The Last Lover

2. MR. REAGAN

On the plantation of rubber trees in the south, under the scorching summer sun, Reagan realized that little by little he was losing his mind. Reagan was an orphan. In his youth he’d gone into the tobacco business with his uncle, earned a bit of money, and bought this farm. He hadn’t been able to finish school, so his knowledge was earned through tenacious self-study. Still, without formal teaching this auto-didact had become an educated man, a stern but commonsensical farm owner. He enjoyed physical labor and at times went out himself to tap rubber, gather lotuses, and the like. Although women tended to indulge him, he was already fifty and still alone in the world. Reagan felt that his body was encased in a hard kind of shell, and that his motions toward socializing could not break through because the shell had grown along with his body. He suspected that his heart, too, had grown a hard shell.

Ida was an Asian woman, brown-skinned with wavy black hair. She was also an orphan, fled from an island nation in Southeast Asia to seek refuge with an aunt she’d never met before. Afterward she’d settled down on Reagan’s farm. At first Reagan hadn’t found her beautiful. She looked a bit like an orangutan, and her arms were far too long. Even so, Ida was an unusually conscientious worker. She had a good hand for technical tasks, and the farm tools she used became one with her body. In his heart Reagan quickly developed a fatherly sort of affection for her, always thinking to take care of this “orangutan.” But Ida was reluctant to accept his care. She hadn’t the slightest fear of her employer, and at moments she even mocked him. All Reagan could do was angrily set aside his kind intentions and observe her from a distance.

About the time of Ida’s second year on the farm, her aunt, her only relative, passed away. In Reagan’s estimation the aunt was an unfeeling woman. She had never, not even once, visited Ida on the farm. According to Ida her aunt was wealthy and had three sons. So to avoid the sons’ “misunderstanding” her, Ida hadn’t visited the aunt either. Ida requested two days’ leave to go to her aunt’s home and help make arrangements for the funeral. It was late at night on the third day when she finally returned to the farm. Reagan was at the lakeside fishing. He heard a call for help from the opposite shore — someone had fallen into the water. He threw down his fishing rod and ran across to the other side. It took him five minutes to reach the scene.

It was Ida, but she hadn’t fallen into the water at all. Instead she’d taken a lap around the lake and come back out. By the time Reagan reached her, she had already changed her clothes and was wringing the water from her hair. Under the dim moonlight she looked up at him a few times, flashing the large whites of her eyes, as if to reproach him.

“Is everything with your aunt taken care of?” He struggled for a long time before bursting out with this question.

“She suffered. You can’t even imagine the pain. I can’t imagine it either. So I went into the lake to try to experience it. But I couldn’t feel as much pain as she did. Isn’t that right?”

She hastily finished these few words with the opposite of her usual arrogance. She stood there with no suggestion of leaving, reaching up and grabbing at the air with her hands as if she were catching a butterfly.

“Ida, your aunt is gone.”

“No. For everyone who dies, there is always someone else who remembers that person in his heart. Isn’t that the same as still living?”

“Ida is very clever.”

“Some people think they know everything.”

Reagan felt his face burning. He couldn’t get used to this girl’s way of speaking. Could it be that he was too educated? Or was he making overtures to her in an evasive way? What odd ideas filled the head of the little orangutan who’d run away from the rainforest?

Because she stood there saying nothing, Reagan had no excuse to keep standing around. So he took his leave, telling her that he would go back to his fishing. At this, Ida grinned bitterly and turned her back on him.

On the way back, Reagan saw the rubber trees’ appearance altered by the moonlight. The short trees were like row on row of dwarves, the ground under the trees was very smooth, with no shadows. Along the border of the rubber tree plantation were a few coconut palms. Their tops reached high up into the clouds, and as long as Reagan looked up at them the ground under his feet refused to stay firm. He thought he was like those chaotic shadows, without substance, while Ida was like the rubber trees, solid and firmly set on the earth, distinct but unable to lay bare the riddle inside her.

That time he’d gone to take care of business in the city, Reagan never thought he’d come across Ida in a pub. At the bar her appearance was entirely different, attractive and full of a tropical flavor, like a lemon. The desire hidden in Reagan’s heart was suddenly brought out by her.

“Ida, what are you doing here?”

“Can’t you see? I’m serving customers, to help out a friend. Today is my day off.”

She passed among the tables, her long arms nimbly transporting glasses and dishes. The customers all craned their necks to admire her dancelike movements. Reagan sat by awkwardly. It felt as if there’d been an earthquake in his heart.

Reagan left the bar without ordering a drink. He turned into a long, dark street, and thought back to the sales manager at the clothing company. He was a highly self-assured man, whose heart hid unfathomable depths behind his bright, shining, pale green eyes. Each time Reagan sat in the man’s office he became his quarry. Suddenly, Reagan found his way blocked by a young black woman with long curved eyebrows and large eyes revolving in their sockets. She calmly stood facing him, obstructing his way along the narrow sidewalk. Reagan’s face reddened, and he almost turned to walk away.

“Stay there!” she said, her voice sharp and clear. “I’ve met plenty of people like you before.”

“And what of it?”

Reagan looked at her curiously, but she merely flashed the whites of her eyes resentfully toward him.

“Southern men like you are all alike, running desperately into dark corners. I wouldn’t even think of doing business with people like you. I have a job. I’m the cleaner for this street. During the day I keep watch to see if there’s any business I can do. But I don’t need southerners like you here. Go to hell!”

She stamped her foot, then abandoned him, disappearing into a florist’s shop. The fine and delicate curves of her receding figure appeared vexed.

Reagan looked at the potted flowers. Before his eyes the image blurred: were these real flowers or paper? And then all at once he was shocked to see three pairs of eyes staring at him from inside the darkened room. His heart leapt crazily as he took a step back and walked away. He didn’t care to linger in the city.

Exhausted in mind and body, Reagan stepped onto the train and took a seat in a corner of the back row, where no one else was sitting. He held up a newspaper to cover the bewildered expression on his face. There was someone in front of him laughing loudly. The voice sounded familiar.

“And he snuck away just like that?”

“I’m not worried about it. This place is so small, he’ll turn up again within a few days.”

“He’s a crafty bastard.”

It was a man and a woman over at the window on the left side who were talking. They were kissing openly and probably doing even more outrageous things. They seemed unconcerned about the racket they were making.

Hidden behind his newspaper, Reagan felt his whole body turn hot and dry. He looked toward his rigid reflection in the windowpane, staring at it. It looked like a dead man’s face, especially about the right nostril, as if the corner of the mouth were already drooping. It was terrifying. He did not want to look, but he couldn’t bear not to. The expression of the man in the glass was extremely eager. It also looked like he was suffering.

“You’re convinced he’s hiding around here?” the man said.

“There are clear signs,” the woman answered, as if desperately holding back a laugh.

As the train was going through a mountain tunnel, Reagan felt someone gently stroking his face. He reached out in the dark to touch this person, but there was nothing for his hand to touch. Moreover, the touch of the person’s hand on his face wasn’t much like a hand, but rather like some kind of soft thing, maybe fur? The hand as soft as fur suddenly covered his nostrils. Reagan was suffocating. He let out a shout. He heard the young woman up front say: “This man can’t be one of the crowd. It’s possible he came from an ancient village.”

The mountain tunnel was left behind. Reagan looked toward the window to discover his face covered in specks of blood; he looked at the floor, and saw a few white plumes. Could that have been a bird just now? He’d plainly felt it to be a person and had heard a man’s heavy breathing.

When Reagan got back to the farm, he ran into a thunderstorm. His car passed through a thick curtain of rain, then stopped in front of the small gray building where the cook, Ali, was coming out to welcome him.

“You’re back. A lightning strike just burned out the electricity. I thought I’d passed over into hell. How could this have happened?”

She was behaving oddly, not coming over to help carry his things. Then, twisting her obese frame, she disappeared inside the building. She must have been badly shaken. Reagan was surprised, too: how could this have happened? Wasn’t there a lightning rod plainly standing on his rooftop?

As he headed upstairs, Reagan’s head felt heavy and his feet light. He felt as if he were swimming along the ocean floor.

That night all kinds of crazed voices shouted in the blackness of the rainstorm. Reagan heard someone discussing how high the water would rise.

In the morning the garden was filled with bright sunlight, but Reagan didn’t wake from his deep sleep.

Ali stood in the doorway, flustered and busied with something. The driver was washing the car.

“Our employer hasn’t gotten up? This is unusual,” the driver said with a smile.

Ali looked at the young fellow sternly, but didn’t respond.

Upstairs, Reagan’s dreams sank to a depth they had never reached before. Deep, deep underneath the black soil, innumerable frenzied tree roots tangled together, making him abandon any idea of keeping his mind clear. He thought naively that he needed only to dig out a passageway, like an earthworm, and he’d be bound to get his head out eventually. With his skull pushed against the dirt, his mouth stuffed with mud, little by little he started to move. All around him there were things whispering, cha cha cha. Perhaps it was the lascivious tree roots. Between root and root were crevices, and even though these were frequently blocked up, in the end he could pass through. Reagan decided to take a rest on one of the roughest root tops. He placed his mud-stuffed ear against it and heard the sap inside thundering like rolling floodwater and shaking the root incessantly. He remembered Ida: her nimble body and these tree roots were so alike! But he found he was having trouble breathing. He wasn’t suited to this dreamscape.

“If Mr. Reagan doesn’t wake up from this long sleep, we’ll both be free!” The driver shouted, paying no heed to Ali’s manner. “Last night when he and I returned home, it was like crossing over the precipice of death!”

Ali ignored the troublesome young man and went back into the kitchen in disgust. From the wide-open door she looked off into the distance and watched the workers laboring under the sun. They wore work clothes and straw hats, and wrapped up their bodies tightly. Ali noticed the young girl who’d arrived two years earlier, Ida. Her face was already blackened by the sun. Ali was aware of Reagan’s intentions toward Ida. She was like an old crocodile in the river, with a perfect and clear knowledge of everything that happened on this farm. Ali’s manner toward her employer was conflicted: she defended him but wasn’t satisfied with him. Sometimes her displeasure reached such a pitch that she had almost no choice but to abandon him altogether. This past year, in the season when the coconuts were ripening, a woman visited Reagan’s house; she was none too young and oddly dressed. Reagan and this woman, who was clothed entirely in black, like a shadow, were inseparable. They kept close together for a week, then she suddenly disappeared. Reagan had seized his moment in the middle of the night when no one was around to see her off. Ali heard the sound of a car. It was Reagan himself driving. After the black-clad woman left, Reagan’s mood improved. He developed a fascination with nighttime fishing, sometimes fishing the whole night through and only coming home in the morning. Ali suspected that the black-clad woman wouldn’t be returning. She also suspected that Ida was her boss’s secret concern, because she was the only nonnative on the whole farm, so the boss couldn’t anticipate her every movement and action. This was how she’d finally touched his heart. Why did he go fishing? Wasn’t it because the girl liked to wander around at night? When she couldn’t sleep Ali often went for walks, and she’d already run into Ida several times. Sometimes Ida was with a companion, and other times it was Ida alone. Each time Ida greeted her absentmindedly, calling her “Mother.” She walked quite slowly, shuffling. She appeared to be looking along the path for some object while muttering softly to herself. If her friend was along, she would help Ida search. At times the night was so black that only animals could possibly see anything. Yet Ida could still see. Oddly enough, her eyes gave off a green fluorescence. Ali had seen it twice, and she’d been so surprised that her mouth had hung wide open. She’d hidden this knowledge in her heart and never shared it with Reagan.

“What are you searching for out here?” Ali stood in the road, blocking the way.

“I’m looking for the diamond ring I lost during the day, Mother.”

“Does Ida have a diamond ring?”

“Yes, I remember it clearly. I’m sure it slid off my finger.”

Ali was sure that the girl was scenting at some odor, that her sense of smell, like a hound’s, guided her along a trail in the dark of night. Ali thought of her own youthful period of wandering about like a homeless ghost. She couldn’t help a small chuckle. She sighed: “Time moves along.”

Ida’s movements were as quick as a snake’s. She ducked into the bushes and disappeared unexpectedly. Her companion stood in the middle of the road calling softly, “Ida! Ida!” Her voice was mournful.

In the room upstairs Reagan still lay in a deep sleep. The curtains were closed tightly, leaving the bedroom in a never-ending night.

Lying on her bed in the singles’ lodging, Ida spat out indistinct words to her friend: “In my hometown, a cloudburst shattered hundreds of the mudbrick houses. . all the leaves of the Chinese banana trees were beaten flat by the rain. That wasn’t rain. . it was like, it was like a flood rushing down from the sky. No one could hide from it. Don’t you understand?”

“I think I understand. How did you escape?” her friend asked.

“Me? At first I didn’t want to live, so instead I couldn’t die. We had to withstand this test every year. . I couldn’t stay there my whole life. I will go home someday. And I’m afraid that the sun here will dissolve me.”

As her friend answered, she discovered that Ida was already asleep and dreaming. The fragrance of coconuts rushed intermittently into the bedroom from the window. She saw that Ida’s expression in her sleep was one of disgust.

“Mr. Reagan has been asleep for two days,” the driver said. “Do we need to call a doctor?”

“Don’t talk nonsense. He had me bring him meals twice. It’s just that he doesn’t feel like waking up. Everyone has the right to do that.” Ali was deep in thought as she spoke.

Ali had met Vincent on the road into the city. She saw him walking, a solitary figure that the sun had burned to a stupor. He appeared to have heatstroke. He’d walk a few steps and then stop, gasping for air.

“Sir, do you need help?”

“My name is Vincent, I’m a friend of your employer. Please, tell me, how is he doing?”

He seemed unable to decide whether to keep on going. His gaze wavered. Ali thought he must be looking for a place to sit down.

“Mr. Reagan isn’t ill.”

“Of course he isn’t. How could he be ill? He decides things for himself.”

“Should I go back and send the car to get you? You look tired.”

“No, no, no. Look, the sun will set behind the mountains soon. I’ll just sit off to the side for a bit, under the Chinese banana tree. I’d like to see the evening in this place. A long time ago I heard that the sky here is green at night. I think this must be true. Ah, the sun’s going behind the mountain, thank heaven.”

After Ali left, the sun set behind the mountain. Vincent closed his eyes and meditated quietly in the shadow of the banana trees. He had come here chasing a woman from a dream. She had taken a red flower — he couldn’t say what it was called — from her head, and placed it under his nose so he could smell it. Then she told him it was “plucked from the farthest south, a place called the Cape.” When he woke Vincent pondered for a while before determining that the black-clad woman in his dream came from his client Reagan’s farm. Out of curiosity he had once looked on a map to find the location of the farm. In the city, Vincent and the woman were “transported” by an overwhelming night together in a shabby hotel. Lying on a simple, crude bed, half-awake, she had brought him to climax again and again. The strange thing was that the woman was just a figure. There was no body belonging to her. When Vincent eagerly embraced her, as he entered her from underneath, she began to move, but her body itself had no weight to it. The climax she finally brought Vincent to was vigorous but extremely barren. Each time it was like this. It almost drove Vincent mad, because this strange kind of climax failed to bring him release: his desire could not subside and instead surged higher. For an entire night he existed on the terrace of climax. The Eastern woman was silent, tractable, and tantalizing. Vincent realized that the woman, whose age was impossible to fix with much certainty, held the dominating position in these sexual activities. At daybreak he lay on the bed, exhausted and worn out, as the woman quietly shut the door and left. Afterward Lisa saw him lying in front of their house behaving in a revolting manner. He’d never been able to decide whether he’d actually been in a shabby hotel and had a sexual experience that left his bones weak. The woman had come looking for him several times since, dressed in black, her face indistinct. Vincent had grasped her hand, but there was nothing for him to hold but empty air. Besides, she came secretly and left secretly, and never spent another “transporting” night with him. So Vincent suspected that even the one time hadn’t been real. Now tomorrow would be his sixtieth birthday. Vincent was inwardly startled by the desire in his body: this was the first time in many years that he knew it as a lurking beast.

The sky gradually darkened, and the wind carried a touch of coolness. Vincent heard the sound of voices. It was two girls walking along the path. One was local, and the other was a brown-skinned Southeast Asian, with a delicate frame and very long arms. And behind the Southeast Asian girl, a woman dressed in black followed closely. Vincent was struck to the heart. But it appeared that the two girls hadn’t detected the woman behind them. They were bent over at the waist, searching for something on the ground.

Vincent stood and greeted them. The girls replied with ambiguous sounds, too absorbed in their own activity to notice him much. Just as they were exchanging this question and answer, the black-clad woman disappeared like a shadow. Vincent stretched his arms out toward the place where she’d been standing, but there was nothing for his arms to enclose.

When Vincent entered Reagan’s house, Reagan had already come downstairs, alert and refreshed. They greeted each other in the living room. As the two men embraced Vincent noticed his old friend’s vigor. As a matter of fact, Vincent had met this old friend only twice before, ten years ago on a bench in a park. He didn’t know how it happened that the two strangers greeted each other without any reason to do so. They had discussed the deep blackish-green lake in front of them. The second day they both went back to the park, continuing their conversation. And after that they hadn’t met again. Vincent knew about it when Reagan signed a contract with his company and later became a regular client. Nonetheless, he had never since tried to meet him face to face, or even mentioned to Joe that he knew Reagan. Over the many years, this old friend became a shadow in his memory. At least until the black-clad woman from his dream offered him a scent of Reagan’s farm, and the past events suddenly revived.

At Reagan’s home Vincent ate a meal and showered, then sat on the roomy sofa and chatted for a while. Reagan spoke of a poisonous species of striped snake, even taking out a picture to show him and warning him to take extra care when walking outside. Vincent didn’t notice the snake in the thick growth of grass — he saw only the image of the black-clad woman next to the snake. At the sight of her back his heart throbbed with terror and he almost let the photograph drop to the floor.

“She’s someone you know. I’ve heard her speak of you.” Reagan glanced at him attentively.

Vincent withdrew his gaze in discomfort and stared instead at the gray-papered walls, at a loss.

On the roomy bed in the guest room Vincent rolled back and forth, unable to sleep. Although the room had an air conditioner and remained cool, his heart churned alongside the waves of heat in the dark beyond the room. It was a long night of surging desire, somewhat like that amorous encounter in the shabby hotel. But there was no one else there.

Reagan had said, “She’s already gone.” What did that mean? That she’d died, or that she’d gone away? His tone of voice hadn’t been sorrowful. Perhaps gone with respect to her was a commonplace. Perhaps she was always coming and going from these tropical regions, and only occasionally stopped over in the city where he lived? He’d tried to guess her nationality. At times he thought she was Arab, at times he thought she was Indian, but there was no way to settle this. Yet at this present moment he realized that for her nationality was entirely meaningless. Before he’d gone to sleep, the woman who’d made the bed for him, Ali, told him that his wife, Lisa, had already come to the farm during the day. Now he fancied that Lisa’s body was everywhere, but there was still no way to expend his desire. Was it more like Lisa or that woman to come and go like a ghost?

After the old clock struck one, Vincent noticed the bedroom wall receding. He remembered that he was on the ground floor. It was possible that he was already sleeping among the rubber trees. He made up his mind: if the striped snakes crawled into the bed, he would play a sex game with them. That would thoroughly change his disposition. He opened his legs to welcome those lascivious small objects; he almost let out a groan.

“Does our guest need anything?” Ali’s aged voice rang out from beyond the door.

Vincent heard her turn on the light in the hallway. She must have stayed outside his door. He wondered what whim had sent him rushing off to spend the night in this place. Was it merely because of the woman in his dream? He wasn’t the sort of man to have affairs. The Arab woman had broken into his life by chance. Originally he’d thought he would be bound to forget about it afterward, but he was unable to.

He got out of bed, opened the door, and saw Ali sitting on a chair in the corridor.

“You’re not sleeping, Mother?”

“Me? I keep watch at night, to stop all of you from running all over the place. Who understands things here? Maybe not even Mr. Reagan.”

“What have you seen?”

“On a scorching night like this, any strange thing can happen. Your wife is a passionate woman.”

“Did she leave right away?”

“I don’t know. Maybe she went into the rubber tree groves. She’s not afraid of the heat.”

“I feel a little cold, in fact.”

In fact he was shivering.

“What should I do, Mother?”

“You came here, didn’t you? Just don’t be afraid, and everything will be all right. Try to be like Lisa.”

Vincent wanted to speak to Ali but she stood up, tottering, and said her employer was calling her from upstairs. Oddly enough, it was quiet on all sides and there was nothing to hear, yet she heard her employer’s summons. It would seem that Ali had the hearing of an animal.

He returned to his room and lay down again. He was still in an overstimulated state from waiting for those snakes to come out. He didn’t know when exactly it was, as he lay half-awake, half-asleep, that he heard someone arguing outside the window. Among the voices was Reagan’s. He sounded irritated and dispirited. Vincent heard him say repeatedly, in a voice that was almost crying, “It will kill someone.” Without knowing how, Vincent realized that Reagan was talking to a woman.

But when he got up, Ali told him that Reagan was still asleep. Vincent told her he’d heard Reagan talking in the night. Ali nodded several times: “Yes, he doesn’t know his own limits. He’s always wandering all over the place.”

“Why did he say someone would die?” Vincent asked, uncomprehending.

“It’s a premonition he’s always had. Don’t you realize that this farm sprang up out of his heart? Everything here is the opposite of what it should be.”

Vincent realized only that her words made him feel strange. He finished eating the breakfast Ali had prepared for him and walked to the stairs leading to the house. Lowering his head, he suspected his eyes of playing tricks on him. In the thick grass close by the marble stairs, six or seven striped snakes were hiding. One look and he knew they were those poisonous little snakes.

“Reagan’s pets.” Ali spoke from behind him.

Vincent’s legs buckled and he sat down on the steps. His gaze couldn’t leave the snakes, and a bizarre desire rose up inside him. The sound of Reagan’s voice in the night echoed in his ears: “It will kill someone.” After a little while the snakes concealed themselves in the grass. Vincent knew they hadn’t gone far. Couldn’t anything happen here on this tropical farm? Concealed behind Mr. Reagan’s stern outer appearance was a frightening landscape like this one. He hadn’t expected it. Originally he’d thought he was tracking down the Arab woman, but now he had entered Reagan’s demon-possessed realm. He’d often heard people speak of intersecting dreamworlds. At his own company Joe was involved in this shady kind of business and he was making experiments through reading.

The sun was beating down on the roof of the jeep when Vincent left, and he dozed off in the back seat. Drowsily he saw himself passing naked through a dark region where every single thing lost its form as his vision suddenly worsened.

At the same time, fat Ali and Reagan stood together on the stairs of the building. Each held a short stick with which they conducted the striped snakes in a dance on the grass. Ali was wearing a brightly colored, tropical-pattern robe and Reagan was wearing black, a suit for mourning.

“He left, damn him.” Ali set down her stick then sat on the stairs gasping for breath.

“He and I are like twin brothers.” Reagan wrinkled his brow as he spoke.

“Are you thinking of leaving?”

“Naturally. Although I made every brick and tile in this place.”

Ali stood up with great effort and returned to the kitchen. After a while the smell of meat pies floated out. Reagan’s appetite suddenly revived. He felt his whole body trembling.