There was something about him that bewildered me in a way I cannot describe. The man standing in front of me had my father’s voice and face; he smelled like him and made many similar movements, but at the same time, something about that person made him a complete stranger to me.

I felt like I should justify myself; I don’t know exactly what for, perhaps for my intrusion or for what he’d read about me in the pages of the I Ching. “The noble son should not behave badly.”

“Mom told me you have a lover.”

“That’s exactly what I wanted to talk to you about.”

With those slow steps he had been taking ever since he’d come home, Dad walked over to the desk and took out two printed photographs. The same ones my mother had found in the trash folder.

Written on the back of the image were the girl’s name, mailing address, phone number, and e-mail.

“That’s her. Look at her closely.”

She was indeed a very beautiful woman and several years younger than him.

He told me that he had fallen more in love with that woman than he’d ever been before, so much so that it made him feel ridiculous because of the intensity as much as years that separated them. Zhou Xun wasn’t even eighteen. He also told me that it had been impossible for him to resist.

“It was an emotion as lethal and sudden as a snakebite,” he confessed to me. “I think of her every second of the day. However, what your mother said is not true. We are not lovers. We were for five weeks, while I was in Beijing. She was counting on me to get her out of China, but since I’ve come back I’ve given her no sign of life. According to your own ancestors, the only way to get rid of a demon or an afflictive emotion is to face it. That’s why I bought this animal, that’s why I decided to separate it from its mate, to observe its pain as a reflection of my own.”

“And what about your marriage?” I asked.

“Your mother is also my own,” he answered. “I’ve returned to her because I belong to her, but I’m not who I used to be, and thus I cannot give her what I did before. I don’t know if I’ll always be like this. Right now I feel like this animal that you want to poison: a lifeless life.”