The Last Lover

5. MARIA’S INTERESTS

The day Joe left for the north on a business trip, Maria was like a small brook rising in the springtime, cheerfully welling up with hope. Joe had taken a taxi at dawn. The previous evening they’d already said their good-byes, so Maria didn’t see him off. She stood at the window of her bedroom on the second floor, listening with minute attention to the sound of the taxi’s motor, watching Joe get into the car, his briefcase with the words “Rose Clothing Company” printed on it clamped under his arm. For a long time after the car drove off Maria still stood there, smoking a cigarette and reflecting on the Rose Clothing Company’s situation. She thought of how the company’s business had spread across the entire country, and was now even expanding to a few countries in Africa. But what kind of people was it relying on to prop it up? Everyone said her husband was the backbone of the company, an employee who’d given outstanding service, but as for Maria, she’d truly thought about it in a hundred ways and still couldn’t understand. She knew that Joe had some natural talent for the business trade, yet she knew his thoughts didn’t lie there. Joe’s thoughts all lay with his books, and because of this the essential life between husband and wife had begun separating years ago, moving little by little onto different paths. This had continued until two years ago, when Maria had grown nervy in the process of weaving those odd tapestries. Then a subtle communication had begun between them again. Maria hoped Joe would go on business trips. She was pleased with his frequently leaving home for a few days at a time. But this wasn’t because she wanted to have affairs of her own; it was rather a thirst for change. Every time Joe went away for a spell, the house grew clamorous, on the brink of something happening. For example, at this moment she heard the two cats in the backyard shrieking in a frenzy; a large flock of sparrows followed them onto the steps; and in the southern wind there was a cloth flapping with a pa pa sound. Even her tapestry loom downstairs began making a rhythmic noise.

There was someone coming along the path leading to the garden. It was her son, Daniel. Daniel had long since stopped going to school, but the two of them kept Joe blind to this fact. Maria had her son stay at her friend’s house two streets away. Daniel did nothing all day now. The times when Joe wasn’t at home, he snuck back secretly to help Maria tend the garden. Recently he’d brought home a Great Dane of enormous build, and had made a doghouse for it with his own hands. He proved quite skillful at these things. The Great Dane was extraordinarily gloomy. Perhaps this had to do with the climate of its homeland. But after the dog arrived at their home it appeared quite comfortable. Although it didn’t heed either the family or the two cats, they could see it was vigilant and much affected by its new environment. The better part of the day it lay dozing among the roses. Daniel christened it “Pirate.”

“Mama! Pirate took our spot. Can we still drink our tea there?” Daniel shouted into the house.

“No, child,” Maria, her hands covered in flour, came out and answered. “It might make Pirate unhappy. Don’t you see he’s trembling? Nightmares from the past still hover around him. Think about where Pirate came from, a place where there’s no daylight half the year.”

Maria put an apple cake in the oven and sat down in a chair, recalling the circumstances of her own girlhood. This had been a small town then. A few shops were scattered thinly along the streets and only one bar was open until two in the morning. Maria’s parents taught at an out-of-town school. She had passed an incomparably lonely youth in this town with her paternal grandfather. She had also been to college and been an office worker at a bank, but in the end she had returned in weariness to her hometown. By then the town had already developed into a midsized city, and that was where she came across Joe. Joe’s eccentricity attracted her. She felt this man was a bit like a cat, and he more or less conformed to the type she favored. The lovers built their present house on the old site of her former home. She resigned from her job and became a housewife. In Maria’s eyes, Joe had been changing all along. The first few years they were together, even though Joe liked to be silent, and when talking liked to “absent his spirit,” she never foresaw that he’d develop into his present state. In recent years, along with the city’s large-scale expansion, Maria realized that her husband’s “soul had left its home.” And she, who didn’t care to go outside, nowadays felt her own hometown grown unfamiliar. There were some streets, some buildings, that she had never been to and didn’t want to visit. One day, however, inside a newly opened bookstore — it was her first visit there — she saw her husband facing a bookcase. Maria didn’t know why her face reddened. As quick as flight she snuck out of the store. After returning home, she hadn’t mentioned this to Joe. It was only in the late night, when everyone was quiet, that she envisioned Joe hidden in some place she didn’t know about, perhaps in the basement of a bookstore, or perhaps beside a water tank on the roof of a high-rise restaurant. Or even on the sidewalk of a recently repaired road, reading books by the bright light of the streetlamps. Maria watched passively as Joe’s interest in books swallowed up everything else, destroying their married life. These past few years, her husband was “journeying in spirit” at nearly every moment. Even when he spoke exuberantly about business at his office, Maria, with perceptive insight, realized that her husband was actually exuberant about something else. Not only did Joe’s changes depress her, but also, at bottom, wasn’t she by nature a woman who liked “something new every day and night”? What Joe’s changes brought out in Maria was a sudden change in herself. Her own changing was not an expansion toward the outside but was rather confined to the family, taking their house as its boundary. Maria wasn’t clear about what she had done in concrete terms. She only felt that now she was like Joe, often able to enter an unusually intense, approximately hallucinatory state. At first this state occurred only when she was weaving tapestries, but slowly things became more complex. In the past two years, she suspected she’d become like her husband, sinking into the snare of “mental journeys,” while this house, and her son, Daniel, accompanied her into the snare. Sometimes, Maria was so frustrated by this feeling of unreality she wanted to scream. Sometimes, instead, she was extremely content. There were a few times, when she was sitting in the house or sitting in the garden, that she clearly heard the voices of her ancestors speaking, her parents and her father’s parents. They seemed to be expressing their objections to her extravagant way of life and their disgust at her immoderate spending.

Maria was a woman who liked extravagance. She had an especially excessive fondness for jewelry. She generally spent as much money as Joe brought in, and the better part of it went to the jeweler. But she didn’t adorn herself with the ornaments she purchased. Instead, she locked them out of the way in a jewelry case. Yet she also bought insurance for the valuable pieces. Joe believed her to be a woman who liked possession. He also knew she didn’t like long-term possession. She only liked the joy produced in the blink of an eye by a purchase. But then why buy insurance? Joe believed that she was compromising to some notion. In addition to jewelry, she bought valuable Persian rugs. When she’d bought so many there was no place left to spread them out, she simply took a few of the rugs that were still quite new and threw them into the garage. Joe had no way to share in the joy of her purchases because every time she went to the shops it was by herself, and after the things were bought and brought back he couldn’t see that there was any special expression on her face. If what she bought was jewels, she locked them in the gigantic jewelry case and that was it; if it was a rug, she spread it out on the floor at once, switching it with the old one. With whatever remained of that day, she did what she needed to do and never spoke of the things she’d bought. Joe sometimes reflected with hatred that she truly was a selfish woman. But on further thought, didn’t he also buy books? Besides, he never discussed his reading with her. At this his anger would disappear.

When Daniel was about ten years old, Maria’s lust for shopping swelled until Joe’s income nearly wasn’t enough to support it. One time she bought an expensive diamond brooch, costing nearly six months of Joe’s salary, and they even took out a small loan. Luckily, Maria wasn’t the sort of housewife to eat an entire mountain of wealth. Later on she began developing her own interests, buying a knitting machine and weaving lambswool tapestries. (Perhaps it was those beautiful Persian rugs that gave her the inspiration?) She was the sort of person who had a talent for real solid work, so from the start there were people who placed orders with her. Since she had begun to weave tapestries, Maria’s desire for shopping had abated somewhat. She grew absorbed in small matters, and inside the house she discovered a few odd signs she’d never noticed before. The very first strange thing she discovered was that the bodies of their two cats carried electricity. When they were in heat, it was so strong she suspected that the electric shock would kill her if she touched them. Was it because the house’s foundations were so ancient that strange things appeared there? The things that couldn’t be explained followed one after another. The roses, the noodle-making machine, the hose irrigating the garden, the stairs to the house all became unreliable. The time when there was a problem with the stairs, Maria, by coincidence, wasn’t wearing her glasses. To her eyes every stair slanted down in the same way. Her legs gave way under her, she sat down, and slid all the way downstairs. When she had collected herself and looked back up, she discovered that the staircase was now fine. These accidents around the house were inconvenient, but on the whole she harbored a kind of nameless and surprised pleasure at them. When she saw Joe getting an electric shock from touching the cats, her heart was also glad. Joe never discussed the strange occurrences with her, and Maria didn’t bring them up either. But when Maria and Daniel were together, the two of them talked over these events spiritedly. One time, when Joe wasn’t at home, mother and son spent the entire day out by the old well in the backyard without intending to. They even ate their meals next to the well. This was because Daniel had witnessed with his own eyes one of the African cats fall into the well, then emerge later from a tunnel that no one had known about. That day the two of them saw no further marvels, but their mood was unusually elated.

“Mother, do you think Pirate is tired of living?” Daniel seemed concerned.

“That’s not so, child. Pirate’s just too absorbed in things, like nighttime animals are by nature. Have you ever seen a smiling dog? But Pirate is able to smile. He practiced this skill in the dark.”

“His master drove him out of the house because of his smile. I don’t think he can tell how much light there is. In his eyes, it’s nighttime here where we are. Pirate dreams both day and night.”

Daniel was tall and thin and looked a little like a heron. Although there was nothing Maria and he didn’t talk about, she still felt that his nature contained some obscure thing. That obscurity originated with Joe. For example, Daniel hid at Maria’s friend’s house, overly cautious and circumspect, seldom going out, appearing to be extremely bashful, ordinary, but she knew he wasn’t an artless child. He had plans that would be difficult to realize; he was unable to abandon these plans.

Daniel arranged the garden systematically. He did such things almost without effort, but he was always nervous and unable to relax. This was the reason he ran away from boarding school. People said he was an excellent, self-disciplined student. But his mind was not on his schoolwork, and this was something only he knew. Maria wondered what this child’s mind was set on. Once she visited his school, where she watched her son from a distance, seeing him standing like a heron in the midst of many people. She suddenly felt that she was looking at Joe in his early youth. The sensation of it was distinct before her eyes. How could that be? Wasn’t Joe a short fellow?

When the two sat down together in the house and drank their coffee, Maria had Daniel look at the new tapestry on the wall. On it was woven a whirlpool, circle after circle whirling into its bottomless depths.

“This is a young woman wearing a kimono. I already saw her once, in Father’s study.”

Maria was inwardly startled.

“You read the same books as your father?”

“No, I only read travel stories. I like traveling.”

“Would you like to go abroad? To countries in the East, for example?”

“No, I’d just like to stay at home.”

Probably it was only Maria who could understand her son’s words.

One of the African cats passed quietly between their feet, its fur rubbing their pants legs and making pa pa crackling noises. The other cat, the yellow-and-white one, came over. Daniel called it “Beauty.” Beauty’s body was not electrified at present. She was a bit irritable, and apparently searching for something. Maria asked Daniel whether he heard his grandfather speaking inside the house. Daniel responded that he heard him every day. Maria asked him whether he was afraid. He said he’d been used to it from when he was little. What was there to be afraid of? Besides, being afraid was no use.

“If Father doesn’t like his work, he can come back here. Why does he have to go to the office every day? Couldn’t you sell all that jewelry you have? I’ve been to a dealer to ask, and the market value isn’t bad.”

“It’s exactly the opposite: he does like his work. Look, he’s off on a business trip again. If he didn’t work, he wouldn’t come into contact with all different kinds of customers. He was happy when he left in the morning.”

“So that’s how it is.”

Daniel was silent. He bent over, placing a piece of chocolate candy in the mouth of Beauty. Beauty ate the candy with a gloomy expression, and walked off haughtily when it was finished. The other, brown-striped cat, however, rubbed back and forth across their pants legs, seemingly to tell them something.

“I understand. Father is supposed to be far away from home, but he’s really returned to you here?”

“It may be. But what do Grandfather and those other people want to say? That he shouldn’t go far away? Like when we were drinking tea on the lawn and watched him appear in midair?”

Daniel didn’t answer. Maria also didn’t wish for her son to answer. For many years, she’d been awaiting a solution that was difficult to fix on, an unreckonable thing, proved only by action. She was in a confused state when she wove this whirlpool tapestry. Her son voiced her premonition, that the composition of this pattern came from Joe’s recent reading of a book by a Japanese person. Maria had never read the book, but she had captured Joe’s soul. And Daniel, without much effort, entered this unreal world.

“Daniel, later on won’t you need a profession?”

“I can help people as a gardener.”

He added sugar to his coffee with assurance, altogether unconcerned about this issue. After becoming a private gardener, he could be like Joe, coming into contact with all different kinds of people. Now Maria realized that her son and his father were the same type of person, and had no fundamental use for the pains she took. Maria also realized that he did not really need to hide from Joe. Joe probably wouldn’t be angry that he had left school. But Daniel didn’t seem to be afraid of Joe’s anger. Rather, he was purposely maintaining an estranged relationship with Joe. What for? Perhaps he didn’t want too much daily contact with his father, but preferred to meet him in some subtle moment and place?

In Maria’s bedroom was a portrait of her father. She’d put the portrait down at the back of a wardrobe, and only when she was getting dressed did she face her father in its dimness. The father’s face in that portrait appeared arrogant, with bright, piercing eyes. Maria found it difficult to counter his look. In the beginning she had hung him on the wall. Later she detected that her father was staring at her, and she unexpectedly lost her competence in life. At this she finally invited the portrait into the wardrobe. The day her father entered the wardrobe was the day she started to weave tapestries. The communication taking place in the dark redoubled her confidence. In reality, her childhood memories relating to her father had practically all disappeared or been wiped out. The vanished father turned into the spiritual support of the father in the portrait. Maria thought: This is the meaning of so-called adulthood. What was a father? A father was a kind of negation, his strict eye making Maria’s life into a string of illogical marvels, and even indirectly affecting Joe’s life. In the night after the day when the roses were blooming like crazy she had seen with her own eyes how Joe, like a crazed man, rushed downstairs, seeming to want to take in the entire courtyard, looking left, looking right, looking everywhere.

Joe had also seen Maria’s portrait of her father, which formerly had been placed in the corner of the living room. Although he had never met her father, Joe said he wasn’t a stranger to his father-in-law. He also said that all the stories he read concerned her father. “You have a legendary father.” Joe made this statement casually, but Maria was greatly shaken. Perhaps it was Joe’s urging that gave her a little faith in this father who did not exist. Maria’s intoxication in daydreams these past few years probably had much to do with the father in the portrait. If even her father could be revived in a fabrication, what couldn’t be fabricated? An elderly neighbor, after seeing her tapestries, said that the design on one of them gave him a feeling “like dropping into an abyss.” Yet he bought that smallish tapestry. Evidently he wished to experience what it was like to drop into an abyss. Deep at night when everyone was silent, her father was able to talk; his speech couldn’t be heard clearly. He seemed to be speaking to her mother, but the talk between them was mixed up with her grandfather’s chatter. Her grandfather and mother’s talk could be heard more clearly. They usually offered her stern criticisms. Maria was already used to such criticism, although she was not used to her father’s vague voice hidden behind it. She would often wonder why she believed she was the daughter of that man. She was also gratified by her relationship with Joe: she’d settled on Joe all at once, but it was because she’d had that kind of father. The composition of the world was truly marvelous.

When Maria saw her gray-and-white hair in the mirror, she thought of her old age. She’d never expected that her life when she was elderly would be as active as the present. Many years back she had already planned to pass peaceful waning years in this ancient house.

“Maria, Maria,” she said to herself, “In fact, you aren’t your father’s daughter, and you aren’t any man’s daughter — you are this town’s daughter. This small town has already disappeared, sunk underground, and so your train of thought transfers to underground. You’ve become an unearthed archaeological relic.”

She was imagining herself with her whole body verdigris, sitting among the rosebushes and basking in the sun. Perhaps Daniel saw on her face, on her neck, that copper-green. Daniel was her son, and from the day he was conceived, the small town’s ill wind had brushed his immature cheeks. Maria recalled something that had happened when Daniel was three years old. One day at dawn her son had escaped from her care, walked to the neighbor’s garden, got into the doghouse, and squatted inside, completely still. Maria went mad, embracing her lost but recovered son and wailing and crying. Maria knew Daniel loved her, but his kind of love was too gray, even old, and this pained her heart. She was unsure of whether her son actually loved his father. She felt that the father-son relationship between them was of a rare kind, as was apparent when Daniel could see from a glance the Japanese woman’s kimono inside her tapestry’s whirlpool. This earth holds some people who, although not through language, and not through close association and exchange of emotions, can still, from estranged distance and silence, reach deeper levels of communication. At this point, Maria seemed to see the verdigris of her body giving off a flickering light.

Maria’s short gray hair stood up straight in the mirror. Her expression was apprehensive. Was this, or was it not, some kind of awakening? Would the restlessness that came with the nearing of old age be able to bring her in the end into eternal serenity?

That evening, when Joe was away, Maria turned off all of the lights in the house. On a night like this, even her parents and grandfather were not talking. But she collided with her son in the living room, and was frightened into a cold sweat all over her body.

“I heard you call me, so I came back,” Daniel said.

“I didn’t call you.”

“Maybe you didn’t know you called me. The night is very beautiful, and our house is like a bay laurel. Mama, what do you say, should I follow the path leading to the mountaintop, uphill all the way? The snow piled on the summit is eye-piercing.”

Maria heard her son’s voice shaking. She thought, He truly is a passionate young man.

“Mother, today I helped the Vietnamese family, over on the street where the church is, put their garden in order. After it rained, millions of earthworms gushed out of the ground. The family didn’t react. They stood in the doorway drinking tea.”

“You found a job, child.”

“Where is Vietnam? I was thinking about it while I was hoeing, but I couldn’t think clearly. Just now, when you called me, on the way here I suddenly thought of Vietnam. I saw the family escaping from the rain into darkened houses. Young girls with bare feet, their feet crawling with leeches. . They don’t react to these kinds of things.”

“Daniel, are you in love?”

“I entered a dead-end street. I went mad seeing the earthworms.”

“Daniel, let me touch your face.”

Maria stretched out her hand toward her son, but there was nothing to touch. She knew the Vietnamese family. They’d opened a laundromat; the faces of the adults and children had assured expressions; the girl went to the public school and walked in the street with a careful look, not anything like the girls around here.

Daniel left the house without a sound, like a cat, and Maria was immersed in the complete stillness. After midnight, a hailstorm woke her. That hail fell strangely. Hailstones as large as eggs shot toward her window and fell to the ground. Afterward she used a washbasin to gather them up, enough to fill it. The window of Joe’s bedroom was shut tightly, and the glass had not been shattered. Maria lay down on Joe’s bed, covered with a quilt, her ears full of the sharp call of the mad gale wind. In her mind acts from her and Joe’s shared life swept past. She saw clearly how daily life had shifted underground, how their surface exchanges had changed before her eyes into this mystical relationship. She remembered in early years Joe making a joke to her: “With all your energy, you’re itching to move the jewelry store into your strongbox.” But Joe was also full of energy. This short man, without meaning to, had built up alongside her a fortress to resist the invasions of daily life. But in the passing of months and years, their life inside was eroding little by little, changing into something unrecognizable.

She lay on Joe’s bed. This was the bed he’d slept in for many years since they had moved to separate rooms. Occasionally, Joe came to her room, but for several years she had never been in this bed. She opened her eyes wide, trying to see anything at all, but it was a wasted effort. Only if she closed her eyes did she feel that there were shadows in the room. The smell of Joe’s body could still make her excited, but inside that odor was a poison which could destroy the seething desire in her body. Those few times making love in the past few years didn’t bear looking back on. When she imagined herself a lioness, Joe became a vapor. .

It was only at this moment, on the night of the hailstorm, that Maria’s shapely body finally embraced Joe, tumbling onto that large old bed. She let out a lion’s roar, and from a remote place came a faint echo. This was the night of Maria’s inferno, as the body’s torment freed the spirit from its home.