Poster for the movie "Requiem", based on Zhou Daxin's novel "Requiem"
The film of the same name, based on Mao Dun Literature Award winner Zhou Daxin's work "Requiem", is about to be released. Zhou Daxin has been named "Honorary Writer of "Contemporary", and his novel "Requiem" was first published in the 4th issue of "Contemporary" in 2012, and was awarded the favorite work of readers in the "Contemporary" Literary Rally and the top five works of the "Contemporary" Long Story Forum in 2012. The famous literary critic Hu Ping once said: "Among the writers we respect, I am afraid that only two have lit themselves, using life as a torch to illuminate the two worlds of life and death that we are aware of, one is Shi Tiesheng and the other is Zhou Daxin." ”
The work also won the third People's Literature Novel Biennial Award, with the award speech evaluation: "This is a novel full of sorrow. It is uniquely formatted, with a father-son dialogue between heaven and earth throughout the beginning and the end, and the narrative is absolutely poignant and moving. The novel is an important apocalyptic record of contemporary people facing life and death, which allows it to step out of the narrow personal vision and infuse special warmth into the depths of the reader's soul with incomparable openness. In the history of Chinese novels since modern times, "Requiem" should still be the first novel with outstanding temperament. ”
Cover of issue 4, 2012
Requiem (excerpt)
Zhou Daxin
Not yet
Ning Er, Dad couldn't have imagined that from August 3, 2008, he would never see you again.
August 3rd is the darkest day in our family.
From this day on, you are completely separated from us. Mom and Dad can no longer see you playing on the basketball court in a vest, you can no longer see you surfing the Internet in front of the computer in a sweater, you can no longer see you frolicking in the snow in a down jacket, you can no longer see you reading on the bed with your bare arms...
We're really not in the same world as you anymore!
August 3rd is the day when my heart aches and your mom's heart and lungs.
From this day on, we will never hear your voice again. Never hear you shouting at the kitchen door again: Dad, let's eat! I can't hear you complaining to me in the study anymore: Dad is stupid and can only type on the computer. I can no longer hear the jokes you often make with us: Dad, Mom, support me with some money...
August 3rd is the most desperate day for me and your mom.
From this day on, we can no longer smell the sweat on your body, the fragrance that comes from your face wash with facial cleanser, or the body odor that is unique to you. Never again rubbing your hair, never touching your shoulders again, never patting your back again. You can no longer be expected to help us move sofas, buy rice, move flower pots, carry suitcases...
The river of life and death has separated us forever.
Why would Heaven want to drag a 29-year-old life away?
We didn't do anything that deserved to be punished.
Why give us such a return?!
This is counterintuitive!
It's not fair!
Dad, calm down and accept the facts. I have left the world, I will never be able to return to you and my mother, and the facts cannot be changed. You have to make yourself accept this result as quickly as possible, and your mind must adapt to the reality that I am no longer there. You and your mother should slowly recycle your feelings for me, change your original life expectations, and learn not to count me in when planning your life. You can't always be sad, complaining, and uncomfortable, that won't be good for you and your mother's health. Medicine has found that excessive grief increases the risk of heart disease and myocardial infarction, and you and your mom should be vigilant. Life is a process of dying, and the process of my life is just shorter. Shortening is not necessarily a bad thing, you think, if I live a few more decades, you have tasted the pain of survival pressure, the pain of supporting the family, the pain of life struggle, I will not have to taste them one by one? What's so bad about tasting less of life's pain?
You can think of it this way: The other world also needs young people, and it is a favor of the god of heaven to let my son go early. You might feel better thinking that way. When people face the death of their loved ones, there are few who are uncomfortable, very few who can think through, and many who complain about the Creator, but they all have to calm down in the end. This is because, in the end, everyone admits that the Creator has truly done a fair job in the matter of death, that He does not take bribes from anyone, does not favor any selfish feelings, does not give anyone extra care, does not let anyone's cellular telomeres completely stop shortening, does not spare anyone from death, and everyone ends up in exactly the same way. The difference is only who arrives at the finish line early and who arrives late.
Since we all have to reach the end, it must be better to arrive at the end late than to the end earlier? People of the same generation may arrive earlier than each other and who arrives later, and after a few generations, no one cares whether you arrive early or late. Want to open it, Dad. You said that you are not an ambitious and domineering man, not a man with power and power, not a man with money and grace, but a strong man, you should be strong now and support our family. When I was very young, you taught me the word "goodbye", and now it's time for me to remind you to say goodbye to me, Dad, goodbye, please advise my mother to say goodbye to me too, goodbye, goodbye...
Boy, where is there goodbye? Where can I go and see you again? Back to your hometown in Dengzhou, Henan? Going to nanyang, Xi'an, Zhengzhou where you studied? To Jinan, Shandong Province, where we lived in the military region compound? Or is it just on Beijing's Wanshou Road? It's impossible, Daddy and Mom will never see you, they can't see you! Lü Yan of the Ming Dynasty said: Once a person breathes, there is no reincarnation in eternity; once the form and god are separated, there is no regeneration of me for a thousand years."
We are never saying goodbye!
No one can make us say goodbye...
Dad, don't be so desperate. Despair is usually created by the desperate person himself. I will not meet you in the present world, and even if I go to see you, you will not perceive it. But the space where we meet will not be this one. Hasn't science already discovered that the universe has 11 dimensions? In addition to the time dimension and the three spatial dimensions, there are seven dimensions. I remember a famous theoretical physicist who said that when we create a place that rotates much faster than the speed of light, we can go back in time, and the time tunnel can exist. If such a place is really going to be built in the future, can't we see each other again?
Also, the existence of the Kingdom of Heaven, have you and your mother not both heard that there is a Kingdom of Heaven and the Existence of the Western Heavenly Elysium? The two places of Heaven and The Western Heavenly Elysium are only different in terms of expression, but they actually refer to the same space. When one day you all come to a different space, why can't we meet again? You must firmly believe that I am only temporarily separated from you and your mother, and you imagine my departure as a business trip, a business trip to North America or An African country, and I can't come back for a long time because of the arduous task, and because of the special environment, I can't even call by phone, so that you won't feel bad.
Believe it, we have another day to see each other...
Son, I often think now, if your grandparents didn't give birth to me, how good it would be, they didn't give birth to me, I didn't become a human being, I didn't come to the world, there was no me in this world, I wouldn't have consciousness, I wouldn't have loved, I wouldn't have married your mother, I wouldn't have given birth to you, I wouldn't have lost you, I wouldn't have experienced the pain of losing my son! Who knows what the pain of losing a son is like? It wasn't just a heartache, it was an indescribable pain, an unbearable pain of emptiness, and it was all stirring up the internal organs!
If anyone could tell me in advance that one of the costs of my coming to earth was the pain of losing my son, I would surely tell him: Spare me, I don't want to come to the world! I don't want to!
I didn't choose to come into this world, but I had to exist here, and I had to suffer so much.
Dad, in fact, if you think about it, Heaven is not thin for us, he has given us a lot of happiness. When I was a child, you let me ride on your neck and run around the house, how happy our father and son laughed; during the Spring Festival, our family of three returned to my grandparents, set off firecrackers, drank yellow wine, ate dumplings, and the whole room was full of joy; I pitched and scored when I played on the basketball court, and you applauded and cheered for me... The happiness that a person, a father and son and a family can get is probably not a lot, we have already got some, maybe it is time to be satisfied. Some people say that life is the rotation of three states, one will be laughing, one will be crying, and the other will be crying and laughing. We have laughed and cried and laughed, and now it is our turn to cry, what can we do when it is our turn?
Dad, when I was very young, I used to dream of a woman with a white silk scarf standing at the head of my bed, not speaking, not letting me see her face clearly, just waving at me. Because this dream was repeated many times, I remembered it, and I remember talking to you and your mother about it and asking you what it was all about. You laughed and said: People's dreams are strange, they can dream about anything, there is no need to pay attention to it.
When I grow up and dream of her again, I will use Freud's theory of dream interpretation to comfort myself: perhaps in the depths of my subconscious, I hope that a woman will stand at the head of my bed. But I didn't expect that when I was about to leave you for a long time, she would appear again. She stood at the head of my bed, waving at me and motioning for me to go with her. On the way to another world, it was always she who accompanied me, it was she who led me, and when I reached the bank of the Styx, I realized that every departed soul was accompanied by a woman with a white silk scarf, who was the messenger of the God of heaven... Did she patronize my dreams very early on, does it mean that when I was very young, my name had been circled, and the god of heaven sent emissaries to follow me, trying to take me to another world? I was able to live to be 29 years old, and to postpone the date of my departure to August 3, 2008, was already a victory.
Wouldn't it be better to think that?!
We have to learn to comfort ourselves...
Stills from the Requiem movie
Child, although everyone's death begins to accompany him from the day of birth, but in most cases, the god of heaven should send messengers in chronological order to lead people, the older go first, and the younger go later. So I never imagined that the first death I would experience in my life would be your death. I had never seen death before you. When my grandparents, your grandparents, died, I was too young to remember exactly what it was like. Before you left, I rarely thought about death, always thought that death was still a long, far away from me, and occasionally thought of death, but also thought of my own death: how many more years will I live to die? What kind of illness will cause death? Where are the ashes buried after death? And when I think of my own death, I feel that I have a son, and when I die, my son will take care of everything for me. But suddenly, Heaven pushed things that I had never thought of before my eyes, turning things upside down, and letting me, who should have died first, face your death. Why reverse the order? God, Allah, Christ, Grandmaster, Buddha, God, Creator, God of heaven, you always have to give a reason, right?
Give a reason!
Dad, we can't all find reasons for what happens in the world. In Tangshan on July 28, 1976 and Wenchuan on May 12, 2008, so many thousand people suddenly lost their lives in the earthquake, what is the reason? What is the reason for the sudden death of so many people along the coast of Indonesia and Japan in the tsunami? Why take so many lives at once? How many of them are infants and elementary school students, who have just come into this world and have not yet had time to do anything, why have they suddenly taken their lives? Why did they suffer such retribution? Does it make sense? Is there a reason? The only answer that can comfort the living is that Heaven needs them, and the other world needs them.
There are many, many things that happen suddenly, accidentally, and unexpectedly in this world, otherwise, who would still believe in the gods and religions? Who would maintain a reverence for the Creator? Human death, most of the time, occurs suddenly, and it is this suddenness that makes us believe that people have a destiny, and makes us have a sense of fear of the uncertainty of fate. You are a writer of literature, you know that fear is important to human beings, and if human beings do not know fear, there will certainly be very terrible consequences. Well, Dad, don't ask me why I'm leaving, no one will answer you. You should tell yourself that my son is gone for a reason, and one of the reasons is that he is young, and the other world needs young souls to do things...
Stills from the movie "Requiem"
Gunshen
Son, considering that after you fell ill by reading the Heart Sutra to resist the disease, and you have formed a fate with the Buddhist family, after you left, I discussed with your mother and went to Fengtai to invite an old grandmother who took refuge in Buddhism and worked as a layman at home to recite the sutra for you. When she came, she sat on the couch where you used to sit in our house, looking out the window at the sky, first silently reciting the scriptures, and then humming in a low voice:
Let go of all your gains,
Take back all your expectations,
Forget all your losses,
Put aside all your unhappiness.
Remember to love your loved ones,
Grateful to the neighbors who helped you,
To your friends,
Kneel down to nurture your land.
Rest in peace, throw away the reluctance,
Rest in peace, throw away the unwilling,
Rest in peace, and dissolve the dissatisfaction,
Rest in peace and erase the uneasiness.
…………
Boy, did you hear me? If you hear it, do as the grandmother sang, and go away and rest in peace...
Ning Er, you are coming hard and in a hurry! When you came to report for work in the early morning of November 4, 1979, you encountered a bad luck.
At that time, the Central Plains of China was already early winter. It was overcast and windy that day, a little cold.
It was a little inappropriate for me and your mom to choose this month to let you land, but we didn't understand it at the time. Those days didn't teach us anything about fertility, we didn't know anything about eugenics, we didn't know how to design the month of your birth, and whoever dared to talk about and pay attention to the details of fertility at that time was a "shameless hooligan."
You arrive at the dock of the world in the Central Plains of Nanyang. In a small delivery room at Nanyang Hospital, your mother began to cry out in pain – we had a difficult delivery.
It's okay, you finally opened your eyes and saw the scenery of the world. According to your grandmother, you were crying fiercely, longer than any other child, and your voice was loud.
Dad didn't meet you when you had a hard time ashore. At that time, I was sitting impatiently on the train returning home from Jinan, Shandong. Because I only took half a month's leave, I did not dare to leave the army early, and I had to return to the army early if I left the team early. I counted the day I got home to send your mother to the hospital to give birth to you, but I didn't expect the boat carrying you to arrive early. I remember the train I took arrived at Namyang Station at four o'clock in the morning. I got out of the car and hired a personal tricycle to rush home, and when I arrived at home, there was no one to answer, and I felt a pang in my heart, and I estimated that your mother had gone to the hospital.
It was still dark, the wind was blowing tightly, and the neighbors had not yet gotten up, but fortunately, one of the nannies had just gotten up to cook, so I hurriedly put my luggage to her and hurried to the city hospital. By the time I found the delivery room, it was already dark. I saw your mother lying on a bed in the middle of a three-person room, and your grandmother was in front of the bed asking her to drink something. I knew that I had already given birth, and I walked over excitedly, just wanted to ask whether it was a son or a girlfriend, your grandmother had already opened her mouth and said happily: it is a fat boy, more than eight pounds, born an hour ago...
At that time, the hospital rule was that the baby was not placed next to the mother, and the nurse would carry it when the feeding time came. I took your mother's hand and guiltily explained the reason for the lateness of the return. Your mother smiled bitterly, didn't say anything, and didn't complain about me. A few days later I learned, because of my late return, your mother is the person in the unit to help send to the hospital, your size is big, you encountered great difficulties, gave birth for a long time can not give birth, your grandmother in accordance with the rural mother encountered this situation, let your mother eat five or six boiled eggs in a row to increase strength, did not expect your mother can not stand this supplement, all of a sudden vomiting, vomiting empty stomach, no strength. This makes you encounter greater difficulties, no way, the doctor is using forceps to pinch your head and pull it out. Perhaps, it was this pull that injured your head? Laid the first curse for later diseases? I heard that the doctor may have been a little worried about hurting you at that time, and also gave you antibiotics. How did we understand the consequences of these dispositions then? Why didn't I take time off early to go home? If I had arrived home early, I would have personally sent your mother to the hospital, and in the event of a difficult birth I might have asked for a caesarean section and would no longer insist on natural delivery, so that I would not use forceps on you!
I regret it so much!
1979 was an eventful year. At the beginning of the year, the Chinese army fought back in self-defense on the southern border and fought a war with another country, and tens of thousands of our soldiers died. In the middle of the year, intellectuals quarreled over whether to reform. At the end of the year, the economic situation did not improve greatly, and the people still had to rely on food stamps, oil tickets, egg tickets and cloth tickets for food and cloth. It is really not right for you to live in this year. Looking back on it today, if you were two years late, it would have been better to be born in the early eighties instead of the late seventies, and the years, months, and hours of people's births could affect people's fate!
The first time I saw you was morning feeding time. The nurse brought you over, and I saw that you were still sleeping with your eyes closed, not small, and your face was quite large. When your mother took you into her arms, you woke up and you instinctively searched for nipples with your mouth. I watched you feed silently, and my heart was filled with joy: I have a son! The three women in that delivery room were all sons, and my biggest fear at the time was that the nurses would confuse the three of you babies and treat you like someone else's son. Therefore, I also asked the nurse, and when I asked her if she had made a mistake, the nurse smiled and replied to me: Rest assured, you, we have tied a number plate to each child, it can't be wrong!
I picked you up for the first time after feeding that day, I don't hold the baby, I almost hold you with both hands. Looking at your delicate face, I feel that life is really magical, and suddenly it comes from nothing. Looking at you, I have an inexplicable sense of solidity and happiness in my heart, and I have offspring! At the same time, I felt that the responsibility on my shoulders was much heavier, and I had to earn more money to raise my son.
From the morning of the same day, I began to go to the market in Dongguan to buy crucian carp, and came back to ask your grandmother to give your mother a fish stew soup to drink, so that I could give you milk to eat. At that time, the free market quietly recovered, there were not many fish sold in the market, and I might not be able to buy crucian carp when I went late, so I went early every day. What makes me ashamed is that my salary at that time was too small, I didn't dare to buy more every time, and I was barely enough for your mother to eat a day, I was really sorry for your mother and you, I should have bought more every day at that time, so that your mother could eat better, raise you stronger, and make your body resistant to the invasion of disease.
During the few days when you and your mother were still in the hospital, in addition to buying fish and vegetables to bring soup and food to your mother, I nervously cleaned up the house and bed and cleaned up to welcome you home.
That year, our family had only one room and a small stove house at the door, and after taking you two home from the hospital, I had to sleep on the floor. I am also happy to sleep on the floor, because with you, I have the motivation to endure hardships. Soon after you came home, you always cried when you slept until midnight. Your mother and I have not been able to figure out the reason, until a long time later, we understand that your mother's milk belongs to clear water milk, on the surface you eat a lot of milk every day, but you are not hungry, you cry at night is actually because you are hungry. We didn't understand it at that time, we didn't know to add some milk powder to you, causing you to suffer losses when you needed nutrition the most, perhaps, this is also one of the root causes of your future illness? If you keep your body strong and your immunity strengthened at that time, there will probably be no problems in the future? Why didn't I ask for advice or read books at that time? I'm so stupid!
The half-month holiday was over quickly, and I had to go back to the army. Your mother wanted me to send a telegram to the leaders of the troops to extend the holiday, but at that time the troops repeatedly advocated sacrificing personal interests in management, not to mention that I was young at that time and wanted to do a career, afraid that extending the holiday would make people say that my personal interests were paramount, provoke the leaders to be unhappy, and affect future progress and promotion, so I did not want to extend it. Only promised your mother to postpone the return to the team for one day and buy everything she needed at home. I got on a borrowed tricycle and went to the coal yard to buy two cars of briquettes, went to buy noodles and vegetables and crucian carp, and then went to the train station. I originally estimated that the problem of postponing the return of the team by one day was not big, and the leaders could be lenient, but I did not expect that after returning to the military district organs, I was ordered to do an inspection because of this.
Only a few months later did I learn that you were sick shortly after I returned to the team, and that it was lao Li, a neighbor in the same building, who took you two to the hospital by tricycle at night. Thinking about it today, I should have extended my half-month vacation and waited for you to grow up until the full moon. I'm stupid and don't understand how important the first month of life is to a baby. Most likely, my non-renewal of leave is also a cause of your later illness...
Zhou Daxin, born in 1952 in Dengzhou, Henan, joined the army in 1970 and began publishing works in 1979. He has published 10 novels such as "Out of the Basin" and 12 volumes, 33 novellas such as "Upward Steps", more than 70 short stories such as "Han Family Girl", as well as essays, scripts and other works. He has won the National Outstanding Short Story Award, the People's Literature Award, the Mao Dun Literature Award, the Chinese Government Publishing Award, and the First Prize of the People's Liberation Army New Works. Some of his works have been translated into English, French, German, Spanish, Arabic, Greek, Japanese, Swedish, Turkish, Vietnamese and other languages. He now lives in Beijing and is engaged in creative work.
WeChat Editor of this issue: Meng Xiaoshu
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