“Can my thoughts be seen?” He was at a loss.
“In your shadow, the grass turns yellow. But you don’t know it!” She ran away.
Reagan thought, gratified, that his farm wasn’t a stretch of emptiness. Of course, he could not wholly comprehend what Jin Xia’s intentions were. Even if nothing could be seen when he looked over here from under the banyan tree, once he came down the mountain, he ran into this girl, a girl who lived in the dream of the farm. Her suffering and that of her sister was concrete, it existed, and that dream-chasing sister had carelessly given up her life. To start with he had invited Jin Xia to the farm because of his working spirit. Or, you could say, because of his fanaticism for buying land. But Jin Xia didn’t want to occupy land himself, and the impoverished life he led was difficult to make sense of. Reagan couldn’t say what the fanaticism of his bamboo-like body aimed at. Reagan asked himself, Am I pondering things? The movement of his thoughts was like the turning of a millstone; it was no more than taking the outward appearance of things that happened and reviewing them once again. At root, it didn’t count as real pondering.
Yesterday some people had returned from Vincent’s city and told him they’d seen Ida. During the long, long night, he and Ida had dug their own deep caves, each listening to the sounds made by the other. “Ida, Ida!” he said. A chunk of earth fell down, striking his head. His movements became frenzied. Ida’s movements were methodical, making Reagan think of her composure in escaping from the landslide. He heard her digging reach underneath his feet. And yet Ida was concealing herself at a bar in the city. Even as his farm grew larger, it still could not reach the city where she was.
“Mr. Reagan, Mr. Reagan, the sun is already cruel, come hide in the shade under the trees.”
It was Ali.
“You look so depressed, you should come over and sit with me.”
He walked over mechanically and sat next to her. The cook patted his knee with her rough hand. He turned around, and made a smiling face.
“So many small snakes crawled into the house. It made me think, I’m afraid the day Ida will return is not far off.”
Reagan was unsure what type of person Ali really was, but he realized she wasn’t someone who kept a quiet spirit or checked her passions. Although Ali’s age was advanced, when she sat in the kitchen, thinking deeply, no slight stirring on the farm could escape those aged eyes.
“Ali, do you think I should continue buying land?”
“Of course you should. It can make your heart peaceful, can’t it? Jin Xia understands your ideas best, you can trust him to the last.”
“The last?”
“The last, you, I, we’ll both see it. This morning, for instance, that old lizard came into the building again. Every time he does, a new round of desire rises.”
Martin brought the jeep over. Reagan saw the young man’s entire body, top to bottom, covered in his own clothes. Even the leather shoes on his feet were Reagan’s. How had he grown so impudent? There was another person in the car, the younger sister of the girl who’d drowned. She was dressed up in gaudy clothes.
“Going home, Mr. Reagan?”
“No, I have no home,” he unhappily answered.
“Sit in the dining room with the mad dancing snakes, and you can think things over, same as before.”
The girl’s mocking voice came from inside the car. She turned her head away and didn’t look at Reagan.
“Elaine’s so silly.” Ali’s deep voice was filled with intimations of disapproval.
Ali stood up from the stone bench by degrees. Reagan also stood and got into the car with her. The four of them drove home together.
As Reagan walked up the stairs to his house, a stranger’s unfamiliar voice sounded by his ear:
“Manila, Manila, the floodwaters cover the fields. .”
Reagan felt his legs go soft and he almost sat down on the stairs. He looked in all directions, but there were no unknown people there. Elaine and Martin stood to the side, nervously attentive to him. Evidently they had heard the voice. There was Ali, too, who was measuring him with her eyes.
“Probably some stranger inside the house?” He feigned relaxation, and stretched himself.
“What strangers could be here? Even the snakes are familiar visitors. Some people you think are unfamiliar because you don’t often actually think of them. But they cannot forget you,” Ali said as she went into the kitchen.
When Reagan went upstairs, Martin and Elaine closely tailed him. He walked into the bedroom, and the pair followed him in. Moreover, they immediately took possession of his bed, becoming heedlessly intimate. Reagan was just about to leave when they stopped moving. Martin said:
“Mr. Reagan, you’re not used to looking at young people like us?”
“Please leave, both of you.” He squeezed out these words between his teeth.
Martin got up from the bed with an aggrieved look, mumbling, “I don’t understand you, Mr. Reagan, why do you wrap yourself up so tightly?” Elaine thumped furiously on the mattress and threw a pillow to the ground, then she jumped down from the bed and stepped on it.
As they left, Martin said directly to Reagan’s face: “Even though you’re my boss, I still want to tell you, Mr. Jin Xia has lost all hope in you.”
Reagan walked to the French windows. In his field of vision, Jin Xia’s lodging became a small gray speck in the distance while the farm looked like it had caught fire in the golden sunlight. He picked up the pillow from the floor, put it on the bed, and lay down with his head emptied of thought. His gaze rested on the open door of a cabinet — that bastard Martin had taken almost all the clothes and personal things from inside. Was Martin even his employee, or was he his master? Many years earlier, when Reagan discovered the young fellow taking his clothes, he’d initially been excited. At the time he thought he would influence this youth, but judging from circumstances today it was exactly the opposite. The two of them were challenging him to battle. The sister of the girl who’d died to follow a dream bared the vulgar desire of her body to him, and at the same time she disdained his lack of upbringing. He had seen Martin sitting in his dining room downstairs, his body wrapped in four or five small snakes. The snakes were not encircling him from outside, but had gotten into his body, entering from one side and exiting from another. The youth’s countenance was like that of a man in a coma. After Reagan entered the dining room, the small snakes left Martin’s body and slid away, following the base of the wall. Reagan was greatly surprised. He wanted Ali to guard against this youth.
“Don’t take him to heart,” Ali said. “He drifted here from an impoverished border region. The place where he was born had no material comforts. Everyone worked like convicts. Now he has an advantageous position. But people like him can’t change the bearing of poverty.”
Imagining life in that poverty-stricken border region, imagining this young fellow who, when necessary, let poisonous snakes enter his body, Reagan felt a kind of respect well up in his heart. It was for this reason that later, when Martin time and again took his clothes, Reagan did not object.
Was it possible that the shadowlike Jin Xia could have expectations of him? Jin Xia worked madly, but not to leave his specious mark on the face of the earth. Reagan thought of the collapsing “termite nest” where he lodged, and felt that Jin Xia would stand fast.
One afternoon, after Ida had left, Jin Xia quietly accompanied him to the lake, where they sat for a long time.
“Jin Xia, how large is our farm now?”
“A hundred and sixty square kilometers.”
“I hadn’t imagined it was so large.”
“Taken all together, it’s very large. That’s why Ida left. She wants an honest man, not a shadowy landowner like you.”