The Last Lover

15. VINCENT AND THE FIVE DRAGON TOWER

Joe had already traveled through so many countries in the East that he could no longer remember where he was. He stood in front of a stone tower. The tower was on a plateau, and beside him was a local yellow dog that had been following him. He’d spent one night in a small town and now the dog followed him everywhere. Perhaps it meant to lead the way for him, but Joe didn’t have a destination. He was only walking at random, and the yellow dog seemed happy with this procedure. Whenever they reached a new place it would let out a burst of yelping, wang wang, in its excitement.

The interior of the stone tower rose in a spiral with stone steps for climbing. Because the tower dated to a time ages ago, its stone steps were broken and fallen in some places. It looked dangerous to ascend. The yellow dog kept barking, begging Joe to climb up quickly. Joe looked up and saw the high roof marked with numerous round holes. They were put there so people could lean out of the tower. He estimated that the stone tower was about thirty meters high. The terrifying steps did not look very solid. He hesitated a while, then decided to leave. The yellow dog barked behind him indignantly for a long time. He felt guilty.

That night he rested in a hotel in the small town. It was a fairly high-class hotel. The rooms had French windows with hanging bamboo screens. Outside the windows a natural mountain spring flowed into the courtyard. But there were lots of mosquitoes. Even though he shut the window they got into the room, dancing and singing and making Joe irritable. Since he couldn’t sleep, he opened the door and walked into the courtyard. It was large and full of yew trees and rose of Sharon. He hadn’t walked very far when he heard someone talking. A man and a woman sat under a yew tree. They didn’t mind the mosquitoes biting. The topic they discussed seemed to be extremely significant.

“And so Vincent came here, but how did he find out where I was staying?” the man said.

“You’re his older brother, of course he would do all he could to find you. Where can you hide?” The woman laughed gently. She spoke leisurely and looked pleased.

Joe’s heart leapt in his chest. He stared at the blurred silhouette he threw on the grass, trying with futile effort to recall exactly where he was. On the route of his journey, with its planes, wooden sailboats, trains, long-distance buses, he’d changed from one means of transport to another, passing from one country into another, and the borders melted little by little in his mind until he no longer took note of them. The old story inside him had already melted. His eyes were empty. The only thing in view was the yellow dog running at the edge of the horizon. These days he was accustomed to the life of a man traveling the globe alone, and now he suddenly heard familiar names. It was like the report of a tragedy communicated from another world.

“Someone saw him climb to the top of the Five Dragon Tower. That was yesterday.” The man spoke again.

“It’s the highest point in the world. Anything might happen there. Doesn’t the proverb say, ‘the higher you stand, the farther you see’?” The woman’s voice lowered, as if sinking into thought.

“It’s frightening. We shouldn’t have come here to begin with.”

“You regret it?”

“No, forever no.”

The mosquitoes bit so severely Joe had to leave. He took off his jacket and wrapped it around his head, then put his hands in his pockets and walked back and forth. The mountain spring made a rustling sha sha as it passed through the rockery. From the garden he could see all the way to the outside, where tiny spots of light swam in the darkness. Could this place be “the roof of the world”? Joe couldn’t believe it. He recalled that “the roof of the world” was in China. He decided to go back to the Five Dragon Tower tomorrow and climb up to look around.

Inside the hotel building there was a sudden confusion. All the lights were on, and someone yelled “Fire!” Everyone rushed into the garden. He hadn’t imagined there could be so many people inside. Joe was squeezed among them and carried along as everyone rushed out to the street. He turned around and saw the small five-story building already roaring with flames. The people around him talked all at once. “It’s dangerous!” The same alarm issued from different mouths. “Was it a plot?” One man raised this question, but the surrounding uproar drowned out his voice. This was when Joe finally thought of his luggage. Several books he’d carried with him were inside, the most important being the book about Tibet. Fortunately he still had some cash on his person, otherwise this would have been a disaster. The small building was still burning. People gradually dispersed. Joe didn’t know where they were going. The street grew cold and deserted. A dog rushed over from the street corner. It was the yellow dog that had been following him.

The dog reached him and held his pants leg in its mouth, pulling him to the left. Joe had to go along with it. They came to a quarry. Several workers labored in the dark. The yellow dog circled to a temporary work shed behind the quarry. Joe saw that the door was open and an oil lamp lit inside. A man sat at the table holding his head tightly in both hands. The table was piled high with various objects.

“Joe, you’ve come. Sit down.” To his surprise the man was Vincent.

Now Joe saw that the things piled on the table were human bones.

“This is Lisa,” Vincent raised his head and seemed to smile. “Lisa followed the route of the Red Army’s Long March and reached here, where she fell into the great gorge. It’s unthinkable.”

Joe’s body shook in spasms. He didn’t dare sit down at the table, so he just stood there. The dog hid at his feet whimpering with a wu wu sound, as if it were crying.

“Vincent, we meet again,” Joe said, his teeth chattering.

Vincent lifted a bone and placed it against his face, with an expression of intoxication.

Joe became aware of a group of people surrounding the work shed, slinking about in the dark and talking in excited low whispers.

“Someone’s here,” Joe said.

“It’s always like that in places like this, thieves everywhere.”

Vincent blew out the oil lamp. He wanted Joe to talk about his happy adventures over these past days. Joe said there hadn’t been anything worth remembering. He was simply roaming. Because Vincent wanted to hear more, Joe made up a story about planting opium poppies on the plateau. Joe thought his narrative prosaic and dull. In the middle of telling it he heard the people outside closing in and beginning to knock on the windows. He believed he saw a knife blade gleaming in the moonlight. But Vincent pressed him to keep talking. He didn’t want Joe to stop.

“I wanted to smoke opium, but no one would let me. I’m an outsider here,” Joe said, feeling slighted.

“You were an outsider to start with, you come from the West. That’s what’s interesting. Look at Lisa, she had an obsession. She threw all her strength into it.”

Joe couldn’t speak because two dark figures had slipped into the room. Unsettled with fear, he calculated how much money remained in his wallet. He saw the two shadowy figures take seats at the table. In this way, the four of them each occupied one side of it. Vincent still talked about Lisa as if nothing had happened. He spoke about his wife’s pursuit over a long course of time. But Joe had stopped listening because the person on his right was stamping on his foot so hard he shouted in pain. He thought his bones might be broken. Should he give this man money? He was unable to determine whether the fellow wanted his money or his life, perhaps both. The man on his left lit a cigarette. In the spurt of flame from his lighter Joe saw the face of an outlaw.

Vincent was also smoking, and speaking unhurriedly. It looked as if he’d long since put life and death out of his thoughts.

“The gangs of thieves are as common in the plateau region as home-cooked meals. Many of the thieves live inside the Five Dragon Tower. Actually, some of them are also local, people who aren’t willing to do honest work, or who are lonely. But the thieves didn’t plot to murder Lisa. She wanted to take risks, she was obsessed. She’d been like this ever since she was young, and it’s hard to change your nature. I regret not going with her. I was too slow, always a step back. Joe, these two guys aren’t out for your life. If you want to go, you can go.”

Joe tried to stand up. He tried to leave the shed. And they didn’t prevent him. He saw the yellow dog standing at the work site waiting for him. Several spectral workers were carrying stones. Joe hadn’t gone very far when he stopped and thought of going back again. A face appeared under the work-site lamps. It was Xima Meilian, the indigenous woman he’d met on the first stop of his journey. Joe thought of going to meet her, but the yellow dog bit into his pants with a death grip. Joe became aware of something. He stopped struggling and stood in place, dumbly watching the woman.

There was a black shadow behind the woman’s body. Half of her beautiful face was blocked by the shadow, so Joe could only see one of her eyes. Her narrow eye still burned with the desire he’d seen in it before. She raised a hand, as if to welcome Joe over. The black shadow slowly enveloped her. Joe couldn’t see her. He wanted to call her name, but he didn’t know how to pronounce it. Looking once more, he saw the shadow already absorbed by the darkness of its surroundings. The work site’s sole lamp shone quietly. Joe sadly recalled that river.

Inside the work shed Vincent struck the bones on the table with a wooden stick. He’d gathered them inside of the Five Dragon Tower, the bones of wolves and dogs. He didn’t know why he’d wanted to say they were from Lisa’s skeleton, perhaps in order to give himself something to feed on. To search out Lisa’s tracks he had gone to many places across thousands of kilometers. The farther he went the more his heart lacked assurance. The Long March was only a long march, Vincent had learned this point profoundly. After she went missing Lisa never reappeared. One time, in a temple, Vincent saw a woman who looked like Lisa. But when he went over to her, he discovered it was a woman of a different race altogether. Although he couldn’t find Lisa, Vincent had never felt so close to her. Yes, he felt that he had already become Lisa. A longing sprang up in his heart to trek from one place to another. His soul melted into the landscape, strange to his eyes, of the Eastern world.

Lisa had disappeared from his side in a crowd of people. They were coming out of the largest department store in the city, and Lisa had told him to wait for her a moment because she saw a girl from her hometown. She squeezed through the spaces between people and soon disappeared. Vincent waited, but she didn’t come back. At last the black woman named Joyner came. Joyner told him she’d seen Lisa at the train station. She was rushing to catch a train. The night before, Lisa had told him she wanted to make an inspection in the field, to get a clear idea of the makeup of the troops who constituted the long march army. Vincent asked her whether she would journey to countries in the East. Equivocally, she made no answer.

Vincent didn’t start his journey until the second day. He understood that Lisa was using her action to point out a direction for him — to go to a place where he’d never been, a place of which he had no perception. So his first intention wasn’t even to search for Lisa, which was almost impossible anyway because there were no clues. His first intention was to throw off everything he had now and go, as Lisa had hinted to him, to try another kind of life. Of course he didn’t plan to abandon his clothing company. He only meant to let this long journey make him lose his way and become a different man, then afterward he would return. He thought it was probably the same with Lisa. When he passed the high-rise building in the car, the Eastern woman was standing at the doorway. The infinite emptiness of the expression on her face left him once again deeply shaken.

The first conveyance he chose for himself was an airplane, not a train. He thought that at high altitude he would recall Lisa’s appearance from their early years together. Before, he thought, he had not paid enough attention to many critical facts. These facts had revealed themselves to him many times in the early years. But on reaching high altitude, he discovered that his plan had come to nothing. People cannot return to the past through recollection. Not only did he fail to recall all sorts of details about their life; he couldn’t even call up the image of Lisa in those early years, as if when he met her she was already a woman of a certain age. He grew dejected and stopped trying to remember. Later he went many places, and Lisa’s face grew vaguer in his mind. And not only her face from earlier days. Little by little he forgot even her more recent appearance. On this point he was both anxious and upset.

One day he slept in a large courtyard belonging to a family of farmers. He slept until midnight, when he was startled awake by the repeated crowing of a rooster. He walked to the threshing floor and saw shadows in the landscape of the paddies where the water and sky met as one color. At the time the moon was bright, and a busy scene, very much like the Eastern markets he had seen many times in the previous days, appeared in the sky. But it was only an image, there was no sound. After careful discrimination, he made out that those shadows were all attempting to enter a structure resembling a casino, but a ferocious tiger stood on each side of the door. On top of the dome of the structure, an enormous hawk looked majestically over the shadows underneath. All the shadowlike people were blocked at the doorways by the tigers. Vincent wanted to look closer, but the old farmer, named Xiao (some people called him this), came out from the house. Xiao was smoking a pipe, his creased old eyes alive with vigor. He spoke a foreign language Vincent didn’t understand, and he seemed agitated. He talked and talked, making all sorts of gestures with his hands. Suddenly, Vincent’s mind opened, because when he stared at the old man’s face, he unexpectedly grasped the import of what Xiao was saying. The gist of the old man’s speech was: do not watch the scene in midair. It is extremely frightening. It kills people daily. Xiao painted a large circle with his hand, to show that there were human corpses buried in all the paddies in front of them. As he spoke the illusion in midair disappeared and became a ghostly atmosphere. Xiao abruptly shouted at Vincent. Vincent heard him say, “What did you really come here to do?”

Vincent turned and ran into the house. In the large courtyard he saw that everyone had gotten up. They stood at the doors of the rooms watching him. The halls and corridors were lit by pine torches. He couldn’t find the room where he had been sleeping. Every room had changed to look exactly alike. He went in and retreated again, ridiculed the whole time. Later a boy walked up to him, making a sign that he would show him the way. Vincent followed as they rounded one turn after another and at last reached a large chicken coop. All the birds inside were roosters. Once Vincent appeared they started to crow, so loudly even the deaf would have heard. The young boy ran away. Vincent was tired and scared, so he simply stayed in the coop. He didn’t know how it had gotten there, but an old sofa sat in the corner. He fell onto the sofa and went to sleep. There was a kind of extremely small mosquito that bit his skin painfully, but he paid no attention to their bites. In a dream, he marched heroically through cannon fire. Shrapnel bloodied his whole face. Blood ran into his eyes until he couldn’t see anything.

In a fishing village by the sea Vincent came across a man from his own country. He was an elderly tourist. He wrapped his head in a white turban like the local men. This man sat in a wicker chair on the beach every day. They conversed facing the distant waves.

“There are people from our country everywhere here. I don’t think this is by chance,” the old man said.

“I hadn’t thought about it closely.” Vincent felt slightly ashamed. “But you, do you live here? Don’t you intend to go back?”

“I want to pass the last day of my life in this little fishing village.”

The old man’s face revealed a smile. To Vincent, his expression seemed to say that he was the only one who knew the mystery of the way of life in this fishing village, but he didn’t intend to communicate it to Vincent.

Vincent was disheartened because in this boring little place his thoughts were already frozen. During the day everyone went to sea to catch fish. Only a few children and the elderly were left in the village, along with four or five of the women. And at night people went to bed early. Once the moon came out there was no stirring in the village; it was profoundly dark. Yet the old man had adapted to this simple, almost primitive, life. He went to the beach every day and stayed there. Vincent saw him sometimes talking to the seagulls, sometimes exclaiming to the sea, but the better part of the time he sat silently dozing in his wicker chair. Vincent had no way to leave. This place received no messages from the outer world. A long-distance bus came once a month. He could only calm his heart and while away the days. Sometimes he realized that he didn’t remember things and he couldn’t think clearly. It was more or less as if he had been born and raised in the fishing village, a loafer eating the food of idleness. He was still able to indistinctly remember his own past busy life, and remember that Lisa was his wife, but the details of his life were like a kite with a cut string. No matter what he did, he couldn’t remember. One boring day he asked the old man, since he’d been in the village so long, why none of their countrymen had come here. The old man answered him:

“That is because you are here.”

After Vincent returned to his room at the hotel he thought again and again of the old man’s statement, and suddenly he understood it. So in his remaining days Vincent no longer sauntered all over, but instead brought a wicker chair to sit by the sea like the old man. Once the sun came out the two men went to the seaside and sat there until the people who’d gone to sea to fish returned. Halfway through the day a worker from the hotel brought them food.

As they sat idly, the old man seldom spoke. Vincent came to know from a few scanty words each day that the old man was from the northern part of Country A. He’d worked for several decades in a timber mill, and was now retired. He had a wife, children, and grandchildren, a large family. He said he’d received an invitation to come to this fishing village. One of his uncles, his mother’s brother, wrote a letter from here inviting him for a brief visit. Although the whole family was opposed, he came. The day before he arrived his uncle fell ill and died. He was only in time for the funeral. He still remembered his agitated emotions on arriving. He had now lived in the fishing village for two years. Because he had no way to communicate with the outside world, his family might already have forgotten him. He felt that in his family’s eyes this would be a good thing. Sometimes Vincent wanted to talk with the old man about life in Country A, but every time, before he opened his mouth, his mind went blank, and he couldn’t think of anything to say. And the old man immediately saw this, always telling him, “There’s nothing to say, let’s not talk about it.”

When heavy winds blew they had to stay inside the hotel. But the old man had something in his heart he couldn’t let go. He made one trip after another, running outside to look at the sea.

“A stranger may come to find me, a local man. I worry about missing him.” When he said this to Vincent, Vincent thought of him on the shore, waiting.

One night at midnight the old man knocked anxiously on the door of his room. Vincent opened the door and saw him standing outside in his pajamas.

“Can you be my witness?”

“What’s the matter?” Vincent already vaguely sensed what it was.

“I need a witness. I’m afraid people will forget me in the same way I fear death.”

“Let me think a bit.”

“So you can’t make up your mind. I need to wait for you to make up your mind.”

He looked a little disappointed. Vincent didn’t know how to console him.

After daybreak, when they met once again at the seaside to sit together, the old man told Vincent that the visit in the night had only been a moment’s impulse. Now his mood was tempered. He shouldn’t be so hasty, he should “let the flow of water make its own channel.” That day a boat arrived. When the boat came, the old man glanced at it with drowsy eyes, then lowered his head, mumbling about something. Vincent guessed what the old man was saying. He felt his heart brought closer and closer to the old man’s.

The atmosphere in the fishing village seemed primed for something to happen very soon. Day followed day, and no one took notice of the two men. Most of the villagers just stood at a distance observing, none of them ever displaying excessive interest. And news from the outer world never reached here. The boats always sped past in a hurry, so that they could not see who was on the deck. When the sea breeze blew through the old man’s white beard, Vincent noticed that his face became more and more expressionless, like a mask. Vincent couldn’t help thinking, Was the coming event happening inside the old man?

He arrived. He came at noon, rowing a small wooden boat over from the coral island. The man was probably a little over forty. He had a face a little like a spider. He was holding a leather bag in his hands. He used the language of Vincent’s country to explain that his leather bag was filled with “precious blood.” The old man stood up from the wicker chair. Vincent noticed his relief, as if he were putting down a heavy load. He realized that the old man wanted to free himself.

They were to set off on a journey. The old man eyed Vincent with a questioning gaze. Vincent opened his mouth and said, “Yes, I saw. I remember.”

In the bright sunlight the fishing village began to seethe with excitement because news arrived that someone had died in an accident.

After the old man was gone Vincent stayed in the fishing village by himself. Every day he went to the beach. Facing the sea, the sky, the blowing wind, he also unconsciously pondered this matter of “witness.” Who could be his witness? Could the ignorant villagers count as his witnesses? Could the wife whose husband had died count as his witness? Could the young boy over there picking up crabs by the sea count as his witness? That there was no true witness proved his time still hadn’t come. Vincent began to long anxiously for the long-distance bus.

The bus arrived on a Wednesday. The whole fishing village, men and woman, old and young, stood by the road to watch him leave. The women held their children and looked into the bus with slightly open mouths. What were they searching for? The driver nodded coldly, signaling for Vincent to board the bus. Then, without turning his head:

“Are you ready?”

Vincent’s heart was in a confused state. He waved his hand to the driver in despair and shouted:

“Go! Go!”

Once the bus started moving, the days and nights in the fishing village came back to life, playing like a movie in his mind. The month hadn’t passed as drearily as he thought. He remembered going out roaming with the old man late at night. They saw will-o’-the-wisps at the grave of a villager who’d met with an accident. There were explorations of the coral island, where he and the old man discovered people sleeping inside a deep cave. They lit pine torches and sat talking with these people for a long, long time. These dreamers knew the answers to nearly all questions; they understood the language of every nation; and their thinking was extraordinarily dynamic. The two of them also visited a fisherman’s home — the family had caught an unmentionable disease. Although each of their lifespans was only forty-one years, they hadn’t turned into gamblers or drug addicts. Their method of coping with the menace of death was to abolish sleep. And so Vincent saw that the family had no beds. The brothers and sisters went about their own work late at night, while their parents sat at the table next to a tiny soybean oil lamp and kept accounts. Vincent and the old man also attended a celebration in the village. Everyone went to the beach and began to dance in the moonlight, to intense drumbeats, until no one could dance any more, until they all fainted on the ground. . There were many other events, Vincent remembered them all. But when he was at the fishing village he’d forgotten all about these things. Why? Probably because they took place in the middle of the night. After passing through sleep and reaching the next day, he forgot them entirely. Now recalling these events Vincent suddenly understood. The old man had entered another kind of existence which he’d desired to attain — an existence he’d desired for several decades. Many years earlier, when he felled trees in the tall mountains and ancient forests, when he heard the long sighing sounds the trees made as they fell before him, he’d planned for that existence countless times. The mysterious uncle had helped him realize his aspiration. But the uncle? Was there such a person? Why had the old man never mentioned him later on? They had gone together to see the village cemetery, and there were no graves of any outsiders. Yet according to his previous narration, the old man’s uncle was buried there. It seemed quite possible that his uncle was inside the deep cave on the coral island. Along the route many travelers boarded the long-distance bus. These people resembled one another. Their expressions were both weary and active. Vincent felt that they all must have come from the same place. In his mind he called that place the village of dreams. It was his firm but ungrounded belief that the village of dreams was the destination of his own journey. Perhaps the old man by the sea had promised him this?

“Are we there, Dad? Why is the view along the way so sad?”

“There are happy ducklings swimming in that lake, child. You need to look harder.”

Vincent listened harder, and to his surprise he understood their language.

When Vincent left the work shed the sky was already bright. He once again came to the Five Dragon Tower.

Joe was also there. His eyes were suffused with threads of blood. It looked like he hadn’t slept all night. Walking into the tower, both men felt a chill wind spinning inside, causing them simultaneously to look up. There was a patch of white light on the roof. They couldn’t pick out the round holes any more. At the midway point of the tower of stone someone was climbing, someone elderly with fluttering white hair.

“He came from the banks of the Ganges. He had raised a lion in the village,” Joe said to Vincent. “Afterward he went mad. It was a very beautiful village. Standing at the riverside, you could hear the ancestors speaking in the starry sky.”

“Was that place really the Ganges?” Vincent asked.

“I don’t know. I’ve been to too many places, they’re all muddled together. But I want to think so. Such a wide river, where elephants stood towering on boats. The Ganges, the Ganges.”

“But it’s really cold here.” Vincent sneezed a few times in succession.

The old man had already climbed to the roof and disappeared into the patch of white light.

“He worked during his lifetime as a cooper. Raising the lion was his secret occupation. He did this using pheasants he’d captured. The lion hid in the forest, only appearing in the village in the middle of the night. The relationship between the lion and the man was unknown to others. He left riding the lion’s back. That day, the woods were full of noise and the water of the Ganges overflowed both banks. The elephants, the elephants. .”

He couldn’t continue speaking, because he heard a loud violent sound, like a rock smashing to the floor. Could a stair have fallen down? But there were no traces of it on the ground.

“Are you speaking of this old man?”

“Yes, I know him.”

“But he just fell down. Think of how heavy a man’s soul is.”

That day they did not climb up. They stood underneath in the tower’s shadow, watching the patch of light at its crown and discussing those irrelevant things that don’t touch on reality. In the afternoon they went to eat at a small restaurant, then returned to the Five Dragon Tower and continued talking. Time silently slipped away and night fell again. Joe sensed that Vincent seemed to be waiting for something. He went up to the doorway, over and over, to look around outside. Finally, a woman appeared. As every step brought her nearer Joe saw clearly that she was the bookshop owner’s aged, beautiful former wife. But in Vincent’s eyes, she was that weightless woman from the twenty-four-story high-rise in City B. Vincent had remembered agreeing to meet her at this spot.

The woman walked in, nodding familiarly to the two men. She said, “At dusk there was so much fog I could hardly make out the road.”

Vincent and Joe opened their mouths at almost the same time and said to each other, “So, you two arranged to meet here.”

At this they were both embarrassed. But the woman wasn’t. She walked over and clasped both their hands, shaking them forcefully a few times. Joe saw a figure beyond the wavy white hair of her elegant head. It was a rare breed of white tiger. In the dim light the tiger’s eyes were two lamps.

Soon the three of them couldn’t see one another’s faces.

Joe pressed the woman’s hand. Her hand didn’t give him the slightest feeling of reality. He thought of something.

“You’d said we wouldn’t meet again, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I said something like that. This is like fate. . If Ito were here. .”

Her voice was so ethereal Joe felt she must be floating overhead. But her slender hand was still held in his own, although it grew icy cold. Joe tried to warm it with one hand, while he clasped it with the other.

“Joe, why can’t I see the things I want to see?” Vincent’s dejected voice came from the dark. “I look harder, but on the beach there is only a boot the sea has pushed onto the shore.”

Vincent seemed to be crying. Joe thought that his tears probably fell on the palm of the woman’s other hand, because the hand Joe held in his was regaining its warmth little by little. The woman took back her hand and walked out through the door with quick steps. Joe heard her voice still inside the tower.

“The work in the bookstore increased every day, while Ito grew old.”

The white tiger walked into the night behind her.

Joe wanted to follow after her, but Vincent blocked the doorway. Vincent said, “She wears that black skirt and shirt all four seasons of the year.”

“Oh,” Joe was surprised. “Wasn’t she wearing a white kimono? She’s the former wife of the owner of a bookstore. I’ve met her before.”

“We saw the same person.” Vincent sank into tangled thoughts.

Someone came down from the top of the tower, then went through the side door and walked away. They couldn’t see the person, or maybe it wasn’t a person: the footsteps sounded like horse’s hooves.

“Joe, you go on ahead. Tonight I’ll sleep inside the tower. There’s a felt blanket here. Everyone says this is the highest point in the world.”

Once Joe left, Vincent shut the heavy door. As Joe walked he imagined Vincent scaling the tower inside. He thought that Vincent wanted to climb alone. Vincent wouldn’t be sleeping.

Outside there were no lights, and no stars in the sky. The night was deepening. He could dimly see the white tiger appearing and disappearing nearby. For the first time in many days Joe remembered Maria, and remembered he had a wife and a family. On this remote plateau someplace in the East a dim part of his lost memories reappeared. He remembered passing rich busy little days with Maria in City B. The two managed a restaurant that offered Western specialties. Their son was a long-distance truck driver, speeding along the highways of other regions year-round. Joe said to himself: “Such a wonderful family life.” He saw steam rising in the kitchen. Outside, the dining room was filled with seated guests. The thick smell of fried shrimp was everywhere. Maria bent over in the food cabinet looking for something, then she straightened up and walked over to Joe, asking, “Joe, did you finish seasoning the shrimp?”

The voice saying this sentence dropped, and the white tiger darted in front of him. Joe sobbed like a child.

He returned to the hotel and lay down on the mildew-smelling folded quilt. His mood quieted and he began to dream.

Midway through the night he woke up once and looked at the yellowed wallpaper on the wall of the hotel. A question flashed briefly across his mind: Was the bookstore’s volume of business really increasing? Then he quickly went back to sleep.

Vincent was inside the tower. It was so dark that when he stretched out his hand he couldn’t see his five fingers. He heard that person walking down. The man was probably feeling his way one step at a time. Proceeding was strenuous. Vincent imagined the fear in the man’s heart and unconsciously made a ge ge creaking sound with his fist. After a while the man stopped. A stair might be loose. Vincent remembered the loud sound inside the tower earlier. Perhaps a section had fallen down and there was a large gap between the stairs. Or could the white-haired man’s strength be used up? He’d looked so frail, he must be ancient. But he began to move again. His footsteps came even closer. Did he have wings to fly over that gap? Or was there no gap?

The footsteps sounded in front of Vincent, but he had not seen the old fellow face to face. Perhaps these footsteps were the sound of his heart? What was the white light on the roof after all? Vincent hadn’t ascended because in a dream the old man from the village clearly told him, “Do not go to the top of the tower.” Last week a beautiful little wolf had died inside the tower. Vincent thought that the little wolf must have died from exhaustion. It appeared quite serene and had no wounds on its body. The color of its fur was very light, almost a light yellow. It was at the age of dreams. But who had taken away its corpse?

Vincent touched the blanket on the floor with his foot. He wanted to lie down. Just at this moment, someone outside knocked on the door of the tower. Vincent went over and opened the door. This person brought in a smell of dew.

“The hotel is all full, I had to come back here.”

It was the black-clad woman.

Vincent and the woman lay down together on the blanket. He asked her whether she’d heard the sound of footsteps descending. The woman smiled and said, “That was me, I went up and came back down. All the people who ascend lose their weight. Don’t you see that I’m as light as air?” Vincent thought she truly was as light as air. He asked her what was on the roof of the tower. “Ten circular holes, you’ve seen them. From the round hole you lean out. .” She didn’t speak. “What’s there?” Vincent pressed her to speak. “I don’t know,” she said, “I haven’t done it, I came right back down.”

Vincent embraced her tightly and entered a dream. In his dream he was at his home in Country A at Christmas. Thick snow fell outside the windows. Lisa was adjusting the logs in the fireplace. The blazing flame made her face shine like a ripe apple. She turned her face to him and asked, “Vincent, when do you plan to set off?”

“Tomorrow,” he blurted out. “Otherwise I’ll be too old.”

When he woke in the morning, his eyes were dazzled by the strong sunlight from above and wouldn’t open. He reached out a hand to the woman by his side. She wasn’t there. When he raised his head again to look up, he discovered that the patch of white light was moving downward. Maybe it wasn’t moving, maybe it was expanding. Yes, it really was expanding! In a short time the whole inside of the tower was bright and dazzling. For Vincent it was as if he were looking directly at the sun. He couldn’t see anything. He felt hot and began to sweat. Nearby he heard the voice of a local person, it was very indistinct. He tried reaching out his hand, felt the edge of a knife, and shrank back at once. Someone was pulling his hand. Vincent caught at the hand, feeling that it was an old man’s, damp with cold sweat.

“Yesterday the sun came out. Today heavy snow seals off the road. You couldn’t go back even if you wanted to. Life at the top of the Five Dragon Tower is the same as a brush with death,” he said. He was probably from the same country as Vincent.

“And me? What is my life at the bottom of the tower the same as?”

“Your life is the same as watching a play.”

He laughed hollowly, then flung Vincent’s hand away, turning to climb the stone steps.

Vincent groped his way out of the tower. His eyesight immediately returned. The plateau was bright and clear. Green grass, trees with pink leaves, gray wolves racing along, cottages with thatched roofs beyond the woods. But this landscape didn’t seem real. Vincent imagined that if he stamped the ground everything before his eyes would disappear. Now that he had placed himself in the beautiful, ill-intentioned landscape he felt deeply that the Five Dragon Tower behind him was the single sight within this scene that was firm and would not collapse — and he’d left it.

He followed a road trampled into the grass by people passing back and forth on foot. He reflected that the plateau changed its face quickly. Over these past days he had become extremely familiar with this area, but now every blade and tree was wholly transformed. Was there some power at work? Was it to make people who came here cherish the Five Dragon Tower with yet greater reverence? He turned to look. The tall tower had already turned into a small gray triangle, just like one of the wooden building blocks he’d played with as a boy. Perhaps the tower was a building block?

Vincent stepped forward alone, anxious and fearful, into this false landscape. His legs were a little shaky. He thought it might be because he was so hungry. He asked himself: Had he made up his mind?

A long time ago, on the beach, watching the distant coral island, he had thought about that question. In truth it was an imponderable question. So how could he ask it? He didn’t ponder the question’s essence. Instead, he only circled around the question, opening many passages to it, setting an ambush.

When these sentences appeared in Vincent’s mind, his whole body felt a little feverish. Energy filled his gaunt and exhausted body. His footsteps gradually became steady. He was no longer nauseated by the false landscape extending in every direction.

Beside the forest an old man collected firewood, catching dry branches with a long hook. After Vincent walked past him, he shouted a sentence in the local language at Vincent’s back. Vincent suddenly understood that he was shouting, “Taking a boat or a plane?” Vincent returned to the old man, but his eyes were lowered as he tied his wood into a bundle with a vine, as if nothing had happened. The old man’s big-boned, able hands looked familiar. Vincent felt a few things inside him swiftly die, but at once a few other things grew.

The old man shouldered his load of firewood and walked into the depths of the woods. Vincent stepped forward along the road heading in the opposite direction.