Can Xue
The Last Lover
1. JOE AND HIS BOOKS
Joe, the manager of the Rose Clothing Company’s sales department, clamps a briefcase under his arm as he passes through the narrow streets that lead to his office. He is a small, conservative man between middle and old age, meticulous in his dress, with shoes invariably spotless, his beard and hair regularly trimmed. His pale green eyes sometimes have a blank expression, either because he’s absentminded or because he’s eccentric. He often harbors thoughts of madness. Joe has a mania for reading, and for years he’s read one book after another, muddling all the stories in his mind. His memory is of the kind that’s excellent at making choices — a grafting memory — so the pathway of his thought is always clear. He usually sits in his office in City B with a novel hidden under the files, trying to look as if he’s hard at work. In fact, he’s reading all kinds of stories. As he is circumspect and conservative, his clients over the years have never discovered this secret. Joe’s manner of reading allows him to practice a singularly coherent method of linking his thoughts together. Every day his job interrupts him countless times, but in the space of a second he can get back into the flow of a story.
Joe’s home is on a small hill two streets from the office. From the windows a stretch of blue sea is visible, over which seagulls hover. In the light of an early dawn, he was already on the road to work. The people of Country A rise very late, and there was no one on the quiet street except a black woman, a street cleaner. Joe heard his footsteps on the empty street sounding a hesitant note. To the right, the storefront windows reflected his tidy hair and necktie. Joe turned away shyly and lowered his eyes to the ground when he caught sight of this distinct image of himself.
“Good morning!” he said.
“Good morning! You’re out early.” The slender woman leaned on her broom and observed him as he slipped by and disappeared little by little into the distance. Her large eyes blinked, as if she were lost deep in thought.
Joe reached his office, turned on the lights, and went to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee, then sat at his desk and continued with the story from yesterday. The book in front of him was very old, and its pages were yellowed; it must have been twenty years ago that he’d bought it. Joe had been purchasing books for three decades, and the house on the seafront was stuffed with them. He had taken all the beds and converted them into empty “chests” that sat on the floor loaded with books. Since the previous year Joe had been envisioning a magnificent plan: to reread all the novels and stories he’d ever read in his life, so that the stories would be connected together. That way, he could simply pick up any book and move without interruption from one story to another. And he himself would be drawn into it, until the outer world wouldn’t be able to disturb him. Joe had put this plan into action, and after two months of persistence it was already producing results. For example, he could even talk business with a customer (he is, after all, the manager of the clothing company’s sales department) and at the same time remain immersed in his stories. He would sometimes stealthily turn aside with a faint smile.
“Joe, my company would collapse without you,” Joe’s boss said when they met. He was the company’s owner, a thin man of about sixty with white hair and wrinkles like canals across his face. “How do you know the secret of getting our customers to like you?” As he spoke he almost sounded sentimental, but at the same time he stealthily sized up Joe’s reaction.
“I think it has something to do with my reading.” Joe spoke slowly, deliberately weighing his words.
“Reading!” The wrinkles between his boss’s eyebrows folded into an upside-down V.
“Yes, I read a lot of stories.” Joe’s speech quickened as a red flush spread over his face. “I, uh. . I’ve even been thinking of resigning so I can read books all the time. Really. I’ve been thinking it over.”
“Well, that would be a real loss for my company. You haven’t made up your mind yet?”
It didn’t seem as if his employer were urging Joe to stay; actually, he seemed hopeful that Joe meant what he said.
“No, not yet. I still have my wife and a child to support.”
His boss peered into his face for a moment, shook his head slightly as though a little disappointed, and motioned with his hand for Joe to leave. Joe departed, pondering what his boss might mean by what he’d said, turning this over and over in his mind until his thoughts led to a dark tunnel. This man, whom he’d worked with for many years, clearly understood his employee. But as to how deep this understanding went, and what he thought of Joe’s approach to life, and what hopes he had for him, Joe couldn’t tell from his expression or speech. His behavior was equivocal and vague, in distinct contrast to the precise operation of his denim manufacturing company. Joe had the impression that his employer concerned himself very little with the company’s day-to-day affairs, although he was interested in his employees’ attitudes and the degree of their loyalty to the company. Joe wondered why his boss didn’t seem to expect him to continue working there permanently. This was an insult to Joe’s self-regard, especially since he was very conscientious about his work and had an intuitive knack for the proper arrangement of things. Joe himself had great respect for this capability. At this point in his thinking, Joe recalled his boss’s wife. She was vivacious and clever, a gaudy woman of middle age. He thought this woman, Lisa, wasn’t a good match for him, yet his boss treated her with constant affection. Joe thought of his own home, his plain and capable housewife, and their likable son, who was off at boarding school. By comparison, he could understand the harmonious relationship between the company’s owner and his wife. But what did his boss think of him? What sort of expectations did he have for him? Joe was at a loss. There were occasional moments when Joe thought he might even tell his boss about how he read novels on the sly during office hours, but every time the words were on his lips he swallowed them back. Joe was a cautious man, circumspect to the point of being a touch pedantic. Once during a gathering at a restaurant his boss had gotten drunk and said, pointing at Joe’s nose, “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to!” Joe had turned white, thinking his life was about to undergo a great change. In fact, nothing happened, and his life went on as before.
After Joe left the owner’s office and returned to his own, he felt a floating sensation pervade his body. He opened a book and followed its heroine through the alleyways of a slum. But today the small alleys didn’t lead off in every direction. In one sunlit alley a fearful dark shadow appeared up ahead, with the pa pa flapping sound of a cloth fluttering in the wind, even though there was no sign of the wind blowing. Joe stopped in his tracks, frightened. At that very moment a telephone rang, and his secretary said a customer from the south was here to see him.
This man, named Reagan, had a square face and a stern expression. He wanted to sign a long-term contract with Joe. Joe figured that he would want to haggle as usual, and rapidly ran through a number of scenarios in his mind. But Reagan didn’t open his mouth. Moving a chair over to the window, he gazed down at the people clumped together in twos and threes. He propped his very broad chin on his left hand as if he were calculating, but also as if he were thinking about something that had nothing to do with business matters. Joe was perplexed, and thought again of the alleyway in his book. When Reagan started talking, Joe jumped with fright because his voice was raised in a near scream.
“In the south, there are rubber tree groves and coconut palms everywhere. How much clothing do you think the workers need to wear? Haven’t you ever thought of that? Do you have that much imagination? Yesterday two workers drowned in the bay because the clothes you make are too thick and heavy, and it’s hard to get them off quickly. . What kind of idiot designed these clothes? One of the workers who drowned was a girl. There were people who saw her leap out of the water like a fish and then sink back in. You fool!”