Last Words from Montmartre

by Qiu Miaojin

  (3) On my outbursts and your shutting down

  Xu, you never really stopped loving me. You can never really not love me. But during this long, long year you sometimes acted as if you didn’t love me. You’ve done countless things that suggest this, but I never really severed ties with you completely because I could still sense your love for me, sense your thirst for my spirit, even though this love only manifests itself in the weakest and most distorted of ways.

  This all happened because I started to “blame” you when I moved to Paris. How pitiful that a pair of lovers so completely enamored of each other chose to take such a journey! I needed you but couldn’t be satisfied. The suppressed and dependent sides of your personality along with your failure to understand my passion and your failure to deal with the pain caused by this passion . . . all these things led me to blame you. I felt so unfulfilled last March and April that my ubiquitous blaming tantrums caused you to start shutting me out. . . . Pitiful! After that the situation went from bad to worse, as I sunk into a pathological state of “outburst” and you sunk into a long-term “shutdown.” On the very same day you started shutting me out, your inner self started to become unhinged, lost. This caused yet deeper frustration and dissatisfaction. In the end you completely failed to express your love for me. Quite the opposite: You kept wanting me but repeatedly said that you didn’t love me, while I frantically continued to blame you and became trapped in a state of hysteria.

  We made each other this way. My worst mistake was my “blaming” heart. That was the first of many mistakes. From the very beginning, the one you place your trust in, open yourself up to, and devote your passion and essentially your life to should be the one who understands you and accepts you unconditionally, the one who will never “blame” you for your immaturity or your failure to satisfy your partner; before coming to Paris, I was this person to you. Though you aren’t mature enough yet to satisfy the needs of my spirit and desires—and could not fulfill the requirements of a union with me—you were still somehow thoroughly devoted to me. Before coming to Paris, I was moved by the depths of your devotion and grew used to it. During that phase we were cooperating and communicating in perfect harmony with each other.

  Everything seemed fine until daily life in Paris gradually started to sicken me with despair—a despair that you couldn’t understand, and so we stopped communicating . . . I blamed you even more, while your own secret self-loathing grew. All this blame frustrated you more and more and more until finally you simply shut me out. I lost your trust, your openness, your love, your devotion. But the most tragic thing is that my pathologically violent outbursts crushed your inner confidence and composure. Now you can’t even act with the slightest bit of honesty, trust, courage, or integrity toward me. Now you are someone who isn’t really you. (Honestly, Xu is another person. The Xu I knew well, whom I believed in and whom I loved passionately and to whom I prostrate myself in worship, is the total opposite of this one. She hasn’t degenerated and disappeared; she’s just hiding from me.) This month, my tragedy reached a peak with a total spiritual breakdown caused by my loss of faith in this deity!

  Xu, it’s not that you no longer love Zoë or need Zoë anymore. It’s precisely because you tried so hard to satisfy him without success that you felt defeated and frustrated. At first, when you were completely open with him and madly in love, you did your best. Later on, when you were shut down and couldn’t love him anymore, you still tried to satisfy him but you were too exhausted, too frustrated, so you chose to abandon him. But even this proved impossible, as, after you had accepted his love, you never really stopped loving him, stopped feeling bound to his spirit; you could never erase the enormous space he occupied in your life, nor extricate your fate from his; you could never stop trying so hard to satisfy him, to grow closer to him. So what I must insist on telling you here is this: What you stumble over, what wounds the essence of your desire, is not loving. Xu, your first love cannot be compared to any other. You cannot erase all traces of it because your body and soul have been so deeply desired by me, so fiercely loved by me. How indelibly I inscribed your body and soul with the first perfect traces of a beginning! Those were the first indelible traces of desire in your life. As your lover I have given myself to you so completely, I belong to you so truly, can you really disavow the mark that symbolizes our desire’s consummation? Can you? Not unless you’ve shut your spirit down completely, as you’ve tried so hard to do recently.

  To untie the bell you have to find the person who tied it. Your spirit can’t be released from its confinement unless it’s released by me. If you never communicate with my spirit again, if your life is never open to mine again, you’ll never leave the desert, no other can provide an exit. You will even lose contact with your own soul, turn into someone I hate and could never want, and I, like a kite with a broken string, will float away, never to return. . . . I want so much for you to talk to me again, to trust me and be as open as you once were; I want to free you from your state of shutdown. To do so, I must stop my pleading and stop blaming you. I must enable you to recapture your original memory of Zoë’s unconditional love for you; this is the unconscious need that’s central to your life and calls forth my desire. It’s all I can do. I’m trying to grow a little (though not too much), while keeping in mind my earlier ideals. I’m trying my best, trying to see how far I can get. For this homecoming, I could never ask you to make the first move, as it’s up to me to return to a place of loving you before I can expect you to quietly do the same. If I fail, then we surely lose each other, down to the final eyelash. I’m waging a life-and-death battle with my own destiny: I can only pray that you’ll help me, that you’ll never push me away with words (or at least a lot less) and actions that harm my desire for you, that you won’t push me off this cliff, nor thoughtlessly sever the cord between us that I want to strengthen because I love you. . . .

  I am not in turmoil anymore. The conflict within me is no longer serious. If you try to reconcile my words and my behavior, you’ll find that they are not as contradictory as you might believe. I’m aware of what each person I know means to me; I’ve always been clear about what I want. And I still have the power and freedom to choose whom to devote myself and my soul to, and hopefully always will. I know I’m complicated, but I’m also lucid. I feel things deeply but my desire is like a pure crystal. This is the rarest, most beautiful part of me, that sparkles brightly in the crowd.

  LETTER FOUR

  APRIL 29

  Xu,

  Last night I went with White Whale to the Centre Pompidou to see Angelopoulos’s The Travelling Players. We sat there for four hours and didn’t emerge until it was already half past midnight. I was in such a good mood and kept laughing and laughing, hopping around and humming the Greek accordion tune from the film. So happy and so content. It was the first time I’d seen White Whale since Bunny’s death. Seeing me this happy, White Whale thought something was wrong with me.

  During the four long hours of the movie there were a number of tedious, awkward scenes that made it feel like political propaganda, but there were also some serenely tender and astonishingly beautiful scenes as well. I was wholly attentive for the first three hours before I started to yawn, but then, for some unknown reason, laughter burst, from deep within my body, just suddenly burst out. . . . Life is so beautiful! Particularly when I think about my future life. It’s so beautiful! J’arrive pas: This expression has repeatedly flown from my mouth lately. It’s so beautiful! In Chinese it literally means “I can’t do it,” but that sounds too flat. Or it can be translated as “I can’t get there,” “I’m not up to standard,” “I’ve failed” . . . I remember Ya Yuan once sent me a newspaper clipping on “the benefits of being defective.” Lin Qingxuan said something that left a deep impression on me when he quoted Master Hong Yi: “I only hope that I will fail in my endeavors, because when things don’t turn out, the failure shames me into realizing my moral defects. How terrible if success leaves me complacent!�
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  And I have some serious defects indeed. My life has never been healthy and complete. It has some serious flaws, just like this film! Twenty-six years diffuse with memories of failure and incompetence, several moments I just wanted to escape forever. But do these failures matter? My twenty-six-year-old self is simply one big J’arrive pas. The film is Angelopoulos’s second, shot in 1975, seven years after his first. After that, in 1988, he made Landscape in the Mist (by this time he was perhaps the second-best director in the world), and in 1991 he made The Suspended Step of the Stork (this film is what made him my personal God, without equal; Tarkovsky was already dead by then). This year, 1995, he’ll release his latest film: Ulysses’ Gaze. (It was the last of a hundred films in the Greek Film Festival at the Centre Pompidou and premiers on July 22. I go crazy with excitement just thinking about seeing this film.) We shouldn’t have waited until The Suspended Step of the Stork to appreciate his exceptional vision. Rather we should have recognized the enduring presence of “a certain quality” in his work even when it was still awkward and rarely screened, whether it was sixteen years ago or four years ago. I love this artist precisely because I recognize this unfinished quality of his; and so this film, which White Whale found clumsy and inferior, is to me as satisfying and joyous as any of his other films. I can’t explain the difference between loving a film and loving its director (someone might mistake this for blind idolatry). I suppose I’m being ridiculous, but it’s difficult for me to put into words. There is no other way for me to draw near to him or pay homage to him besides my writing. There are eight of Angelopoulos’s other films screening and I won’t miss a single one. In addition to the closing film, I plan to see the others by May. The Suspended Step of the Stork I can watch again the day before my birthday. The accordion music is so joyous that I just want to keep singing and singing along with it. I’m a total nutcase, aren’t I?

  LETTER SIX

  MAY 1

  Life has suddenly become overcrowded. Too many people I can care for are swarming in and filling up my chest. Too many things I want to do are rushing headlong into my new life for reasons unknown to me. All of a sudden my new life is like a field overgrown with strange flowers and exotic grasses or the shimmering, starry sky of my unbridled imagination. . . .

  A REMINISCENCE

  So many people I’ve loved are reappearing after a long absence: Yong has tracked me down and made a place for me in her life. For the first time in a long while I feel like my family understands me and can console me. I feel like I’ve returned to their warm embrace. My eldest sister has been the one who has sustained me through time. Not only do I completely trust her now but I tell her everything about my life. On the evening of March 13, I cried and told her: Sister, for years other people have been hurting me and I can’t take it anymore. My spirit is decaying. Sister, sister, I’m so lonely. I’ve done my best to live as others want me to, but this time it’s serious. I’m afraid I could die at any moment, that’s why I called you. If something bad happens, please take care of Ma and Ba for me. She wept silently, saying: You’re not alone. People may hurt you or reject you, but you can always come home. You’ve still got us. If anything bad ever happened to you, how could I tell Ma and Ba? How could they bear it? All I know is that my little sister has always been brave. She has chosen her path and will step bravely forward! After that phone call, she called me several more times, once three days after Bunny’s death she happened to call again when she offered me the encouragement I most needed. On March 13, I also called my mother to tell her I wouldn’t be able to complete my studies and that I would be suspended from school. To my surprise she said gently: It’s okay. If you can’t finish school just come home. On March 15, Ba called and said that he only wanted me to be safe and happy, and that he would come and take care of anything that needed to be taken care of, and that I was always welcome home. I also got back in touch with my younger friend from college, Xiao Mei, as I knew she needed my support just then. When I called her from Tokyo, I only told her that I was there to see Yong and that Yong was taking good care of me. She said that she was relieved and that she wanted to send me a Chinese-language keyboard. I feel so ashamed. I’ve been in Paris for three years and it’s as if I haven’t spoken to her nor listened to her. I never offered her a “window” for her own self-exploration, and so it became harder and harder for her to be honest with herself, until that part of her life related to the humanities stagnated in favor of the sciences. I figure that besides her dependence on Li Ying, the deepest reaches of her soul have never been fathomed and are blank even to her. Back in 1992, she hoped I would leave all my books with her, but I didn’t. Doing so would have deprived me of the shared cultural memory that she and I had accumulated together during our four years of college. She was my main conspirator during those years and this decision must have really hurt her. Later, I even ceased to nourish her spirit. I thought she’d be apathetic, but she actually wanted me to have a happier life. She accepted me, and not once did she ever reveal to me her profound sense of loss. I don’t know what’s been wrong with me all these years, hoarding all the nourishment I should have been giving to others for one person!

  A MEMORANDUM

  My life in Paris also started to blossom. Even Shu Ren, who had always refused to open up to me and had disappeared for such a long time after moving, dropped by to say he had enjoyed reading my first novel. (This is the second person to tell me this recently. The other is an editor at my publishing house. Strange to realize that the book could provide some solace to others.) Shu Ren liked the book so much that he even bought my earlier short stories, though he couldn’t get through them. I told him the new novel I was writing was an even better novel and that another collection of stories would come out soon. I told him not to bother with the stories and that I’d give him a copy of the new novel. We also made a plan to meet at his new place on Friday. I’m looking forward to learning more about him and what he really thinks about my novel. Maybe one day he could be my number-two fan after Weng Weng.

  AN ARCHIVE

  For dinner Sunday, Qing Jin took me to a seafood restaurant called Le Criée (“street peddler”). She asked me:

  Why bother writing to someone who doesn’t deserve your love?

  Maybe it has nothing to do with the other person but is for my own love. Qing Jin, you know marriage is more than just a certificate or a ritual. It’s a kind of commitment to oneself.

  Yes, I agree. But you realize this person is not worthy of your love anymore?

  I know!

  Then what can she offer you?

  There’s nothing she can offer me.

  It was my last chance to see Qing Jin. I had returned from Tokyo, but on May 10 she would fly back to Taiwan for work and also see her son and daughter. At the end of June she would return to France and move into her new apartment. We had spent many nights talking candidly and were totally at ease with each other. A week earlier she sent me a letter, but I put off sending her my reply until yesterday, Sunday. Qing Jin’s feelings for me could not be more obvious. I only needed to respond. We talked until half past midnight, and then I saw her home but we didn’t kiss good night or say anything that would take it further. But my sense was that, like Xuan Xuan, she could love me without regret or complaint. The streets glowed with lights on the taxi ride home. I think I was in Strasbourg when I prayed for a woman who could really love me and now she had miraculously appeared! As I thought back to her mysterious appearance a few weeks ago to now, I still wasn’t sure if I could truly love her or not. But I was sure she was the first woman in years of stumbling around who could be right for me. I didn’t tell her I was waiting for her to return from Taipei. Nor did I reveal any sign that I might change the nature of our relationship when she returned. I had been trying to persuade her that my desires could never transform instantaneously. I’ve behaved like a self-righteous friend. . . . My reserve led her to mistakenly believe that I was sensitive about her age, that my feelings f
or Yong and for Xu had to do with their youthful female bodies. I dropped so many hints that she was wrong in thinking the situation hopeless and the obstacles insurmountable, though she’s also listened to way too many monologues about my love for Xu. Facing the “tombstone” of my love, she was at a loss. But not everything I said was true. She would be a pretty good match for me, and it’s possible I could fall in love with her. Age and physique don’t matter to me. What I need is time. I need time to be sure that my love and desire can never harm her the way I harmed Xuan Xuan.

  She has no clue what a huge blessing it would be if I could fall in love with her, for I’ve never encountered many of her qualities in other women I’ve been involved with, and yet she could still love me; she has not stood in my sorry shoes and cannot know that my troubles result from what’s missing in these younger women. Maybe what’s missing in them can only be found when they reach Qing Jin’s age. Though not many people who have lived a life as rich and full as Qing Jin’s can later shake off all the bewildering and oppressive chains of the secular world and emerge on her own wings, unscathed, with a crystal-clear perception of what’s real. . . . She isn’t aware that her spirit is precisely what I need. I’ve never found it anywhere else and it’s much more important than age or physique.