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Shanghai Literature, February 2022
First snow
Song Mingwei
After the last summer vacation of the 1980s, I entered my sophomore year of high school. This means that the days of freedom are over, and every day before the college entrance examination has to be counted. But I hadn't read a single page of the textbook for a whole summer. It was a time of intense heat and restlessness, the scorching sun outside the window was daunting, and the trees on the street were roasted and rolled up in leaves. I felt that this was my last moment, and I had to think hard about what I wanted to do in the future, and whether I could still live the life I wanted.
In the middle of August, it began to rain frighteningly heavily, and every midnight I was awakened by the sound of thunder, lightning reflected on the curtains, making the room instantly strange, and the tables, chairs, and wooden bookshelves lost their silhouettes and became white shadows. Faintly, I heard Dad coughing in the next room and walking gently. But in such moments, all the familiar people and things are gone, and I feel like I am left alone in a place where time and space are boundless. I was immersed in all kinds of strange fantasies, and my heart was full of excitement. I was also dreaming of trying desperately to break free of my body at this moment.
After the school started, I went to borrow the key to the drawing room from the art teacher, and I told him that I was determined to apply for the Academy of Fine Arts in two years. Although the art teacher is still a very young person, his hair has become thinner and thinner. He himself graduated from the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts three years ago, and I thought my decision would make him happy, but he didn't say a word, just handed me the key expressionlessly.
The sketching room is on the ground floor of an old European-style building in the 1940s on campus, and the sunlight shines obliquely, and it is piled with various plaster statues and geometric models, and the light is illuminated, and the black and white shadows are clear. I would come here in the afternoon during extracurricular activities, when the art teacher had already returned home, and the huge studio belonged to me alone. I set up the model, calmly wrote on the paper, and heard the rustle of the tip of the pen rubbing against the paper, which made me feel at ease and satisfied. It's one of the most secluded corners of the campus, with only the occasional noise from the playground. At such a distance, I couldn't hear anything, and the vague sound seemed to me that it meant to me that the other side of the world had nothing to do with me.
For a long time, I have admired the cynical, self-made artists, and I aspired to be them, believing that that would save myself. The life I imagined was far from reality, there was a clear breeze, I didn't have to deal with anyone, I didn't have to care about anything, I was just a lonely and self-congratulatory ghost staring in the mirror, sometimes arrogant, sometimes disheartened. All summer long, I couldn't step out of the door, reading all kinds of books I could find in the sweltering heat, and the dizzying summer wind, combined with the excessive rhapsody, made me look pale and depressed. My parents were worried about my increasingly silent tendency, they asked me why I didn't watch TV, why I didn't hang out with my classmates, and one evening, my dad even offered to go swimming with me. After the school started, they took the initiative several times to ask me to take my classmates to my home to play. I think this kind of excessive concern of theirs is very inappropriate, am I not good? When I like to be alone, I am thinking about my own life, and who can help with such a problem. I closed the door to listen to the music, and the sound was very loud. I scribble on paper, drawing portraits and abstract figures. The days passed.
During that time, where I imagined life and reality intersected, there was a painter who lived downstairs from my house. He had long hair, he was extremely thin, and every time I saw his figure I was nervous and almost closed, he seemed to be walking in the air, proud and calm, taking steps without anyone around him, his eyes closed in a very narrow range, and he had no interest in everything around him.
Every day, as soon as I walked into the family compound of the "Literary Association" after school, I always expected him to appear in front of me. Sometimes he bought newspapers at the gate of the compound, sometimes he hurried outside, sometimes he stood by the side of the road, smoking a cigarette, looking like he was waiting for someone, or he was like me, meditating. I had never seen him talk to anyone, how lonely he must have been, how lonely he must have been, his solitude that separated him from the crowd and made his image completely embedded in my imagination. Once, curiosity drove me to ask my father about this man, and he took one look at me, warned me not to associate with him, and then continued to read his newspaper, as if this had answered my question. But I still learned something about him sporadically from others, his name is Wang Fang, a painter from the south who has held exhibitions in Europe and Japan. I also came to understand the content of my father's warning, which was stained by the fact that he had squatted in detention for half a month, and the reason was due to the issue of weathering. In fact, my understanding can only be regarded as a half-understanding, and whenever the speaker speaks here, the tone becomes more and more mysterious, the language is vague but full of hints, and the space given to my imagination is very limited.
Nevertheless, I think he is innocent, or he is deliberately framed, or this is simply slander and rumors. Even if he is really guilty, I have read many biographies of artists, some of whom have achieved masterhood because of their sinful lives, who always have to break the rules of the world, who act according to genius, who themselves are the judges of the world. In my mind, his image became even more awesome as a result. All I was bothered about was not being able to get close to him, especially after my dad had warned me that I didn't dare mention his name at home, and I didn't have the courage to speak to him every time I passed him in the hallway. In order to hide the tension in my heart, I pretended to be indifferent to him, of course I knew that he was really blind to me.
But it wasn't long before the painter disappeared from our compound. Dad once mentioned it to me by accident, or deliberately mentioned it to me, saying that this person had been dismissed from public office by the "Literary Association". I asked why, but my father refused to talk about it again, saying only vaguely that it was all an adult's business. Wang Fang has not even published a picture book, I have only seen his works in a few old magazines, his painting style is hazy and gloomy, I can't understand it at all, but I still like it very much.
Autumn has arrived, the leaves have turned golden, and the sky is blue. In the early morning, we were like flocks of sheep, whipped by the shouts of the teachers, running on the streets near the school. Then we sang revolutionary songs all the way back to the classroom and waited for class. Because I made up my mind to enter the Academy of Fine Arts, I would no longer devote myself to various cultural courses like other students. I put a translated novel under my desk, and the class time was very good.
There is a plane tree outside the classroom window, and the sunlight shines through the dense canopy, forming some tiny spots of light. When the wind blew, those light spots gently jumped on the students near the window. One day at the end of September, a girl was transferred from her third year of high school to our class, and her seat was arranged at the window. Her name was Xu An, and no classmates knew why she was demoted. She was not tall, with slender hands and feet, she loved to wear dark clothes and black leather shoes, with a short mushroom head, and her complexion was fair, and the sun shone as if transparent. She rarely speaks, looks like she's absent-minded, or reluctant to talk to people because she's repeating grades. Her seat was in a row with mine, and whenever I tilted my head to look out the window, my eyes would involuntarily fall on her halfway through. From the side, her neck was a soft curve, and the feminine undulations made my eyes short like an electric shock. I struggled so I looked out the window, or not, and this meaningless entanglement lasted not long from late autumn to early winter. Xu An seems to be a girl who is not afraid of the cold, she is not like other girls, she tied a bib and a silk scarf around her neck early, no matter the wind or rain, her neck is always bare. This gave me endless opportunities to paint that curve on the corners of every page of the textbook.
When I was nearly seventeen years old, for me, beautiful girls were like quiet music, white sculptures, and bright pictures, which was a kind of beauty that led life upwards, but in reality it was a taboo that could not be faced. Xu An's name has been desecrated countless times among the boys, and she has been red-faced, but she walked into the classroom wordlessly and sat quietly, her beauty did not have a little shadow, which made my heart warm. I began to write some unsatisfactory verses in my diary to describe my feelings: the first snow I encountered in winter, in my gloomy sky, the snow is so mysterious that it illuminates the beauty of life's good birthday.
The direction of life is unpredictable, through the mood and thought of one stage, the life of another stage is often the first sign, but we are not yet aware of it. It is quietly hidden in the depths of our hearts, slowly budding and growing under the nourishment of time and events. In this part of my life, through my imagination of the lonely artist, a new emotion, like the dark tide at the bottom of the sea, is taking shape in new aspects of life. Xu An appeared in front of my eyes, like a kind of fate, the dark tide surged to the surface of the water, stirring up waves, and my whole world began to have color. On those cool autumn nights, I didn't have the heart to read, and my thoughts drifted involuntarily. I even think of Xu An on the most unrelated occasions, such as at the dinner table, my face will swell red, my parents will look at me doubtfully, and I have to rush to come up with a few jokes to say. In the middle of the night, I often wake up, sit in bed, stare at something unknown in the dark, and feel chagrined by my own wild thoughts.
One day in October, when our class was out on an outing, I took my own picture clip with me and prepared to sneak to the side to draw sketches. But on this occasion there is no secret to keep, first two boys rushed to look at it, and then passed it on to the girls. Xu An was also among the girls, and I listened to the bursts of laughter, tried to pretend that I didn't care, and walked toward the woods where the leaves were piled up. I looked at them from time to time and saw that Xu An did not join the other girls' discussions. She was quietly looking at my paintings.
On November 9, 1989, I remember this day clearly: it had just rained lightly in the sky, the ground was damp, and the asphalt particles were erected. The freshness of the air not only makes the body feel comfortable, but the eyes are also pleasant. I jumped on a bus heading into the city, there were so many people on board that I squeezed toward the conductor when I suddenly saw Xu An huddled on the side of my body, and she obviously saw me too. Thankfully God bless me for being calm in this moment, I continued to squeeze over to buy a ticket and then squeeze back again, struggling to maintain a face-to-face posture with her, but not close together. It was the first time I'd been so close to her. She wore a pale yellow sweater, probably rubbed some emollients, and had a good smell around her. Her eyes were clear and bright, and they reflected the shadow of the window frame, the arms, and myself being reduced by different multiples.
"Are you going to the city to buy something?" It took me half a day to pluck up the courage to say this, and then I blushed and thought it was a stupid question. She said generously, no, she was coming home. She probably noticed my blushing, because she laughed silently, turned her face, and after a while she faced me and asked me in a very friendly tone like a big sister: "Are you ready to go to the Academy of Fine Arts?" I said yes and asked, "How do you know?" "I tried to speak calmly and in a normal way to keep the conversation going. But she turned her face away again and said, "Because I saw your painting." You're very good at drawing. After that, she stopped talking, as if she were looking out the window, and the car was passing through one of the most prosperous commercial streets in the city at that time, and the shops after the rain were tacky.
She no longer turned her face to me, the greeting and the conversation were clearly over, and I was stunned, letting my mood be jolted by the nameless excitement, but also beginning to be satisfied with this wordless relationship. The moment seemed long, with a vague surreal feeling, which seemed completely unexpected, but it seemed exactly what I had imagined, and I felt a kind of happiness that I did not know. My heart was trembling, and I almost had to pray that the car would never stop. The bus drove slowly from stop to stop, many people got off the bus, many people got on the bus, and the bus was still very crowded. Then she's going to get out of the car too.
She bowed her head and said goodbye to me, squeezed toward the car door, and when the car stopped, I saw her walking toward an alley. The car suddenly started again, and I was shaken to my knees. A man made up for her position, a dirty smell of hair that hadn't been washed for a long time burrowed into my nostrils, and I hurriedly turned to look at the other side of the car window.
There is no reason to recall the past, and there are often some completely unrelated impressions that will stay firmly in my mind. For example, Wei Yilin, for a long time, this thin girl always stood against the wall in my memory. With a pair of large black eyes, she leaned motionless against the wall, and just at noon, the shadows of the trees were wafting, and her body was covered with dazzling spots of light. She was half of Zhejiang ancestry, her skin was as white as snow, but her body was thin, and when she was sixteen years old, her breasts were flat without any ups and downs. In her memory, she never smiled, and on some joyful occasions, she just tried to sip two naturally bright red lips, looking idyllic and slightly sad. Now, years later, when someone mentions her, she always likes to praise her for her bright smile, but in my memory, she never smiles. Perhaps those people remembered her bright red lips, which were sexy and charming, stunning, in unforgettable contrast to her childlike look. Perhaps someone remembers her playing tennis, her long soft hair tied behind her head, tied with a blue headband, she jumped up to catch the ball, waved the racket, but it didn't take long to catch the ball, and her pale face gradually turned pink. Wei Yilin, a thin and thin paper-like girl, disappeared from my life before she could grow breasts and become plump. Some people say that she had a lung disease and went to her grandfather's house in the south to recuperate, but as soon as she left, she did not know whether she would be admitted to college, whether she would fall in love, and even whether she would live or die. Through a long and thick time, I saw Wei Yilin leaning against the wall and standing thoughtfully, and under the sunlight, her skin became pale, if there was none. In my memory, her image remains permanently in this moment, and this moment is firmly imprinted, and it will no longer fade, nor will there be any slightest change.
Another example is Zhang Jian, who sat in front of me in the classroom, and he always sighed inexplicably. One night of self-study, everyone was quietly writing their homework, when he suddenly stood up, ran out with a loud sigh. He makes people feel like we're too much of a burden and that something is wrong with our lives. He had a rare smile and was alone there sullen. Before the noon class, he rushed in, looking nervous, as if he had just run a thousand meters. But sometimes, he is very willing to interact with people, and at the same time he always wants to go to the opposite side of the routine, for example, he will suddenly talk back to the teacher, but there is humor in the tone, and it is easy to get the teacher's forgiveness. At the New Year's Day party, he wanted to learn to dance, and there were boys who could dance to teach him to walk, and he practiced carefully on the side, although in the end he still couldn't muster up the courage to invite girls. But there are always many times when Zhang Jian's irritability is difficult to restrain, and he sighs loudly: It's really annoying! Sick of it! His irritability was overwhelming and disturbing. We initially ignored each other, but eventually I offered to talk to him and he was friendly. Soon after, he told me that he was trying to get into a certain university, which was a very difficult goal to achieve, and his tone was extremely serious. I don't know where he ended up, maybe he still fell off the list, and his sighing, uneasy, sullen look was like a strange light, tearing open my memory, through more than ten years of time, until it reached my eyes.
In the first semester of my junior year of high school, I suddenly stopped drawing. When I returned the key to the drawing room to the art teacher, he was not surprised, but casually put it in his desk, without even asking me why I gave up. I started using one day as two days, and went crazy for a period of inhuman life. I desperately shoved algebraic formulas, ancient texts, and historical chronology into my head, and sometimes I felt that I had lost my memory and feelings, because my whole heart had been completely filled.
During the college entrance examination, my parents tirelessly sent me to the examination room six times. My feeling was that I basically failed the test, but I didn't expect that the results were actually quite good, and even the class teacher was surprised. A month later, I received an acceptance letter from the English department of a foreign university. Then he began to attend the farewell dinner held by the classmates in a muddy manner, which was held about eight times before and after. In fact, there are only five students who have been admitted to other places, including me, why it is held three times more, I still have not understood.
It turned out that I had always been alone in the class, almost never talking to people, and at the moment of the final farewell, I actually cried with my classmates many times, and as a result, whether it was those who had good homework or those who were always naughty, they all regarded me as a confidant without exception. They even said that I have long been the object of everyone's admiration, but I usually seem arrogant and difficult to approach, but if I am a real man, which one is not lonely? Although I objected to this statement, I could not explain why I always seemed so depressed. During that time, I can't remember how many times I was walking down the street with everyone, and suddenly I ripped open my throat and sang in a wolf-like voice. The most sung times may be Luo Dayou's "Love Song 1990", Qi Qin's "About Winter" and Zhao Chuan's "I Am a Little Bird". At that time, it felt as if everyone had just passed a life-and-death barrier, and now they had become friends, but in fact, I quickly lost contact with my classmates. Every winter and summer vacation, I return to my home, occasionally contact everyone, and find that everyone is busy, not going to school is thinking about making money, and going to school is more nervous, and they are waiting hard to fight in society.
But I can't blame others, I myself have become more and more lazy since the second year of college, and of course, I can't afford to maintain that gradually blurred friendship. By then I had seen that going to college was just a legitimate way of wasting time, so I was still dangling on campus because I couldn't see anything better I could do than keep shaking. Four years later, I graduated with seven successful courses and the rest of my good resume, and I landed a job in the city where I was staying at the university. Two years later I joined an advertising agency run by a college classmate, got married, and began a busy but aimless life. Sometimes I would go back to my hometown to visit my parents, and occasionally I would go to high school to see, and as the whole city became more and more foreign under the construction of successive mayors, several large hotels were built around the school, and the central teaching building that originally looked tall and white now looked short and dirty. As for the old European-style building in which I spent many afternoons, it is said that it was demolished and rebuilt as early as 1994 to become a modern computer center.
I now remember that when I graduated from high school, only three of my classmates didn't participate in any activities. Wei Yilin dropped out of school half a year ago, Zhang Jian did not contact anyone after the college entrance examination, and Xu An did not take the college entrance examination at all. She suddenly disappeared from our class after her last mock exam at the end of May, and her family had been to school saying she had found a job and was determined to give up the gaokao. No classmates knew what job she had found or where she worked, and no one had seen her since. Everyone talked about it and felt incomprehensible. Maybe only I had a full premonition of this matter, and it didn't even stay in my heart for long, because I knew that if she chose to disappear, she would disappear, and she did it cleanly, and obviously didn't want us to take it too seriously.
In November 1989, the simple encounter with Xu An on the bus, in my mind over and over again, gradually became the beginning of a movie, full of revelation, as if from it, my whole life would be changed. But in fact, this revelation is deep and bottomless, and even if I review every moment of that time countless times, I can never understand the meaning of it exactly. Each of my explanations always immediately brought out its opposite, which made me lose my judgment and wonder if I really remembered the scene: did she ever ask me, did she smile at me, did she have a friendly look in her eyes?
Every afternoon, I still worked hard in the sketching room, and the art teacher occasionally walked in quietly and looked behind my back for a while, but did not say a word. If I were to ask him for advice, he would be very conscientious and would give me a detailed lecture for half a day or demonstrate it himself. Most of the time, he just went to his own easel, waved his brush, and in one afternoon drew an oil painting that could not be seen in shape. My task was to draw the monotonous geometry and the few plaster heads. Occasionally, I would put on a new piece of white paper and gently sketch out some beautiful lines, which were the imaginary Xu Ann, who walked on the road, sat in the room, talked to people, or rested under the tree. I kept drawing her smile, and the image in my memory was always unattainable, it became blurry and kept retreating into the darkness.
When I met Xu An at school, she was still the same as usual, and she never greeted me. But I could still hear her talking to other people, which happened when she passed by the school gate, or when she went to the boiling water room to turn on the water, and she and her female classmates met unexpectedly. No matter the questions and answers, she is simple and generous, and when I hear her voice, I feel that the lightning flashes in my heart. It's just that afterwards, these feelings disappear immediately, and new impressions will join the old memories, constantly rolling, becoming ambiguous, even if I think about it.
On December 3, 1989, it suddenly snowed at noon. Having just eaten, the classroom was chaotic, almost everyone who hadn't come home was talking, and I was sitting near the window, reading Faulkner's novel Bear. It was always dark and snow was falling. I was probably the first person in the classroom to see the snow, and I didn't say a word, closed my book, and watched the snowflakes slowly fall from the sky. Later, I looked up and saw that Xu An was also looking out by the window at the other end of my line of sight.
A few minutes later, the excitement of the snow stirred everyone in the classroom, and the boys roared like Indians, and the girls rushed to the playground together. The room suddenly fell silent, and only the two of us were left. By this time the snow had fallen so heavily that a fine web of snow had been woven outside the window, and the sky, the roof, the bare trees, and the pedestrians on the road were completely blurred. Even the snowflakes blurred, and everything turned pure white. In this moment, the whole world seemed to come to a standstill.
The desire to speak to her made me restless at this moment. Aren't we enjoying the beauty of life together? I kept saying these words silently, but somehow my mouth was tightly closed, and I couldn't utter a word. Suddenly, she looked back, saw it was me, and laughed, and then I heard her whisper, "Well, I've been looking forward to snowing." Do you like it too? ”
Her words were like a spell, and immediately made me chatter, even to my own surprise. What I said specifically, it was probably a mess, mostly from the snow, when I was a child in the snow, I played games in the snow, climbed mountains in the snow, and even talked about the thick and boundless snow in the primeval forest depicted in the Faulkner novel I was reading, and I wrote a poem, the snow will engulf everything, and what a happy engulfment, people are oblivious, standing in the snow and not moving, listening to the sound of silence, feeling the snow become light under your feet, you stay in that feeling forever, your heart melts in the snow. I was so excited by my own words that I could hardly speak anymore. She looked at me in surprise and said, "I didn't expect you to like snow so much." Then she asked me, "Have you tried eating snow?" ”
Without waiting for me to answer, she continued. She said that if you stand quietly in the snow, snowflakes sometimes fly into your mouth, that feeling is very strange, it is cold, but it makes you feel really clean, let your whole mouth be purified, the snow melts in your breath, and then you want more snow, you face the wind, open your mouth, let the snowflakes fall into your mouth, a lot of snowflakes fall into your mouth, your whole body becomes cold and clean, that feeling is really great, it will make you think that you are a child of snow, naughty, ignorant, curious about everything, Your feeling is almost a miracle, you yourself have almost turned into snow.
There was a wind that made snowflakes fly in the air, and the window glass was wet and blurred. Xu An seemed to be completely immersed in his monologue, having forgotten my existence, and I was shocked by her poetic description, and when she finished, after a long time I was dumbfounded. She turned back, smiled apologetically at me, and said, "Sorry to interrupt what you just said, you seem to say that you wrote a poem about snowy days, can you read it?" ”
It was a very bad poem, entitled "Exile in the Snow", full of new literary tones, writing about the loneliness of a teenager: in the early winter, the wet sky in front of him, the monotonous colors, a young poet roaming in the woodlands of black and white snow, he experienced loneliness, it was as if it were his privilege, his pass to the Creator who was communicating with all things, after the first snow, he began to exile himself with great pleasure, he chose to disappear into the snow that was flying in the sky. I finished the poem in shame and stuttering, and Xu An kept her head down, and I didn't even know if she could listen to it.
But she said: "I didn't expect that you would not only be a future painter, but also a poet." She laughed and said, "You wrote about exile in the snow and disappearing from the world, is that what you really thought?" I nodded, not understanding what she meant. She didn't look at me and continued, "It sounds beautiful, but what the hell would it feel like?" Maybe it's just a mood that passes in the blink of an eye, or a mood in a certain situation. At the end of the day, there is no loneliness in a lifetime, and with the passage of time, loneliness is not your own. ”
I hesitated, but insisted: "What I want to write is a kind of eternal loneliness, forever leaving the crowds and allowing myself to be exiled in the snow." ”
"Oh, is it?" She furrowed her brows, as if she thought it was funny, but after thinking about it for a while, she said to me seriously, "In fact, if it comes to a lifetime of loneliness, it is almost impossible, if you leave the crowd for a short time, you will definitely go back to the crowd." The infinite romantic loneliness without a way out is unfathomable, you can't control it, it's actually a kind of madness. Can you make yourself crazy? Are you prepared to sacrifice for madness? ”
"I know what you mean, you mean that lonely people are special voters, not everyone will be like this," I tried to express my ideas more clearly, I said firmly, "I will choose this life." ”
She smiled and said, "But it's best that you don't, you may have a beautiful imagination of exile in the snow, but you should be a happy person in the future." ”
"No, I certainly don't want to be a mediocre person in the future."
"But happy people don't necessarily mean they're all mediocre." I see what you mean, you're afraid of mediocrity, and for that you declare yourself maverick. But the price of mavericks, how much preparation do you have to pay? The poet always wants to put himself on the altar, right? ”
Xu An finally laughed and said this sentence, which made me feel insulted, and I desperately wanted to say something to her, but I didn't know how to open my mouth for a while. She seemed completely oblivious to my feelings, but then told me a story. This is a German story, about a teenager named Emile, who was born into high society, had no worries, he happened to meet a young man who was many years older than him, named Demian, who was a god-like romantic figure, whose otherworldliness attracted Emile, who learned from Demian how to be a man who rejected the world and was not willing to be mediocre, but he had to give up his family, give up his future, give up all worldly ways of life, and kill a bloody road, and then he had to always resist, not only against the world. He also had to rebel against his inner weakness, overcome his submission to sweetness, surrender to the ubiquitous social customs, and eventually bury his life in a state of mind that was completely hidden. Xu An said that demian's image was awe-inspiring, like Christ, but also more like the devil, and Emile eventually grew into another Demian, whose life was finally scarred, his heart and reality completely split, and he became his own prison.
After Xu An finished speaking, I was silent for half a day, and asked in a dumb voice, "Who wrote this story?" She laughed and said, "This story was written by a German writer a long time ago, and it has not been translated into Chinese, and I myself have heard it told by a friend." By the way, this friend is also a painter, and you may want to meet him. I absentmindedly asked him what his name was, but her answer really surprised me: "His name is Wang Fang, and you probably have never heard of him." ”
The students with snowballs in hand rushed into the classroom and interrupted our conversation. After a flurry of yelling and fighting, the class bell rang. The first class in the afternoon was history class, and the teacher explained the ancient Roman political system loudly in front of the blackboard, but I completely ran my head out. This snow, the way Xu An talked unexpectedly, and the last mention of Wang Fang's name, were all sudden, as if the reality of the encoding was messed up at this moment. I looked over at Xu An, who was sitting on the other side of the classroom, and she was looking intently at the blackboard, as if she were listening attentively. After class, Xu An handed me a piece of paper and said, "This is Wang Fang's address, I will go to see him on Sunday, if you are free, come together." ”
"Ann, find a cup for your classmates and pour a cup of water." By the way, what's your name? ”
I said my name to Wang Fang, Xu An dragged a paint-stained chair from somewhere, handed me a plastic cup filled with water, I said thank you, and sat across from him.
It was the beginning of December, and Wang Fang had been moving away from the Wenlian compound for more than four months, and he looked like he hadn't changed much, still wearing a long hair, but with a few more curly black beards on his chin. At the moment he was wrapped in a black trench coat, tall and thin. He opened his mouth to talk to me, and a mouthful of fine teeth appeared to me, which gave me a very strange feeling, the teeth were very small, but they were tightly arranged, and seemed to be much more numerous than normal people. Probably because he was talking to me face-to-face, and in his own rented room, and his expression was so casual that I could not feel the arrogant, inaccessible impression he had given me when I had met him on the road before. I faced him, it was the first time, but it felt a little off for a while.
The atmosphere of the whole room was like an old castle where no one lived, the lights were dim, and there were crowded paint tubes, cigarette butts and pieces of paper thrown everywhere. Wang Fang was half lying on a sofa chair by the window, and when Xu An opened the door to lead me in, he slightly raised his upper body to say hello. His eyes kept fixed on his chest, as if he couldn't concentrate when he spoke, and his gaze only occasionally stayed on my face for a moment, and then immediately slid away, and I don't think he would recognize that I had lived upstairs from him. Xu An had been busy, constantly turning around in this small room. She was sorting out the drawings, folding her clothes, pouring water for us, and finally she sat down on a stool at the foot of the sofa chair and listened to us quietly.
I had imagined many times before facing Wang Fang, and the excitement in my heart could not be described, I would stutter to him with my name, and my admiration for him, I agreed with his extraordinary artistic conception, and so on. But now none of what I had envisioned had happened, and the excitement that I had felt like I was going to shut up as soon as I saw him had never recurred since I entered the door. I felt like I was falling into a dusty dream, and I was in a trance, feeling that everything I saw in front of me was not very real.
Wang Fang spoke extremely quickly, but he spoke very clearly word by word. He asked me, "An An said you plan to apply for the Academy of Fine Arts?" ”
"Yes. I think..."
"If you really want to paint, don't think of this kind of idea, you will get nothing in the Academy of Fine Arts, you will only waste time." There has always been only the cultivation of mediocre talents. Painting, you have to ask here," he pointed to his chest, "you know? This is very important, you can't hear the inner voice, you can't do art, you can only follow others, become a parrot who follows others to learn tongues, and in the end it is nothing, nothing can be done. ”
Next, when he talked about the exhibition of modern Chinese art in Beijing in February, he asked, "Have you seen it?" "I said that I was going to Beijing with my family, and I was stopping by to see it, and I was trying to describe to him the shock of seeing Xu Bing exhibiting the Book of Heaven on the entire floor.
He interrupted me and said in a low voice, "There must be a complete subversion, the destruction of all the old ones, and then there will be new life." ”
He turned to look at me and said, "You know, it's the artist's mission to destroy the old, and every new generation of humanity has to uproot traditions and create them in an experience of blood gushing out." The artist is destined to rebel, he wants to rebel against everything in front of him, and resistance is his only destiny. Then he pointed to my chest and said, "So, I just told you, don't go to the Academy of Fine Arts, you have to learn from your own heart." ”
After saying this, Wang Fang fell into a long silence. I fully understand what he means, similar words I also heard many people say at the modern art exhibition, I used to feel the blood boiling all over my body, nervous excitement, but at this moment to hear Wang Fang say this, my emotions became strangely bad, even a kind of depression, feeling a kind of sadness that can not be said. I also fell silent, and Xu An asked me if I wanted to eat fruit, and she bought a lot of oranges when she came. Next, the three of us took an orange in each hand, peeled it off and ate it. Wang Fang asked my name again, and he nodded, this time as if trying to remember it hard, and then he explained to me that his memory has been very poor lately, but he hopes to see me paint excellent works in the future. He pointed to his chest again and said that he must press his own soul, it must be so, it must be so! I suddenly realized that this sentence was a sentence from the popular "Unbearable Lightness in Life" at that time.
After sitting silently for a few minutes, I got up to say goodbye, Wang Fang said goodbye to me loudly, and Xu An sent me down the stairs. In the dark, she said to me, "He's been in a bad mood lately, but not always, he's still a great artist." I replied yes, saying that I understood everything he said today, and that was extremely meaningful. She added, "You see, he's a man who needs to be taken care of, he's the kind of 'man who needs people.'" I come to see him every Sunday now, and if you make friends with him, you'll find that he's a very nice guy. He was kind, easy to socialize with, and sometimes almost like a silly kid. ”
She said: "I heard what you said about exile in the snow, and I thought of him, and he was the only one who had the courage to put himself on the altar, disappear from the crowd forever, and walk into the snow to exile without return." ”
At this time, Wang Fang's shout came from the upstairs room: "An An, An An." She smiled at me, waved her hand, turned and ran upstairs. I walked down the street, and it was just after noon, and the sun was shining, giving people the feeling of a season of confusion, as if it was not the middle of winter, but the spring was about to bloom. It's just that the road is muddy everywhere, and the snow in these days has been soiled by pedestrians. I walked toward the bus stop with my school bag on my back, and then I remembered that I had forgotten to show Wang Fang a few pieces of study I had brought. But it might be better not to take it out, and what could those uncreative assignments be in his eyes?
That night, I cried, but at the same time my brain went numb. I scribbled some of the poems and stupid words in my diary, but I also knew that the memories that remained in my heart could not be erased.
Later, I came to Wang Fang several times, but none of them were on Sundays, so that I would not run into Xu An. Wang Fang is sometimes very enthusiastic and will talk to me for a whole night; Sometimes I was absent-minded and only repeatedly advised me not to think about the academy of fine arts. But we may not end up being friends, and I find that in front of him, I still can't express myself freely, which makes me feel very bad.
About February of the following year, I went to Wang Fang once, and the person who opened the door was a middle-aged woman, who was surprised to hear me say the name Wang Fang, explaining that she had only moved in for a few days and never knew this person. I asked Xu An where Wang Fang was, and she turned her back on me, saying that she didn't know, but that he had long wanted to go abroad, and maybe now it was finally done. She couldn't say a month, and she was sure she could get a letter from him. But a month later, Xu Ann stopped mentioning him to me, and I knew she must not have heard anything from him. Wang Fang finally disappeared from our lives completely.
When Xu An and I met, we would greet each other in a friendly manner, and sometimes say a few words, but we never had a deep conversation. And she was even more silent in the classroom, barely talking to anyone. Later she grew long hair. Sitting by the second-floor classroom window, I could see her walking toward the school gate from afar, her black hair fluttering behind her, like a gloomy color, closely following my vision.
Then one day, I suddenly felt so irritable as soon as I sat down in front of the drawing board that I couldn't even lift my pen again. I looked at the carefully illuminated plaster statue, the lifeless white, and the disgust that rose from the bottom of my heart almost made me vomit. I gave up art, which seemed inconceivable to others and myself. Especially my parents, I began to learn to paint from the age of three. I still regret it myself from time to time, and occasionally draw a few strokes, but when I was seventeen years old, art seemed to me to become a deadly poison, and I could not touch it at all. Perhaps Xu An's words are not without reason, "time has changed", I went through the imaginary situation of snow exile when I was seventeen years old, and then everything changed, and the past deteriorated, and I could no longer continue that situation. Or Wang Fang's words are right, I have never been able to force my inner voice, after all, I belong to the generation that grew up in the nineties and followed the rules.
In the last stage of our senior year, our physical education class completely turned into a carnival, and the teacher let us move freely after the name was roll called, and let us do whatever we wanted. At that time, we boys invented a so-called "Chinese rugby", that is, to play basketball as rugby, run around on the playground, throw the ball in any direction at will, and then everyone rushed up and pressed the person holding the ball under the body. I joined the game once and grabbed the ball so hard that I ran forward desperately, but I didn't know who to throw the ball again. Then I was thrown to the ground, still clutching the ball tightly in my arms, many heavy bodies pressed up, and my arms and clothes were covered with the mud after the spring rains. Everyone was shouting excitedly and forcing me to throw the ball out, but I was still calling out to my teammates, hoping they would break me off the fence. I opened my mouth wide and shouted, my eyes searching nervously in panic, and I saw Xu An less than ten meters in front of me, she looked at me indifferently, then turned and walked away. I was eventually forced to give up the ball and gain my freedom. Everyone continued to chase the new ball carrier, but I didn't keep up, only to feel a sour nose and a tight grip on my heart.
