As for Jin Xia, who was addicted to buying land, and his “lunatic,” perhaps they were playing at a two-person comedy. Just now Ali had said “old residents”—was this sarcasm? Reagan wasn’t a true old resident. There was the forest keeper, and before the forest keeper, there were some people — he basically didn’t know anything about them — but only they were the true old residents. Over so many years, Reagan had never run across people like that. To his surprise, he realized that by analyzing the soil’s composition the farm’s history could be known. It was a little like mythology. Why did this family want to seize the farm and hold it? Then there was Ali, who seemed to understand their situation as if she held it in the palm of her hand. Last night someone had walked into his house, someone a bit like the black-clad Eastern woman. But “she” was a young man walking over to face him. He held a round porcelain dish. He’d abruptly smashed the dish to the ground, where it broke into splinters, but made no sound whatsoever. Without knowing how, Reagan formed a kind of attachment to this black-clad youth. He wanted to pour out his feelings to him. The youth turned his white bony face toward Reagan, kicked at the smashed pieces of porcelain with his toes, and did not answer his questions. Reagan understood, he would never get an answer. Looking at this young man, an unusual desire rose in his heart, even more intense than his desire for Ida. This one time, Reagan terrified himself. The young man went outside. He followed but failed to catch him, because the young man strode like the wind. Recalling this event now, Reagan thought, for no reason, that it was actually Jin Xia pretending to be a youth. Although he had looked like an Eastern man, the impression he gave was also of someone of unclear nationality. But during the day, when he faced Jin Xia, Reagan didn’t feel the slightest degree of desire. Jin Xia was certainly not the sort of person to make people desire him, if not to say, he was the sort of person to extinguish desire.
“Look, she’s already found what she wanted. Her pose is so graceful.”
Ali had come in again from somewhere without his noticing. They could see Jin Xia’s wife shouldering her hoe and receding into the distance.
“How did you know this woman wanted something? You don’t know her.”
“In my hometown, there are many people like this. Once I saw this family I was sure they were the same kind of people. They absorb a few things from your body, and they pour a few things into your body. I’m speaking of Jin Xia’s family. Mr. Reagan, from the day they arrived, the farm has been changing, but you haven’t detected it.”
As Ali was speaking her eyes looked to the ground. Reagan thought that surely she knew many more things. There was nothing hidden from this pair of aged eyes. He even suspected Ida’s leaving had something to do with this loyal, faithful old servant. But why did he suspect her loyalty?
With these many contradictions rushing toward him, Reagan made up his mind to flow along with the current.
He stood in the garden wearing pajamas, because the driver Martin had taken all his coats. He turned his face to the autumn sun, figuring that it wasn’t bad to be a child, to be unconcerned, and let this 160-square-kilometer farm return to its age of savagery. He didn’t want to be concerned with the future any more. A few workers walked past. Were they going to work? No, they weren’t going to work, they were playing a part. They each harbored their own ancient story, drifting along on his farm, searching for something.
In a spot where the grass and leaves reflected the light, underneath a palm tree, he saw his mother. His mother’s appearance didn’t show her age and there was no expression on her face. She held knitting in her hand, as if she were making wool socks. The sun shone on her body — wasn’t she too warm? He didn’t dare call out because the sight before his eyes was too fleeting. But his mother raised her head, looking at him inquiringly, as if to say, “Why are you wearing pajamas outside, little boy?”
His bare feet tread on a small snake. It was ice cold.
“Martin, Martin, you’re always wearing my clothes. What are you thinking?”
“Me? I don’t think about anything, I’m unable to think, so I wear your clothes. When I walk outside, I become another Mr. Reagan, and the knots in my heart disappear. I’m a rootless person, I always need to pull on a coat.”
Martin made an exaggerated gesture. Elaine stood to one side covering the smile on her face.
“I think,” she directed her words to Reagan. “I think Martin is like my sister. Someday he will swim into the sea wearing your clothes. . Mr. Reagan, have you noticed that everyone on the farm looks the same? Only people harboring the same thoughts come here.”
“There are two crows in the pockets of my hunting gear.” Martin shrugged, and began to whistle.
Reagan followed the young man with his eyes as he walked, bouncing, into the distance. He was overwhelmed with many thoughts and feelings. The sunlight seemed to press down on his body, thousands of jin heavy. He lowered his head and saw the bottom hem of his pajamas torn and bloodstains on his bare feet. Before dawn, he’d heard the sound of the earth rising and falling, a sha sha sha rustling, like the movements of an enormous python. He’d thought then that the land was traveling away from him, that the crows would not wheel over his head. But now he saw Martin wearing his hunting clothes, saw him embracing the younger sister of the girl who had drowned, and the land came back under his feet. Elaine was not ordinary, either. Sometimes she loafed in front of his house, her eyes staring straight ahead. If he stepped in front of her to say hello, she would jump away, guardedly, reproaching him in a loud voice: “Who are you?”
She had said, “My sister gave me her place, but I’m not grateful for it.”
A train’s steam whistle sounded in the distance, he heard it clearly. Perhaps Ida had returned long ago, and was hiding somewhere. The longing in Reagan’s heart was for the black-clad young man. That different impulse was hard to forget — could he be an incarnation of Ida? The discrepancy in sex didn’t amount to anything. There was a photograph of a young man clipped in Reagan’s sole photo album upstairs. His mother had said it was his older brother, but he had never met this black-clad man.
11. VINCENT VISITS THE GAMBLING CITY
In a room in the tall high-rise Vincent imagined the Chinese woman telling him that he should visit the gambling city to figure out a few things about his wife, Lisa. The Chinese woman sat with her back to him. She hadn’t opened her mouth, but Vincent heard her thoughts. They came toward him as language, and so he formed this statement from her present thought.
Lisa had forgotten her birthplace entirely. She spoke incoherently of a grassy lawn. Retired grandmothers sit on the lawn in wicker chairs all in a row. Some read the papers, some nap. In the distance, a long snake slinks along in the deep grass. A silver-haired woman catches sight of the snake. She doesn’t get up. Instead she covers her face with the paper and lies down in her chair.
“But you haven’t spoken of the gambling city’s most important feature,” Vincent interrupted.
“The slot machines?” Lisa’s eyebrows drew together in a line, betraying her ferocity. “I’ve seen many of them in that valley of death. If you go there, you’ll see the blood-red sunsets. I cannot go with you because if I go to that place I won’t be able to return. Poor Vincent, I’m uneasy about letting you go there.”
But Vincent had his mind on the horse-racing tracks. He didn’t take Lisa’s prophecy to heart. Hadn’t she come from that place? And hadn’t she lived outside it for decades? Vincent had always envied his wife’s origins. He thought of them as a legend that was true. He had never told her this, and if she heard him say as much she would be furious. Vincent had only passed by the gambling city once on a train, and had never stayed there. Every night he saw its rose-colored sky in his dreams. The domes of the gambling city appeared so dubious under this sky, so untrue. On a nearby mountainside, the bells of a cathedral tolled. There were no people in his dreams. He felt that the activity in the casinos had nothing to do with people. When he’d first known Lisa, her body’s active, inexhaustible desire astonished him. He’d had so much happiness from it. For many years he’d wanted to explore the source of her vitality, but she kept her mouth closed like a stoppered bottle.