Imagine how these seventy thousand people were now. Whether their vanishing had brought them pain or joy, it had surely opened up a vast unknown world to them.

Of these seventy thousand, some had gone abroad, where they became adventurers or language teachers. The Far East was ideal for this. Take China—newly liberated, naive about the West . . . Can you imagine? Perhaps among your foreign professors there was a member of the vanished, someone who’d become too disppointed in others or in himself.

Hongmei looked at that word, “disppointed,” spelled wrongly for the twenty-third time.

He said he’d been watching her through binoculars, but when she had gotten to the shopping mall, she hadn’t known where she was going.

She felt a little uneasy. Why was he always lurking in the dark, leaving her unprepared for their encounters?

He seemed to sense the anguish she wasn’t expressing and said he was very sorry, he knew he was always flaking out at the last minute, afraid of letting her down if he came out from behind the shield of words, by being just an ordinary man. He confessed to using extra-powerful binoculars to bring her closer to himself, examining her detail by detail. This way, he could own her body, inch by inch, kissing her bit by bit. Her underdeveloped breasts were mesmerizing to him; the birthmark on her ass filled him with savage desire.

She gaped at these words. How had he seen that birthmark? Had she revealed it while she was swimming? But she did her laps first thing in the morning, when there were hardly any people at the pool.

He said he knew this sort of obsession was unhealthy, but he couldn’t help it. He wanted her to believe that he understood love, both spiritual and physical.

The binoculars pulled you into my arms. Feel my chest—broad enough for you? My shoulders—firm enough? My skin, which smells like I’ve been out in the sun. My body is warm. Your hands feel cool against it. Parched skin beneath them. And these are your eyes, black and inviting. Inviting sympathy, understanding, even invasion. And so you brought this on yourself. You can’t escape now. Invasion always hurts a little. Now you’ll open yourself up and accept me.

Hongmei was breathing hard. She blazed as she read these words, hating herself for being so useless, and hating him for luring her down this evil path. Did she really hate him? She couldn’t work it out.