The Last Lover

6. LISA’S SECRETS

Lisa, who came from a gambling town, was like sunshine on a summer’s day drying the layers of mold from Vincent’s hidden life. She, who’d lost both parents to the slot machines, with her shining eyes, her loud voice, her coarse, stiff red hair flying in all directions, was like an exploding bomb. She was a consummately skilled administrator, and very few people could manage what she held in her head, the method and keenness. She could make decisions swift as lightning. Many years ago, this daughter of a gambling family had wandered into this small city and fallen in with Vincent. The two of them had established the clothing company together.

She had retired from management of the company when its business was thriving and expanding because she feared the battles of the business world. Its battling reverberated with the lingering sound of her dead parents. From that day forward, she lived inside the enormous shadow of Vincent’s inner world. When she was still young, Lisa came to think of herself as vulgar, and she didn’t intend to change this part of herself. She wore colorful, gaudy clothes, spoke coarsely, and sometimes got drunk. After she married Vincent these traits became slightly restrained, but it wasn’t an alteration in essence. She knew Vincent appreciated her.

Their house had reddish-orange outer walls and was situated behind the trees on a hillside. In front of the house lay an enormous flower garden and lawn, with a light-blue swimming pool like a beautiful jade under the sky. Vincent had designed this wealth-symbolizing residence on an impulse in his youth. The building had four stories. Although its furnishings were contrastingly thrifty, the several oil paintings that hung on its walls were quite valuable. Even so, after they had lived there for a year, they both started to neglect the upkeep of their house. For the sake of privacy they dismissed nearly all the servants, only retaining a cook. The sturdy fellow was also in charge of cleaning the swimming pool and the interior of the house. Fortunately the owners didn’t bring guests home. The garden quickly became an uncultivated plot. All kinds of birds came to make their nests among its overgrown flowers, grass, trees. This, too, lent a peculiar air to the residence. What secrets did the husband and wife keep? For Lisa, their so-called secret was actually a riddle, something that couldn’t be explained but rather was a longing buried away from beginning to end in the depths of their hearts. They both fostered this kind of secret. Especially at periods when business picked up and communication with the outside world became more frequent.

Once they were fully familiar with each other’s bodies, after their enthusiasm for frenzied lovemaking had long since receded, the two, independent of each other, began searching in the nighttime. It was on a summer night that Lisa, waking from an apprehensive dream, turned on the light and discovered that it was exactly one in the morning. So as not to disturb Vincent sleeping beside her, she hurriedly turned off the light, and walked outside on bare feet. Sitting on the stairs was a playmate from her childhood, a dwarf nicknamed “Dummy.” Lisa was pleasantly surprised to see him.

“Dummy, where did you come from?” She grasped his hand. His palm was rough, like a file.

“I took a fork in the road that leads from here to your hometown. It only takes half an hour.” When he said this, Dummy appeared to be making a joke. Even after the passing of so many years his voice was clear and loud; his chest had a good resonance.

“Tell me about it. I want to go back, too.”

Lisa plainly knew that this was dream-talk, but she was willing to keep talking.

“I walked here from there. But if you want me to go back on the same road, that’s impossible. Everything changes after time. I’d need to search for it again. You also need to search. In your house there is a road leading to the gambling city. You cannot see the road, because it disappears in the daytime. It really only took me half an hour to get here, but what does that prove? It proves that there is a road. .” He would have kept on like a tongue-twister, but Lisa cut him off. .

Dummy said he was only passing by, and now he had to leave. He walked down the stairs mumbling something to himself. Lisa saw his small body disappear into the shadows of a cluster of peach trees.

She didn’t know when Vincent had also sat down on the steps. Vincent said, “Lisa, won’t you go out searching for a bit? I’m going to.”

He, too, walked down the stairs, disappearing into the shadows of the peach trees. At first Lisa heard bumping sounds among the branches. After, she didn’t hear anything.

He returned in the morning. Lisa asked him where he’d gone. He was unable to say, only that the more he walked the less confident he felt, so he’d had to return home.

During the daytime, Lisa went back and forth among the trees, but failed to discover anything. It was then she was most puzzled because she discovered that as Vincent’s work grew busier, he slept less at night. He would tumble out of bed, head to the closed-in un-tended garden, and not come back out. And Lisa herself walked back and forth along the periphery of the garden. This went on until she learned that her husband had appeared in a garden at a street corner at midnight. She finally had her suspicions.

“I was tired of walking, so I went to that garden to rest for a while.” He spoke vaguely. “To me, she is you, and in a place like this, nothing is too strange.”

“You’ve found a new companion.”

“Nonsense, you are who I found. Lisa, if it wasn’t for you, I could sleep at night like a corpse.”

They drank underneath the grapevines. They were both drunk, falling on the ground.

“Vincent, Vincent, did you grow up out of the grass?” Lisa asked, her eyes blurry with drink. She saw meteors falling from the sky, and her red skirt had already caught fire.

“Lisa, I saw you setting a fire in the abyss.” Vincent spread his arms and legs wide. His green eyes lost their light as his gaze settled on a clump of grapes. “It’s so hot. Is your gambling city full of stone mountains? I know you’re not afraid of fire, dear. .”

After Lisa sobered up, she saw Vincent lying in a small rivulet, the mountain spring rinsing his short hair. All his clothing was soaked. She called to him again and again, but still he slept like death. Afterward the cook came out and shouldered his unwaking employer, carrying him back to the house.

When Lisa retired to their home, weary of work, she began her life of reverie. Or, you could say, she continued her life of reverie.

When Lisa was young, no one foresaw that this scarlet-cheeked, incredibly driven young woman would be one for reverie. During her roving period she had tried every kind of work: housemaid, waitress, car washer, tour guide, office secretary, typist, department store bookkeeper, warehouse custodian, radio broadcaster, and even a short time as a weather announcer. She was multi-talented and multi-skilled, free from worry, even-tempered, with a remarkable appearance, slightly vulgar, a common woman. But there truly was a reverie belonging to her. Every day it took place at a set time in the middle of the night, a secret of which no one was aware.

Every night after midnight, at the time of utter silence, a few strange people assembled at the walls of her bedroom and discussed the long march. By raising herself slightly from the bed Lisa could see their several black shadows, and their conversation also carried to her ears. The long march was their perpetual topic. All the apprehension, difficulty, loss of hope, feelings of defeat, and life-risking resurgence that this activity contained — these were not things ordinary people could understand. In the stifling silences, Lisa often shouted into the darkness. Thereupon the tall, thin figures would scurry over and clutch at her throat, rendering her unable to move. She vividly felt the nearness of death. After this recurred a few more times, Lisa gave up in fear. She would rather suffer the oppression of that silence, that not-yet-reached limit of sorrow. In those years she passed through many places, but whenever she reached a place, at midnight discussion of the long march would be, as before, the inevitable topic. What was the long march? Observing the shades assembled at the walls, with their unchanging, conspiratorial air, listening attentively to those tedious, nervous dialogues, and imagining the army’s march through that endless hell, year after year, Lisa little by little came to understand that the long march was not another’s; it was related only to her own life, something she should do her utmost to forget, but also a deep thought destined to be inscribed on her heart. There was a tragic night when an old woman in the shadows spoke of a member of the long march army, wounded and at the point of death. This young woman lay on a crude stretcher, imploring her companions to be merciful, to lift their hands and throw her into the river. Blood spurted from her mouth and her hands danced madly in the air like chicken feet. The troops silently followed the river. Their faces little by little grew incomparably savage. The black sky seemed to press down on each person’s back. Suddenly, there was the sound of desolate crying, but it was not coming from within the army. Rather, it was coming from the sky itself. . The old woman had told the story up to this point when her voice disappeared, and the whispering of the others surged up again. In Lisa’s dream that night there was a continuous rainstorm lashing at her face like a whip. The strange thing was that this soul-corroding grief in the night did not wear down her body. It was even nourishing: she looked excessively healthy. Even the tragedy in the swamp at night when the whole army was destroyed, the cut-off cries reverberating through the air, the horror of the severed bridge, the struggle in the tiger’s jaws, could not fade the rosiness of her cheeks. She thought that perhaps she was a compound body of two people. The one suffering hardships in these reveries nourished the other, who was leading a comfortable life.

Once, when she was working as a tour guide, an old man fell in love with her. As the cruise ship headed to a small tropical island, at midnight on the deck Lisa told this fatherlike white-bearded old man about the long march, her narration baffling and hurried, as if she were trying to catch hold of something.

“Lisa,” the old Middle Eastern man, Yasin, said in her ear, “Come to me here, girl. I am the destination of your long march. Look there, it’s a falling star, a happy star.”

His body gave off an odor of sulfur. Lisa gave herself over to illusion.

Before dawn Yasin lay dead on the deck, his aquiline nose suggesting boundless dignity. The tour group continued on ahead, and Lisa, alone in the cabin, carried on the long march. She already felt deeply how remote she and the beautiful Yasin were from each other. Among the long march army, between the dusky sky and darkened land, who else would be able to see her destination? And so, for the first time in many years, she remembered her distant parents, discovering with panic how much she resembled them. In the ship’s cabin the discussion reached a high point, because behind the long march army there appeared a pursuing army. .

After she met Vincent, these ghosts no longer appeared to Lisa. From their first meeting she saw a heavy shadow behind him. That shadow would sometimes grow larger, shrouding the two of them inside it. Lisa thought that a man who could carry the black night on his body as he walked back and forth was her ideal of a man. The two discussed at length the matter of the long march. Lisa asked him, Had he been one of those ghosts in her bedroom? Vincent answered, Perhaps yes, but he couldn’t remember things from the past, what a pity. As they spoke there came an intermittent smell of sulfur, making Lisa shudder uncontrollably. Vincent was not adept at description, and he only repeated, “Ah, Lisa, my ideal!” That sentence seemed unbearably crude. Lisa told him that the shadow behind his back was like a powerful black cloud. With him standing beside her, she felt as if she were living inside an imagination. But in this, wasn’t she too lazy?

In the city, among crowds of people, Lisa always kept one eye on her husband. Often, as she ran to his side, her high heels snapped off.

In recent years Lisa had observed with panic as the shadow behind Vincent grew darker and darker. At times his whole person unexpectedly disappeared inside it, without leaving an image or trace.

“Vincent, Vincent, have you abandoned Lisa?” She worried over this sentence.

Originally, when they married, Vincent’s world became her world. The two of them passed many unforgettable days in a shared refuge. But now Lisa was suddenly again a solitary person.

The nighttime became a trial of tortured nerves. Especially on rainy evenings.

The day she retired Vincent asked her what she was going to do, and she responded, “Start the real long march.” Vincent felt a little surprised at first, but soon he was relieved, saying, “You’ll settle everything for the two of us.” That evening they got drunk to celebrate Lisa’s return to the home.

Afterward the period of waiting seemed endless. The ghosts didn’t appear in her room any more. She tried a room separate from Vincent’s, but they didn’t come. Later she realized that there was no need for separate rooms, because it was quite possible Vincent was one of the shades. The searching activity was thus begun. The dwarf, Dummy, had told her that on the plot of their house there was a road leading to the gambling city. Lisa thought, without any reason to, that by finding this road she could join the long march army. But Vincent’s searching had its own method. Once he headed into the thick groves and tangled grasses, Lisa could no longer find him. Lisa could not help suspecting that building this house on a hillside and buying this enormous garden in the middle of the city was something Vincent had premeditated long ago.

Sometimes Lisa went to the office to observe her husband closely. But she couldn’t see the slightest marks of his nighttime activities on him. Where did he actually go at night? She said to him, “We can return together to my hometown.” Vincent said, however: “I’m also searching for you. I’ve reached the long march campsite. The fires are not put out, the troops have not yet departed.”

When Vincent and his co-workers got into a car, Lisa saw the black shadow behind him remain outside it. The car started off, and the shadow floated on top of the car roof like a black hot-air balloon. Lisa could only stare, but the faces of the people next to her had no expression at all. Perhaps they saw it, too.

The night without Vincent was a night without anything at all, other than the yi ya babbling of an infant learning to speak. Perhaps it was their punishment for leaving no descendants. . their two-person world couldn’t contain a new life. Lisa still harbored a desire to develop on her own. One time she thought that it might be worthwhile if she walked to the head of the mountain stream, because recently a species of small fish had appeared in the rivulet, like a piece of news from the outside world rushing in. She changed into high boots and groped her way along the gully holding a flashlight. The moon was dark and the wind high as Lisa heard the faint sound of the army’s bugle, and smelled a pungent smoke. Her pulse grew wild. The gully bent and curved. She thought she was already behind the mountain, and up ahead was the side of a large road. But the gully unexpectedly cut short and the babbling spring, chan chan, ran down into a natural well. This well was not far from the road. It actually looked more like a puddle than a well. She could imagine that it was very deep underneath its commonplace appearance. Lisa didn’t have the courage to jump into the well. Although she was able to swim, as soon as she thought of the bottomless abyss and the narrow entrance she became so afraid that her mind went numb. Besides, who could guarantee that Dummy had taken this road? Vincent was even less likely to have. Hadn’t people seen him sitting in a coffee shop off the street? She stood beside the road in her boots, sweat pouring like rain all over her body. The second night she practiced again. This time she hadn’t walked far before the rivulet disappeared, its running water seeping into the ground. She realized that the earth on which she stood was soft. She was sinking down. She grew anxious and began to churn up the ground, reckless of everything, turning up the piece of land. Then someone was in front of her, speaking to her. It was Vincent, who seemed to have been there for a while.

“Lisa, go back. There won’t be any results so quickly. Your hometown is more than five hundred kilometers away, in the mists and fog. How can it be found all at once?”

“But you, what are you looking for, Vincent?” she asked him, her mind in confusion.

“I’m not looking for anything, I was this way before I knew you. I can’t always stay in one place. But we are together, aren’t we?”

“Yes.” She had to admit what he said was correct. Of course they were together, perhaps forever.

In the dark she saw Vincent reach out his hand toward her. Her hands held that familiar hand, bringing it to her face. Suddenly, she discovered it was a broken-off arm.

“Vincent!” she shouted desolately, and fainted.

The water from underground flooded her clothing. It was the mountain stream, the one which had just disappeared.

She returned to the house dripping wet. The driver told her Vincent had already gone to work. This driver, Booker, was a part-time employee. He looked so steadily at Lisa’s body, which seemed almost nude, that her face reddened.

“Haven’t you seen this before?” She forced herself to make a provocative look.

“I haven’t. At least someone like you,” he said resentfully.

“Huh, go back to your hometown and look around then.”

Lisa realized that she wasn’t making sense, saying this. Why tell him to go look around his “hometown”? Did he have a hometown? It seemed she was going too far with her obsession. But the young man had already walked off. She heard the cook cursing maliciously from inside the house, but she didn’t know if he was cursing her or the driver.

She changed her clothes and went downstairs to eat breakfast.

“Who were you cursing at?”

“I don’t know,” said the cook, A Bing. “I just wanted to curse at someone. There’s such a strong smell of gunpowder in the house.”

“It’s the smell of brimstone.”

“You and Mr. Vincent are at war between yourselves. Am I right?”

“No. He and I are fighting a common battle. How can you get the most basic part wrong?”

“I think it comes to about the same thing. This morning when he was eating breakfast he had blood flowing over his hands.”

Lisa covered a surprised shout with her hand. A Bing walked away, as though nothing had happened.

It was after this that Vincent fell asleep on the grass, behaving awfully. She looked carefully at his hairy wrists, but there were no scars on them. Then Vincent looked at her with lust-filled eyes, hazily saying, “Who are you? Are you a Moroccan?” Lisa shouted into his ear, “I come from the gambling city!” He turned, one side of his face stuck to the messy grass, and said, his voice distinct, “I need a woman of Arab and Japanese descent, or else you won’t be able to see me.” He finished this sentence and snored.

Lisa sought out Joe’s wife, Maria, to talk about the situation. She didn’t know why she needed to find someone to talk to, but since she needed to talk, she had to find Maria. She’d been to Maria’s house, which she secretly called “the playground.” Striding through the wooden gate set in a bamboo fence, she grew dizzy, with the clear feeling of a powerful magnetic field inside the building. That afternoon, drinking coffee among Maria’s rosebushes, Lisa spoke to this woman, who had great wisdom and a cool head, about her own chaotic life. As she was speaking, Lisa realized that the roses had an unusual fragrance. She asked Maria where this variety came from. Maria said they were from a pastureland in the north, and that the flowering plants there were all cultivated in midair.

“I sit at home, but at any time I can see the snow piled on the mountaintops,” Maria said, smiling with a slight squint.

Two cats scurried out from under the low table. Lisa’s whole body tingled.

“Your cats, Maria?” she asked.

But Maria’s silhouette grew dim, and after a bit Lisa could only hear her voice.

“Our long march requires an impetus that doesn’t wear away,” Lisa said hopelessly, in that direction. “Otherwise, on that great overcast river, the iron chains of the bridge will break, hong, with a crash. The whole army will be destroyed, doomed by fate.”

Maria was smiling artificially. Lisa saw that her head and body were completely separated from each other. All at once her hair stood on end and her spine ran cold with fear.

Lisa walked straight to the wooden gate, still hearing Maria’s voice continuing, following her.

This meeting left Lisa with an indelible impression. From then on she regarded Maria as being similar to herself. She often saw Maria’s husband, a short, reticent man, but her impression of Joe was very hard to clarify. Today was the second time this month she’d come here. As for the period when she hadn’t come, it was because she was a little scared.

“Hello, Lisa!”

Maria reached out strong, nimble hands and held her. Her thick gray hair was casually drawn back behind her head and her whole body gave off an inhibiting energy. She said she’d been weaving.

“Amazing!” Lisa said, leafing through the works piled up there. “Maybe you could guide me. I’m looking into these deep, deep whirlpools. My heart becomes a mirror. .”

Abruptly her voice cut off, because she saw an extremely familiar picture. She’d seen this picture many years ago, when she was still a young girl, and in the days following she frequently met with it again. She clearly remembered, on the long march nights, how this picture would repeatedly appear in the dark. What Maria had woven was a scorpion, hidden in a deep clump of grass, a big fellow, faintly visible. This scorpion was red. The lambswool Maria used to knit it was dyed the color of flame.

“I can’t see it clearly. .” Lisa said, stammering, pointing to the picture.

“Oh, that design! It’s nothing, that’s Joe.”

“Joe? Clearly it’s a scorpion!”

“Yes, but it came out of his story, and Joe’s stories are Joe himself. . I can’t explain it. Have you really seen a fire-red scorpion before? I usually like to weave things that have never been seen before, like Joe.”

Lisa believed what Maria said, because she’d never been an affected woman. She asked Maria whether she knew that Joe had a mysterious client in the north.

“I know. But why mysterious?” Maria was a bit alarmed.

“Because the man doesn’t exist. Every year he orders clothing from our company for his workers at the pasture, but when our people make business trips there they discover that it’s an abandoned quarry. He pays for the orders, but the clothes are piled in a warehouse to this day.”

A slight smile floated on Maria’s face.

“Ah, that’s what you’re talking about. That kind of man has no set home. Don’t take him too seriously. And anyway, the company hasn’t taken a loss, right?”

“I guess so. I really want to see him with my own eyes. Your husband is the only one who’s met him.”

Lisa watched this woman who in weaving transformed her husband into a scorpion in the grass. Abruptly, she felt unexpected passageways appear in her mind. Perhaps her long march at night should shift direction; perhaps she should change from expanding outward to becoming still?

Following Maria into the living room, she saw through the French windows a very thin boy wielding a hoe in the courtyard. The boy’s face looked somewhat familiar.

“That is my son, Daniel.”

“Oh!”

That day she sat with Maria in the kitchen. She talked all along about Vincent. Outside it was raining, with the constant sound of drops falling. Daniel often scurried in and out, his clothing soaked through, with a fugitive look. Lisa noticed that the boy made no sound when he walked. Lisa asked Maria what the Rose Clothing Company signified to Vincent. Its immense machinery working day and night seemed somehow separate from him. His world was a different place, at night among the trees in the garden, in the gloomy middle of the night in gardens at street intersections.

“The Rose Clothing Company,” Maria lit a cigarette and spoke slowly, “to someone like Vincent, is everything. Maybe he thinks his life has already run its course.”

“How strange!” Lisa sighed. “In your house nothing is peaceful,” she spoke again.

For Lisa, Maria’s house was a place that made her nervous. In its vicinity all sorts of voices were speaking, every object carried electricity, and then there was the son with the cruel expression. There were also the tapestries with their furtive meanings. But even so this woman was someone Lisa believed she could trust. Were Vincent and the company collecting this type of person? According to Maria’s way of speaking, Vincent’s life had already run its course, and so he began an absurd lifestyle, one without any sense of reality. Then why did she say the Rose Clothing Company was everything to him? Would he take this spectacular, human enterprise and make it into a ghost’s stronghold? Lisa thought of the black-clad Eastern woman on the rubber tree plantation and her whole body broke out in goose bumps.

“The Rose Clothing Company’s business is expanding to the north. Three batches of orders arrived in a row, each from eccentric clients. It was hard to get in touch with them. These days Joe has to spend all his time on business trips.”

Maria’s expression was extremely calm as she spoke. She was not making a large fuss over a small issue. Lisa thought, Maria’s life has long since run its course. She saw now that Maria was like a goddess.

“There is an Eastern woman in Vincent’s life, perhaps a Japanese woman,” Lisa said.

“She lives on 13th Street in Building No. 2.”

“You knew this already.”

“No, I didn’t. I only passed there by chance, and saw a woman covered in a black veil coming out of that building.”

“Do I belong to Vincent’s finished life?”

“Just the opposite, I feel you belong to his future. This means that you two will be isolated from each other, just like me and Joe. Actually, Vincent is looking for you everywhere, too.”

Leaving Maria’s house, Lisa seemed to have decided many matters. She also seemed to have decided nothing. Although her steps appeared careless, she felt that every step was along some invisible trajectory.

That night, when Lisa once again converged with the long march army, which she hadn’t encountered for such a long time, when like blind men in the enormous dense fogs of a swamp they circled around and around, she realized that passageways were beginning to appear in her chaotic mind. The ghosts who’d come to her house many years before did not reappear, nor was the sound of their voices any no longer in her ears. She strode from the room, passing unhindered through the chaotic garden, and walked directly into the midst of the army.

“Lisa, Lisa, Vincent has been waiting for you a long time.” They spoke in unison. “Go with him to the grass over there to make love. There is a zebra that will guard you.”

But Lisa came to an iron cable bridge. Underneath were terrifying waters. Her bare feet stepped onto the rocking cables. She couldn’t stop because the people behind her pressed her on. Her feet slipped again and again but never fell through. She heard herself shouting for help; her voice was drowned in the clamor of the waves. The people behind her were singing a strange song: “The long march, the long march.”

Lisa finally lost control, and her numb hands loosened their hold on the iron chain. She closed her eyes. But she still proceeded with the army along the iron cable bridge between the two mountains. There was someone carrying her. She wanted to see who it was, but couldn’t with the dense fog blocking everything from view.

“Ah, you’ve returned,” Vincent said. He sat smoking a pipe in a small thatch-roofed pavilion.

“I’ve been looking for you everywhere. Here’s my umbrella. How will you walk back with the rain coming down so hard?”

Lisa stood in the midst of the coiling smoke as Vincent’s long arms, like a caveman’s, embraced her. In her distraction, she realized that she was still on the long march. Seemingly, she and Vincent were at the camp cooking food for everyone. The firewood was wet through, choking the two of them and making them cough. Lisa stood up and went outside the canteen, panting for air. There was a fine drizzle on the plain, where among those sitting on the ground and those staggering along she saw to her surprise a woman in a black skirt shuttling back and forth. She recognized at a glance that tall and somewhat rigid posture.

“Her, her!” Lisa shouted incoherently.

“It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter. The army will set out soon.” Vincent grasped her hands, pressing his lips to her ear as though making a promise to her.

She couldn’t see Vincent’s face clearly, yet she said to him, “I don’t want to go back. Let’s walk on a bit farther.”

“We’re already getting farther and farther from home.” When Vincent said this, Lisa could no longer see him.

Continuing on she heard Maria’s voice behind her. She returned to her own house, where she heard the driver and cook cursing at each other in the kitchen. Looking out through the French windows she could see the small pavilion and the smoke curling up, but she did not see Vincent. Was he still inside the pavilion?

“This unjust life!” The cook A Bing raised his voice and sighed.

“A Bing, A Bing, how fortunate, almost all of my friends live with cooks.” Lisa stood at the door of the kitchen, addressing A Bing. “See, the title ‘cook’ is so attractive!”

But A Bing was in a very bad mood at the moment. He said fiercely: “For people like us, life is no better than death!”

When A Bing spoke, the driver Booker appeared distressed. The two of them evidently wanted to embarrass Lisa, but to what purpose? Lisa recalled Booker’s dissolute life on the farm, and she reflected that this young fellow was also a riddle. Right now, for example, he’d rustled up an army uniform from somewhere and was wearing it, but the uniform didn’t suit his languid bearing. Lisa believed that he was playing the part of a clown, and in her heart she loathed him. She wasn’t someone who could be annoyed easily, so she sat down at the kitchen table, trying instead to see what tricks these guys were up to.

Once she’d sat down she felt very tired, and she fell asleep leaning on the kitchen table. Yet at the same time she heard Booker loudly discussing the long march. Lisa wanted to cut in, but her eyelids wouldn’t stay open.

“When sinking into the swamp the best thing is not to struggle, otherwise it’s all over.”

She didn’t know how long she slept, perhaps a very long time. When she woke, she heard them beside her still discussing the long march. The circumstances they spoke of were wholly familiar to her.

“Booker, are you on the long march at night?” she asked.

“No, I’m on the long march during the day,” he answered haughtily, as if this gave him a higher status.

In his lazy way, he already lay face-up in an armchair, his legs propped up on the arm. Lisa truly could not connect him with the army, the fires of war, and the smell of gunpowder. But how did he come to have information about it? In her heart she had many suspicions.

“A Bing, I’ve seen you all day inside the house. Are you also on the long march?”

“Yes, Lisa.” When he spoke as before it was with a distressed look. Then he cursed a few times.

Lisa thought, Is it possible every person is on a long march? Judging from the vast army she knew, this seemed a matter of course. In the blink of an eye, the magnificent spectacle of a global march welled up in her eyes. The spectacle shook like lightning, then quickly disappeared.

A Bing stood apart from the table and said to Booker, “I have a wife, and a child, but I haven’t seen them in many years. I’ve climbed and climbed, and in the end how many mountains have I crossed? Just think, your wife pulls your daughter along, shading her eyes with her hand as she stands under the eaves, her gaze always trying to penetrate the thick mist before her. And me, I trudge along in the swamp. The rumor of catastrophe is becoming widely known in the ranks. There is a poisonous snake, and if someone’s shoe is worn through he can be attacked.”

Suddenly he covered his face with his broad palm and started to cry without shame. His violent wails appeared meant to drive Lisa away, and intended to make a powerful show of force. Booker stood up from his chair, looking indignantly at his employer.

Lisa left the dining room and headed upstairs to the bedroom. She shut the bedroom door, but could still hear the two men standing downstairs, their voices ferocious, like two savage wolves. She turned around and saw Vincent lying on the bed, still holding a pipe in his hand.

“Have you come to an agreement with them?”

“It counts as an agreement. In the dark, I must listen to their commands.” Vincent’s voice was a touch hoarse. “Those two are very powerful. Didn’t you realize on the farm what Booker is capable of?”

Vincent put down his pipe and said lightly: “Come over here.”

They tried a new position. Lisa asked Vincent where he had learned it. Vincent said he’d learned it yesterday from a group of animals. Last night he’d made his way alone into a great primeval forest. Lisa said that she’d felt like a cat, without a clear climax, but completely beside herself. Was this the tiger’s way of sex? Vincent did not answer, but said: “Listen, the young men downstairs are completely silent.”

Many years ago, in a small coffee shop in a poor neighborhood, Lisa had stared at the thick black shadow behind Vincent, lightly repeating: “Vincent, Vincent, I love you.” The proprietor had come over with a strange look and asked Lisa, “Does this man live in a forest?”

“I am slowly changing into a tiger,” Vincent answered for her.

When Vincent saw her onto the road back to her apartment, she did not walk beside him, but fell behind a little, stepping on the black shadow behind him. At the same time she made up her mind not to return to the apartment but to go to Vincent’s hotel. .

Now they lay side by side on the bed, and Vincent recalled this occurrence. Lisa asked him whether he was changing into a tiger. Vincent said yes. He also said he really did have the feeling of living in a forest. He started to speak to Lisa about what had happened on the farm. Accompanying his narrative, what Lisa discovered before her eyes was not the rubber tree plantation but rather a vast and borderless desert. The sand blown by the wind blotted out the sky. Without knowing how, Lisa realized that the feeling this desert gave her was the same feeling as the rubber tree plantation. She was stirred once more with the excitement of her whole body catching fire under the scorching sun. The suffocating sand and dust left her no way to draw near. Vincent handed the broken arm to her again.

She made an effort to distinguish the lines on the palm, but it was no good. Blood was already dripping down and sticking to everything. She had to bathe. .

Maria said to Lisa, “You are Vincent’s future. It isn’t him disappearing in the night, it’s you. You are the sound of nature, traveling without hindrance.”

As Maria spoke, one of the African cats stared at Lisa guardedly. She saw that its tail was discharging electric sparks. In the sunlight a pi pa crackle issued from the rosebushes. Plainly they were on fire, only the flames couldn’t be seen. Lisa mused that Maria had changed her house into the rubber tree plantation. This woman was capable of so much. What was her future? Lisa opened her mouth, wanting to ask her, but the question didn’t come out.

“My future is Joe, of course,” Maria said, smiling. “One day he will journey to some country in the East and settle there forever.”

“That East is you then?” Lisa asked in confusion.

“Ah, that is a difficult question to answer!”

Maria walked into the room where the loom was set up. Lisa sat at her side. She heard the loom continuously repeating a word: “Joe, Joe, Joe. .” Maria’s agile hands wove a fluctuating design. It was impossible to name its shape: it could be called a whirlpool, or a snowy mountain, or even a square without edges.

“Joe said he was going to the north on business. How could I believe him?” she stopped.

“Yes, who can even believe her own heart?” Lisa echoed her.

Seeing the beautiful wool, there floated up in her mind the red sun of an early morning in the gambling city, where sprouting seeds, exhausted from a long night of breaking through, struggled out. Under the red sun there were human shapes like dewdrops. Her parents were two of those dewdrops. She couldn’t remain seated. She stood up and took her leave. At that moment Maria hurriedly tugged at her, pursing her lips and signaling, but Lisa didn’t understand. She didn’t know why all of a sudden she threw off Maria and ran to the door. With shock she saw tall, thin Daniel making love to a small young woman among the rosebushes.

She rushed out the front door and ran far away, as if she’d committed a crime.

“What a beautiful day!” she said to herself.