Life is a reality made up of countless camel thorns
——Commenting on Pattigul's novel "The Fork in the Road of Fate"
Dundees
If life is a vast sea, then there must be countless camel thorns, and each thorn will pierce a memory, or joy, or pain. These are pointy, but camels love to eat. The camel is a traveler, often hungry and thirsty, walking as far away as the skyline. The Gobi, the desert, there is no other food, only camel thorns. The camel loves the thorns of the camel as much as he loves his life. Every writer is a camel, storing its thorns in a full hump, carrying sharp pain. They are thirsty, sensitive, and have long legs.
From Xinjiang to Yuyao and then to Zhongshan, Pattiguli has walked a long way, but has never walked out of Daliangpo. Daliangpo will not get lost, but life will get lost, in the labyrinth of fate, Patiguli has asked for the answer to life many times, but no one answers. Reality stands there like a mystery, the mysterious roads separate and intersect, and at the fork in the road of fate, you can hear the clear crash of two hearts, and a long sigh.
Compared with her previous works, she highlights the confusion of individual fate and dilutes the background of the times and the national background. Her language becomes refined, poetic, and has a long aftertaste. The rescue of memory and the excavation of individual fate constitute the main body of the novel, and the troubles of survival and growth are a theme that she repeatedly pursues.
Although a large part of the novel is written about the love triangle between Ellie and Maizi and Wheat Straw, this is not a romance novel, love is just a few camel thorns of fate, and Pattigul describes all the "camel thorns" in life, which grow on the desert of life, tenacious and abrupt, and seem to hide the ultimate answer to the mystery of life.
1. The thorn of fairness. At the beginning of the novel, my grandmother's house has everything, and Eli's family has nothing. The father felt the pettiness of the mother-in-law, and Eli felt the inequality in the world. There are countless forks in the road of life, and most people's choices are related to unfairness. Animals can also feel unfairness, and the primate experiments of Sara Brosnan and Frans de Waal show that even a monkey can be angry when it is treated unequally. "I won't marry a boy in the village" and "I sleep on a single wooden bed" are all childhood memories about unfairness, and this emotion directly affected Yili's love choices in her youth. Yili is in love with Maizi and Wheat Straw, on the one hand, it is innocent love, and on the other hand, it is a subconscious yearning for a more superior life on the farm. Human genes are naturally profit-oriented, moving from disadvantage to advantage, which is also one of the cornerstones of civilization progress. At the end of the novel, Eli tries to complete a betrayal in Three Alleys to avenge the injustice more than thirty years ago, but this is in vain, because Maizi has long since let go of that relationship in favor of younger women. Ellie's emotional world is empty, as if declaring that life is empty after all. The pursuit of material fairness may be achievable, but the pursuit of emotional fairness is like a bamboo basket of water, and emotion is something that cannot be quantified. And the fullness of life comes precisely from emotion, not material things that can make up for it.
2. Accidental thorns. My father ran from southern Xinjiang to northern Xinjiang, and my grandmother's family ran from Gansu to northern Xinjiang, and they all settled in Shawan. A famine brings together two people who would never have met, and fate is full of serendipity. "Bitter Beans" escaped the marriage of two bowls of millet, but did not escape the marriage of a cotton jacket, in that poor era, marriage misfortune seems to have become a high probability event, but where misfortune occurs is still full of chance. Yili originally loved wheat straw, but unfortunately missed it several times with wheat straw, met Maizi by accident, and dedicated her first kiss to him, and this accident affected her life. If she had encountered wheat instead of straw in the first place, it might have been a different fate. At least Ellie wouldn't be so weak in the face of her father's intervention. No one knows what would have happened the other way, and life is uncertain. As Wittgenstein said, the past and the present are closed, while the future is open. Fate is made up of countless accidents and inevitabilities, and even if we go back in time, we can't let fate go the way we set, because there will always be new contingencies to break the established plan, which is the mystery of life. It's as if we belong to ourselves and not to ourselves. We exist in the world, but we are also outsiders, and life is an elusive mystery to individual life. Yili didn't expect that her father would die shortly after she married Tadao against her will. If she fights for a while, the obstacles disappear. However, Mai Straw's weakness was also a catalyst for the tragedy of her marriage, and instead of choosing to fight with Ellie, he blamed Ellie for not keeping her promise and turned to find another girl. The loss of her mother "Bitter Bean" made Yili and Maozi achieve another marriage, and the friendship between Maozi and Maizi made Yili feel the pain she was sandwiched between wheat and wheat straw.
3. The thorn of impulse. Yili had an ignorant love at Lan Ping's house, and she had a heartbeat for the shy and withdrawn teenager Wheat Straw. After going to college, Eli receives a letter from Mai Straw and learns that Mai Straw has also fallen in love with her when they first met her in life. So, she impulsively went to find the wheat straw. Unexpectedly, she missed it several times, and when she came to Mai Straw's house, she spent a few days with Maizi, and Yili fell in love with Maizi impulsively. Yili's established love partner is wheat straw, and although there is no face-to-face in-depth communication, the goodwill of her youth has always been cherished in her heart. Wheat straw is a love symbol to some extent, a fantasy body, and Yili's beautiful imagination of love is pinned on him. But life is judged by intuition and impulse, and after a few days of exposure to Maizi, Ellie's intuition tells her that Maizi is the one who makes her feel more. Life, as a body of consciousness, relies on intuition and impulse to complete the meaning of life, and this meaning is unquantifiable. If people live only by reason, make plans, and follow the steps, such a life is like an electrochemical machine, and there is no joy in life. Only impulses can bring a steady stream of freshness to life, but impulses are a double-edged sword, which can cut to pleasure or pain. In Pattigul's novels, impulses create more forks in the road, making reality more complex and uncertain. For Wheat and Straw, the voice of reason tells Eli that she belongs to Straw or she will hurt him. An intuitive and impulsive voice told her that she belonged to the wheat, and that the love would be more intense and deeper. Sandwiched between wheat and straw, Eli faces an ethical dilemma in which she is unable to make a choice. Even if she is married, she must spend her whole life keeping her and Maizi's secret from Wheat Straw. This impulsive punishment has been carried by Ellie for the rest of her life.
Fourth, the thorn of authoritarianism. In the novel, the father's whip is a symbol of authority or masculinity, and the father always uses the whip to assert his authority. After Xiao Yili came into contact with the hazy sexual topic, she asked her father, "The girl and the baby, why do there sprouts in the belly?" The father thought that little Ellie was learning badly and did not hesitate to pick up the whip. Ellie, who was in high school, was whipped by her father for buying more things and talking back to her father. Although his father loves Yili and is reluctant to be ruthless, he must use the whip to maintain his authority. After Eli and Mai Straw were found kissing by their father, their father slapped Eli hard. Her father was in control, and Yili's marriage had to be decided by him, she couldn't marry someone on the farm, and the person he chose for Yili was the county's agricultural machinery cadre. When Tian Fu learned that Yi Li did not want to marry him, his father slapped Yi Li again. "Before this fire, my father slapped me to separate me from the wheat straw. Now, my father ordered me to marry Tian Fu with a slap. In order to make the marriage an established fact, his father even instigated Tian Fu to rape Yili in the middle of the night and let the raw rice be cooked into mature rice. The father, as a master, stubbornly believes that only the path he chooses for his daughter can make her happy. At the fork in the road of fate, he did not give his daughter the right to choose, and in the father's "code", obedience is more important than happiness. He chose Tianfu not only to safeguard his dignity, but also to safeguard his interests. Therefore, the figure of the father is a contradictory existence in Pattiguli's pen, benevolent and irritable coexist, which not only makes Eli grateful, but also makes Eli hold grudges. The father never considered that his daughter's marriage to Tian Fu was a twisted melon, he only knew that the rebellion against his daughter must be resorted to thunderous means. Tian Fu is his father's "isomer" and has the same violent temper. When drunk, Tian Fu would grab Eli's hair and slam it against the wall, causing Eli to suffer a concussion. The first time he took over Ellie, he deliberately made a loud noise, an authoritarian demonstration, like a male animal using urine to claim his territory. The authoritarian consciousness of men constituted the shadow of Elly's psyche, which accompanied her throughout her life. Women are usually weak in life, and the survival plight of the weak is one of the themes that Patigul presents. The struggle against her father ended in failure, the struggle against Tian Fu ended in escape, and at the end of the novel, Yi Li just wanted to take revenge on Tian Fu with a cheating behavior in "Three Alleys", which is a soft resistance, but it is also one of the few ways for the weak to resist.
5. The thorn of betrayal. "The Fork in the Road of Fate" contains two kinds of betrayal, one is the betrayal of marriage and the other is the betrayal of love. Father, Tian Fu, and Tie Dan belong to the former, and the common denominator of their marriages is that they have no love. The father marries the mother only out of sexual needs, he needs a body to soothe the lonely body and reproduce, the marriage between the father and the mother is formal, they share the responsibility of family life, and there is no lubricant of love. The father betrayed his mother and had an affair with the "fake aunt", and the angry mother took her anger out on the child and almost burned Erie's sister Ina. The father's infidelity caused the mother's illness to worsen, so much so that she later went missing. Tian Fu had an affair with other women before he got engaged to Yili, and he was full of domineering desire for Yili and had no sincere love, and Yili never loved him from beginning to end. Tian Fu's domestic violence against Yi Li led to the breakdown of the marriage, and Yi Li left him and married far away from the south. The relationship between Tie Dan and Lan Ping is a complicated one, Lan Ping has had an affair with him, but only her ex-husband Long Hai really loves her. And Tie Dan, like his father and Tian Fu, is a patriarch, with an arrogant side and a flowery side. Tiedan's derailment caused damage to Lan Ping, making her like a dead tree for the rest of her life.
Maizi's situation is more complicated, he has three kinds of betrayal, one is the betrayal of Xingzi, he loves Xingzi first, and after meeting Yili, he pursued Yili without Xingzi, and at that time he and Xingzi were already engaged, and Xingzi's identity was his fiancée. The second is the betrayal of his younger brother, when he first met Yili, he knew that Yili was his younger brother Mai Straw's girlfriend, but he still ignored his brother's feelings, kept pestering Yili, and even took away her first kiss. The third is the betrayal of Yili, he did not give up Xingzi while pursuing Yili, so Yili became his plaything. Many years later, when he met Yili again, he only verbally expressed his feelings for Yili, but in fact he was more interested in the young Xiuxiu. It's hard to say whether Maizi has ever had a sincere love for Ellie, and emotionally, he can't help but seem cynical. He is selfish compared to his younger brother Wheat Straw, although Wheat Straw has the mechanical sense of a "science and engineering man", but Wheat Straw is a responsible person.
Mai Straw's love for Erie is sincere, but at the same time he is also a defender, and his understanding of love emphasizes exclusivity and responsibility, and he writes love letters like love essays. Wheat straw lacks sensibility, and his understanding of the world is rational. After learning that Eli was going to be engaged to Tamao, he did not hesitate to draw a line with Eli on the principle of exclusivity, never considering whether Eli was forced, whether he should do something about it, and whether or not to save Eli from an unhappy marriage. He threw all the responsibility for the struggle on Ellie alone, and did not fight for Ellie's father. With a sense of responsibility to his fiancée Jinzi, Wheat Straw avoids suspicion of Yili who has fallen into misfortune everywhere, of course, this is a rational attitude towards the world, but it inevitably seems indifferent. After learning that Yili and Tian Fu divorced, she actually gave Yili a "homemade simulated sexual device", as if what Yili lacked was sexual needs, not love. Therefore, even if Mai Straw can marry Yili, what he can give Yili is not the kind of love that Yili longs for, but a sense of responsibility. So, after meeting Maizi, Eli betrays Mai Straw emotionally.
Yili has only loved Maizi alone in her life, and the meaning of her life is based on a sincere love, although she has a peaceful and stable life after meeting Maozi, she has never experienced the kind of vigorous love she wants. And her love with Maizi is like an idealistic picture, built on an imaginary cloud, and once it falls to the ground, it is shattered in an instant.
Pattigul expresses a sense of brokenness at the end of the novel, and Eli becomes a sacrifice of love. The marriage that his father had built for Eli was shattered by a domestic violence by Tian Fu with his death. The mother's endless sorrow was shattered in the suffering and loss. Lan Ping was in a loveless marriage, and her thirst for life was shattered. Wheat straw is also broken in the transmutation of love. With the passage of time, the wheat gradually peeled off its original appearance and shattered. Eli's illusions about love have also been shattered as she grows older.
The collapse of the ideal world has made life a void, "My memory betrayed me, and my life was empty." Time, the witch, is viciously waiting for me to discover this for myself. Eventually, Ellie discovers that she is only living in her memories, and that her memories are not necessarily equated with those of the real world. That ignorant, youthful, and innocent youth may be another thing in the memory of wheat and wheat straw.
Looking back on her life, Eli found that she had just had a dream, "Maizi seems to be a person in my dreams, I dreamed of him when I was young, and then I took the dream as real." In the face of the vast time, my memories are like dreams of my previous life, like withered grass under the autumn sun, which will eventually return to barrenness. And this dream, isn't it the heart of a girl who pursues beauty? In the collision between the real world and the ideal world, how many dreams will eventually be shattered? Pattigul's lament also reflects the paradox of life in the real world.
These camel thorns in life constitute the thorns of the real world, and when a person tries to realize the value of life, he has to be careful in front of these thorns, they are likely to smash the ideal world to pieces, and eventually only a piece of nothingness remains. It's like "The white land is really clean" in "Dream of Red Mansions", or "The Milky Way seems to pour down on his heart with a bang" in "Snow Country". ”
While writing about the breakdown of love, Pattigul is also exploring the ultimate meaning of life, and her life has a unique inner world, and there is a degree of isolation between this world and the real world. Although all human beings live in the same world, each person has his own little world, and in the mind, this small world may float above the real world. But in reality, it is at the bottom of the real world, and it needs to pass through countless camel thorns in order to get the peace and clarity of life, happiness and satisfaction.
For individual life, there will always be a clear answer to the material needs, and the needs of the spiritual world are often inexplicable. Perhaps, we all need to sort out our memories like Ellie in order to see life more clearly. The little me hidden deep in my soul, and even the self-deceived by memory, is the most authentic, transparent, and sincere me. Only by finding this "me" can we calmly let go of those camel thorns and find a channel for the soul to go up.
Dundees, writer and critic. Director of the Founding Department of the Periodical Alliance of the Hebei Federation of Literary and Art Circles, and Executive Editor-in-Chief of the Second Half of the "Little Novel Monthly".
Patigul, born in 1965, female, Uyghur nationality. A native of Shawan, Xinjiang. He is a member of the Chinese Writers Association and a student of the 32nd Advanced Research Class of Lu Xun Academy of Literature. He has published a collection of essays "The Hidden Hometown", "The Lost Mother", "The Weight of Missing", "The Life of an Imitator", "The Secret Land of the Village", "The Land of Love", and the novel "A Hundred Years of Blood", which won the "Nomination Award of the 6th China Outstanding Publication Award", "The 3rd Recommendation of 100 Excellent National Books to the Whole Country" and "Beijing Excellent Book Award". The novel "Keka's Love" won the "Beijing Excellent Novel". The essay "The Weight of Thoughts" won the first prize in the National Essay Competition. The essay "The Life of an Imitator" won the 2012 National Literature Award, the Best Chinese Prose Award, and the Presence Prose Award. The essay "The Tongue Contested by Language" won the 2014 People's Literature Award.