Vincent reached out his arms to embrace Lisa. The woman sat in his embrace as calmly as a kitten. He heard a strange noise. He listened carefully and made out the sound of galloping horse’s hooves, with the sound of people yelling pressed in between.
“Darling, where do you think you can run off to?” he asked, kissing her ear.
“I am changing my habit of going on journeys at night.” She stifled a laugh.
“Lisa, you’re so light. Is this you? I saw the gambling city under the sun. It looked like it was coming toward us. Lisa, is this you?”
“It’s me, darling. You can’t forget the city, because it will always be in the depths of your heart.”
They were talking in this mad way, and at the doorway of their house Joe, his features strained, was looking for Vincent. He had an emergency to report to him. The cook told Joe that the house’s owner and his wife had already returned and were both in the garden. Joe walked into a large garden so overgrown even the path was obscured, but he didn’t see the two of them. He saw doves. The white breed of doves, hidden in the thick grass. They were everywhere, making a lovely cooing. Joe was released from his anxiety. He felt no need to be nervous, and thought that spending an afternoon here wouldn’t be too bad. A few nights before he’d passed through a street-corner garden and seen Vincent sitting on a bench drinking, worries written all over his face. He had come here to find Vincent and discuss a problem from work, but he’d already forgotten what he’d wanted to talk about. He vaguely remembered that it had something to do with an improvement to the style of the clothing. Now he was afraid of meeting Vincent, because he couldn’t say what had brought him here. Joe squatted in the grass, listening carefully to the doves’ coos. It was a few days since he had seen his boss. Joe wondered whether he himself still hoped to leave. If he hoped to leave the clothing company, why was he still laboring body and soul at the company’s work? It had already developed into a giant corporation. Opportunities increased, and Joe’s salary grew larger. Maria had renewed her habit of buying jewelry. In the midst of his pressing business at work, Joe continued his frequent reading. And so sometimes, when talking about work, he used literary language. Encountering this, his customers often nodded their heads to show complete understanding. What kind of people were his customers? He heard Vincent and Lisa’s voices. They were walking past the other side of the peach tree beside him.
“How could you breathe in the underground rooms? I can’t think of how. Could you teach me?” Vincent said.
“Vincent, dear, it is called summoning demons. I don’t want to fill our everyday life with earthquakes.”
Through the branches of the peach tree Joe saw Lisa’s gorgeous skirt. The couple was walking toward the house. The cooing of the doves, the blue sky, and the green trees made one reluctant to leave the place. Joe sat down, taking out a novel from his briefcase. A train appeared in the chapters he read. One of the train’s cars had no people in it, only two shadows showing on the glass window. The train conductor, a fat old man, came over to explain: “This is a newly implemented experiment, to see whether this special journey is possible. The two people who founded the Rose Clothing Company in the city belong to an elite class of people.” Joe didn’t like the tone of this description: it was oily and shifty. What elite class of people? Vincent wasn’t that kind of man. Joe suddenly realized, How could things taking place in reality be written in the book? He looked again at the book’s cover, where there was a picture of a bee along with the title in italics: The Heroic Long March. At this moment two real bees fell onto the page of the book. They were both comatose, one a worker bee and the other a drone, hopelessly moving their legs. Was Vincent passing information to him? He cautiously moved the bees onto a blade of grass, thinking of everything Lisa had said about the earthquakes. Yesterday there had been a real earthquake in his square. The statue in the center had toppled over a little at a time. Spring water rushed from the well. With a nameless impulse he ran to the well, wanting to see his own face. But he couldn’t lean into it because he was drenched by a small waterfall, and he couldn’t keep his footing because of the vibrations from every direction.
The couple floated in the air, walking as they talked, then fluttered into the large house. The door quietly shut behind them, then quietly opened again. The cook, a woman, put her head out. Joe stood up, clapping the dust from his clothes, and walked toward the cook. He wasn’t sure what he could do to appear natural.
“I remember the cook they hired before was a man. If his employer lay drunk on the ground, the cook would carry him inside.” Once he opened his mouth, this is what Joe said.
The cook didn’t say a word. She looked at him briefly, then let him enter the building.
He had just sat down on the sofa in the spacious hall when husband and wife came to greet him.
Although they welcomed him warmly, Joe sensed that their thoughts weren’t inside the house. He could tell this from their drifting expressions.
“Joe has come to settle accounts with us,” Vincent joked.
Joe heard this with surprise. He thought, Was a foundational change coming to the Rose Clothing Company? The empty hall gave him an eerie feeling. Where had the original furniture gone? Vincent didn’t ask why Joe was there, but thought it natural that he was. Later on Vincent invited Joe to go for a drink at a restaurant down the street. Joe said that if he drank before the sky was even dark, fear would fill his heart. Vincent laughed aloud, a skin-crawling laugh. Then he pulled Joe into the street by main force. Joe was a moderate man and not willing to oppose his boss. So although he hated the way Vincent went about it, he was compelled to go along.
In the car, Vincent told Joe his trip had left him uptight and he wanted to get drunk. At home if he drank too much Lisa would interfere, so he pretended to take Joe out for a drink. He really just wanted Joe to accompany him. He didn’t have to drink. When Vincent said this, his voice became loud and piercing, like a parrot’s, like an old parrot’s. His brow twisted, revealing his ferocity.
Because it was afternoon there was no one in the restaurant, but the door was open and a single bottle sat on a single table. Vincent uncorked it and drank a few large gulps straight from its mouth. He then turned and told Joe that he wanted to go below. Joe asked him below where, and he replied that he meant the underground rooms.
“You’re coming, too?” Joe agreed.
The underground room was full of wine bottles. People lay on the ground every which way, and appeared to be asleep. Joe saw a small door beside the liquor cabinet and couldn’t help reaching out a hand to push it open.
“You will get free if you leave this place.” Vincent seemed to smile. “You will make up your mind eventually.”
Before Joe’s eyes appeared the back garden of his own home. A ghostly woman wearing a kimono stood in the garden.
“Maria!” he shouted.
A strange man walked out of the building. Glancing back, Joe saw that the door to the basement was already shut. Joe scanned the walls for signs of rain, but there were none. Whose house was so like his own?
The woman said to the man, “I’m going to the square.”
She finished this sentence and the sky grew dark. The man and the woman, one after the other, left the garden.
12. JOE RESOLVES TO LEAVE
Joe finally emerged from the intricate crisscrossing alleys. He told Maria that he had been in a heavy-headed state, but light-footed. He remembered only that he saw parrots everywhere — on the balcony, on the walls, on the trashcans. Everywhere, and moreover, the birds weren’t afraid of people. When they saw Joe, they approached and spoke to him. The birds’ voices scared him, sounding too much like Vincent’s voice. Even the import of what they said was similar.