Last Words from Montmartre

by Qiu Miaojin

  You say that for you it’s like walking in the desert now. I sense that you aren’t totally numb toward me, not totally unfeeling or apathetic. For me the most important thing is this: As long as I can feel the finest thread of your acceptance, I can still tell myself that I have something to give you.

  I don’t know if I still have what it takes. I can’t stand the thought of you walking in the desert. I want to give you a little patch of solid ground to stand on, or at the very least some small green oasis you can look at in the distance, to keep you from drifting away from reality, from escaping back into your mind. It’s all my fault! I missed my chance. But let me see if—using these words as a little plot of land and my life as a cornerstone—I can build you a center. Okay?

  LETTER TWO

  APRIL 28

  Xu,

  It is now one o’clock in the morning of April 28, 1995. Two hours ago I buried Bunny.

  I buried Bunny in that little triangular park near rue du Mont Cenis, just like you asked. I didn’t feel depressed—I felt satisfied. Bunny’s body had lain there in my room for two whole days. It was the first time I’d ever experienced the death of a loved one, of a life connected to mine. Extinguished, just like that, gone from existence.

  But the loneliness following Bunny’s death caught me off guard, knocked me flat, deprived me of any fleeting sense of recovery. I was like a tripod newly balanced, then a leg suddenly gets sawed off. The death-filled afternoon air thickened with misery and I couldn’t eat or drink. Maybe you wonder why I torture myself like this, why I don’t have even the slightest immunity to it. I don’t know. I’m too receptive by nature, what Buddhists might call a kind of openness. It’s my disease and it’s my gift. It’s my treasure and it’s my fatal flaw.

  This morning I was anxious about burying Bunny. I had promised you an earth burial rather than a water burial for Bunny, so that you could visit the grave. But my friends all said I’d never find a good spot. And the pet cemetery was too expensive. Camira even went so far as to suggest throwing the body in the garbage. The body had been sitting there for two days already. If I had put off the burial any longer it would’ve started to decay and I would’ve failed to fulfill your wishes. This afternoon I finally resolved to just pull myself together and lay Bunny peacefully to rest. Then you wouldn’t have to worry about either of us. Daddy would take care of Bunny.

  I woke up to send my first letter to you and then on the way home bought ten champagne roses (I gave three of them to Ying), a squat blue candle (sitting beside me now), and a shovel. I put yesterday’s wet laundry in the dryer (I am now wearing dry pants). Then I wrapped the gifts I’d bought for my family at Narita airport (three ties each for my father and brother-in-law; a pair of purses for my mother and sister). While I was at the post office to mail your letter, I impulsively bought you thirty sets of gorgeous stamps with four different designs. The books and CDs you sent me were an unexpected delight. I tried to call Shui Yao on my way home to let her know I was safe and well but couldn’t get through. Then I left a message on Weng Weng’s answering machine to tell him my impressions of Chungking Express and Vive L’Amour. I returned home around dusk and made scrambled eggs with beef and onion and macaroni, and some rice. After watching the news on TV, I went back to my room and stuck the stamps on envelopes already addressed to you while listening to the arias you had sent me. I felt curiously blessed. And I called Qing Jin to arrange a time to talk with Xin Ping about learning to play the violin. White Whale called before dinner, too, to ask where I ended up burying Bunny, so I took that opportunity to press her about my taking tap-dance lessons with her, and told her a bit about the progress of my thesis.

  At the stroke of eleven, I picked up the box with Bunny in it, put on my backpack full of tools, and stole out the door. . . . All the gates to the park were locked shut. So that nobody would see me I chose a remote corner, climbed over the wall, made my way into the wooded area, and—keeping an eye out for the police—hid behind some of the thicker bushes and began to dig. The soil was soft and loose from the rain. After I dug the right size hole, I decided to take Bunny’s body out of the box and place it directly in contact with the earth so it would decompose more quickly. I figured Bunny would enjoy becoming nourishment for those big plants. The picture of father and mother, the pair of farewell letters that they wrote, the plant that had preceded Bunny in death, the big hairbrush, and a ball of toilet paper that Bunny liked to play with—all were buried with the body. The body was still in good condition. It even seemed softer than two days ago. I covered it in a blue blanket, put some of Bunny’s food pellets on top, then pushed all the dirt back into the hole and tamped it tightly with my foot.

  Suddenly I wanted to cry, thinking how I hadn’t failed you, how I’d never again see that adorable little white body, how I’d finally experienced firsthand what it means to “bury with your own hands,” how Haruki Murakami had described burying two cats in six years. How many Bunnys and how many secret loves would I have to bury in the beautiful, lonely city of Paris? What I was burying “with my own hands” was actually my love for you and Bunny. Has my love for both of you really ended up in the ground, with nothing left but fantasy and echoes? Xu, you’ve misunderstood me. Perhaps I wasn’t completely fit to be Bunny’s daddy, but I had never been abusive. I cared for Bunny with my whole heart, and when Bunny died I was a brave daddy! The sixth track on your CD—Saint-Saëns’s “Softly Awakes My Heart”—speaks to my feelings about Bunny’s death. . . . Xu, enter the park through the gate on the church side and look for the tall tree behind and to the right of the second bench. The final resting place of our beloved Bunny, and of our love, is beneath a little mound of earth with a few scraggly weeds and a little champagne rose, in the little triangular park near rue du Mont Cenis!

  LETTER THREE

  APRIL 29

  Xu,

  Someone called around four o’clock this afternoon. I was up late last night writing letters, so I was still lying in bed with the day yet to begin. For a moment I thought it could be you, calling to find out about Bunny’s funeral, but the phone stopped ringing before I could get up. I immediately dropped the idea that it was you calling. Since you have been trying so hard to abandon me, as I’ve become such a great scourge to you, it’s unlikely you would squeeze out even a few reluctant tears of genuine concern.

  Xu, what you’ve done to me this month is wrong. I have to tell you this. From the point of view of interpersonal relationships, even if I’m older and more mature than you, and even if there are things you’re too young to understand, everyone is still responsible for their actions and the wrongs they commit against others. In their heart of hearts, no one can escape this responsibility. I can’t, and so I’m trying to make up for the wrongs I’ve committed.

  I believe that two individuals always share a basic human bond. The depths of this bond depend on an unspoken agreement or oath between the two. The more stable their inner life and personality, the more honestly they can thrive within this genuine unspoken agreement. When there is too little of this kind of consistency, they will continually wrong others, either by creating chaos in their inner life, or by leaving themselves no choice but to close off their own soul from the rest of the world. This kind of “consistency” is at the core of Gabriel Marcel’s investigation of fidélité (loyalty). This past month, when I started really applying myself to understanding Marcel, I discovered that in my own life I had matured enough to have a better grasp of the overall spirit of his work, and that I identified with the entire range of his concerns. I’m delighted. It’s like finding a best friend. Part of the reason I want to study violin is that I’m moved by him and want to be a kind of disciple.

  Who knows if I’ll ever have the chance to tell you more about his philosophy and art? Who knows if you would even enjoy it and find it moving? I may not be able to interpret your life for you, to speak for you or make choices for you, but starting with my first letter to you, I have offered you a vivid int
ernal blueprint, an illumination of the coordinates of your inner life, haven’t I? Your inner life and mine are symbiotic. Unless you want to shut it down completely—to castrate it—your inner life will never be complete with anyone but me. Always it will remain, thirsting to communicate with me. As long as I’m still alive, it will thirst to hear the sound of my voice and thirst to hear the music emanating from the wellspring of my spirit.

  You could of course just suppress this thirst, this desire, become insensate. Yet once it has swelled inside you, you’ve already had a taste of it. The existence of this “spirit” is a fact. Your spirit and my spirit are made from the same material, one tuned to the other. Eventually you’ll realize that this part of you is the fruit of our careful irrigation and cultivation. It is a blessing. Through our violent outbursts, we have ultimately blocked, run aground, and sealed off our spirits from each other. In this world there’s no bond of love formidable enough; not even the enduring, permanent bond between life and body, or anything else, is formidable enough. Instead, the most formidable—and indestructible—bond of all is that mutual belongingness of souls that share an originary home (or “womb”). This bond will always be vital, so humans are condemned to suffer the pain of failing to transcend it even as we are compelled to break and deny such a bond.

  It’s precisely because I’ve realized this that I can express a simple conclusion in a time of chaos: Let us have no rupture between us. I’ve also gradually come to see more clearly what actually happened this past year—my violent outbursts and your shutting down; what my issues were, what yours were. . . . I no longer have to depend on you for information because I’ve found my way through the labyrinth and have left the jungle behind. None of this chaos has been caused by other people or your desire for them—all that doesn’t matter. What matters is that an obstruction has blocked our spiritual communication; an emotional disconnect has grown between us. But the significance of your betrayal has already been carved in stone. In the future, when the time of reckoning arrives, you will pay by losing me, by having lost, whether in whole or in part, my most beautiful, most precious fidélité to you. This is something no one else will ever be able to give you in full. Loyalty is not a passive, negative guardianship of the gate—loyalty arises from the complete and utter opening and subsequent blazing forth of one’s inner life. It is an active, determined desire that demands total self-awareness and deliberate engagement.

  And I don’t agree with your tangential use of the “secular” and the “non-secular” to describe our differences and to explain the rupture between us—I wholly disagree.

  “Secular life” assumes a kind of passive, moralistic “loyalty.” It’s the kind of life my parents and yours have been leading as they do their best to conform to the standards of such a life. Apart from relating to the outside world as a couple, however, you could say that their shared inner life is minimal and shallow. This isn’t to say they have no spiritual needs at all, or that their passions never cause them suffering, but they focus instead on the external world or find other outlets for their passions. The “secular life” they live demands they compartmentalize the very structure of their lives. This is their right, but they have no choice and no imagination.

  So if you say I’m a “non-secular person,” then I agree: The “loyalty” of a so-called “secular life” means nothing to me. I have no desire to have a barren life and soul. If you say that you, on the other hand, are precisely this kind of person and that you are well-suited to such a life, fine. I won’t suffer then. If you are such a person, or you want to become one, then I won’t be bound to you because I couldn’t possibly need nor want someone like you. My relationship with Xuan Xuan was an example of this kind of disjunction, and I ended up hurting her.

  Although I could depend on her completely day to day and received from her as much love as I could ever ask, what I didn’t understand was that my soul could never really need or long for her. I tried to be responsible, to care for her and cherish her. I earned a living, shared my livelihood, listened to her, protected her. What she and I achieved was precisely the ethical fulfillment of the “loyalty” component of a “secular life.”

  Only later did I realize that wasn’t what she wanted from me.

  She yearned for me, but I was completely dispassionate as I hadn’t given her my whole soul. Crueler still, she watched helplessly as I offered my soul to you and I burst into a brilliant flame. She watched and she understood. She experienced the difference between zero degrees and a hundred and this was so painful that it nearly destroyed her. This is the wrong I committed against her. It’s a story about Xuan Xuan in which you were also implicated, a story of my failing to live a “secular life.”

  Don’t say that I do not understand, that I am incapable of living a secular life or that I don’t belong in a secular world. I’ve discovered that I actually may be able to simultaneously live two kinds of lives. The strength needed to lead a secular life is stored inside my body. You could even say it’s hidden deep within the seed of my desire for love. It grows in the opposite way of most people’s experiences, because first a deep spirituality developed in my life and only later a desire, and capacity, for the real world. The seed of my desire for love could never fully mature. Instead it drained all my energy reserves, with tragic consequences. During those six months when you came to France, I had a chance to make that seed bloom and bear fruit, and my secular life might have thrived. But instead I was drawn into a period of incredible turmoil and self-destruction because you totally shut down and didn’t reciprocate my love. After the pain of your betrayal, I went to Tokyo to visit Yong. For a month my body and mind were on the verge of total collapse, and Yong was the one who took me in and cared for me. For the first time she opened up to me, lightening the load of my longing and anguish and offering the passion and connection that I desired so desperately. Only then did I suddenly see what had actually happened this past year.

  The story of Yong and me is too long and too dense to be summarized in just a few lines.

  In fact she admitted a deep love for me. Although her love wasn’t absolute, somehow it caused that seed within to bloom and bear fruit. Three years of maturing had made her realize that she loved me, and that she was ready to admit her desire. It would not be for me to call this a kind of redemption. She knew what she wanted from love and she accepted and paid the price for her comprehension with her whole self. So there was no need for me to possess her completely even as she loved me deeply, and my life quickly recovered from a malaise so profound I was almost blind with it. My potential to live a secular life began to bloom and bear fruit.

  Because of her I wanted to recover, I wanted to become a healthy, whole person again. Moved by her love, I wanted to mature into someone strong enough to be accountable for her (particularly for the secular aspects of her life). Because she had loved the wrong person for a very long time, part of her soul had suffered and shut down. She had sworn an oath to that person like the oath I swore to you (you, though, haven’t yet entered the phase of life yet where oaths are sworn). Once I am completely liberated from the burden of my responsibility for you (When? Maybe the day when you become completely irrelevant to me. How sad to even mention it. . . . ), I now believe that Yong is the “final” one, the one I will spend my life waiting for. She’s already a fixture in my life story and genuinely needs me, her need highly exclusive and selective. Only I, and no one else, can occupy that position. If I can’t have you, ultimately I will love her and our future family. Moreover, I am prepared to do whatever’s necessary and care for her, since in the end I am the only one who can shoulder the burden of her broken life. More important, she and I have already forgiven each other. Our feelings for each other have already passed beyond desire and possession, emancipating me from desire. What I mean is that she is the first person with whom I’ve experienced “creative loyalty.” Before we parted, she told me to find an outlet for my passion at all costs. I replied that I would surviv
e, for her, and mature into a whole and healthy human being who would be able to take care of her.

  As for you, Xu, like I told Qing Jin: “My misfortune is that I have devoted myself completely to someone who can’t accept my perfect love.”

  There are still so many long, long reflections and experiences that I want to write to you about . . . but after writing for seven or eight straight hours, I’m empty and exhausted. . . . Xu, can I point out a few things to you with these last words, though they may not be true?

  (1) On betrayal

  Your betrayal of my life, my will, my body tortured me this past month, leaving a wake of hate and trauma, and I’ve paid dearly. This was the most painful betrayal you could inflict. But I didn’t die, I survived and will continue to heal. Your spirit, however, could never betray me, because your spirit will always yearn for me and belong to me.

  From your perspective, total betrayal can’t hurt you. On the one hand, you never really cared about me or any of this. You never really cared enough nor have you really grasped how the monopoly of desire works. Yet you would still suffer if my soul betrayed you; you would never be able to watch dispassionately if I gave my soul completely to someone else and my tenderness toward you disappeared. If that day ever comes, you’ll pay a painful price. My soul is slipping away from you even as I try to cling to it.

  (2) On passion and sex

  Xu, it’s not that you don’t desire me; it’s that your body has not yet grown into its desire. Your corporeal desire still can’t merge with your spiritual desire; they’re incoherent to each other, they can’t cooperate. It’s not that you’ve stopped desiring but that your desire has not yet reached maturity.

  It’s easy for the body to be open to desiring different people because desire wells up and demands to be satisfied. It’s easy to categorize corporeal desire as sexuality, but if it has no means of merging with spiritual desire, then a rupture will occur between spirit and flesh. For ultimately passion and sex aren’t only expressed physically but through a true union between two spirits. When the spirit can truly love and find contentment, both the body and other key aspects of life will fall naturally into place, working in unison, merging. Xu, one day, when your corporeal desire has matured—when you’re able to desire any body—then you will desire me, if, at that time, there isn’t any rupture between us, our lives are harmonious, our spirits remain in love, and our bodies can still satisfy each other. And you will discover that I’m the one you desire most profoundly of all, because your spirit loves me most profoundly of all. I’m working hard this time so that nothing can undermine the loving communion of our spirits.