The Last Lover

8. MARIA TRAVELS

Standing in the southern wind that blew across the wilderness, Maria felt her mood brighten and expand. She had taken a late-night train. She’d slept in the car while the train rocked, and had many uncommonly strange dreams. When she awoke these were wholly forgotten. All she recalled was a dream about snakes. In her dream, nimble, delicate green snakes pushed into her room through every crack and crevice. Afterward, the sound of strangers’ voices entered the room, and the snakes floated one by one into the air and disappeared. She didn’t wake when the train reached the station. A train attendant woke her. The attendant was a young girl, with a freckled snub nose. She looked as though she might be Cambodian. She stood to one side and watched Maria collect her bags, as if there were something she wanted to say, but she held herself back from speaking. When Maria disembarked the girl also helped carry her luggage, warning her in a professional voice, “It’s very chilly outside, take care not to catch a cold.” Maria thought the girl was a bit unusual.

The place was called North Island. It was a place Maria had dreamt of as a child. Toward the end of his life her grandfather had told her about this place in a few spare words. Over the years that followed a notion often occurred to Maria: could North Island be her true hometown? At present she felt that her coming here wasn’t a sudden whim she’d seized on, but rather that she’d arrived after several decades of premeditation. It was a secret journey. She hadn’t even told Daniel.

There were buildings hidden among the bamboo groves. The village covered a considerable stretch of ground. Maria had never seen bamboo this large and tall before. Its height exceeded that of poplar trees, and the smooth trunks left one with a feeling of dread. The village was made up of earthen houses with grass-thatched roofs, scattered thinly over a large area.

The taxi driver brought her to the entrance of the village and departed. Maria looked toward a wilderness extending as far as the eye could see, and her heart brimmed with uncertainty: What did these villagers do for their livelihood?

Based on arrangements she’d made beforehand, she was met as a guest. A large, tall woman with a voice like a man’s took her suitcase and led her through the bamboo groves. The woman was barefoot. She wore a dark blue linen gown, with her heavy bronze hair drawn up behind her head. Maria thought that the woman, whose name was Wula, was probably about forty years old. She also thought that Wula’s whole body seemed flush with strength, like an animal’s. The woman walked too fast for her and kept having to stop and wait. Maria felt apologetic.

They stopped at the door of one of the earthen houses. This building was a little larger than the others, but already old, having a look of decline about it. Even its wooden doors swayed. Just inside was a spacious central room with a number of giant ceramic water vats arranged around it. In the center of the building were an enormous square table and wooden chairs that were also large and rough but looked very comfortable. Maria thought that perhaps all the people here were incredibly tall and large. After she sat down in one of the chairs, Wula disappeared. Maria heard the water in the vats splashing, ding dong, against the sides as if they contained some kind of aquatic animal. Maria looked into the bedroom and saw that the bedding was done in very aggressive colors, a homespun cloth with a background dyed deep blue with a pattern of large gold flowers. In the dimness it gave off an ambiguous light. “How beautiful!” Maria was inwardly surprised, then her heart surged with a sort of regret, a pained feeling at the imperfect art of her own handmade weavings.

Someone knocked on the door. Maria stepped over, opened it, and saw a man with a body like a pylon and hair that was already white. He asked whether Wula was in. Maria said she had just left.

“That poor woman!” the man said, stooping and lifting the covers from the water vats to look inside.

The room was too dark for Maria to make out the animals in the water vats, but she saw indistinctly that there was something in every one. The vats were deep. The things attempted to climb out, but never succeeded.

“What are these animals?” Maria couldn’t help asking.

“They’re peculiar to this place. They used to be feral, but then, over many years, they became domesticated. At first they ran into the village in packs, jumped into our jars, and sat there without moving. Then, later on, we domesticated them. We named them golden tortoises, even though their bodies don’t have shells. Wula raised all the ones here in this room. Before this, we planted rice paddies for our livelihood. After the tortoises came, no one planted any more. When you arrived you saw, too, how all the land lies uncultivated. They are really tortoises of desire! What’s the old saying? ‘Where there is desire, there is a wilderness,’ is that right?”

When he spoke, his white teeth flashing, Maria grew alarmed. She sensed that he was a man inclined to violence. But she also thought his sort of violence was harmless.

“Why would the tortoises seek their own death?” Maria sank into confusion.

“Maybe they want a life of certainty. Every vat is a dungeon.”

“What do they eat?”

“For a long time now they haven’t eaten anything. They depend on nourishment from our bodies to live. Just think, who wouldn’t want to run a business that required no investment? You only have to change the water once a day! And a tortoise sells for 200 yuan. As each day lengthens, the people of the village become like the tortoises. You didn’t meet anyone on the road coming in, did you? It’s because they were all lying down inside their houses. Except for small children, most people are lying down.”

“Why are they lying down when they could go outside and play?”

“Who would be in the mood for play? They contemplate their life of suffering instead.”

“Wula, too?”

“Wula is an exception. That’s why I called her ‘poor woman.’ She has no time for contemplation. She’s opened this hotel and she has to take in travelers from outside. My name is Qing. Didn’t I tell you that already?”

After Qing had inspected the tortoises, he stood at the entrance smoking tobacco. Now Maria could see Qing’s face. His expression was hard to describe because the left and right sides of his face could have belonged to two completely different persons. Maria was sitting directly opposite him, so she saw the left and right sides of his face at the same time. The left side was lively, and at the moment it wore a bitter expression, even though a second before it had looked full of energy and even slightly evil. The right side of his face had a somewhat frightening look, dead like a corpse or vampire, with a firmly shut mouth and an eye like a glass bead. Perhaps he knew that the right side of his face was frightening because he was apt to place his left side forward. Now he turned his face sideways. Maria saw his left eye blinking continuously. The muscles in his left cheek twitched.

Maria stood and walked to the doorway to see where he was looking, and discovered Wula already within his view. Maria was surprised: what a strong influence Wula had on him! Even the left side of his body began to twitch. It was an unbearably painful sight. When Wula walked in, her brow creased, Maria was even more surprised to see that her appearance had completely changed. She no longer looked forty years old, brimming with a natural wildness. She looked instead like a weathered old woman. Her long face, like old tree bark, made Maria wonder whether this was the same woman as before.

Wula entered the room, greeted Maria, and asked whether she’d rested well. Then she stiffened her face and, with her back turned to Qing, asked in a low voice from deep in her chest:

“Is there still something wrong?”

“No,” Qing answered feebly, leaning against the earth wall as though he might faint.

Maria marveled at the way this pylon-like man had turned into a mashed cotton flower.

Wula led Maria by the hand into the bedroom, saying in her ear, “Don’t mind him. He’s here to cause trouble. I was to the east of the village visiting an invalid when someone told me he’d come here, so I hurried back. He hasn’t said anything bad to you?” Maria answered, “No.” Wula said, “He’s a hollow man.” She shut the bedroom door with force, and stuck close to the crack in the door, peering out to see whether Qing had left. She repeated this action for a while because Qing still hadn’t gone. She started heaving sighs. Maria thought that at this moment she seemed at once old and impetuous. It was as if she had a secret hidden deep inside her, a secret of which she could not speak.

“Is Qing a local man?” Maria asked.

“I’m not sure.” Wula waved her arms in vexation. “He says he is, but I don’t see it. How could someone local have a face like his? But you can’t say he isn’t local, either. Many people here watched him grow up. I don’t know why he despises our lives so much!”

Wula was indignant, and her face went red all over. Gnashing her teeth, she added: “He cut off our way of retreat.”

Wula helped Maria turn down the bed, and said to her, “You should rest a while. I still have to go take care of the tortoises.”

But after Maria lay down, Wula wasn’t in a hurry to leave. She sat in a chair in front of the bed and started to tell Maria the story of her village.

“You’ve seen everything. The place has become a wilderness, and it’s continued this way for decades. Before it wasn’t like this at all. Before, this was a foggy region. Back then things were obscure and dim under the sky. People’s temperaments were good, in a rare way. It was a good place for rice paddies, and you’d go outside and see paddy fields. The whole village was a cooperative business. Specialized merchants bought our produce. Our lives were peaceful. Think of it: through the fog, can we ever see clearly where our graves lie?”

After she spoke of these things, Wula was suddenly silent. There was a misty expression in her eyes. As Maria lay there she heard once again a familiar agitation coming from within the walls. Yet it wasn’t the sound of voices. It was as though there were lots of mice scratching around inside. Although she was nodding off, she couldn’t help asking Wula: “And then?”

“And then? After that, a hidden danger erupted in the village. The hidden danger was Qing. Qing’s family was of a particular sort: they wanted to make things very, very clear. Even though they were born here, and grew up here, they were different from the rest of us. You could even say that they are foreigners, I think. For example, with selling grain — we never haggled. But his grandfather had to dispute with the buyers, asking one price and then getting a counteroffer. And as a result fewer and fewer people came to buy, until a part of our grain lay rotting on the ground. But fish and grain were plentiful in the village, and life at that time still went on. With the generation of Qing’s parents the situation grew worse. The strange thing was that everyone wanted to see Qing’s family as leaders. Everyone obeyed the family, probably because of our great inertia. Qing’s parents were shrewd and demanding. Everyone said they laid schemes and plans far ahead. Once this husband and wife were in charge of the village’s affairs, the rice paddies were neglected. This was because the parents insisted there was no reason to do hard manual labor, that we only needed to raise the asking price of the grain and everything would be fine. This tactic worked for the first few years; later it was a catastrophe because the dealers coming to buy grain grew scarce, less than half as many as before. The villagers were suddenly so poor they had to skimp on food and clothes. But that one household still appeared to be happy. Sometimes Qing and his little brother would belt out songs on the threshing floor, singing late into the night without going inside. Qing’s parents both died on the same day. It’s said they ate a poisonous mushroom, and they bled from the eyes, nose, mouth, and ears. Qing and his little brother almost collapsed with grief. After they buried their parents, Qing formally became the head of our village. He was opposed to us planting grain in particular. He had schemes to scare off the grain dealers. Later on he introduced the tortoises from somewhere. Even though no one saw it, I knew he brought these animals because before him there were none here. You noticed his face, of course — isn’t it terrifying? But I’ve gotten used to it. A man with a face like that is capable of changing everything! So now there’s no fog in the village. The sun comes out, and every object is very, very clear. In this environment everyone became ashamed, and then collapsed.”

“Collapsed?” Maria asked, her eyes filled with sleep. She thought she was already dreaming, but she very much wanted to hear the story.

“Yes, collapsed. .” Wula’s voice lowered. “Dejection. . disease, a trouble in the heart. You’re an outsider, you can’t see them, they don’t come out. Some people. . stay hidden inside their rooms until they die. Only Qing saunters around outside, Qing. .”

In her dream Maria’s mood also became one of dejection. She was following a path through an endless forest. The path was dark. Animals made suspicious sounds in the woods. She didn’t know whether they were predators. She was tired, more tired than her heart could sustain, when an idea suddenly occurred to her: was this the village of the dead? At this thought, there were tears in her eyes. It surprised her. She’d never been one to form sentimental ties. How was it possible now? She stopped in her tracks, sat down on the grass, and listened to the calls of the wild animals. They came more and more frequently. She heard her own heart, too, beat twice, then stop once, with the sound of blood rushing through the ventricles. She thought her heart must be wrecked by the damage.

When Maria awoke she smelled the fresh scent of the grass and leaves. She remembered that in her dream she had been pulling up weeds from her own grave mound. Out in the central room Wula was talking to Qing. Waves of sound flowed in, their speech seeming intimate, with even a teasing note. Maria got dressed, made the bed, and then couldn’t decide whether to go out into the hall. But Wula was calling her.

She sat in Qing’s embrace, her pliant body incomparably bewitching. Maria stared blankly. Wula’s bronze-colored hair swept down, plentiful and shining and filling the room with its luster.

“Come have some coffee,” she said to Maria, with composure.

Qing stretched his face out from behind her shapely shoulders and looked mockingly at Maria.

Maria looked at the blue veins protruding from her own hands, so adept for manual work, and felt inferior. Some time passed, and she managed to raise her eyes, letting her gaze rest on the side of Qing’s face that held no expression. That half-face recalled in her a kind of distant memory. She thought of paved granite roads and an elderly jewelry craftsman walking along them.

“She’s bashful,” Qing looked at her steadily.

Probably Wula also thought it was too much. She struggled out from Qing’s embrace and poured coffee for Maria.

Maria noticed that the tortoises in the water vats had all grown quiet. Qing walked outside to smoke. Wula sat down next to Maria.

“So you two are lovers,” Maria said dryly.

“I became his mistress because I was afraid. You don’t know, Maria, how hard my life is. During the day, I go to each home and comfort the suffering people. Then I also have to take care of the tortoises and receive guests from distant places like yourself. I’m so busy, and yet I don’t mind. But the night comes, when everything changes. Every night I go mad. Some nights, I think I’ve changed into a goat — I ate up a whole patch of the grass at the doorway! In the morning I was in such anguish that I wished I were dead. Then Qing came. He stood under the starlight, and under his gaze, like a wolf’s, I became tranquil. So the two of us, neither with a home to return to, fell in together. Don’t believe that I think well of him. Most of the time, he is my enemy.”

The enthusiasm suddenly faded from Wula’s eyes, replaced with an emerging desolation. She proposed taking Maria to tour the village.

“You will see a sight familiar to you.” She smiled ingratiatingly.

They ate some bread and then went out. Qing, who stood at the door smoking, stared at Maria, which made her whole body tremble, her face burn.

“No one can resist his charm,” Wula said proudly, tossing her hair.

They swiftly entered the dense bamboo forest. Although it was summer, Maria felt eerily cold. She kept breaking out in goose bumps, and regretted not dressing more warmly. It grew colder and colder, and her whole body shivered and shook.

“Wula, how do you know things about me?”

“We’ve had a connection for a long time. So for the past few years I’ve been sending you travel brochures.”

Wula had not answered her question. Maria hoped they soon would reach a house where they could warm up for a bit. She thought the huge, towering bamboos were changing into icicles. If she kept on walking she would be stiff with cold. She looked at Wula by her side. The woman’s face was ruddy and she was not feeling the cold even a little. Maria finally saw an earthen house. A dirty boy, his face plastered with mud, sat at the doorway to the house. He was stirring up the sewer water with a stick. Wula said they would go in to sit for a bit, and Maria immediately agreed. The boy slapped the dirty water with the stick so it splashed onto Maria’s pants. Maria heard Wula call him a good boy.

On entering the house she warmed up a little. Inside three people were lying down, all in one room but on three cots. It didn’t seem like a home. It was like a makeshift hotel. The three of them were not asleep. They stared, eyes wide, at the ceiling. The two older ones were the owners of the house, it seemed, and the other was a middle-aged woman. This woman’s expression was one of sorrow. Her thin, bony hand dug at the metal rods on the side of the bed, nervously twitching. The two older people were comparatively quiet, their bodies covered by the same kind of thin quilt, with a blue background and gold flowers, that had covered Maria. They almost did not move.

Wula squatted by the bed, talking to the middle-aged woman in a near whisper. Maria struggled to hear her. As Wula spoke the woman’s nervousness lightened and the hand digging tautly at the bed’s iron rods loosened. After a time, Maria saw her face suddenly reveal the shyness of a young girl. She heaved a sigh and sat up in her bed. As she sat up, the two old people in their own beds raised their bodies slightly, in unison, reproaching her with a glare, as though she had just done something unseemly. The three of them faced each other awkwardly.

“Lila, this is Maria, the woman I told you about. Wasn’t there something you wanted to ask her? Look, she came herself.” Wula broke the impasse.

Lila, as if she were freed of a heavy burden, dressed and went outside with Wula.

The three of them stood by the doorway talking. Maria discovered that when she left the house Lila became youthful and vivacious. She no longer looked like a middle-aged woman but rather like someone about twenty years old; her brown hair also had life in it. She caught Maria’s hand, and said impatiently:

“Maria, Auntie Maria! Are you really from that place? Can you tell me about what happened forty years ago in the locksmith’s workshop? Oh, please don’t be offended. That event is like an enormous rock pressing on my heart. God, there’s something wrong with my throat, I can’t speak. . Wula! Wula. .”

Her face swelled, turning red. Wula helped, obligingly thumping her on the back and comforting her, saying, “Don’t worry, don’t worry. Maria is here. She can tell you everything.”

“What happened in the locksmith’s workshop forty years ago was a murder that was desired by both parties,” Maria said, carefully and cautiously. “So you really are the locksmith’s daughter?”

When Lila heard this her face brightened. She made several “ah” sounds in surprise.

“Then Nick, the one who’s lame, he’s still there? That demon?” she asked, gnashing her teeth in rage.

“He’s still there, but he didn’t do this. Your father was a man who knew his own mind.”

“I know,” Lila quietly agreed, her gaze suddenly distracted.

“Before long, Lila came to North Island, and became the daughter-in-law of this family!” Wula said in a loud, celebratory voice. She raised one hand and made a strange gesture.

A gust of wind scraped past. Goose bumps covered Maria’s body again. She couldn’t hold back her complaint: “It’s so cold here.”

Lila and Wula smiled at her when she said this. Wula explained: “You aren’t used to the weather yet. Here, our hearts each hold a ball of fire. If you want us to live like people in other places, that’s difficult. To tell the truth, Qing couldn’t deprive us of our right to farm all by himself. It is we ourselves who demanded it. The Qing family only saw through to the villagers’ natural instincts, that’s all.”

As Wula spoke, Lila leaned against her, looking as if she couldn’t bear to be parted from her.

A shout came from inside the building, a denunciation. Lila’s face changed color and she rushed back inside.

Wula explained: “The two old people protect Lila. If it weren’t for them, I’m afraid she wouldn’t have lived to today. After her father died, she simply didn’t want to live.”

“Is her husband here?”

“That’s a peculiar thing. No one has met her husband. He is a shadow, even Lila hasn’t seen him. He only lives in the recollection of the old couple. Lila heard their story, was deeply moved by it, and stayed on with the family.”

Maria felt a pair of eyes staring at her from the depths of the bamboo forest. The expression in these eyes was familiar to her. But just when she was about to see who it was, the person disappeared. She wrinkled her brow in an effort to recall who it was. Wula also looked in that direction, as if lost in thought.

“If you don’t mind the cold, I will take you to Grandmother’s. She lives alone in the depths of the bamboo forest. There’s a small brook at her door. She is the only one in the whole village who doesn’t raise tortoises.”

“Is she your grandmother?”

“No, she is everyone’s grandmother. They say she’s almost a hundred, but she’s still pretty nimble on her feet.”

“I’d like to see her.”

Wula made Maria walk faster, saying that this way their bodies would give off more heat. They’d walked for a while when the road before their eyes disappeared and they had to wind in and out among the bamboo. Maria became dizzy, but Wula grew energetic. If she hadn’t had to slow her steps to accommodate Maria, she could have walked as swiftly as the wind through the thick bamboo groves. At the moment Maria grew so tired she was about to fall down, Wula stopped.

“We’re there?” Maria asked listlessly.

“Yes. But we can’t enter the building yet, because the old woman is sitting in the stream bathing. She’ll be embarrassed if she sees that someone is here.”

“On a day that’s so cold?” Maria exclaimed.

“But she’s not cold, she’s so hot she can’t stand it. Not many people come here, so Grandmother walks around outside naked. Every month the villagers give her grain. Look, she’s coming over.”

Maria saw that Grandmother was even shorter than a dwarf, and wrinkled all over. Grandmother ducked into the earthen house. This small, low building was set behind a few weeping willows. Unless one looked carefully it was difficult to discover.

“Grandma! Grandma!” Wula shouted loudly, as she passed through the door.

The old woman did not answer. The room was very dark, like entering the deepest part of an underground cave. Wula led Maria ahead. The strange thing was that they walked for a long time and never came to a wall. Apparently, the building only looked like a building from the outside. It was actually a tunnel.

“Grandma!” Wula shouted again.

In the dark a small light flashed. It was the old woman striking a match. She lit a pipe. In a short while a choking tobacco smell permeated the air. The spot where the old woman sat appeared to be a rock slab, on which were many curiously shaped pebbles. As Wula drew nearer, Grandma was playing with the pebbles. They made a hua hua sound, the sound of running water underneath the rock.

“Is it her?”

It was the old woman’s hoarse voice.

“It’s Maria, Grandma, she’s come to see you.”

Wula pulled Maria down next to her on the rock. Maria felt a pair of piping-hot hard small hands squeezing her arm. She stopped shivering and no longer felt the slightest cold.

“So this is what Joe’s wife looks like.” Her aged voice sounded again.

“Maria, Grandma knows your husband. When he was little, Grandma hugged him, and went with him into the river to bathe, but afterward Joe forgot all about it,” Wula said gently.

“Oh — oh!” Maria couldn’t speak.

“Grandma uses these pebbles to help her remember things. She cannot forget a single thing, not anything! Do you hear the sound of running water? That isn’t water, it’s the fluctuation of her thoughts. The place where Grandma lives is very special. People from outside can’t find it.” Wula’s speech was full of adoration.

“Maria, do you understand Joe’s work?” the old woman coughed as she asked this.

“I don’t know, Grandma,” Maria said, hesitating. “Are you talking about his sales work? I think I understand it. I always support his going on business trips, and wait at home for him to return.”

“You really support him?” The voice became stern. “Listen, his work is only a pretense! He’s a two-faced man.”

“I thought as much.” Maria summoned her courage and said, “I am also two-faced, so I came to North Island. I cannot forget the things of the past.”

“Joe cannot forget them either,” Wula cut in.

“My grandfather, in his story, mentioned a rock cave, but he didn’t mention the bamboo forest. And yet once I got out of the car I recognized this place.” Maria felt as if this were dream-talk. “It’s so dark here.”

Wula had Maria stand against the wall, to avoid stumbling over the small animals passing back and forth. But where was the wall? Wula said it was by her right hand. Maria groped to the right and went several steps without touching anything. Yet Wula said she was already touching the wall, it was only that she hadn’t felt it. Every object in the room was like this. Take Grandma’s pebbles. They looked like stones but were actually small animals, pets Grandma doted on. Maria decided to go back, and she returned to Wula’s side. Abruptly, she realized that Wula’s voice was getting farther and farther away.

“You don’t need to look for her. She can’t leave this house,” Grandma said. “Calm down. Think about your own mistakes.”

“Mistakes?”

“Yes. If you’re tired, you can even sleep. There are too many clamorous things in here. An old person like me can’t sleep, I only doze.”

“But you just wanted me to think about my mistakes.”

“Did I say that? It’s the same whether I said it or not. Put your hand here, feel this small mouse. What do you think of it?”

The small mouse was very hard. It was bouncing and bouncing, like a glass ball. Maria thought it was impossible to be sure that it was a mouse, but Grandma said it was. She also said it was the one she loved best because it stood for the greatest mistake of her life, a mistake that almost cost her her life.

“You used to live in a town where the roads were paved with granite, and later you could no longer find that town? The young always make mistakes, and always think of their mistakes when they grow older. Today my mouse is obedient.”

“Wula!” Maria shouted in her direction.

“Don’t bother, she is too ashamed. Besides, she’s over there.”

A feeling of panic rose in Maria’s heart. What could she do in this expansive desolate “house,” with no way to determine what anything inside it was? Wula had brought her here, but what did she expect from her? Now she, too, was ashamed, because she could not guess the meaning of the things before her eyes. She had always thought the meaning ought to be self-evident.

The old woman screamed. Maria would never have anticipated that she could let out such a sharp, thin sound, like a bird call. And then immediately she began to grumble because a small animal, probably a squirrel, had bitten her cheek. She said she was too fond of them, so they sometimes gave her lessons like this.

“It was a small town with dark clouds pressing down overhead.” She suddenly sank back into her recollection.

“Wula!” Maria shouted again. She could hardly stand it any more.

Grandma was angry. Her voice became husky and confused. She loosed a string of curses, took the rocks and threw them on the ground. In a moment Maria felt the ground full of small animals scurrying madly. Maria thought, Grandma doesn’t cherish these “pets” after all. In her state of frenzy she would not let Maria approach. Whenever Maria neared, she made a strange, low roar, as if she wanted to eat her. Maria was exhausted, almost collapsing. Her legs trembled with painful needle pricks. She sank to the ground and lay down, not caring whether the small animals ran back and forth across her body. Without caring or noticing, she closed her eyes.

But she couldn’t sleep. In the dark she heard Wula talking with Grandma, and it sounded as though they had been talking for a long time. So in fact Wula had been nearby the whole time.

“You look at her, seeming so delicate she can’t stand up in the wind, and you worry about her, but actually she can wrestle with evil people — jackals and wolves.” It was Wula’s voice. “At first I couldn’t decide whether to let her come, but she was too persistent — it was beyond my control. And with her constitution, she can withstand anything.”

“Wula, did you cry today?” Grandma’s voice again became dignified. She was striking a match.

In a short while, Maria again smelled the tobacco, and this smell unexpectedly sent her to a small building with wind chimes hanging from it. She also saw a few fine books on the bookcases in the corridor. She didn’t know how it happened, but in those books was Joe’s handwriting. It gave her a very odd sort of feeling.

“Today I did not cry.” Wula’s voice sounded timid. “Because Lila kept pestering me to talk about her problems, I forgot my own. Grandma, do you think things are hopeless for Lila?”

“Yes, hopeless. She has to wait on her father-and mother-in-law to the grave. She is an ill-fated person. Who let her see what happened way back then?”

Wula began to sigh. Maria could hear that her sighs were rough and heavy, like a man’s, and wondered how Wula could suffer so much over other people’s problems. She thought again of Lila, of her appearance lying on the cot and her appearance outside. It seemed the faces of the people of North Island were not at all like those of people outside. They could change into something unrecognizable in a single day. You couldn’t tell whether a person was twenty or forty years old — the age seemed to change depending on the situation. Take Grandma: at the moment her voice was just like a middle-aged woman’s, but Wula had said she was almost a hundred. Grandma reached out her hand in the dark, and the hand was smooth, without any protruding veins on the back. But earlier, beside the stream, she had appeared extremely old. Was it that when one reached this “house,” time flowed backward?

Now Grandma lit another match. The face that shone in the flame made Maria jump with fright. It was the face of a brown bear, behind which was the circle of a halo, and, finally, in this halo, Grandma’s face. That is to say: the bear’s face was real, the human face false. She tried to see which it actually was, but the flame went out.

“Grandma, which side of your face did the squirrel bite?” Maria asked.

“The right side. It doesn’t matter, their bites do no harm because my face has so much hair on it.”

“Maria, let’s go.” Wula walked over and gripped Maria’s hand, saying to her in a low voice, “Grandma wants to talk with a little hedgehog, and she doesn’t want us next to her listening. Be careful. Here’s the small stream, we lean to the right side and walk along, all along keeping to the right, and we’ll reach the outside of the building.”

When she said “lean to the right,” Maria felt Wula push her to the right. She asked Wula whether Grandma was one of those people who live inside stories, who have two lives at the same time. She was thinking of Joe’s double life. Wula said no, that Grandma actually had only one life, the life in this house. People from outside enter the building, talk with her, and have the illusion that they are influencing her life. Her life in fact cannot be influenced. Maria went along with Wula, lifting one foot, then the other. She wanted to talk with this woman about Joe, but didn’t know how to put things clearly. She believed Wula and Grandma already had a deep understanding of Joe. If Maria questioned Wula, she would be ashamed of her own ignorance.

They walked a long way but still had not walked out of that “room.” Maria asked how this was possible. Wula told her they’d already reached the hotel.

“There is a door at your right hand, it’s the main door of the hotel.”

Maria felt only empty air to her right. But all at once she came to her senses, turned and walked to the left. On the left was an opened door, with light shining through.

Qing sat smoking next to the large table. Maria faced the right side of his face. This time she discovered that the right side was not only expressionless like a corpse, but also showing signs of decomposition. The earlobe on the right side seemed to have rotted into a hole and swollen into a lump. And so Maria thought, What a poor woman, this Wula. Her life surely was as dark as if there were no sun or sky.

“You thought it was false, but actually it is real,” Qing said.

Wula embraced his neck from behind, with an intoxicated look. Maria saw what she believed at this moment to be the left side of a man’s face.

“The tortoises were so noisy it was hard to stand, so I changed all the water in the vats. Listen, they’ve calmed down.”

“You’re such a dear,” Wula said, kissing his left cheek.

“I’ve been thinking about it but I can’t understand,” Maria raised her voice to speak, to avoid showing her uneasiness. “Is Grandma’s house next door to yours? Is it just beyond this door?” She indicated with her hand the door through which she had just entered.

“Yes. Push open the door and take a look.” The two stood up and spoke in unison.

Maria walked over and pushed the door open. Before her were the bamboo groves of North Island. A chill wind blew past and she promptly shut the door again.

The two of them, staring at her, loosed a sigh and sat back down. Wula whispered to Maria: “Actually, even a painstaking search won’t locate her home. Most of the people in this village have never met Grandma. Can you believe that? Everyone knows she lives behind a few weeping willows in the bamboo groves, but the building can only be found from time to time. When I took you there, I had no plan in mind. I was only walking at random, because I can’t recognize the place. Even if I’d been there hundreds of times it wouldn’t be possible.”

“You think of something in your mind, and afterward that thing becomes real? Like in a dream?”

“When I get quite near Grandma’s house I might feel a foreboding, but this kind of foreboding has no certainty. If you don’t notice, it’s the same as if there were none. When you reach her house, all the questions you ask are answered.”

While saying these things, Wula again sat in Qing’s embrace. With a change in position, Maria now saw the left side of Qing’s face. She felt that this pair of lovers, fooling around together, was full of life. In their movements they seemed to want to swallow each other. Qing stretched out his long, long tongue and licked Wula’s face and neck; Wula circled her strong arms tightly around him, her fingernails embedded in his flesh. It seemed that people here had no sense of shame. Now the two of them cast Maria wholly to the side. Moaning loudly in unison, they began to make love. Maria promptly rushed out, her face burning.

She walked in the bamboo grove for a while, and her heart finally calmed. No one from the village was to be seen. It was mealtime, but there was no cooking smoke. If it weren’t for an earthen house dimly visible here and there among the trees, it wouldn’t have seemed like a village at all. Thinking back to the scene she’d just seen, Maria found it incomprehensible. In this deathly still place, a corner of the world gone to waste and forgotten by the outside, how could desire continue?

“You’re distracting me with your walking back and forth.”

It was Lila speaking. The girl watched her with bitterness in her large brown eyes.

“How many years have you been here?” Maria asked her.

“I can’t remember. Can you tell me about the lame man?”

“No, I can’t. Only my son has been in contact with him. Lila, do you love your father?”

“I hate him. Auntie Maria, I suffer too much. Do you think I should go back to my hometown?”

Like a blind person Lila stretched out a hand into the air in front of her, scratching back and forth, bawling: “Go to hell! Go to hell!”

“What are you doing?”

“I need to claw these things, then it will be all right. They surround me day and night. I don’t know what they are: sometimes they look like a spider’s thread, like a gray tassel, something like that; sometimes there is nothing, only a terrifying black. Ah, there is something hiding in that bamboo tree.”

Lila put her arms around the trunk of a bamboo, held it closely, and put her ear to it. Then she shook her head with all her strength. It appeared that not hearing anything made her agitated. Watching her frantic movements, Maria recalled Lila’s father the locksmith. That man, back then, stuffed dynamite into the walls of his workshop and blew off his own leg. Maria was stroking Lila’s back, thinking to comfort her, when she saw an old man and an old woman emerging from the bamboo. It was Lila’s father-and mother-in-law. They looked lively and agile, the opposite of their former sickliness. The two separated, flanking Lila on the right and left, then suddenly pounced and caught her. They were seizing her to drag her back home. Lila struggled at first, but soon became obedient. When passing by Maria, she said in a loud voice: “Auntie Maria, I’m such a fool! If I go back with you, I might as well be dead!”

Her in-laws listened to this speech, then released their hands in unison, becoming affectionate, warmly restraining her, and comforting her with low, kind whispers: “That’s right, that’s right, a young girl who understands how things are.”

The three of them walked closely together toward the house.

Maria returned to the entrance of the hotel. She remembered clearly the direction she’d been facing before when she’d headed into the depths of the bamboo, so how had she come back here? She resolved to try once again, seeing as the two people were inside making love. Although they acted as if no one were present, Maria herself was terribly uncomfortable. This time she circled to face the rear of the building and walked in that direction. At the start lay a road, and farther on she reached a thick, cheerless wood. When she was cold enough to start shivering, she heard nearby, from inside a few bamboos with trunks as thick as basins, the nan nan muttering of low voices. They resembled somewhat the voices inside the walls at home, so she was not afraid. The difference was that these voices carried a sprightly note, full of praise and urging. Maria circled back and forth alone in the forest, listening to the low voices. Her mood suddenly changed for the better. She realized that she no longer feared losing her way. At the same time she felt amazement at her former misunderstanding of the concept of losing the way. How could she have misunderstood for decades?

Wula sat under a bamboo tree. Blood flowed from the side of her forehead and her hands were swollen up like steamed buns. She was crying.

“Wula, how did this happen to you?” Maria stooped and covered Wula’s temple with her handkerchief.

“We fought. Every time we make love, we come to blows afterward. Qing says I am a tiger. I don’t know how I got to be like this. But him, he is a wolf! Do you see the teeth marks on my forehead? I bit his finger!”

Saying these things, Wula appeared inspired, her eyes filled with anticipation.

“Let’s go back to the hotel,” Maria said.

“I want to go back, but I cannot find the road. My heart’s in chaos.”

Her hair spread down and covered her face. Maria saw that there was no shoe on one of her feet, and a bloodied wound on her ankle as well. Wula lifted her head, with tears in her eyes.

“Maria, go back home. If you don’t go back, the road back won’t be there. What can you do here? We all depend on raising the tortoises for our livelihood. These animals don’t appear to eat or drink, but caring for them is not easy because they depend on the energy of our minds and bodies to live. If one day we no longer want this kind of life, then they’ll disappear from the water vats. A few of Qing’s relatives did this, and now they all lie in their homes on the brink of death. Without tortoises, they lose their means of support. What meaning does life still have for them? Maria, you would not like living here for long. Only people who grew up here, from the time they were small, like their lives here. Look at Lila, who’s been here so many years: she cannot make up her mind.”

“I still want to see the tortoises. I still haven’t seen them clearly.” The idea occurred suddenly to Maria.

“Walk toward the right, keep walking, and maybe you’ll find yourself back at the hotel.”

Maria turned around in the bamboo groves for a long, long time, until she grew disheartened, and then she began to be afraid: would she starve to death in the forest? When she truly could not walk any farther, she sat down and leaned on a bamboo tree, falling into a doze. As she slept, someone spoke, lover’s talk, in her ear, sickeningly sweet and calling her “little nightingale.”

“Are we going back?” said the taxi driver, who had thick eyebrows and big eyes, seeing her awaken.

“Where are we?” she asked, rubbing her eyes.

“At the edge of the bamboo forest. Look, up ahead is the waste-land you saw when you arrived.” He pointed to the right.

“Oh, I didn’t notice it! I still need to go to the hotel and pick up my luggage.”

“Of course, the hotel is right ahead.”

Maria got into the taxi, uneasily sizing up the driver and thinking that he didn’t look like a local.

“You don’t live on North Island?”

“Me? I come and go. I specialize in transporting guests like you.”

After Maria entered her room and picked up her luggage, she stood for a while in the hallway. Finally she couldn’t bear the curiosity. She edged toward the doorway and saw no one there, she returned and pulled open the lids of the water vats. It was amazing, every single vat was empty, without even any water.

“I just saw your village head Qing sitting in the wasteland and howling like a wolf.”

As the taxi driver spoke his back was to Maria. She realized that all along he had averted his face from her. She was only ever able to see the back of his head.

“He isn’t my village head, because I’m not from around here.”

“It isn’t so simple. I still regard him as your village head.”

Maria saw that he was stealthily laughing. She imagined how Qing would look howling like a wolf. Would the right side of his face, where it was starting to decompose, be able to grow a wolf’s fur?

Once the car started moving, the driver said to Maria:

“You didn’t think I would come here, too?”

“Ha, you’re Joe! How could I not have recognized your voice? You were wearing a mask? I thought that you were someone else. How did you find your way here?”

“Wula has been sending me travel brochures, too. She and Qing were woven into my story long ago. I told you just now that I come and go, transporting guests. I have done this for a long time. When I go on a business trip I come here, and in the future Daniel will also be able to come here. Look at those two white egrets in the sky, so free and unrestrained!”

Maria didn’t see the egrets; she saw a granite path. Her heart surged up with a thousand kinds of tenderness, so she leaned her head on Joe’s shoulder and shut her eyes. She heard many people all hailing her; most of the voices were familiar. Then she saw the square surrounded by cypresses, and a young woman wearing a kimono, and a spring in the center of the square. In her dream she said to Joe: “Joe, I’ve arrived in your story.”

On the road Maria did not wake up. Even if Joe stopped the car for a meal, she ate and slept at the same time. She felt so weary she could die.

Even so she woke when they reached home. She saw Daniel busy in the garden, with small Amei working alongside him. Maria said to Joe:

“Could these two be a match made in heaven?”

Joe smiled serenely, answering:

“Just like the two of us back then.”