Last Words from Montmartre

by Qiu Miaojin

  March 24. Tokyo at dusk. We’d been apart for three years. At the arrival gate at Narita airport I finally saw her again.

  Short black jacket, black pleated skirt, a yellow wool knit sweater. The black so elegant, the yellow eye-catching. Her long hair was combed neatly back, and the little makeup she wore highlighted her red lips and big sparkly eyes. She was carrying a chic little black purse. I thought she looked great and had grown up a lot.

  Before I left Paris I had gotten a haircut, threw out my old jeans, and bought an entirely new outfit. Brown plaid overcoat, soft gray pants with black stripes, white cotton shirt, a cream-colored vest, a worn brown cap and brown leather shoes, a gray scarf. I pulled one suitcase along and wore a black backpack. Inside the suitcase I had packed some clothes and many books: a biography of Marguerite Yourcenar, Derrida’s Mémoire d’aveugle, my professor’s audiobook Préparatifs de noces au delà de l’abîme, and a lot of Chinese poetry. . . . My diary and sleeping pills were in my backpack. I wanted to look my best for her, a final image of myself.

  After I passed through customs I saw her in the crowd right away, but she didn’t see me. I called out to her and leaped over to kiss her. . . .

  We rode the high speed train to Tokyo. She couldn’t stop talking about the landscape on the way, rude Japanese people, her daily life, how she’d been waiting for me all afternoon, scanning the screens for my arrival, searching for my face among the hundreds of faces until her eyes hurt, expecting to see me in blue jeans and a black jacket, fearful of missing me because I had told her I didn’t have much money and had forgotten all my English, and that it was my first solo trip to Tokyo, so she couldn’t leave me alone in Narita. . . . On and on she talked as I smiled quietly and listened. Neither of us dared look at the other, until suddenly she turned to me and said, “It’s good to see you.”

  She was so happy, but she’s not the type to admit it, I could tell.

  Yong, if I tell you the whole truth, if I expressed my undying love for you with all my being, could you handle it? Would you accept me? Or would you laugh or get angry, or turn your back and sink into silence? If I no longer try to conceal anything from you, shed away my pretense, would you find this blasphemous?

  LETTER SEVENTEEN

  MAY 18

  Before our reunion in Tokyo, I had never really felt I could love and be loved in such a way.

  The significance of this special experience will disappear from the world unless I recount it. So few dare to articulate their unique experiences and try to distinguish nuances of meaning between them. . . .

  In the five years I’ve known Yong, communication with her wasn’t easy. She and I maintained a nihilistic relationship where I had little power to act. She wouldn’t actively communicate with me or tell me what she was thinking, while also ignoring anything I tried to communicate to her.

  The biggest difference between Yong and Xu was that I wasn’t sure if Yong really accepted me or not. Xu accepted me to such a high degree that we were able to cultivate a relationship of long-term, intimate communication that enlarged my powers as a lover to the point where it approached the level of la disponibilité absolue. In the absence of this kind of acceptance, the vitality of my love was weakened; it became like a hair preserved in the amber of an ancient tree. Yong suspended the love I offered her in that amber. By contrast, “acceptance” was a big part of Xu’s personality, so even at the height of her betrayal and deception and apathy and avoidance, I could still feel her “acceptance” of me, from a certain ingrained knowing of her soul that was beyond pure experience. If she were to fade away from my life, I would still sense her “acceptance” of me through a kind of shared telepathy.

  (That said, the flip side of “acceptance” is “passivity.” At its most extreme, one’s “passivity” is also the pinnacle of weakness, and Xu wounded me deeply by falling into this trap. I was physically hurt for a whole year due to this weakness of hers, and because of my faith in love and my stubbornness, I suffered from this weakness of personality in our relationship to the point of total collapse. Yet she persists in thinking that turning to another will allow her to escape from her own weakness and from the possibility of hurting others. She doesn’t understand her own accountability and that you can’t run away from this kind of weakness in your life, it’s impossible, and if you try you will only cause more misunderstanding and pain and transgression.)

  Maybe this whole year Xu was actually trying, although not subconsciously, to treat me well. (How ruthlessly cold, how injurious the “subconscious”!) But the fact remains that I felt completely unloved. I understood this as a feeling of abandonment, like a stab in the chest, when I went to Tokyo. Paradoxically, if I hadn’t encountered Yong’s complete openness toward me at the same time, it’s possible I wouldn’t have understood that what she was offering me was the essence of “being loved” and “being supported” that I had been yearning for from Xu. In the past, I never could have imagined how to ask for these things as there was no one in my life with that natural capacity. Besides a general mutual love between myself and others, for me there has been, furthermore, No. Other. Love.

  Without this body, I’d have no visceral knowledge of Xu, how she loves me, what I mean to her, how unstained, how fragile, how beautiful she is. . . .

  The floodrush of desire in the deepest layers of my body—so beautiful, so natural, so uniquely mine—formed after three years during which it sought me out and came alive as the manifestation of her spirit, her fierce desire, her desire that rescued me, rescued me as I lay dying, marginalized, struggling; rescued me from death and reignited my will to live.

  I can completely forgive her for the suffering she’s caused me. I forgive her for the unavoidable “annihilation” of five whole years or maybe a lifetime. My love for her will only grow, my aching tenderness for her, my acceptance, unconditionally. Ultimately I can still see her true beauty, the beauty of her inner passion for me, and how I in turn bring real value to her life by helping to express and even elaborate her vital energy, a precious treasure, a hidden reservoir of desire; only she possesses this vital energy for me and loves me just by living, no matter what direction her life takes or how she expresses her desire for me. . . .

  I can only find this expressive capacity in myself, only see the exact shape of my own desire, and I doubt I’ll ever encounter another with the same capacity. Maybe my past lovers weren’t able to convey that feeling of recognition, couldn’t even recognize themselves (you can only be recognized by another after you’ve come to recognize your own desire). In the end it was Yong who enabled this feeling of recognition in me, though it was still far from deliverance. Next to the joy of encountering one’s own desire there is no greater joy than to be received by another.

  And Tokyo is the cherry blossoms, the sunset at dusk, dawn sunlight through her windows, the cry of the crow, the cityscape of darkened rooms on a rainy evening, the depth of feeling in her eyes. . . .

  LETTER FIVE

  MAY 19

  Xu,

  Maybe this letter doesn’t fit with the book as a whole. When I’d written as far as the tenth letter the book had already taken on a life of its own. It had its own aesthetic style, its own themes, plus the content and ideas were already mapped in my head. I’ve written nearly half of it and the prose has found its own style organically. It seems I can’t speak honestly to you through the book anymore. It now expresses more than what I’d wanted to convey to you; it has grown denser, more beautiful, and you won’t be able to appreciate its whole value until I’ve finished writing it. It won’t be a great work of art, but it could be a book of true purity; the detailed, thorough excavation of one very small field of a young person’s life.

  Nevertheless, I still must talk to you. Apart from creating this manuscript I still have to talk to you. There are too many things I have to tell you that would consume me if I didn’t tell you. Promise me we’ll talk for the rest of our lives, that for the rest of our lives you won’t re
fuse to talk to me. As long as you’re alive please accept the fact that I must talk to you. I want to cherish everything about you, to love you while you still exist.

  I think you misunderstand me. You think I’m incapable of providing the qualities of tenderness and tranquillity in a relationship. You think that my unstable, passionate nature will inevitably nullify these qualities. But as long as we love each other, they can exist in harmony. Xu, you misunderstand me and misunderstand our relationship. You disregard me and disregard the potential delight of our relationship, and so you want to discard me and discard our relationship, discard it completely, so that you even want to discard my being. But maybe now that you’ve gone through this abandonment process, you’ll be able to discern what I mean to you and slowly wrap your mind around the whole me that you’ve discarded, my very being. But you can’t ignore what I mean to you; you can’t ignore our relationship. Even if I die, you’ll still be in this relationship. Your body might travel but your spirit cannot be abandoned. I had never thought about this before, I couldn’t understand it, but having gone through such intense annihilation, I see it completely now, all of it, everything about you, everything about me, I can even see the whole expanse of our relationship. Do you believe me? Deep down I know (not simply believe) all of this, and now that I feel okay again I can tell you: You are eternal. Really, it’s not out of arrogance that I say “I know”; I’ve humbled myself in silence so I can devote more to you.

  Your reasons for abandoning me and your judgment about our relationship didn’t take in the full picture. You’ve only cut one small branch from a tree, so it still looks whole. You still don’t know that you love me, but in fact you love me deeply. For three years you haven’t really tried to “recognize” its features. One day, perhaps upon your death or mine, you will recognize it. By “recognize” I mean that you’ll finally accept my all-encompassing love for you as for my own life, and take on this responsibility without it being a burden. Every stage of this evolution is essential, no single detail or chapter wasteful or unnecessary; every stage of this evolution between us is beautiful. Osho said as much, and that has always been my thinking too.

  Or maybe you’ve decided to turn your back on me totally and replace my love. Maybe you don’t want me to ever speak to you again and won’t allow me to love you. If so, then the truth is we must “separate,” definitely. We can only be either wholly together or wholly apart, otherwise you’ll just keep hurting me and, wounded, I will hurt you again. This is the fundamental pattern of the love we share. I’ve told you from the start: If you strum the qin wrong, it will crack and splinter. You must love me with your whole being or go love someone totally different, or no one at all, but you can’t have it both ways. These aren’t my rules, and I’m not trying to order you around and control your life. I understand my own nature and my nature connected to you has always been like this. It’s obvious to me. If you insist on strumming me the wrong way, this qin will continue to resonate sounds of love for you, but the sounds will be earsplitting shrieks. I am helpless to keep you from playing me in this way and will split and shatter. . . .

  You keep hurting me and I keep putting up with it, as presently I’m still putting up with it, until I’m broken, my flesh ground to powder, my bones to fragments. I recovered only to find myself right where I started, ready for more. Your lack of wholehearted devotion doesn’t mean much in terms of our whole relationship, and the fact that I’m shattered doesn’t mean much either. If my words can help you understand the truth that you love me, or help you on the path toward (and not away from) true devotion, then all will be well. If, in the future, you continue to treat me in ways that are unacceptable and harmful to me, I will be forced to live as a wounded being, and will bear it and endure until my final breath.

  I can’t make you treat me the right way. But I can try to describe the explicit nature and meaning of our love. So either love me unconditionally or have the courage to face me and tell me you want to separate forever and don’t want my love anymore, that you forbid me from ever offering this love again—reject me boldly and then we’ll part forever. Only these two options I deserve. Nothing else matters and would only cause more harm, making it impossible for me to respect you. Please understand that if you can at least reach a place of inner “honesty,” then you can never really hurt me, even if we’re separated for the rest of our lives. As you’ve said before, we’d still love each other anyway. The only problem left is that I know I belong to you, while you still don’t know if you belong to me. But from before birth, to the afterlife, to where they overlap, we belong together. We must acknowledge this any way we can, no matter how long it takes, and no matter where it takes us.

  Xu, my most beloved Xu, how can I finally make you understand what I’ve experienced firsthand of our “tree of love”? Xu, listen to me. You’re my life, you’re my everything. I belong to you, past, present, and future, and forever and forever more. The words “to belong” have been there from the beginning but I didn’t understand until now that it meant you. What I understood as “to belong” was very different and had nothing to do with you, nor with your impoverished love. There was no comparison for me. “To belong” to anyone—it’s not a choice. “To love you” is a suffocating form of fate for me. It upsets me that you aren’t maturing at the same pace as me, because it’s you, Xu—any sentient being can see that I belong to you and no one else. Here is my life bound. I am ready to accept my fate.

  Though sometimes I sigh to the heavens for sending me someone to belong to who matures at such a vastly different pace, in truth there are also times I can’t stand how you treat me; lately, especially, I’ve felt unloved and cursed, and as much as you treat me like an enemy, and as much as I sense your cold indifference, all these things are part of a story where everything happens for a reason and sentiment is genuine. Hard to say whether I’d like you now. Who were you this year—someone who deserved my love? I refuse to believe that this year’s “you” represents the whole you. Because I understand you. I understand your maturation process. I can predict what gifts and what challenges lie ahead of you. And I know the effect my irrational explosions had on you. Your loathing for me, your disgust—you weren’t born that way. So I refuse to cut you out of my life entirely. You won’t always be like this. I’m convinced that you’re going to grow until you’re even better than your past self—the self that loved me completely. And more important, when you dumped me and I was nearly trampled to death I finally understood that my love for you was no disease, no; it didn’t mean I was dependent on you, nor was I in love with you for purely physical reasons, nor did you fall in love with me because I’m so fabulous. No, our love was bigger: It was fate. I have no idea when you’ll sense this aspect of fate, but you will. I am part of your fate. Whether our love is worth it or not is irrelevant. So what if there’s someone nicer than you or prettier than you—it doesn’t change a thing. Come and hurt me more. You still mean the same to me: I belong to you.

  Anger has turned me into a disgusting creature, and since you don’t love me and you continue to hurt me, I treat you like an enemy. I tell myself I must first transform the animosity and resentment in my heart, or try to persuade you to transform these things, so I can start treating you with goodness again, and you could regain your previous state of beauty and kindness; it’s as if I have to wipe the dirt off your face so you can reveal your original face to me.

  After your nastiness worsened to the point where I hated you and you hurt me worse still, it’s not that I lost all my willpower or wasn’t free to walk out the door; in fact the more I understand what you really mean to me, the more determined I become and the freedom I have to distance myself from your cruelty grows. Love is not merely need alone, and what is more important is loving you, and making my true nature comprehensible to you.

  Even far away I still belong to you. The location of my love will never change; nobody else can occupy that space. Distance isn’t a means to abandon you; I
can’t bear the way you treat me. My unwillingness to remain in a relationship that has turned ugly and completely resists my good nature may also convince you to admit your mistakes. I won’t indulge your dishonesty or bad behavior. I’ll find a way to tell you when you’re behaving badly. I just hope you won’t leave me and will let me love you forever and let yourself always be loved by me so we can cultivate a love for eternity. I hope I won’t be forced to leave you because I can’t take it anymore. . . . I’ve already lost you. I’ve got nothing more to lose. Even if you were to marry someone else and have children, or even if you died, I couldn’t lose any more than I already have. Do you understand this at all?

  One can talk endlessly about the sorrows of life, but only art can express it precisely. . . . I’ve felt sorry for you, I’ve felt sorry for others I have loved, and I’ve felt sorry for myself, but this sorrow is not a burden I can share with you anymore as it only brings more sorrow thinking about how we used to share these things with each other. Yes, we used to share life’s annoyances, frustrations, pain, beauty, new experiences, new discoveries, our thoughts about each other, our yearning, love, tenderness, and adoration; yes, Xu, my deepest and most beautiful love, even though in the past there were times you couldn’t entirely comprehend my views, and even though I became frustrated with your perceptions of me and I casually negated your shallow experience, still, over the past two years and eight months, we actually united to become one self that could share the joys and pain of life. And this compound self was something I couldn’t abandon even if I died: It was our love. I’m sad that you’ve discarded this compound self, and I’m sad that you no longer want to share the joys and burdens of life with me. I am sad, so much endless sadness. . . .