Last Words from Montmartre

by Qiu Miaojin

  Last night the film Underground by Emir Kusturica, who also made Time of the Gypsies, won the Palme d’Or, beating Angelopoulos’s Ulysses’ Gaze. I think the reason was political. The ongoing Bosnian war and the siege of Sarajevo are surely the legacy of long-lasting European conflicts, and the jury must have been thinking about Yugoslavia in awarding Kusturica the prize. If Underground is as realized as Time of the Gypsies, then I have no issue with this. I see more of his films—already he’s on his eighth and so young. If there are four among them that are as good as Time of the Gypsies then he will be the next director I hold dear in my heart, third after Tarkovsky and Angelopoulos. In my third year in France, I’ve realized that in the cinematic arts there are only a few directors who thrill me. Their spirit doesn’t lie in France but rather in the northernmost and southernmost parts of Europe. To the north are the Russians Andrei Tarkovsky and Nikita Mikhalkov, and to the south is the Greek Theo Angelopoulos and the Serbian Emir Kusturica. The living French directors Godard, Robiner, Louis Malle, Rivette, and Chabrol are middling spirits, and the next generation of post-baroque directors like Beineix, Besson, and Carax are all still so young in their art that you can see their stylistic limitations; who knows if they’ll improve with age.

  In every young artist you can perceive a spiritual disposition of how they will develop. For me, the distinguishing features of this spiritual topographic map of European cinema have been formed by my experiences of the past three years. Oh Xu, I beg you not to cast me aside because I’m far away, oh don’t casually cast me aside here in Paris. I’m in Paris so that I can mature into a working artist, so that I can mature into a beautiful spirit worthy of your lifelong love, so please don’t cast me aside for my choice! It’s not that I’ve left you behind. I can pack my luggage and return to you in an instant. Whatever can be achieved in this world through art means nothing to me. Loving you is more important than my artistic destiny. But you’ve exiled me from our country and refuse me and never call me home, saying you’ve never felt that you needed me. . . . Without your summoning, I have no choice but to heed the call of my artistic destiny and move on in exile. Your casting me away is purely a casting me away and nothing less, and if there’s only one little thread holding me to this distance, then you’ve misunderstood me and have made a great mistake, a very concrete mistake.

  Work, for only in working can everything be forgotten! my teacher once said. Beethoven, Landowski, Angelopoulos, and other artists are teaching me this, and in this life what I really want to become is an artist like Angelopoulos—to become a “shaman.”

  LETTER FOURTEEN

  MAY 31

  (We have nothing to fear but insincerity.)

  The mouth stands for sincerity. The nose stands for generosity. The eyebrows stand for integrity. The eyes stand for sexual prowess. . . .

  I stroke her face lightly, every feature, murmuring to her how beautiful she is to me. Yes, it’s her. The image that flashes through my mind is of a bird flying past drifting clouds; the illusion is what floats to the surface of the water when you stare into it. Is that what I saw among the hovering clouds? Or is it what I’ve seen in my heart? An image I dreamed of her? Or is the flowing water itself an illusion?

  Yes, she is a simple woman. I can’t describe Xu’s physical appearance, how her beauty is engraved in my heart. . . . I think a sculptor must carve the way his lover looks in his mind by imagining, that he must find a temporal focus as solid as marble in order to chisel out a permanent image in the shifting sands. This is how it is, right?

  I met Xu in September 1992 and in December I boarded a plane to Paris; our chance meeting became a honeymoon. I first lived in a small village, and the following September I moved to Paris for graduate school. That June we took an oath and maintained a perfect relationship and Xu resolved to be the rock supporting my vague ideas about studying abroad, illuminating the path of my lonely self-pursuit with her radiance. More than three hundred letters kindled my love’s glowing resplendence. This love, this grace, how can I deceive myself that there is someone as beautiful waiting for me; how can I ignore my heart and tell myself that I could love someone else; how could I pretend not to have seen the outline of my life as she tailored it and say that I could belong to someone else and say that this isn’t how “love” is, it’s something other, it’s somewhere else. . . .

  June 1994, Xu flew to Paris and we realized our idealistic dream of a loving union, until February 1995 when I accompanied her back to Taiwan and our union disintegrated with each passing day. . . . You could say that the one before my eyes was no longer a “her” I recognized, and when she returned to France to live, her final promise to me, she had already left her body and I had already lost a Xu who loved me 100 percent. I’ve often thought that she returned to Paris not to love me but to torture me. The more she tried to treat me well, the more she lashed out. Our relationship crumbled. After she started being unfaithful to me in August, I fell into a state of insanity, destroying myself bit by bit, tearing myself down, twice planned to die so I could escape from the gory narcoleptic nightmare that was my life. . . . And she grew colder and colder, more frightening, committing more serious acts of unfaithfulness. . . . I was unable to stop myself from hurting her. . . . The deepest feelings in me had been gutted, and it was as if I was confronting my most ferocious enemy. . . . She too seemed nearly destroyed, terrified that I’d crossed the point of no return. . . .

  In March 1995 I returned to France to continue my studies. To persuade me to leave Taiwan, Xu promised we’d work together to revive our love and try to recover and that she would wait for me with hope. . . . I was too vulnerable and too fragile, and couldn’t imagine that she was no longer the “she” I had trusted and respected, though in fact that “she” with integrity had already been destroyed by my own hand. . . . (Yes, destroyed by me, a month before she came to France I had already destroyed the deepest part of her that she had opened to me, and when I realized she didn’t want to care for my heart and didn’t want to return to France—and that she herself couldn’t acknowledge this—I turned away and flung her love root and branch down to the ground, and I resolved to go live alone in France, to stop waiting for her, and in despair I locked myself in my little apartment, pulled out my phone cord, and blocked her out. . . . By then her heart was broken, and the spirit of her love had flown away. . . . Before a month had passed she rushed to Paris to get me back, to save our relationship. Oh, it was a she that wasn’t even recognizable to herself, for she really did not want to leave home!)

  Until the day before I “died” for her, I still believed in her integrity, her sincerity, and I still trusted her. . . . On March 30, ten days after leaving Taiwan, she was sleeping in someone else’s bed. . . . In the telephone booth I died in the blink of an eye, experiencing in one moment the entire cumulative effect of the violence and murder of half a year of her unfaithfulness. Yes, I died . . . true death. Happening. Death. Death. Happening.

  Crazy screaming uncontrollably, striking the glass and the metal frame of the phone booth uncontrollably, blood streaming from my numb head. . . . I howled at her through the receiver, “Tonight I’m going to die!” . . . A police car was parked nearby and four officers wanted to take me away, but I insisted on finishing my call. . . . In the midst of this turmoil I heard Xu crying that she would leave the other person’s place immediately and go home and call me right away, each lie she told putting my life even more in jeopardy. . . . Beyond the lies there were only more lies. . . . Two policemen pulled me from the telephone booth and I resisted them, trying to pick up the receiver again. . . . I was taken to the police station; my brain felt like it had exploded and I just sat there catatonic on the floor, feeling as if there were many pairs of feet treading on my body, which felt severe pain yet was numb. . . . I forget how I managed to stand up and march out of the police station, or how I walked home. I’ve forgotten everything except the deep spiritual scars. I felt my spirit pushing me to go home quietly, go home
and sit near the phone to wait for Xu’s call. . . . I arrived home and my whole body felt swollen with a dislocating ache and my vital organs felt as if they’d been squeezed, and I vomited continuously. . . . In the darkness of early dawn as I sat next to the telephone in the living room a voice exploded into my ear: “You’re really going to die!”

  I thought about the portrait of van Gogh, after he had cut off his ear, with the bandages wrapped on his head, and I thought about “Apollinaire’s head bandaged in white” that Osamu loved so much.

  “Someone lives with an unfaithful ‘woman.’ He kills the ‘woman,’ or the ‘woman’ kills him. This is an inevitability.”—Angelopoulos, Reconstruction

  LETTER FIFTEEN

  (Marital dark ages: Xu is in Paris, Zoë is in Paris)

  When you told me that L. had said I’d aged, my tears, which were about to pour out, spilled freely. Today at the subway stop I had the same mood, the same sorrow, and the catalyst for this “aging” was that Xu would never be my beloved again, never again.

  Once my family had a pet bird, a bird that matured into a brilliant variety of colors, but when young was just dullish yellow. But the bird died before it could transform into its multicolored maturity; and I, too, a stunted, prematurely decrepit old woman.

  I’m sorry I exhausted your patience, wasted away your love; but when you stopped giving me your focused attention, your unqualified benediction, the arrogance of the gods collapsed, and I could only keep silent.

  · · ·

  . . . thinking back to when I was twenty-five and had accomplished little, I was always expecting things to just exist, already done. Others took care of things for me, our love being a representative example. I was always carried in the palms of both hands. You spoiled me more than anyone in the world, and truthfully, your love and indulgence made me proud. . . . Clichy silently mirrored me, empty except for the few tangible scars left by your love. I think of the stack of letters you returned to me, incredulous that someone in this world could be so ridiculous as to take back something so precious that had been given. Zoë, I’m not greedy, but I am extremely proud, too proud.

  I’ve already cleansed myself of my willful resentment toward you. But I don’t know how to rid you of the venomous resentment I’ve created in your heart . . . and last night when you rejected me, in your anger you moved away from Clichy. I sent a letter to you in Montmartre, and you wouldn’t let me come upstairs. . . . I participated willingly in your project of forgetting me and finally, no more leaving it to chance, no more avoiding responsibility, Zoë, I owe you for life. I don’t even know if I’m worthy to have what we once had. It makes no difference to you if I’m helplessly unfortunate or disgracefully unfortunate, right?

  Zoë, you can do it, come on, stand up straight, you shouldn’t have been knocked down like that in the first place.

  · · ·

  I only neglected you so badly because you were my strictest teacher.

  Yesterday I returned to Clichy. Every object that passes through one’s hands holds a story. I fondled with awe the complete set of habits and governing principles underpinning the objects. That day you came from Montmartre to see me and as you were about to leave carrying a load of stuff, it was as if you were standing onstage and shouting: Clichy is my home! Now I stand here sighing softly: “Home” for me, as in “building a home,” I lack the imagination, so that even when I’m physically there and have been given countless explicit instructions and hints, I still am incapable of making a real “place” of Clichy. For Clichy I have mopped the front courtyard, tending to every detail. Why is it always better when you buy her a bowl, put up a shelf, bring back a jar of jam or butter? Will my soft sigh bring things to a close? I carried out my business as usual in Clichy, assuming I was doing housework there and being cared for and paid attention to by my “wife,” when it turned out that I had already brought her, Clichy, to the brink of destruction through my “chores.” I wanted it to “end well” for her, but my steps grew increasingly heavy and sluggish and the residual emotions came out looking like a sneer as I wished in vain that together you and I could, with our presence, pay homage to her.

  Clichy was the same as ever, standing there upright, sparkling white, and innocent, willing to maintain a tacit understanding with me. But how can I tell her she is about to get a new owner, that I am about to pass her along to someone else?

  · · ·

  I snuck over to Montmartre to sit at your desk, where I sat listening to Zhang Aijia talk, making me think of my birthday last year (well, the year before) when you gave me a tape of you singing and with a teary sniffle I remembered you singing for me and remembered the little boy’s bowl of porridge. . . . For half a year I’ve been contemplating the idea that people always imitate themselves growing up, and now here I was sobbing and wondering if I really understood the price of growing up. Zoë, wearing a gray wool cap, asks me if I know the meaning of “trauma.” But before I can or will or dare to answer this question, Zoë has already grown old and weak.

  I just wanted to tell you how beautiful it felt to be sitting here since yesterday writing letters at your desk.

  · · ·

  I can’t face speaking to you. I can’t be myself. I’m sorry I have to write in this circular and torturously convoluted way.

  Ma came to visit me in Paris. I repeatedly forced you to wait for me. Do you remember that phone call when it was snowing? I was in my room and Ma was in the living room and you were on the other end of the line sounding so full of sorrow, and the snow was falling and you told me not to come see you and on my end of the line, gripping the receiver, saying nothing but my thoughts transparent, I felt stricken, I threw you out into the snow, this was the first time I saw that what I wanted to escape wasn’t you but my own incompetence. My heart was heavy to feel your sorrow so near, but we can’t go back.

  You told me I was incompetent and moved out, taking with you everything of me—my letters, my rabbit, my love, and saying I was weak to hold on to these things, angry that I would give everything up, but why? That you believed you were a victim and assumed the attitude of a great martyr of love; still, why did you pillage everything? That’s my question. I am the loser in this marriage, I’ve never denied it, my faith in this marriage was inadequate and I hurt you again and again and created unending animosity, my crimes unpardonable. But why do you pronounce judgment that I am not fit to possess these things? Why do you write me off in one stroke? From what evidence?

  I must depend on others who care about me to take care of you and give you the attention you need, and I am ashamed. But in the midst of responding to your rage I didn’t know how else to go on, didn’t know what to do.

  Ma said that I was enchanted by you. I was surprised at the appropriateness of this word. I was enchanted by you, enchanted by your world, enchanted by the state of crazy drunken love you put me in, enchanted by your vision of me, and I followed you dizzily into an idyllic Edenic garden of love, the likes of which I could never have imagined leaving, so suffused with love. And I was enchanted by you as I plunged with you into an emotional abyss, drowning in anger at Xu; I was enchanted by you as I recklessly dispatched troops against Xu, mistakenly believing that Xu’s survival depended on it, that it was a way out. . . . On my path of infatuation I discovered that I had arrived at the edge of a sea of fire, and I selfishly chose to sacrifice our relationship to save myself. And once my heart of selfishness opened up, so did the evil within it, and we were beaten black and blue. . . .

  Accompanying Ma back to Taiwan, leaving the airport, you were still willing to take my hand and my love, and for the rest of my life I will never forget how much love that small act signified—the resolve to love and the courage to seek nothing in return. But there wasn’t any way I could tell you how much I cherished that action; I was completely incapable of expressing any emotion in front of you. Why? Why? When did the give and take of emotions become so difficult for us?

  I want to explore the cause
of this detachment in myself, investigate how and why it is aimed at you. Is it a disloyal desire? Is it the selfishness of self-preservation? Is it the weary fickleness of passion? Is it society’s support and lack of support?

  For a moment during our phone call as it was snowing, as I realized the extent of our sorrow, I knew that I loved you so much it was like I was practically crying out: Here is the location of the soul I have cared for, and here is the source of all beauty and love, but how heavy, how painful, how heavy, how painful.

  LETTER SIXTEEN

  JUNE 5

  I dreamt of Laurence and the curve of her ass.

  Laurence retrained my body. I felt my body coming into being in the same way that my artistic sensibilities and my eyes and ears and heart had been retrained and opened during my three years in France. . . .

  The day I met Laurence, we walked from the Bastille to rue Saint-Paul in the Marais after a party. Torch-like antique streetlamps illuminated the quiet twists and turns of the streets complementing the marvelous imposing forest of old Parisian architecture. The winding streets were empty. Laurence told me all about the architectural history of the Marais as if she were a tour guide. Though most of the restaurants and pubs were already closed for the night, she could still describe the cuisine and defining characteristics of each one, a smug expression on her face as if she were the master of all Paris.