英文小说：A Shadow in Surfers Paradise(32)天堂之影

洋八路

Chapter 32




‘Vivian, do you really love me?’ he asked, in the park, looking steadfastly at her.

She held his eyes, in a sort of wonder. Then she kissed him, and said, ‘Yes, I love you.’

In the thick winter clothes, she looked a bit clumsy. It was in the period of Spring Festival holiday. Bing insisted on her coming out for one day with him.

‘But why don’t you look at me like now when we are in the classroom, or in the public,’ he said, fondling her hair, ‘you were like a stranger to me then.’

‘Oh, silly, do you really want to let others know about us?’

Bing thought a while, before he answered, ‘Why not? I know quite a number of couples don’t mind that.’

‘It will have bad marks in our political profiles, affecting our graduate assignments, don’t you know that? The school never approves of courting on campus.’

Bing kissed her nose, feeling the shallow archness in the middle of the bridge, ‘Vivian, would you follow me to Sichuan after graduation?’

She mused a moment or two, groping for words, ‘You want me to follow you?’

With his hands he turned her head to face him square, so that he can look deep into her eyes, ‘Yes.’

Her large eyes were blinking, ‘If you really want me, I …’

He kissed her eyes so that she didn’t have to finish her sentence, for, he knew he had asked a question to which the answer was already obvious to him.

Then he was sad.

He held her for a long minute looking ahead, silent, gloomy, dejected.

‘Bing, what is the matter?’ she asked, conscious of his capricious mood, which was not at all unfamiliar to her.

‘Vivian, apparently I love you more than you me.’ He let out what had a long time lurked at the back of his mind.

‘How could you say so?’ she replied, sombrely, ‘you are a heartless person; you know how I suffered in the hospital.’

Instantly, Bing detected the tears in her voice. He turned to her, and kissed her, ‘Oh, Vivian, I know, don’t cry.’

But she wept on; and he couldn’t but love her and brush dry her tears. Oh, Vivian, how can I, or anyone else in the world, imagine you can be a person so weak and soft, so susceptible to tears!

At length their youthful emotion was harboured in their mutual warmth and consolation. But he was resolute to pursue further the new intelligence he had developed from his conversation with Kang the other night.

‘Vivian, you know, I am very unhappy when you are not with me, and I am very jealous of other boys talking to you.’

‘Bing, you are sometimes too sensitive. How many times have I told you that, though I talk to them, I don’t love them, why are you so stubborn?!’

Then Bing said abruptly, beyond his schemed purpose, ‘Have you loved others before?’

She looked at him, in indignity and disbelief and resolution. ‘Yes,’ she answered curtly, straightening up, looking away from him.

He pulled her over, intending to restore their previous intimacy. But she shunned his efforts.

‘Vivian,’ he called her, in a humble and regretful tone.

With her eyes looking straight ahead, into far beyond the lake, she didn’t answer his call.

A dead silence fell onto them.

Then, his eyes full of sorrow, he suddenly blurted out in the same unintended manner: ‘Vivian, maybe we should say good bye to each other.’

She started at his words, swiftly turned to him, held and shook his arm, ‘Why?! ...’

‘Vivian,’ he felt himself suddenly sobbing, ‘Vivian…’ He was inarticulate.

Her tears came fast and bigger; she laid her head on his lap. He gently stroked her hair, which was shaking and spreading, which for the moment reminded him, on the registration day, of his contemplating moments upon her back.

Then three sparrows, probably the same three he had seen last time, were jumping about their feet. The tiny creatures were the only birds he had ever seen in the park, and had accompanied him almost every time he had come here. He knew they had come to beg some food from him, but today they could beg for nothing, not even peanuts, but tears of hers, and his.   

So, in the chirping of three hungry birds, she cried, without once lifting her head to him, for a considerable time, before he thought she was ready for him to gather her up and go back to their residence.   

In his bed that night, Bing was wondering if this was the actual end of them. He didn’t deliberate to say those words at all; they just broke out of him in one ridiculous moment.

‘Is this the end, or not, who knows,’ he sighed.

A couple of months wore on, both of them didn’t try for any more meetings. He was still sitting in the classroom corner; Vivian was still active and swinging about all the time. Even their occasional clashes of eyes were, it seemed to Bing, anything but meaningful or historic. How weird and incomprehensible was it for him to imagine anything had ever happened between them? It was as if their courting, for a period of six months since their trip in Beijing, had not taken place at all.
However, it might be only her who had developed a callous insensitive scale, protecting herself from any adversarial love history, not him. All the time, she was hurting him; the discontinuance of their physical contact didn’t end his jealousy and agony; she was from time to time still shattering his frame of mind.

One early evening, as if putting salt onto the gash of a wound, he saw Vivian walking along a lane on the campus, and she was not alone; she was clasping another’s hand, a hand of a man. He knew him; he was a post graduate student in the English department, who was also an assistant teacher for the under-graduate class.

He had never walked with Vivian like that within the boundary of campus, a place she had always averted while dating with him, fearing familiar eyes upon them. But she was doing it now, with another guy.

Oh…

Before her eyes had a chance to see him, he detoured, out of instinct, to avoid a horrible encounter, like a highly vigilant spy sliding into the shade at the slightest sound.  

If he had ever known what jealousy was about, then he had known nothing, compared to what he was feeling. Not about upset, not about anger or revenge, not even about love or hatred. At the moment his eyesight was smeared with an abhorrent reflection. He saw through his distraught mind the man was jerking his swollen penis at Vivian’s buttocks, and they were going to mate like the cattle in his childhood memory. And, this woman, whom he had loved and still loved hopelessly, was in her submissive way arching her back…

Leaning against a tree, he felt he had been castrated and then grilled in an oven.

He was dizzy, his stomach churning, a rush of nausea surged from his middle. Long after the two culprits had disappeared from his sight, he was still too weak to leave the tree.

As soon as he was recovered enough to make a move, he felt desperate for a secluded place for his watery heart and bones. He dragged his legs out of the campus, and like an aged cat with little calcium left in his skeleton, he moved along.
He was not quite conscious of arriving at the park, until he was stopped by the ticket inspector at the gate. He paid for the ticket and dived in. On that night, like a shadow, in the blessed Lu Xun Park, which had once been a paradise for him, he clutched at a bench and slept the night...




-- End of Chaper 32 ---