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本帖最后由 洋八路 于 2014-5-12 22:37 编辑
Part 4
Chapter 37 1/3
He was going home together with a Fudan University graduate, also from Sichuan.
Vivian came to the railway station to see him off, which was not really what he had desired or expected. Two days before, she asked about his departure time, and he had to tell her, feeling rather touched by her last minute of caring, in spite of the light and indifferent attitude he had long assumed towards her.
In the waiting hall, leaning against a wall corner for possible privacy, he couldn’t help but kiss her. How could he resist her innocent and wistful face that seemed to desire so much of him? How could he continue to pretend his coldness at the last moment in time prior to their indefinitely long if not permanent separation?
So in the midst of many unfamiliar faces, they held each other tight for nearly ten minutes. Then, in tears, she took out a gift from her pocket, a watch which looked much more modern and elegant than the one his father had given him.
Vivian seemed to him, now in more clarity, having two facets of personality: one in public, almost a complete stranger to him, another private, when with him alone, a true lover to him. How she had treated her other boyfriends he couldn’t have known. This confused him; he was unsure which one was truer than the other, unsure whether he should love her, hate her, completely leave her behind or retain a certain amount of her in his future.
And, ah, she gave him a watch! Did she want him to wear it all the time so that he wouldn’t be able to forget her?! It would be so cruel and mean if she really had such a purpose, considering that, after this day, she could not possibly come to him at any point of his life.
At last she broke away from him, and walked towards the exit. With his mournful eyes looking at her back, he stood there perplexed, and on the edge of her vanishing from him, she turned her head and shaped her mouth for an ‘I Love You’ and was gone.
Oh, she was really crying for him! Who on earth could understand her heart! But one thing was certain, now in his more mature mind, that she was not his enemy; at least she didn’t mean to become his enemy even if he had been badly hurt by her double-sided nature. In her there was something mysterious, that was beyond his comprehension.
What should he do with the watch in his palm? For a moment, he was compelled to put it on, to replace the one on his wrist. On its surface, there was still warmth of her hand, of her heart. It was as if, indeed, the bitterness of losing her forever could be lightened by the weight of her watch. Yes, I should put it on.
But as he fiddled with the chain of the watch to do the swapping, his friend called loudly to him to join the mass of passengers heading for the ticket inspection. Thinking to wear it later, he thrust it into his pocket.
The people, as always, were everywhere, helping him to forget his past quickly. By the time he had his luggage and his nicely clothed guitar stored properly on the rack and then unhurriedly seated himself, his mindset was already occupied with a new excitement to do with his home.
Yes, four years he had been away from his village, and today he was heading back. The train was making a regular sound, like a heart always beating. To his pensive eyes the buildings, high and low, new and old, were only one way passing, freeing up space to receive the forthcoming, endless and perpetual.
They drank beer, and compared to the fresh and rough and ignorant village lad four years back, Bing was now a sophisticated young adult, philosophic and thoughtful, watching the dull passengers with somewhat distant and supercilious eyes. No more was he like those junior students in their drab clothes who had to roam about the train, their eyes shifty, bearing a soul laden with tons of anxiety.
In a number of days, he would see his grandma, his father and mother, Ming and Dan, and his uncle, aunt, among many others who had shown him their greatest admiration at the time when his life-changing fortune struck. Oh, four years, he had not seen any of them, not even heard the voices of his grandma and his mother. How strange! How unreasonable it was that he could have lived a life independent of those at home whom he loved and should have dearly missed!
But it was okay; this was what a life seems to be. His love for them had merely been saved and stored up for a later release, and the time was coming.
The journey home was rather uneventful. The howling train was cutting the time into the bits and pieces of reminiscence to be chewed up by its young master. When the speaker announced the next station to be Mianyang, he looked around amazed, as if he had wished to stay much longer on the train before reaching his destination.
Sometime later, he said ‘bye, bye’ to his country fellow, collected his things and got off the train. On the station, he took out Vivian’s gift and weighted it again in his palm. Strange, he had not thought much of it during the long trip and, feeling it now, the urge to wear it was not there any more. ‘No, I don’t want to wear it and think of her all the time,’ he judged fairly, ‘it would be such a torture, a kind of absurdity. But what should I do with it?’ Throwing it away was obviously not an option, nor was giving it away to someone. After moments of hesitation, he opened his case, a new case of good quality he had purchased in Shanghai, and stored it in its inside-pouch.
Then he went for a pedicab to take him to the bus station, because he remembered he had taken a pedicab from a bus station to the railway station four years before, but then the pedicab driver told him the bus station was just on the other side of road. This confused him and made him wonder if he and his father might have been cheated by the pedicab driver taking them for an unnecessary ride. Well, if that had been the case, it had all passed, and no resentment should stir in today’s him.
Over the phone prior to his journey, his father had expressed his wish of coming to Mianyang to greet him, but Bing claimed he was ‘big’ enough to go to the County by himself. So, alone, hauling a sizable case storing quite an assortment of gifts bought in Shanghai, and with his guitar strapped over his shoulder that made him look artistically fashionable, he trudged to the bus station swarming with passengers, and from there, took a three-hour bus ride no less bumpy and buoyant than what was in his memory.
He couldn’t exactly describe how much different his father had become in the span of four years. The white streaks in his hair and the lines in his face had scarcely varied, or perhaps he had never had a correct mental image of his father. After all, his father did not labour like a farmer. His mother and grandma and others who would have frequented the harsh fields ought to have a greater contrast carved out by the fingers of time.
However he did detect something queer in the manner of his father, who somehow appeared not as excited and happy as Bing had been imagining. Bing had expected to see his father’s sunny smiles, or even some happy tears, but what he perceived was an expression of poor quality, almost pretentiously assumed, evasive and uneasy. It was as if a shade of something was hidden beneath his complexion, but he didn’t pursue the thought. The coming back to this home, bringing a dream to its reality, satisfying the empty missing with the real touch, was so sweet and cheerful that certain clouds at his mind could be easily blown away by the blissful wind of reunion.
Some time later, around the table, as Bing sat eating the bowl of egg-noodle his father had made for him, his father told him his grandma had passed away.
‘What?’ Bing stopped eating. ‘When?’
‘Two years ago.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘We didn’t want it to affect your study.’
‘Why, study! Study! what study?!…’ Bing boomed in exasperation, in spite of himself. ‘I could have come back home, to see her for a last time.’
A thick and resentful silence filled the shop, shrouding a guilty father and a sulky-faced son. Then Bing roared again pursuing, ‘You should have told me when she was getting seriously sick, or when you guessed she was going to die!’
His father, sagging, kept his silence. Then, Bing, with an ‘Oh…’ began to cry; and the more he thought of his grandma, of the old days and memories, the more the tears climbed to his eyes. Her voice, her mottled hands, her groaning for toothaches and headaches, and his last sight of her thin body standing on the bridge, and her little hand waving in departure … were all embodied as palpable teardrops, tumbling out of the windows of his soul, falling to the bowl of half-finished noodles.
Quietly, his father was receiving audible and inaudible reproach from him.
In the afternoon, they took the earliest bus possible to the Town, where Ming and Dan, with a bicycle, either owned or borrowed Bing didn’t know, were there waiting for them.
His sister, now grown into a beautiful young woman, in her bright shirt and skirt, and with her healthy and ruddy complexion because of her regular exercise in the Police College, called him, ‘Ge...’ Then as if detecting her brother’s bitterness-stricken face, spoke no more but smiled an uneasy smile and joined Dan to busy herself fixing his luggage upon the bicycle.
The four of them walked to their Guzhai Village home. Bing, with his guitar on his back, walked most of the time quietly at a distance from the other three, who had to busily employ their time and minds around the bicycle to steady the precarious luggage loaded onto it.
The greetings at home were conducted in a funeral-like air, for all the facial expressions seemed false, timid and grieving. His mother was evidently darker than the image kept in his mind. She was smiling meekly and carefully as if she had to be afraid of him.
He didn’t know whether it was his dark face affecting them, or they were just wearing an expression that had been prepared a long time before for the anticipated reunion that was destined to be faulty and partial due to the lack of his grandma. The fact that all the members seemed to be mourning her secretly, crying for her without tears, sharing the sorrow under a smiling mask, was melodramatically unbearable to the home-coming that should have been full of joy and glory.
Oh, if his grandma could only now come out to hold him, grasping his arms, dusting him with her old hands, crying in tears ‘Aiya-hah…’; if all the people he had loved and missed could only greet him laughingly, blue-skyed with the sunny happiness in their faces, without the shade and sadness dimming the eyes and hearts.
No sooner had he stepped into the living room than Bing demanded to go to his grandma’s grave. The stone that had weighed down his heart since he was told of the old and sad piece of information, was so heavy that he couldn’t think of anywhere else but her grave, the place bearing her mortal existence, to alleviate his wretchedness.
But it was already late in the evening, the darkness was gathering fast; he was persuaded by his mother to go early next morning.
The evening was passed sombrely; the recounting of his story in Shanghai, and Ming’s story in Luzhou, was done in the manner like a mirthless classroom.
The next morning, he woke up to hear the crowing of roosters, the chirping of swallows, the booming of cows, and the bustling of people downstairs. All of a sudden, his heart seemed to fill with a flow of wakening joy, spreading rapidly to take control of him. The happy feeling of coming back home was so lifting, and the familiar sounds and fresh air were so intimate that any shadow that might have lurked in the corners of his mind was overpowered and dispersed. He got up and went straight out to the creaky wooden balcony.
What a picture was meeting his eyes!
The sun was in the sky, close to the hilltops. It was clear-shaped, shining in its cool brilliance and bathing in a pool of gold. The cloud, neither shaded nor grey, was rippling, tranquilly, on the back of the azure sky. Oh, there in the air, the swallows, the spirit of earth and the soul of fields, one and two and three, were roaring high, and gliding low at the level of land that was thickly blanketed in green or yellow by the rice crops. The gleaming water, the winding streams among the fields, reached him with a light so intense that he had to frequently blink his eyes.
He stood there long absorbing the view, so much elevated and buoyant, fancying himself in many a dream he had had in the confined bunk bed in Shanghai.
When some time later his sister called him, he knew he had a smile that must be very contagious, for he saw her face smiling, blooming like a miniature of the sun in the sky.
He looked at her, his eyes twinkling, as if he only saw her just then, until Ming turned a bit uneasy and flushed under his gaze.
‘Hey, why are you looking at me like that?’ she protested.
‘I thought you would wear your police uniform.’
‘Well, this is a holiday, we’re only required to wear it in school.’
‘Have you brought it home?’
‘Yes.’
‘Wear it,’ he said, ‘today, I will see it on you.’
‘No,’ she said, pursing her mouth, ‘Don’t you like what I am wearing now?’
‘No, I don’t like it. It is so ugly,’ he teased her, ‘a uniform is much better.’
She turned, and glared at him, her thick eyebrows becoming thicker, and then suddenly raised her hand, and hit straight on his arm, which was her old habit of hitting him whenever she was annoyed by him, ‘Don’t you dare say I am ugly…’
‘Oh…you still like to hit me, after all these years.’ Bing feigned a cry, clutching at his arm, ‘…help, help, a policewoman hitting an innocent man…’
‘Haha…’ Ming was laughing with a malicious joy. ‘You should have known I have been practising my punch everyday for the last two years. So, heihei, don’t bully your sister.’
‘Wooh, practise your punch,’ he returned, ‘why don’t we do wrist wrestling, to see whose fist has more iron?’
Ming looked at him, hesitating as if to withdraw her words.
Bing said, ‘See, you are afraid...a policewoman…’
‘Okay, fine, let’s try,’ Ming said, in an affirmative tone like a policeman. ‘Let’s go down to the dinner table.’
So they went down, and sat around one corner of the table. Then Dan chimed in, showing a great interest in the sport.
‘I am the judge,’ he declared, grinning from ear to ear.
Laying their elbows on the table, clasped their hands, shifting and adjusting the position so as to best exert their force, they were ready to go.
Then, Bing suddenly loosened his hand from hers, said: ‘Let me have a closer look first at your finger.’
She shrank from him, ‘No, no…’
But he reached quick to grab her hand, in spite of her effort trying to hide the tip of her middle finger under other fingers.
‘Oh, it’s grown well enough, only a little bit of irregularity, no one would have noticed it,’ he said, as if he was a doctor giving a consolation to a patient. ‘It won’t affect your finding a good husband.’
She hit him again…
When they were back in a wresting position, Dan gave the order, ‘Go.’
To Bing’s dismay, he lost quickly, yet he complained honestly, ‘No, no, I am not ready yet. Ming was cheating. We should try again.’
But Ming, laughing all the louder, refused to do it a second time. Then he complained to Dan, who was not sure which side he should stand with. At last Bing asked his sister, in a near begging tone, ‘Ming, my dear sister, how can you let your brother lose face? Please, at least one more time, if I lose again, I will…’
‘You will what?’ she said, her eyes widening.
‘I will shout you a trip to Shanghai.’
‘When?’
Bing thought for a while, said, ‘During your holiday, not this holiday, after I get my first salary.’
‘Then what if I lose?’ she asked.
‘Well, if you lose, you don’t worry, I won’t ask you to do anything for me, so long as I have my man’s face back.’
But his sister seemed to have little interest in his offer.
‘Come on, please,’ Bing entreated, ‘a trip to Shanghai! The biggest city in China!’
Ming regarded him calmly for a second or two, before she proceeded, ‘Win or lose, you should afford me a trip to Shanghai, otherwise I won’t give you the opportunity. Because I have already beaten you,’ she said, and turned to Dan, ‘haven’t I, Dan?’
‘Yes, the first time, Ming won,’ Dan said, implying his agreement on Ming’s proposition.
Bing was cornered by the two, and eager to do it again, conceded, ‘Okay, I surrender, win or lose, I will take you to Shanghai.’
So, they got into position again. Learning from his failure of first time, Bing’s ears were on highest alert at Dan’s order, so Ming didn’t have much of the timing advantage, though she was still acting slightly faster than her bother.
When, he slowly and surely pushed down Ming’s hand, his happiness was enormous as if he should be proud of beating a girl in the game.
Then Dan challenged him. Dan, due to his hard field work after quitting high school some years before, had much rougher skin, larger bones and hands. Bing’s fingers were rough too, due to his playing of the guitar, but that was only around his fingertips. They tried three times, all ended up with Bing’s undisputed loss.
Their laughter attracted a number of people into the dining hall, including his uncle and two women from the neighbourhood. His father came in, and after giving a reserved smile, muttered, ‘Hehe, wrist wresting,’ and went out.
Ming told Bing his mother had gone out to the rice fields, spraying pesticide to kill the insects.
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o(∩_∩)o康康日记の麻麻走丢了的日子！~~~P14 L399 (2009-12-14) 舞美拉 
发表于 2014-5-12 23:31
)，看到樓主寫的這個大綱，還是支持一下
发表于 2014-5-14 18:46
