He stood behind the tree and spoke with Ida between the tree trunks.
“Ali and I live on a boat now, a sea vessel. In dreams, our boat reaches different places all over the world. One day I saw Ali eating durian fruit, and I asked her where she got it. She said it was from Malaysia. Then she asked me, ‘Last night we got off the boat there, and stayed for a long time in a garden shaped like a triangle. Have you forgotten all about it?’”
“These past days I’ve lived at a bar, in a tower in the air. There are two bedrooms. The owner’s daughter and I each had a room. Downstairs a group of musicians played folk music from the countryside the whole day long. There was no staircase to go downstairs, so we depended entirely on our thoughts to move up and down. They were unforgettable days.”
The sky wasn’t light yet, so Ida was still lying down. She tried as hard as she could to return to her dreamscape and converse with Reagan. She collected her thoughts by thinking of a tiny black door, and longed to hear its slight zhi ya creak. Owing to this excessive effort, she couldn’t tell later whether she had actually been dreaming. She felt her mouth saying “ah, ah, ah.” No matter what speech she came out with, it all turned into this “ah,” and that small black door was in a place nearby, half-open, with a beautiful peacock passing in and out.
“On breezy nights I lie on the deck listening to the whales swimming. There is a shark that lives there, and when it arrives the whales grow restless. On the shore someone says, ‘Is this the village of fruit?’ Then a burst of running footsteps.”
“We, the bar owner’s daughter and I, later reached the point where we didn’t want to get out of bed. We slept in the air. Gradually, the music downstairs changed into a dirge. The room was filled with women and elderly people dressed in mourning. Once someone led in a dog yapping wang wang.”
Reagan saw that Ida didn’t move when she spoke. He couldn’t make out the face of the person under the quilt. He constantly suspected that Ida’s body had already disappeared because the voice he heard sounded like it played from a tape recorder. Had Ida come, and now the sky would not grow light? Lara and Liang were lighting oil lamps. Reagan thought that the two girls seemed a little nervous, as though they were waiting for something to happen. The banyan’s aerial root swayed above him with a ge ge creak, like the sound of a skeleton in a dissection room. He thought that maybe after Ida awoke she wouldn’t remember that he and she had talked. This kind of misapprehension would be the pattern of their contacts after this.
Reagan didn’t remember when he’d begun to change into a ragged drifter. He wore clothes that gave off the sour smell of sweat, and passed through the crows that crowded together. These drenched birds sometimes attacked him, leaving his body covered in droppings, but he didn’t care about such things any more. If he saw any strange girl whatever on the farm he would go over and interrogate her, until people found him detestable.
Beautiful Ida was lying under the banyan tree, and Reagan hid behind its thick trunk, giving off a stink from head to foot. They were separated into two worlds, carrying on this strange kind of intercourse. Reagan felt that this woman had taken away all the vigor and weight of his body. He was as light as a mayfly now. His body rose and fell with currents of air.
“Is it better to change into a bird, or into a tree?” Lara asked from off to the side in a loud voice.
Liang let out a ringing laugh, playing in the dark with her mice.
Reagan came out from behind the tree trunk and walked toward the two girls. He felt as if he were swimming. The effect of the earth’s gravity on him was reduced until it was miniscule.
“Girls, girls!” he said weakly, his voice like a cicada call.
“Is it better to change into a bird, or into a tree?” Lara responded to him with this question.
He couldn’t walk. He sat down right there on the spot. He heard a section of the broken-off wall collapse. But rather than collapsing altogether, it fell down brick by brick, as though someone were knocking on it. He doubted whether he was sitting on the ground, because he couldn’t feel the soil, only handfuls of dry leaves. He became very light, so light the leaves failed to crackle into pieces underneath his body.
“Is this that powerful man our boss? His body is breaking apart like pieces of tile.”
It was still Lara who spoke. Her mocking tone made Reagan feel there was nowhere to hide himself away. He wondered how she could treat her own boss like this. She was caustic. He couldn’t help feeling over his body to make certain he hadn’t broken into pieces.
Liang was still laughing. He didn’t know whether she was laughing at him or at Lara. Perhaps her laughter had nothing to do with the two of them.
The day a rainstorm collapsed the multistory building, Reagan had seen Liang searching for her mice in the rubble of the broken walls. Her movements were like lightning in the sky. Whenever her hands touched the small animals, they became obediently still so she could lift them one after another to carry in her apron. The sight moved Reagan greatly. He meant to commend this girl, but afterward he forgot about it because he was busy finding accommodation for all the people who’d lost their homes. There were many mice on the farm, but Reagan’s attention rarely focused on these recluses as they traveled back and forth. Liang appeared to be someone who had a purpose, and perhaps her schemes ran deep. Every person here had schemes that ran deep, including the one who’d drowned.
“Girls, girls.” His voice had no strength.
“My mice, my mice!” Liang, who hadn’t spoken all along, suddenly shouted, then wailed with heart-tearing, lung-rending grief. The sound cut open the silence of the night air.
Reagan hung his head, repeating silently to himself: “Disappear, disappear.” He saw his boat and a black river, so he went aboard, entered the cabin, and lay down in its narrow space. . His hand explored underneath him, catching handful after handful of leaves, leaves he couldn’t twist into pieces. Liang’s voice grew more and more distant and finally couldn’t be heard. A wild wind, its direction uncertain, blew across the surface of the river.
At daybreak the two girls finally came over. They saw Reagan’s body buried in thick layers of leaves from the tree. His mouth was also stuffed full of leaves. His figure looked like a corpse.
“Our boss is pursuing pleasures of the mind,” Lara said. “Look how content he is. I had a grandfather whose body was set into an earthen wall when he neared the end of his days. Other people believed he was suffering, but really it was pleasure.”
At night Ida slept under the banyan tree, and during the day she drifted around the farm. One night she got up because she couldn’t sleep, and without realizing it walked to the eastern slope of the mountain. There was a half-collapsed wooden house on the hillside. Ida knew the family of the farm manager Jin Xia lived there. Ida had known for some time that the house was eaten through by termites, and now, it seemed, one side had finally fallen in. In the several rooms that had not collapsed the lamps were lit. The inhibited howl of a wolf came from inside. The shapes of two people scurried in front of the window. What was the family busy with in the middle of the night?
That wolf’s howl abruptly began again, a sound loud enough for the deaf to hear. Ida felt the ground under her feet vibrating slightly. Immediately afterward a window opened and a dark shadow flew out, landing on the ground. Ida simply stared. It was Jin Xia’s older son, the one who cared for the wolf. The boy came over to Ida.
“They will kill someone,” he told Ida, pointing to the window. “The wolf is chained, but even an iron chain can’t hold it. Mama puts the blame on me, and now the whole family wants to kill me.”