英文小说：A Shadow in Surfers Paradise(35)天堂之影

洋八路

Chapter 35




It was about mid-afternoon when Bing came back from the airport. Supper was some hours away, and he didn’t know how and where to pass the time before that. It was Thursday; other students were still in the class. He had asked for leave to go to the airport. Other students had wanted to go as well, but Kang didn’t want too much of a sad scene on his departure, and had told Bing to pass on his message to them. So only Bing and Ms Tang had been to the airport.

Walking along the Eastern Tiyu Hui Road, Bing didn’t feel good going back to his dorm. Wasn’t it a dreadful thing if he stayed in the room and looked at his friend’s empty bed? He then thought of going to the library, but he rejected the idea immediately. How could he possibly read a book at this hour? Then out of habit, Lu Xun Park came to his mind. Yes, I might just go there to pass the hours.

So he moved towards the park, but only a little way beyond the campus gate, his steps began to slacken, for he was unsure of his destination again. Why going to the Park? Even if he chose a bench he had never sat upon, where no history of sadness had ever plagued, he couldn’t possibly feel any better than anywhere else. And to think the park was actually a graveyard, the place where the writer Lu Xun was buried!

A pang of coldness seemed to seize his heart. He didn’t know why Lu Xun as a name should frighten him so much. Numerous times had he been there, he had never related the writer’s name to a fear he should avoid.

So he returned and tracked back to the bridge, the smelly bridge. He walked slowly, and strange this time he didn’t notice its stink, though the water was as black as ever. And what was more, now under his pondering eyes, the water wasn’t even ugly; its curvy path of liquid that once or twice still reflected a glint of afternoon light appeared serene and beautiful. Even if there was sadness, it was the one of awe inspiring.   

Oh, wasn’t it just the dark blood flowing in one’s veins!

He loitered there for a minute or two, before his sensation returned to normalcy. Dirt, filth and death, these words came back to him again. It was as if his faculties had been paralysed or distorted for just a little while, conjuring up a flash of fantasy.

Away from the bridge, the thread of his shadowy thoughts went to the Huangpu River, the bund. Immediately it lit him up, and the more he thought about this new destination, the sounder and better it seemed to be. So, driven by the new light, he was trotting to the bus stop, as if he couldn’t wait to escape the acres of the university.         

Inside the bus, he felt much better. The bus was moving, lurching and shaking all the time. And the restless people were up and down in tumult; the noise, the Shanghai dialect, the smell of sweat, the smoke of smokers, the stern-faced inspector, the women and men and girls, their tight-wrapped arms and breasts and bulging bottoms, their gentle or flinging gestures, were emanating a kind of heat, a living temperature that seemed to warm and thaw his soul.

By the time he got off the bus, and began to tramp along the solid pavement in the bund, he felt he was a live person, a person with a heart still beating, a person with a stomach still feeling hunger, a person with eyes still able to comprehend a reality.

From a food stall, one of many around the place, he bought three tea-eggs, and began to eat like a hungry beggar who has just won some food from some kind-hearted people. After finishing all three, he felt his throat and chest were so stuffed that he was like a dumb person struggling to utter a word. With his fist he banged many times against his chest hoping to loosen the lump, but his chimpanzee-like gesture didn’t relieve him. In the end, he had to buy a can of Coke to wash it down.  
   
When three hours later he got off the bus back at the school, the air was dusky. Most students, with supper time past, had already gone to classroom for their evening study. So the street was nearly empty. He had a queer feeling that he had just visited the moon and come back to earth, and the familiar things were not as familiar, an age of time seemed to have intervened in a space of a few hours.

Just over the threshold of entrance to his dormitory, a voice called him.

He turned and saw Vivian coming to him.

‘Bing, where have you been?’ she asked.

‘Well…’ Bing muttered a syllable in a tight voice, clearing his throat, and for a while stood baffled by her question, by the unexpected appearance of a person whom he had known but whose essence seemed to have long melted in his memory.

She said again, ‘I thought you would have come back from the airport long ago.’

‘Oh, I went to other places after that,’ he said, gaining a little of the real light, yet still confused. ‘But why?’

‘I called at your room and found you hadn’t come back, so I am waiting for you here.’

Obviously she didn’t get what his ‘why’ actually meant, ‘I mean why you are you waiting for me, is there anything …?’

‘Well, no…’ she mumbled, her posture uneasy. ‘Can we have a walk?’  

‘Now?’

She looked at him strangely, as someone may look at a stranger, or at one mentally retarded. ‘Yes? ’

At last he got the point, ‘Okay then,’ and moved out again.

She turned and followed behind him. From habit, he turned left towards the campus and Lu Xun Park, but then on the bridge, as if suddenly realizing something, he halted and turned and asked, ‘Where will we go?’

‘Lu Xun Park?’ she said, her eyebrows wrinkled, obviously confused by his question.

The mere mention of the park grudged him; he answered grimly, ‘No.’

Advancing a step further to come level to his side, she spoke harshly, as if she was offended, ‘Then, where?’

The same difficulty of where to go which had earlier disoriented him sat on him again. He stood there indecisive for a considerable time, fumbling hard for a choice that should be agreeable to this unexpected and purposeless ‘walk’ with her. And worse, in his own predicament, he had paid her no attention.

At last, Vivian had run out of her patience, blurted out, ‘Then don’t worry…’

She walked away, taking the same path they had just taken.

He was startled by her reaction, but only mildly, for looking at her back, his mind was clearer, and the stress that had come to bother him since her appearance, was lifted to part with her brisk departure.

He walked very slowly back, in a solitude and desolation that seemed perfect for him, and for the world.

However, approaching the gate, he was surprised to see her still lingering there.

He paused a second, then kept moving forward. Nearing her, he caught her eyes, her pair of pupils that seemed to speak of an emotion he thought he had been familiar with.

Slightly touched, he didn’t enter the gate; instead, he walked further down the road, a road he had scarcely walked before, because it didn’t lead to the campus, nor the park, nor any specific place worth visiting.

She followed him tacitly. He heard her steps behind him. Then he slowed down, and without turning, he was waiting for her.
Then she touched his hand; he flinched, feeling a quiver at his heart. It was a strange, poignant and somewhat ugly feeling that her fingers should such touch his. It was kind of stained, alienated intimacy.

Realizing her hand was still in his, he was inclined to withdraw and remove it from him. But she retained her clasp, not soft, not forceful, only persuasive.

They walked steadily like this, for a long distance, and between them, no audible communication occurred.

Then, as the temperature of her hand grew more and more evident in his palm, he mumbled, ‘Vivian…’ not knowing what to say the next. But his mere calling her name, first time since like an age before, stirred up something in his depth, that had long been crusted thick with wintry frost.

He didn’t pause, but Vivian did. She turned herself to him, searched his eyes, and with her arms she first held his neck, then up to cup his cheeks, like a mother does to a dying baby.

His hands, rigid and cold as they still were, went subconsciously to her abundant hair, where his fingers could dive and weave.

They looked at each other. He didn’t kiss her, nor she kiss him, but they both cried, tears streaming on her face, encouraging him to wipe them dry.   

She then leaned her face upon his chest, sobbing, her soft breasts quivering against his ribs.  

Then the crying face of his sister at his departure from his village three years before flashed into his mind, prompting him to check the one in his embrace. He raised her face to him, and gazed at it in a wonder as if she was an alien blundering into his life. In his perusal, the face was part of a stranger, part of a sister, part of a lover; and the love or hate, the pride or humility, the shadow or paradise, were all merging to the well of tears.

At length, when both of them had reached the peak of their emotion, he said to her: ‘Don’t worry, Vivian, I shall be fine.’



--End of Chapter 35--