, and geese appeared in alternation. Maria’s eyes were heavy with sleep, and they filled with tears.

“Do you like the women here, Joe?” Kim asked him once again. The two of them sat in a teahouse where they had a full view of the snowcapped mountains.

“I don’t know. They’re not much like what I expected. What is her name?”

“Xima Meilian. All the women here are named Xima Meilian.”

“When I was at home, I saw an especially beautiful Eastern woman. Did she come from here?”

Downstairs someone called for Kim. He leaned over to listen carefully, seeming a bit nervous.

The man came upstairs as he called. It was the old fellow who sold silver goods. He stood by the table, glancing with eyes full of hate at Joe, who was drinking tea. His ornaments struck one another with a pleasant sound.

Kim approached the old fellow, the two of them speaking the local tongue.

Suddenly, Joe felt the light from the snowcapped mountain to be especially dazzling, an endless flow toward the dark little teahouse where he sat. In the room the two men changed into two pale shadows in the white light.

“This is Xima Melian’s father,” one shadow said to Joe, his head stretching and curving, both comical and a little distressing.

“What’s wrong with my eyes?” Joe struggled to say.

Joe could still hear the silver ornaments as he felt the small building disappearing and his feet thrashing in the air. He became a man floating in midair. And those two shadows were also floating into the distance.

“Xima Meilian, Xima Meilian!” Kim said, as if threatening Joe with a false show of power.

But his voice floated far away. Now Joe was facing the snow-covered mountains. When he stepped ahead, the snow under his soles made a cha cha whisper. Aside from the snowy mountains there were no other colors or forms before his eyes. He suddenly experienced a feeling of being “crushed.” He was crushed. His body disappeared. He wanted to touch his face with his hand, but he had no hand, and he had no face. So whose sense of hearing was this? In the long long rumbling of an approaching avalanche, who would witness it?

“Who?” he asked.

“Xima Meilian!” Kim said, his response echoing in the distance.

He wanted to step toward the place where Kim was, yet he didn’t dare. He felt that it was an abyss. His lower abdomen tightened, and untimely desire made his organ harden. Where did Kim actually come from? He looked outwardly like a genuine local man, but he spoke the language of Joe’s country. Joe thought of the portrait of Kim, the pasture owner, in that book. He thought of the owner of the streetside bookshop. He suddenly understood that the book with one page was a snowcapped mountain! The reason the owner wouldn’t sell it to him was because he wasn’t willing to sell the secret in his heart. Joe’s thoughts moved away from these two books, and returned to those books he’d read before. He felt waves of emotion, his mind flickering with light. Now what appeared in his mind was no longer a square and a broad road with parasol trees planted along its side. The wild, heavy snow concealed everything, everything whispered secretly under thick layers of snow. He laughed with understanding: so this was that anthill! How many years passed while industrious worker ants constructed a palace underground, and already no one could see through to it? Should this be sad or joyous? The books existed. The owner of the tiny bookstore guarded them. Joe, too, guarded them. Paper perhaps could be damaged by insects, could be scattered in all directions, but the stories inside the books entered the mind and were passed down generation to generation, preserved in secret places.

Now Joe’s face was pressed to the surface of the ice. Perhaps the snow-covered mountain was kissing him? How unusual, he felt the bone-piercing frozen wind cut through his whole body — his body shook without stopping — but his desire was as before.

The snowy mountain leaned toward him, as if pressing against his body, but it wasn’t heavy. Joe squinted. He saw butterflies flying in the ice and snow, masses of colorful butterflies mixed in with the snowflakes. Joe’s organ was frozen by the ice and snow. Moaning, his spirit lost in rapture, he came.

“Xima Meilian!” Kim said in the distance.