Foreign Miniature Romance Novel: The Return of the Prodigal Son

The prodigal son returns

[Beauty] Peter Hamill

Translated by Tang Ruoshui

There were six of them: three young men and three girls, and they were leaving for a vacation in a small coastal town in Florida. Their paper bags contained sandwiches and liquor and hitched a ride on Thirty-Fourth Street. The cold spring of New York City faded behind them, and now they longed for golden sand and billowing tides.

As they passed through New Jersey, they noticed a man in the car motionless as if he had been held down by the "Fixation Method." His name was Wen Ge—he was sitting in front of these young men, his face like a mask, making it impossible to guess his true age. He was dressed in a simple brown dress that didn't fit, his fingers were smoked yellow, and his mouth was always chewing on something, and he sat there without a word.

Late at night, the car pulled up to the door of a restaurant named Howard Johnson, and everyone except Wenger got out of the car. The young men began to wonder—they wondered who he was: maybe a captain? Maybe it was a woman who abandoned his wife and slipped out? Of course, it is also possible to return home from the army.

When they got back to the car, a girl sat down next to him and talked to him.

"Let's go to Florida," said the girl in a loud voice, "and you'll go there too, right?" ”

"I don't know," Wenger said.

"I've never been to that place," she said, "and it's said to be beautiful there?" ”

"It was beautiful." He whispered, the expression on his face making it seem as if something he had been trying to forget had struck him.

"Have you lived there?"

"I was in the Navy at Jacobsonville."

"Want to drink?" she asked. He smiled and took a sip from the bottle. After thanking her, he didn't say a word again. After a while, Wen Ge fell asleep, so she went back to her companion.

The next morning, when they woke up sleepy-eyed, they found the car parked in front of another Howard Johnson Hotel, this time Wengar got out of the car and went into the restaurant. The girl repeatedly invited him to dine with them. The young man was excitedly discussing how to camp on the beach, but he seemed to shrink back. He only ordered a cup of black coffee, nervously smoked a cigarette, and returned to the car, where the girl was sitting on the edge of Wen Ge again. After a while, he began to tell her painfully and slowly about his life. He's been in jail in New York for four years, and now he's going home.

"Do you have a wife?"

"I don't know."

"How could you not know?" She was taken aback.

"Oh, how can I tell you?" I wrote to my wife in prison and said to her: Martha, if you can't wait for me, I understand you. I said I would be away from home for a long time. If she couldn't stand it, if the children often asked her why she didn't have a father—that would have stung her heart—then she could forget about me and find another husband. Really, she was a good woman, and I told her she didn't have to write back to me, she didn't have to write anything back, and she didn't write me back. For three and a half years, I haven't heard anything from me. ”

"Now you're on your way home—don't you know?"

"That's the case," he said with embarrassment, "last week, when I knew I was going to be released early, I wrote to her: If she had remarried, I could forgive her, but if she was still alone, if she hadn't abandoned me, she should have let me know." We have been living in the town of Brownswick, just one stop before The Village of Jaxon. As soon as you enter the town, you can see a large oak tree. I told her that if she wanted me to go home, she could hang a yellow handkerchief on the tree, and when I saw it, I would get out of the car and go home. If she doesn't want me to go back, then she can forget about it, and if she doesn't see the yellow handkerchief, I will run on my own way—the road ahead is still long. ”

"Oh, that's the way it is!" The girl was very surprised, so she told her friends about it. Wenger showed them pictures of his wife and three children. It was only twenty miles from the town of Brownswick, and the young man hurried to his seat by the window on the right, waiting for the big oak tree to come into view. Wen Ge was timid, and he did not dare to look out the window again. He re-established a wooden face, as if trying to get himself to hold his head high in another disappointment. It was only ten miles, five miles away, and the car was quiet.

Suddenly, there was a thunderclap on a sunny day - the youths all stood up at once and burst into cheers! One by one, they were ecstatic and dancing.

Only Wen Ge was overwhelmed and dumbfounded. The oak tree was covered with yellow handkerchiefs, twenty, thirty, perhaps hundreds—as if in the breeze a flag welcoming him was waving. Amid the shouts of the young man, the old prisoner slowly got up from his seat and walked toward the car door, where he took the step of going home, his waist straight.

Martha, the wife of the prodigal son, does not really appear in the work, but uses the method of side description to write her. But through between the lines, an honorable image of a woman has leapt onto the page.

Martha is a woman who endures humiliation and bears a heavy burden and has a noble heart. Her husband served four years in prison, and she did not divorce him, but waited in silence with her generous and kind heart. When the prodigal son Wen Ge was released from prison early and returned to his hometown, he was greeted by a yellow handkerchief symbolizing love.

The novel fully affirms Martha's behavior and praises her beautiful heart. The plot of the work is not complicated, but it can be fascinating.

At the beginning of the work, there is a suspense, a motionless WenGe, a strange look, who is this person, and where is he going? This not only arouses the suspicion of the characters in the work, but also leads the reader into doubt.

When people understand his origin and whereabouts, suspense rises again, what awaits him? What will be his fate? It is through the author's ingenious design that the plot is pushed to a climax by wave, which greatly enhances the artistic effect of the work.

The novel is written plainly, naturally and smoothly, and while writing the central characters, the six enthusiastic and friendly young people also left a deep impression on the reader.