Text: Dong Zhiyang
It's probably a story about the redemption of love, I thought after reading it.
The lens of the story unfolds on the coastal town, the deep sea is silent, and all that remains is the silent story of a family. Reading the whole article, it suddenly occurred to me that Borges said that "death is like water disappearing into the water", like a sea child who eventually returns to the deep sea. Although I don't know how he ended up, I was happy for him with tears.
The feeling when reading this story, in the words of the Buddhists, is like the process of "witnessing", silent and constant, always silent, straight to the source of life. Like a fish in the deep sea, it can swim to the end to avoid the adverse currents and disturbances of the world. We slowly walked into the ocean with the words. Seeing that little figure rising and falling on the surface of the sea, quietly watching, I saw what I saw - Jiang Zhiyue's love, silent teenager, silent sea... There are many things, but when I read it to the end, I found that I had already been in tears.
About love
The hostess of the article, Jiang Zhiyue, was firmly in love with her husband Cong Zhi, they fell in love, they married, they had children, and they became real relatives. If the story is as smooth as all romance novels, the love between the two is not reduced, but it is also less of the ups and downs of life. So Jiang Zhiyue thought that she was invaded by the loneliness brought about by marriage, and insomnia and quarrels were also staged one by one. Why does so-called love bring loneliness and boredom? Does marriage just bring loneliness? Jiang Zhiyue and Cong Zhi in the story, as well as Juan Sheng and Zijun in the "Wounded Death" mentioned in it, their love stories make me wonder whether marriage is the graveyard of love.
Cong Zhi may also love Jiang Zhiyue deeply, and when he tastes love, he proves with his own actions that he is also fully devoted to the love he is seeking, but the differences between the two in the face of the silent sea boy are also real. After marriage, the pressure brought by life, the triviality of chai rice oil salt sauce vinegar tea will dilute the strong passion of love. Is marriage the graveyard of love? Is it really because of marital love that it disappears? Think about it carefully, but it is only because the small things of life have worn away the initial enthusiasm.
Does Jiang Zhiyue love sea children? The answer is undoubtedly yes. She loves when she writes down her full expectations for her dear child in words full of maternal love; she loves when she finds that the sea boy does not like to talk and feels the expression of the sea child with her lips and teeth; she loves when she perceives that the sea boy is deeply attached to the ocean and takes him to the beach to see the sea; when she sees the sea boy abandon the game and go home alone and endure the pain only to ask a question that is very hard all the way, she is love; when she knows that the sea boy does not want to leave the sea to study in Beijing and supports his decision, she is love... I can't look at the right and wrong of a mother's actions from a mother's standpoint, because to me the sea boy seems more like the child of the sea.
Do Jiang Zhiyue and Cong Zhi love Haixin? At first I thought it was unloved. It is believed that for Haixin Jiang Zhiyue, it is more about fulfilling the responsibility of being an adoptive mother, and cong zhi is the same. From the beginning to find a playmate for the sea children who do not like to talk, to the rebellion of Hai Xin when he entered middle school, and the urgency of Hai Xin's desire to leave home and be independent during the college period, it shows that the relationship between Hai Xin and them is gradually cracking. In the face of her daughter's rebellion, Jiang Zhiyue did not discipline Haixin strictly like other parents, but chose to obey Haixin's wishes to express her love and respect for Haixin. Reading this, what I feel more is the courtesy and kindness of Jiang Zhiyue to Haixin. But when Jiang Zhiyue later learned of Haixin's a series of actions after being dropped out of school and pregnant, Jiang Zhiyue, who became a grandmother, suddenly seemed to lose her fear and became full of life. And Cong Zhi's relief of the pregnancy of his daughter and the repeated questioning of the child's father also make this image more like a father. When the sea boy carefully picked up the child in the sea heart, I had a picture of a family enjoying itself in my mind, which made me smile.
There's so much to think about in this story about love. Jiang Zhiyue to Professor Xu, Cong Zhi to the two children, Haixin to Jiang Zhiyue and Cong Zhi, Haixin to David, Haitong to his parents, to Zhenzhen... Too much about the derivative of love.
About salvation
The sea redeems the sea child, and the sea child returns to the sea. As I read this, there are so many unexpected turns. When I read that Haixin fell in love with David and was pregnant, I thought it was a story of a husband with a wife and an infatuated girl, but the appearance of David at the end surprised me; when I read to the warming up relationship between Jiang Zhiyue and Professor Xu, I thought it was a story of a college teacher breaking free from the shackles of marriage to pursue the love in my heart, but because of my daughter's pregnancy, this story seemed to come to an abrupt end; when I read that The sea boy often went to Zhenzhen to buy flowers, I thought it would be the beginning of a romantic love story, but the ending was not satisfactory... Too many plots are reasonablely unexpected, but why not form a network of mutual redemption?
After reading the article, my heart could not be calmed for a long time, and for a while I did not know whether the characters in the story had been redeemed, or whether I had been inspired outside the story. Somehow from the beginning of reading, seeing the name of the article, the melody of "Silent" has been haunting the heart, just like the lyrics singing: "The cycle begins again and again, and the end still loses you." "The land lost the ocean, Cong Zhi Jiang Zhiyue lost the original intention of falling in love, Jiang Zhiyue lost the sea boy, lost his father... Everyone seems to have lost something but it seems that they have not lost. Compared with the sea boy is the crystallization of the love between Jiang Zhiyue and Cong Zhi, I think that his appearance to departure is the process of love between Cong Zhi and Jiang Zhiyue, from entering the marriage from talking happily when in love to becoming silent, and then to the sea boy's attachment to the deep sea, just like Jiang Zhiyue's obsession with the sea in his heart, the yearning for love, to the sea boy falling into the deep sea, the birth of the child of the sea heart, the fall of Cong Zhi's father at the beginning of the story, the death of each life will be replaced by new life, and the cycle begins, just like the process of cong Zhi and Jiang Zhiyue's love.
The charm of the novel is that although she has not experienced the life of the protagonist, she is also in tears because of her story. As the article reads: "There is no light on the seabed, and whoever is in the dark is black." But at the end of the article, when she opened the words written for the unborn child, my eyes were already moist, and I couldn't help but wonder if this was a faint light at the bottom of the sea?
November 2, 2021
Silence of the Deep
About the Author:
Lu Wenbin, writer, scholar and translator, Doctor of Literature of Peking University, Professor of the Department of Chinese of Beijing Language and Culture University, Doctoral Supervisor, Distinguished Professor of Ludong University. He has published novels such as "Silence in the Deep Sea", "Flowing Fireflies", "Tianxiang", "Hello, Professor", essays "Reading Love", "Who Hurt Our Love", "Betrayed Life", "When Education Meets Movies", etc. He is the author of "Women and Evil", "Lost Boy", "Animal Hero", "Angela's Ashes" and so on.
Marriage, family, career, answer the multiple puzzles of the adult world
Admire Teacher Lu Wenbin's work "Silence in the Deep Sea"
Graphic production: Shangguan Wenlu Sound Studio - Haoze