In February 1946, in Wenzhou, a small hotel with a guest room, Zhang Ailing's husband Hu Lancheng, and a small widow sat opposite Zhang Ailing.
Watching her husband and the "female guest" talk and flirt with each other, Zhang Ailing looks like an outsider. Seeing that her husband completely ignored her own existence, Zhang Ailing proposed to draw a sketch for her husband's "female guest". However, when Zhang Ailing drew the outline of the female guest's eyebrows, the pen in her hand trembled and fell to the ground, and she could no longer continue to draw.
After the "female guest" left, Hu Lancheng asked her: "Why did you suddenly stop painting?" Zhang Ailing said: "I see that there is already a husband and wife between her and your eyebrows." Zhang Ailing's eyes looked at her husband expectantly, hoping that he would lose his temper in anger and then refute himself and explain to her. However, Zhang Ailing was disappointed, and her husband did not refute, did not explain, did not admit, just silence.
Zhang Ailing's heart was like ashes.
Young Zhang Ailing
Who is this "female guest"? What will Zhang Ailing do next?
Why would a generation of talented women marry such a prodigal son and indulge him to such a point of fearlessness?
A "blockade" opens the lock of Hu Lancheng's heart
November 1943, Nanjing.
Hu Lancheng was basking leisurely in the sun on a recliner in the courtyard while casually flipping through a magazine called "Heaven and Earth". After seeing a novel written by the novel column Zhang Ailing called "Blockade", Hu Lancheng, who ate with a pen, was extremely excited in his heart: How could anyone in the world have such talent?
I don't know how many times he watched it, he was immersed in it for a long time and could not extricate himself, he used the power relationship in his hand, immediately contacted the editor-in-chief of "Heaven and Earth" magazine, and asked her who this person named Zhang Ailing was.
Two months later, Hu Lancheng took a train to Shanghai, went straight to Tiandi Magazine, asked the editor-in-chief for Zhang Ailing's home address, and then decided to visit Zhang Ailing.
A note, the beginning of a bad relationship
February 1944, Shanghai.
Zhang Ailing was writing for the magazine at home, when suddenly, the housekeeper of the apartment sent a note that read:
"Mr. Ailing gave a gift, rushed to visit, did not get permissioned, but also had a silly happy, stay in Shanghai for a few days, hoping to be able to tell"
In Shanghai in the 1930s and 1940s, Zhang Ailing, who had always advocated early fame, was already the most prestigious talented female writer in the literary world at that time, and she was already strange for some readers to send letters. But it was the first time she had seen a reader like this who had come to visit and delivered the letter to her doorstep. Therefore, unconsciously, I looked at the letter: "Hu Lancheng".
This name is not unfamiliar to Zhang Ailing. Hu Lancheng, the editor of Hong Kong's South China Daily at the time, later published a traitorous editorial during the most difficult period of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, advocating the traitorous theory of "peace is not easy but we must also make peace," thus whitewashing Wang Jingwei's traitorous behavior. Then, he was appreciated by Wang Jingwei's wife, Chen Bijun, and was promoted to editor-in-chief of the South China Daily, officially becoming a cultural traitor who worked for Wang Jingwei.
And the most unbearable marriage in Zhang Ailing's life began with this note sent by Hu Lancheng.
Young Hu Lancheng
Seeing the note sent, 23-year-old Zhang Ailing didn't even think about it, and decided to go to see Hu Lancheng.
So, how could Zhang Ailing, who has always been arrogant and cold, go to the invitation of a man who has never met so easily?
In fact, the arrogance and high coldness were only the appearance that Zhang Ailing passed to the readers through her novels at that time. At that time, Zhang Ailing was still very young, and had been living a reclusive life, writing at home most of the time, and occasionally going to a magazine to deliver manuscripts. At this time, she did not know the stakes represented by the word "traitor". So, she dialed the contact information left by Hu Lancheng on the note, and a generation of talented women and a traitorous literati had their first intersection.
The two agreed to meet Hu Lancheng the next day at his apartment in the Beautiful Garden on Shanghai's Daxi Road.
Web pictures
A large web of elaborately woven "love"
February 4, 1944, Shanghai, Merry Park Apartment.
Before officially meeting Zhang Ailing, Hu Lancheng paced around the house, looking a little nervous. Through the recent period of intensive understanding of Zhang Ailing's works. He believes that Zhang Ailing can write all the love of men and women in the novel, love and hatred, she must be an intellectual woman whose emotional experience is almost the same as her own, as a prodigal son who has been crawling in the pile of women for many years, he knows that if he wants to take down a female writer like Zhang Ailing who is well versed in the world, it is certainly not feasible to use sweet words and sugar-coated shells like other women.
At this time, Zhang Ailing was also worried at home. From the age of 13 to 17 years old, Zhang Ailing spent all her time at the St. Mary's Girls' School in Shanghai, and at the age when the love sinus first opened, she was surrounded by the same flower season girls as her, so she could only write the emotions in her heart into the novel through words.
After graduating from high school, 19-year-old Zhang Ailing went to the University of Hong Kong to study, living a simple life of reading, writing and sleeping every day, and her emotional experience was blank. On the afternoon of the same day, in order to make herself look more mature and stable, Zhang Ailing rummaged through the boxes and cabinets and found an otter fur coat that had not been worn for a long time.
Later, in Hu Lancheng's autobiography, he recalled the scene when he first met Zhang Ailing:
"Her clothes are very incompatible with people, like a little girl in the family who secretly wears her mother's clothes and high heels, she is more like a seventeen or eighteen-year-old child, like a little girl on the way home from school, someone calls her, she ignores it, just thinking about her own little thoughts." 」
Zhang Ailing, 24 years old in a fur coat, is a high school student in Hu Lancheng's view. Obviously, for Hu Lancheng, a veteran of the love scene, Zhang Ailing at this time is a blank piece of paper in front of him.
A rash inquiry opened the heart of the ignorant girl
Hu Lancheng asked, "How much do you have now earned from a month's writing fee?" ”
The first time we met, I asked people about the income of girls, if you put it now, it is estimated that you will directly issue a good person card. However, for Zhang Ailing, it is a special kind of care.
Why is it that asking so rashly is interpreted by Zhang Ailing? Zhang Ailing was born in a prominent family, her grandfather was Zhang Peilun, a famous minister at the end of the Qing Dynasty, who was the right and left arm of the Guangxu Emperor, her grandmother Li Ju was the daughter of Li Hongzhang, a major minister in the late Qing Dynasty, and Zhang Ailing's mother, Huang Yifan, was also a famous and talented woman.
Zhang Peilun
However, Zhang Ailing has an extremely unreliable father, Zhang Zhiyi. Relying on the family property accumulated by his ancestors, this unreliable father is proficient in various bad habits, and his life is to smoke cigarettes and crazy kilns all day long, and even bring the Qinglou women home. As a mother with trendy ideas, Zhang Ailing's mother could not stand it, so when Zhang Ailing was 4 years old, she chose to divorce and then went to the UK to study alone.
Later, Zhang Zhiyi married another tycoon, and the two people were like-minded. Since then, the window of Zhang Ailing's childhood nightmare has also opened.
In an essay by Zhang Ailing, "Fairy Tales", she described her stepmother this way:
"There was a period when she lived under the rule of her stepmother, picking her up and wearing the rest of her clothes, as if she had frostbite all over her body, and winter had passed, but there were still frostbite scars, which was such hatred and shame. Sometimes, when he doesn't agree, he reaches out to fight, and when he resists, he will be beaten by his father, and the blue moonlight scattered on the floor slab always reveals a quiet killing machine."
On her 17th birthday, Zhang Ailing spent time in the house arrest room where her father was locked up, and this year happened to be the Battle of Songhu in Shanghai, and the Japanese army bombed Shanghai, and the 17-year-old Zhang Ailing had a thought in her heart: "If a bomb can fall from the sky, the whole family will rush to Huangquan together." ”
Therefore, the idiot men and women in the novel are more from a large number of books read by Zhang Ailing, as well as observations of people and things around her, not their own personal experience, and what is hidden under the arrogant and cold appearance is actually a heart that lacks love.
And Hu Lancheng's sentence "How much do you pay in a month" made Zhang Ailing feel the care of life from a mature man that she had not had for more than twenty years, and also opened up her long-frozen inner world.
In the evening, Hu Lancheng sent Zhang Ailing home, and the two walked shoulder to shoulder on the road, Hu Lancheng smiled and said, "You are so tall, how can this be?" ”
Hearing this, Zhang Ailing's heart was like a deer thumping, and the implication of this sentence was "I like you". However, as Hu Lan, who has been groping in the pile of women for decades, does not express it so directly, that is, it conveys the feeling of admiration and takes into account the conservatism of a young girl, and the measure here can be described as exquisite.
In the face of such a slightly frivolous confession, Zhang Ailing, a talented woman in the literary world, was actually gagged for a while, and she was sorry one after another. Hu Lancheng understood that Zhang Ailing was already his person.
Humble to the bone of the end of love
In this way, Zhang Ailing fell in love with a person for the first time. Zhang Ailing, 24, fell into the big net that Hu Liancheng had carefully woven for her. He liked everything about Hu Lancheng, eyes, nose, mouth, eyebrows, and even just hearing Hu Lancheng's name, it was so happy and beautiful.
For this love, she regarded it as important as life, and she put her position very low, behind a photo she gave to Hu Lancheng, and wrote: "When I saw him, she became very low and very low, low to the dust, but her heart was joyful, and flowers blossomed from the dust." ”
Six months after the two met, Hu Lancheng divorced his third wife and instead married Zhang Ailing. However, due to their status as traitors, the two did not hold a public wedding, but only wrote a marriage certificate by hand. The content is: "Hu Lancheng and Zhang Ailing signed a lifelong marriage, may the years be quiet and good, and the present world be stable." ”
The prodigal son's nature is exposed
Autumn, 1944, Wuhan.
The two were married less than two months ago, Hu Lancheng, who was fighting for the Japanese, left Shanghai, and it was not long before he fell madly in love with the 17-year-old nurse of Wuhan Hanyang Hospital, and in a letter to Zhang Ailing, he also told Zhang Ailing that he wanted to take the little nurse as a concubine. After seeing the letter, Zhang Ailing chose to forgive, and for her "true destiny", Zhang Ailing had no other choice. However, soon Hu Lancheng proved with practical actions that whether it was Zhang Ailing or the little nurse, he would not be his last woman.
On August 15, 1945, Japan announced its surrender. Hu Lancheng knew that his end would also come. So, he separated from the little nurse he had known for 9 months, and when he broke up, he promised that he would come to pick her up one day.
However, when Hu Lancheng fled to Wenzhou, Zhejiang, he turned around and left the Hai Oath Mountain Alliance with the little nurse, and then quickly fell in love with the little mother of the rural classmate, that is, the "female guest" who Zhang Ailing drew a sketch for her at the beginning of the article. However, he wrote to Zhang Ailing to tell her that this was to disguise his identity during the escape. Later, Hu Lancheng wrote in a letter to Zhang Ailing: "Whenever I use others, it is always a fake drama that comes true, and I have to return her two loves for one love." ”
At this time, Zhang Ailing was even selling jewelry in the seller, sending living expenses to Hu Lancheng on the way to escape.
The sorrow of the chaotic world turned into a pool of mosquito blood
In February 1946, Zhang Ailing bought a ferry ticket to Wenzhou after selling the last gold in her home. She had planned to go this time to make Hu Lancheng change his mind and continue to live with herself.
However, what appeared in front of her was Hu Lancheng and the little widow who was often with her. Zhang Ailing blamed her husband for the first time and asked him to choose between the little widow, the little nurse and her.
Hu Lancheng said: "I treat you, there is no comparison between heaven and earth, if you have to choose, won't you be wronged, and you have also wronged her?" ”
Zhang Ailing said: "When I got married, you promised me stability in this world, did you ever give me stability?" ”
Hu Lancheng was vague, saying only one sentence: "Alas, this world is desolate!" ”
At this time, Zhang Ailing understood that for Hu Lancheng, who sold his soul as a traitor at a critical moment in the country, and betrayed his feelings to deceive women on the way to escape, it was only a fantasy to turn back.
After 20 days in Wenzhou, Zhang Ailing chose to leave by boat. On that day, it was raining lightly on the river, Zhang Ailing looked at the gushing river and cried loudly, after returning to Shanghai, Zhang Ailing wrote two film scripts "No Love" and "Long Live the Wife", and then sent the 300,000 yuan of the two scripts together with the divorce and breakup letter to Hu Lancheng.
Since then, Hu Lancheng has completely disappeared into Zhang Ailing's life, only as a scar in her heart that will never heal. That year, Zhang Ailing was 27 years old and Hu Lancheng was 41 years old.
On September 1, 1995, 75-year-old Zhang Ailing slept forever in her Los Angeles apartment. This day is a Chinese family reunion festival, the Mid-Autumn Festival, but There is no one around Zhang Ailing.
summary:
In Zhang Ailing's short story "Red Rose and White Rose", there is such a classic famous sentence: "Maybe every man has had two women like this, married a red rose, over time, the red changed a touch of mosquito blood on the wall, the white is still the bright moonlight in front of the window, married to the white rose, the white is a rice sticky sticky on the clothes, the red is the cinnabar mole on the heart." ”
Some people say that Zhang Ailing saw through men and would write such a harsh thinking. However, this is not Zhang Ailing's true inner portrayal of her love pain.
Although she often tells her readers that no matter when and where, there is always someone waiting for you in the world. However, in the end, she can only say to herself: "Love, just don't ask if it is worth it" to talk about comfort.
(End)