Nightfall, Beyond Words (an excerpt)

Translator’s Note

by Fion Tse

“Nightfall, Beyond Words” is extracted from a chapter of Lo Yu’s novel Yung Yung, originally written in Chinese and published in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Yung Yung follows the narrator, Yin, through issues of language, identity, and love through the germination and dissolution of her romantic relationship with another woman, Yung. Yin and Yung meet on a dating app and sparks fly instantly, but Yung already has a girlfriend whom she’s unwilling to break up with. Throughout the novel, Yin contemplates her intense attraction to Yung as well as the unwelcome reality of always being second best. 

“Nightfall, Beyond Words” comes halfway through the novel. In this chapter, Yin and Yung spend time together in preparation for Yung’s upcoming monthlong trip, during which they will not be able to see each other or be in touch at all. Yin reflects on their sexual relationship and her role as the other woman, and the distance between them continues to grow as their relationship approaches its end.

Saturday

She says the first time we met she could have slept with me. I wouldn’t have said no, at the very least. She always sees right through my stiff façade. Do you want to come to my place to take a look at my ceramics, she asked; and once you sat down on the couch I would have seduced you, she says in my ear, whisper-like. Her fingers caress me the whole time. And she’s right, because the first time I saw her I wanted to sleep with her. 

I get to her place Tuesday evening after work. She’s going on holiday the day after tomorrow and we won’t see each other for a whole month, so we each took time off work to spend more time, now unrestricted, with each other.

She makes dinner. By the time we finish and head to her room it’s past twelve, and when we fall to the bed we cuddle and kiss. We can’t help it, the way magnets and metals are drawn to each other. At one, we finally go to sleep, but of course we can’t fall asleep without making love to wrap up the night, or perhaps all the nights we’ve ever spent together. 

We can’t help it, the way magnets and metals are drawn to each other.

I do my best to satisfy her, and she’s satisfied indeed. But we’ve fallen out of sync. She doesn’t seem to have noticed it—that thing I can’t even bring myself to say out loud—but it’s precisely because she hasn’t noticed it that I know for certain she’s no longer acutely attuned to me. Her joy, so easy and direct; my wallowing sensitivity, so natural in its progression: each side of the story expanding, floating away, and so we’re adrift in our own imaginations. 

Or perhaps it was that we’ve each only ever had “I” in mind, and not “we,” even though all along I thought “we” were a thing. Who had left first? Was it that I had been the first to float off, or was it that she hadn’t asked me to stay? Either way it doesn’t matter, because what happens next will determine my sorrow and my joy—if I end up without her, does it matter who stepped away first? 

She’s told me before that there seems to be something in between us that stops her from diving headfirst into the physical ecstasy of the moment. But the way I see it, she’s learned to enjoy it more and more, taking total pleasure in my body in my presence. I’m the one who prefers an active role: to avoid her taking over my body, my thoughts; and to avoid my discomfort with my body that expands the membrane between us. I don’t want her to touch me or enter me. She may already occupy every inch of my skin and my nervous system, but I don’t want to play this occupation out over and over again only for it to end up being too much to withstand. I don’t want to give her up. We have so much more to experience together, so much further to go through together.

It’s as though no language can truly and accurately describe our contradictions and complexities. Intimacy and indifference go hand in hand—it’s never entirely good or entirely bad. Sometimes it feels like we’ll be together forever. Other times, we’re nothing more than a shimmering mirage. 

Intimacy and indifference go hand in hand—it’s never entirely good or entirely bad.

Her burning passion is unprecedented. She’s growing lighter and lighter, while I grow quieter and quieter; she’s having more and more fun, while I’m a balloon that shrivels up without love, wilting away. Not noticing, she drags me behind her as she skips along. There are parts of me wilting with disappointment, but they won’t blossom again, not for anyone in this world. They’ll even destroy the parts of me that remain. 

I hold her at arm’s length. She returns to her girlfriend, or maybe she never says no to her. We go back and forth like this, some sort of trial by fire. I can’t satisfy her, but I keep letting it happen. I let her caress the folds of my skin, dig into my warmth, take what she needs from my body. In satisfying her, I forget myself. We move to the floor, repeat: burn brightly, rot, fall into silence; and when we can no longer keep going we fall asleep. Sleep is good, no need to think when we’re asleep. 

Two passageways cannot ever connect seamlessly; something always gets stuck, forever unable to move forward. Sex, for me, is a spiritual experience beyond physical ecstasy. And unlike with my ex-girlfriend, I can’t seem to transcend physical activity to spiritual satisfaction; I can’t tunnel into the depths of myself; I can’t fling open the gates to my heart and place a rose within. Or maybe she’s never had the depth I was searching for, but at the same time I’m wildly infatuated with this possibly incomplete person. 

I suppose only love can excite me, my own love. 

The next morning a wet smell lingers in the room, trapped next to the soundless sediment of past desire—the uniquely salty scent of sex. We awaken and forget everything else: forget the thorniness between us, forget the pleasureless touches, forget that she returned to her girlfriend’s side. That wave of sleep washes away my memories, long- and short-term—what else can I do? Seeing her, holding her, she takes over me. I’ve always found it hard to live in the moment. I’m always thinking about the past, but now because the moment is her I enjoy it, forgetting the past—my past, and hers, too. 

Translation from the Chinese