Last Words from Montmartre Read online

  QIU MIAOJIN (1969–1995)—one of Taiwan’s most innovative literary modernists, and the country’s most renowned lesbian writer—was born in Chuanghua County in western Taiwan. She graduated with a degree in psychology from National Taiwan University and pursued graduate studies in clinical psychology at the University of Paris VIII. Her first published story, “Prisoner,” received the Central Daily News Short Story Prize, and her novella Lonely Crowds won the United Literature Association Award. While in Paris, she directed a thirty-minute film called Ghost Carnival, and not long after this, at the age of twenty-six, she committed suicide. The posthumous publications of her novels Last Words from Montmartre and Notes of a Crocodile (forthcoming from NYRB Classics) has made her into one of the most revered countercultural icons in Chinese letters. After her death in 1995, she was given the China Times Honorary Prize for Literature. In 2007, a two-volume edition of her Diaries was published.

  ARI LARISSA HEINRICH received a a master’s in Chinese literature from Harvard and a PhD in Chinese studies from the University of California at Berkeley. Heinrich and Qiu—who would have been the same age if Qiu were still alive—crossed paths without knowing each other in Taipei and in Paris. He is the author of The Afterlife of Images: Translating the Pathological Body Between China and the West and the coeditor of Queer Sinophone Cultures. He teaches at the University of California at San Diego.

  LAST WORDS FROM MONTMARTRE

  QIU MIAOJIN

  Translated from the Chinese by

  ARI LARISSA HEINRICH

  NEW YORK REVIEW BOOKS

  New York

  THIS IS A NEW YORK REVIEW BOOK

  PUBLISHED BY THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS

  435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014

  www.nyrb.com

  Copyright © 1996, 2006 by Qiu Miaojin

  Translation and afterword copyright © 2014 by Ari Larissa Heinrich

  All rights reserved.

  Cover image: Kyungwoo Chun, Aa, 2004/2006; courtesy of the artist and Fifty One Fine Art Photography, Antwerp

  Cover design: Katy Homans

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the earlier printing as follows:

  Qiu, Miaojin, 1969–

  Last Words from Montmartre / by Qiu Miaojin ; translated and with an introduction by Ari Larissa Heinrich.

  pages cm. — (New York Review Books Classics)

  ISBN 978-1-59017-725-9 (pbk.)

  1. Lesbian authors—Fiction. 2. Psychological fiction. I. Heinrich, Ari Larissa, translator. II. Miaojin, Qiu, 1969–1995. Last words from Montmartre. English.

  III. Title.

  PR9470.9.M53L3713 2014

  822'.914—dc23

  2013049765

  ISBN 978-1-59017-738-9

  v1.0

  For a complete list of books in the NYRB Classics series, visit www.nyrb.com or write to: Catalog Requests, NYRB, 435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014.

  CONTENTS

  Biographical Notes

  Title page

  Copyright and More Information

  Dedication

  Note

  Epigraph

  Witness

  Letter One

  Letter Two

  Letter Three

  Letter Four

  Letter Six

  Letter Seven

  Letter Eight

  Letter Nine

  Letter Ten

  Letter Seventeen

  Letter Five

  Letter Eleven

  Letter Twelve

  Letter Thirteen

  Letter Fourteen

  Letter Fifteen

  Letter Sixteen

  Letter Seventeen

  Letter Eighteen

  Letter Nineteen

  Letter Twenty

  Witness

  Afterword

  For dead little Bunny

  and

  Myself, soon dead

  If this book should be published, readers can begin anywhere. The only connection between the chapters is the time frame in which they were written.

  Sa jeunesse antérieure lui semblait aussi étrange qu’une maladie de la vie. Elle en avait peu à peu émergé et découvert que, même sans le bonheur, on pouvait vivre: en l’abolissant, elle avait rencontré une légion de personnes invisibles auparavant, qui vivaient comme on travaille—avec persévérance, assiduité, joie. Ce qui était arrivé à Ana avant d’avoir un foyer était à jamais hors de sa portée: une exaltation perturbée qui si souvent s’était confondue avec un bonheur insoutenable. En échange elle avait créé quelque chose d’enfin compréhensible, une vie d’adulte. Ainsi qu’elle l’avait voulu et choisi.

  —CLARICE LISPECTOR, “Amour”

  Her earlier youth seemed as strange to her as a disease of life. Little by little she had emerged and discovered that one could even live without happiness, and in abolishing happiness she had encountered a legion of invisible people nearby, who lived as one works—with perseverance, determination, and joy. What had happened to Ana before having a family was forever beyond her reach: an unsettled exaltation that had so often been confused with an unsustainable elation. In exchange she had finally created something she could understand—an adult life. And thus it was as she had wanted and chosen.

  —CLARICE LISPECTOR, “Love”

  WITNESS

  Yong,

  The only person I ever gave myself to completely has betrayed me. Her name is Xu. Even Bunny (the crystallization of our three years of marriage, whom she left with me in Paris to keep me company) departed this world suddenly, and all of this happened within the space of forty-five days. Now Bunny’s cold body is resting peacefully near my pillow, and the little stuffed pig that Xu sent me is resting against Bunny’s body. All last night I cried silently under the covers, holding Bunny’s pure white corpse in my arms.

  Yong,

  My sorrow, my day upon day and night upon night of relentless grief is not for the mess the world is in, and it’s not for my own mortality; it’s for my delicate heart and the wounds it has had to endure. I grieve for all the suffering it has endured. I agonize over all that I have given to others and to the world, even as I’ve failed to live better myself. It’s not the world’s fault; it’s my fragile heart’s fault. We’re not exempt from the world’s injury, so we are doomed to suffer spiritual illness over time.

  Yong,

  Like you, I have an ideal love that can’t be realized. I devoted myself to someone completely, but it was something the world couldn’t accept. My devotion was so minor in the world that it was hardly worth mentioning; it was a joke. How could this fail to wound the delicate heart? Yong, let there be no more mutual hurt in the world, all right? Can’t we just stop playing these hurtful games altogether?

  Yong,

  I don’t want to fabricate a perfect love anymore. I just want to live a little better. To not be hurt anymore, and to not hurt others. I don’t like it that there’s so much wounding in the world. If there persists in being so much wounding in the world, I don’t want to live in it. My need for true love isn’t so important now. The important thing is to lead a life where no one can wound me anymore.

  Yong,

  You’re someone I now trust and feel close to. But how can my sorrow ever end when I’m so alone here? Even if I were to reconcile with everyone in the world I’ve ever hurt and who’s hurt me, would my sorrow end? Why is there so much hurt in the world? My soul has already endured so much wounding. Can it sustain more? How can it assimilate so many wounds? Will it be able to assimilate the wounds and then move on and make a fresh start?

  Yong,

  Maybe the world has always been the same, maybe it has always crushed to bits anything you hoped it would not crush. But it
’s not the world’s fault, it’s still the same world that keeps crushing down. It’s not the world’s fault, it’s just that I’ve been wounded; can I really assimilate all these wounds? If I can’t assimilate them, then the wounds will stay open. Can my sorrow and my wounds be released, can they be consoled? At my core, can I really accept these things about life and grow stronger?

  Yong,

  With you standing by my side I am not alone. You lead your life just like I do. You understand my life and love me deeply. But don’t I have to change? I don’t know how I’ll change. I want to become someone else. This is the single best thing I could do for myself. I know that I have to change my identity, live under an assumed name. I have to cry. I have to live by transforming myself into someone else.

  Yong,

  I don’t long for an eternal, perfect love anymore. It’s not that I have stopped believing in it. The two times in my life I could’ve had eternal, perfect love both wilted on the vine. I’ve ripened, wilted, fallen. Yong, I’ve burned completely, I’ve already bloomed fully. The first wilted because I was still too immature and missed my chance, and the second wilted prematurely because I was overripe. But even if I only blossomed for a split second, I blossomed fully. Now all I have left to do is to accept and face the facts about these two crippled loves. Because I am still alive. . . .

  LETTER ONE

  APRIL 27

  Xu,

  It is now three in the morning on April 27, 1995. It is nine o’clock in the morning for you in Taiwan. Bunny died at midnight on the twenty-sixth, so it has been twenty-seven hours since Bunny’s death. I haven’t buried the body yet. It’s still in the tiny coffin here, keeping me company in my room. On your advice I didn’t throw Bunny into the Seine. I will find Bunny a little grave site. I still haven’t found the right place.

  For twenty-seven hours all I’ve done is lie here in bed, as if keeping vigil while Bunny dies all over again. I’ve shut myself in my room to indulge in thoughts of you and Bunny. For more than a month now I haven’t been able to think about you without feeling wounded and resentful because needing or desiring you would hurt even worse, nor have I been able to pour my heart out to you in writing like I used to, because as I’ve told you, the letters I write to you are themselves a fierce form of desire. . . .

  I’ve made up my mind not to let Bunny die in vain. I want Bunny’s death to mean something. Otherwise I won’t survive it, I won’t be able to handle it, I won’t be able to go on living. I tell myself that maybe I’ll write Bunny a book and stop recounting things to you and thus shut away our love . . . or that I’ll keep loving you, for Bunny, loving you unconditionally, and keep writing you another set of letters like the ones I wrote to you at the end of that year, a perfectly unrestrained symmetry of words smoldering with love.

  In one heartbeat I’ve addressed thirty envelopes. These are the letters I will write to you this month. I want to concentrate the way I did at the end of last year and write you letters again.

  I envy you. I envy that you are loved completely by a beautiful soul, and that this love can still grow, still adapt, that it can recover from catastrophe, still vital and capable of giving birth to new things.

  Please don’t feel burdened by this. It’s just that I still have so much to give; I want to give you everything there is to give. The sweet juice has yet to be completely squeezed from the fruit. All the hurt has not yet severed the cord I’ve tied to your body, so I’ve returned to your side to sing for you. You nearly severed it, but a gossamer filament is still suspended there. I don’t know when you’ll make the final, lethal cut, but before that happens I will cling to you and sing with all my heart.

  Xu, it’s my turn to be the ox. You’ve been my ox for so long. You used to say that it was a blessing to be the ox. I beg you, please don’t do anything to drive it away, okay? I’m willing to be your ox, so you just have to make a comfortable place for it to stay, okay? You may be cruel, but could you bear to drive away the ox that you have loved, the one who has loved you for three years? Could you bear to drive it away in agony, never to return, never to exist again? Is this old ox really not worth your tenderness, your care? I’ve loved you madly for three years now. For three years I’ve given myself to you utterly, loving you completely and totally. Now my hair’s a mess and I can’t put one foot in front of the other, but I’m prepared to return to your side and keep on loving you. Is this ox just any old beast? Tell me, if you feed and nurture an ox that has already proven itself, won’t it produce for you the kind of livelihood, life, and love that you want?

  At this stage I’ve been through so much, witnessed many relationships, weathered the storms of life, and have remained true for a long time. That’s what I want to cultivate, that’s what I would pay any price to offer and to nourish. True love makes it through any ordeal. I yearn to be in a relationship that can shake off the frosty wind and the couple still stands hand in hand. I yearn for a love that, because of devoted vigilance, can withstand time’s ceaseless erosion and come out alive. Xu, I’m not young anymore. I’m no frivolous, impulsive, immature child. I long to be your stalwart ox, eternally loyal in love and always dependable. I can picture it so clearly. I’ll prove it to you. I’ll find a way to make you understand how tremendous my love is for you. I swear I’ll transform myself into your loyal ox. I know what this will mean.

  “If a couple’s love is truly eternal, then does being together day and night really matter?” I used to love this saying. Now I can finally live it for myself.

  I grew a lot between 1992 and 1995 and came to understand and put into practice the rules of love, didn’t I? But my heart is still on fire. Xu, you have no idea how little I care that you left me for someone else. Nor do I care how many others have possessed your body. I understand that I can’t stop loving you just because you left me or betrayed me. You are the same to me and this won’t change. This is the most important thing I could say to you, and I’ve suffered the worst trials this past month. I’ve suffered, but somehow survived with my love intact—now it’s even deeper, calmer within, less constrained.

  And that’s the reason I can be so open with you and write to you like this. Do you understand? It doesn’t matter what forms your indifference takes or how deep your betrayal might be; if we see each other again, nothing will get in the way of my love for you, whatever pain or obstacles. I could never articulate this before; this is the first time I’ve been able to put it into words because Bunny’s death has brought me to a very deep place. It has made me realize how much I need to love you, and made me realize just how much I am capable of loving you.

  If we ever meet again in this lifetime, my passion for you will be unchanged, even if you’re not mine anymore, even if you’re married with children. You’ll always be the one I get down on my knees for, whose whole body I will kiss and whose whole being I’ll desire. If you still don’t want me, I’ll probably find someone else to be with. My love is fierce and my desire is at its peak. If you want me, I can stay true to you and temper my physical desires with whatever you can give me. But if you don’t want me, please don’t tell me because I’ll already know. I’ll offer my body and my life to someone else and try to live a life full of joy and creativity. But my soul is determined to belong to you; she is determined to keep loving you and to keep talking to you. If my body and soul can never be integrated—if I can’t reconcile the desires of my soul and body—that will be my tragedy. I’m prepared to live with this tragedy, but I can’t disregard the needs of my body. Without the pleasure and creativity I need to live, I’ll vanish.

  You ask me what I mean by “devotion.” Devotion means I give you both my body and soul; it means I place both in your hands, and so in turn I desire your body and soul. And you ask me, “Why you? Why not someone else?” Because I can never give myself body and soul so completely to anyone else, and I can never desire someone else, body and soul, so completely.

  It’s a matter of experience. Maybe I could love a number of
others, whether physically or spiritually. But I know that it would never reach the depth and completeness of my love for you. I could never want to belong to someone else the way I want in both body and heart to belong to you. I could never desire someone else the way I want you with my body and heart. No. It’s a matter of degree. My desire for someone else could never reach the degree of want I feel for you. Do you know all this? So it’s you, just you. There can never be anyone else for the deepest reaches of my body and soul. Even if you don’t want me anymore, don’t love me anymore, and don’t belong to me anymore, I will still say to you with a loud voice: No love can ever replace the love that we shared, our mutual belonging, what we gave to each other, our openness, the communication we realized between our body and soul. What I’m trying to say is that you are the one who accepted Zoë’s body and soul most deeply. And you were the one who loved and understood me best, body and soul. It’s precisely because you’re the only person to have loved me and accepted me as I am, to have understood my songs, that you had Zoë truly, wholly on fire in the palm of your hand. . . . How could I not love you? And this is also why, when you left me and I couldn’t keep burning for you, my life was thrown into agony and turmoil! You’ve already decided that we can’t travel together anymore. Maybe someone else will come into my life, maybe she will be able to give me more than you can right now and understand me better. But I have to keep telling you: What you gave me and what you shared with me and the depth of our love for each other can happen with no one else—it’s totally unique. So though I’m desperate and my love unrequited, I persist in loving you with every last part my soul.

  Tu es le mien, je suis le tien.

  You are mine, and I am yours. Forever. No one can ever take you away from me, and no one can ever take me away from you.