“It’s sexual repression.” Kim lifted his liquor bowl and drank a mouthful. “For a year already, everyone has suppressed their desire. Do you want to see her? She’s waiting for you to go in.”
Joe uneasily made an “ah” sound, and his face reddened. He saw Kim curl his lip in disdain, and avoided his glance in shame.
The door creaked with a zhi ya sound as a woman appeared. She was young, her body naked, her long hair worn to her waist. Her nipples were erect, and she watched Joe with eyes like a wolf’s. Fortunately she swiftly went back inside. Otherwise Joe wouldn’t have been able to sit still.
“I’m so ashamed. .” Joe spoke haltingly. He wanted to say something to Kim, but Kim was nowhere to be seen.
Joe was enlivened. He stood up and went inside.
The woman lay on a felt cloth, as red as orangutan blood. She was moaning. She saw Joe approach her in the dim light and made signs for him to strip off his clothes. Joe complied. There was a deep riverbed, with a crowd of snakes dancing madly. The snakes entered into their bodies without friction and came out again from another side. In a state near to unconsciousness, Joe saw the woman, indistinct, above him. She put a dagger, flickering in the cold light, into his hand, and with infinite tenderness pressed it down on her wild breasts. Joe subconsciously took the dagger and cut into her left breast. His last thought was: how could there be waves in the deep, dry riverbed?
Maria was weaving the largest of her patternless tapestries. She felt some object about to bulge out from the weaving on which she concentrated her mind. Lisa had already quietly entered, and stood behind her.
“The entire Rose Clothing Company is in chaos.” She spoke gently.
“Oh!” Maria shut her eyes. The hallucination disappeared from her memory. The room was deserted. She smelled something burning, so she jumped up and ran to the kitchen, with Lisa following her closely.
That cat ran through the door shrieking. Its fur was all burned away.
“Look, it opened the stove,” Maria said anxiously.
Together they cleaned up the kitchen, sat down, and ate a chocolate cake. Maria stroked the burned cat. Its brown fur fell in pieces to the floor. Its eyes were bleary. Only Maria knew how much it suffered because it missed its old home in Africa. When people brought it here, it was only as big as a mouse. But Maria knew its body was filled with memories of burning heat.
Lisa told Maria that last night on the long march she reached Luding Bridge, the iron cable bridge in Chinese Tibet. She stepped onto the bridge, and cold wind spun up from the abyss. An idea appeared in her mind: if she came across Joe in Tibet, surely she would bring back a message for Maria. But she was trapped on the bridge the entire night.
“Is the day when two dreams will meet still as far away as before?” Her voice was contained within the kitchen.
Maria raised her head and saw the handsome driver standing next to the refrigerator, looking absentminded. He grabbed the chocolate cake and put it in his mouth, eating as he said, “This is for me? This is for me? Why can’t I taste it?” He ate an entire large pan. Cake crumbs covered his face.
“Eating cake cannot solve his problems.” Lisa watched him sympathetically.
He heard what Lisa said and nodded.
Daniel dug up earth in the yard. He’d gotten poppies from his girlfriend Amei’s family. He wanted to plant them in all corners. Yesterday Amei told him that if he napped among the poppy flowers a book would spread open in the sky. Daniel asked her when she’d seen that book. She said it was aboard the ship on the way to Country A, and then afterward she’d seen it twice more. She also said that the book was not used for reading, because its pages were filled with revolving lotuses. Eyes could never endure it. Daniel was enthralled by the scene she described, and immediately asked her for poppy seeds. When Amei gave him the seeds she joked: “Daniel will run into his father.”
Then her expression grew sleepy as she entered a kind of hallucination. She wanted him to come to her home at nightfall.
“At that time the magnolia tree at the door of the house will be in bloom. Your father will stand underneath the tree.”
“Amei!” Daniel shouted, shaking her.
But she didn’t hear. She slid out of his hands like a fish.
“Come at six o’clock,” she said.
When Daniel stopped digging, his whole body began to tremble. There was no magnolia tree at the doorway of Amei’s house. What metaphor was she speaking in? His sweat flickered in the sunlight. He felt that he was so young, so ignorant, while Amei, her body attached to an ancient spirit, had seen through him long ago.
He saw his mother put her head out at the kitchen window. Her face was covered with wrinkles like knife cuts and her gaze had the air of a tomb. How could she look like this, when she was with her lover? Daniel had just seen her lover. He was a glutton, ready to eat everything in the refrigerator. As the man ate, Daniel’s mother and Lisa cowered into their own meditations.
A little past nightfall, when the sky was almost black, Daniel finally went to Amei’s house. The lights were unlit and the door tightly shut. It seemed that all were sleeping. He stood on the broad stairs and knocked rhythmically on the wooden door.
Cursing came from inside. It was Amei’s mother. She thought it was punks making trouble out on the street.
Then Amei came in a flurry to open the door.
“How could you come so late? It’s terrible, the magnolia blooms all withered.”
A strange sound came from her throat. The sky grew dark in an instant. Daniel thought the girl might disappear into the dark at any moment. He followed her closely as she went inside.
“Amei, Amei, you can’t abandon me!”
He heard his own piteous voice. In the dark the arrangement of Amei’s house was entirely different. He’d already walked far in behind her, but Amei still walked on ahead. Daniel remembered that the bedroom where Amei and her older sister slept was through the living room and down a small hallway, but where were they going now?
“Daniel, close your eyes. You will see a lamp in the rainforest.” Amei’s voice came from a distant place.
Now Daniel’s surroundings were pure dark. He was slightly nauseated. He did not know how to proceed, but in short order Amei’s voice came from in front of him, and he had to follow it.
“Now you’ve reached the outer edge of the rainforest. Do you smell the mist? That’s also the smell of your father’s body, so you must be used to it, ever since you were little.” She chuckled, ge ge.
Daniel heard vague cursing somewhere. It was Amei’s parents. They made him very uneasy.
“Your father has walked out of the rainforest. Didn’t you know this? That place is in the East. It is our native place, us two. Listen, it’s raining again there. Everything is growing.”
Generally, what appeared in Maria’s mind were always pictures, and very seldom words. But that morning when she lay on the bed, her eyes open and watching the waving curtains, a paragraph caught her by surprise.
“The traveler stands at the end of the bridge, the muddy yellow river water churning under his feet. He hears the distant call of wild geese. In his pocket he carries three silver coins, jangling, ding ling ding ling. The sounds of these strange things make him nervous, they make his body stiffen. When he can’t go on, a vineyard appears before his eyes. ‘Ah, wild geese,’ he says, but not aloud. Someone pushes him and he bounces, like a rag blown in the wind, crosses over the barrier, and falls into the river. When he’s still in the air he thinks: ‘Who is pushing me?’ Three silver coins scatter from his pocket, disappearing in the warm sunlight that illuminates everything.”