Right now, the big ship seems to have run aground. Dawn and sunset still change like grandfather's steps. I dwelt in a region known as the "water's edge" and wrote a book similar to the prophecy of St. John. I want to dedicate it to my former lover. She was too excited at the candlelight party on her thirtieth birthday, suffered from cerebral thrombosis, and unfortunately passed away. I haven't seen her since.
The "water's edge" area, as I described in that book, is sunny and the visibility of the light is very good. Sitting at the window of my apartment, I could clearly see the pebbles of various colors at the bottom of the water in the distance, and the crustacean or moth-like microorganisms crawling on the snow-white spikes. But I can't tell the change of seasons. Every day I find a layer of hoarfrost on the black tiles on the roof of my apartment. The frost turned into water dripping from the eaves as the warm sunlight of the midday sun gradually increased its heat. It has never rained in this area. In addition, in the dark of the night, I can also observe some strange celestial phenomena, such as meteors moving around at a uniform speed, the moon becoming irregular cherry shape, and so on. I figured if it wasn't a memory block, it must have been something wrong with time. Luckily, there are some brown migratory birds flying over the water's edge every day, and I can vaguely guess the timing based on the direction in which these brown birds are flying (to the south or north). Just as I remember a doctor saying that "blood is a sign of injury", I thought that migratory birds were a symbol of the seasons.
I write very slowly. Because I was always worried that the brown flock would never appear again, and I thought that the disappearance of these flocks would take time away with me. My worries and preoccupation often distract me from my writing, and even deprive me of the joy I can get from writing quietly. Later, I wondered if I was hallucinating, and I often heard an empty and faint sound echoing in my ears, I thought it would not be the sound of a migratory bird's long whistle-like wings flapping in the air as it approached, as if it came from a crowded station or a solemn cemetery. The sound sounded like falling snow and sand.
One day, a woman dressed in orange (or brownish-red) came to my apartment at the "water's edge", and she walked very fast along the shallow pebble beach at the "water's edge". I thought of her at first as a passer-by, and when she stomped towards me in front of my apartment, I finally saw her clear face in the midday sun. I think it might be a girl. She was holding a large clip in her arms, much like a painting clip or a mirror or something. It wasn't until later, when she untied the grassy canvas and asked me to look closely at the clip, that I realized that it was really a clip, not a mirror.
I never had any visitors in my apartment. When she saw me, she didn't follow the proper procedure for two strangers to meet, but showed the warmth and intimacy of a wife. She said her name was chess. She showed me her clips and mentioned in passing that it was autumn. The depths of my memory twitched painfully, but it didn't wake me up. I'm happy for autumn. She stood in front of the door of the apartment and talked to me, with two warm bags hanging from her breast, which seemed to be filled with water or lemon juice or other liquid, and these two oval bags through an orange-red (brown-red) sweater made me feel warm. My first encounter with chess made me miss an opportunity to look at the migratory birds, which I thought might have flown away while I was talking to them. When I looked futile over her shoulders and at the blue waterline of the "water's edge" in the distance, she asked: What are you looking at?
Those migratory birds......
She turned and glanced at the pebble beach "by the water", and looked at me with an innocent and sophisticated gaze.
I let the chess into the house, and then we sat down on two low stools and looked at the paintings she had brought. The paintings also depict some women, whose faces and figures resemble those of chess. She sometimes snuggled up to a telephone pole with the endless Gobi Desert in the distance. Sometimes she wears a summer dress lying on her side on the beach: there are some paintings of fallen leaves in the park. She lay prone on her slender legs beside the winding path covered with a thick blanket.
When she showed me the paintings, two warm bags hung on the back of my hand, and these two things that seemed to be leaking made me feel uncomfortable.
Did you draw these? I say.
No, it was painted for me by a boy named Li Pu. Chess said.
Li Pu?
yes, Li Pu.
I shook my head, and I said that not only did I not know any Li Pu, but I couldn't remember who you were for a while. Forgive me for taking the liberty of saying that Li Pu gave you these paintings probably because he wanted to fall in love with you. But. I added that I was not interested in these paintings either.
Wow, Ge Fei-
Qi suddenly sat down and said word by word: Li Pu, you don't know me, you don't know you, don't you even know Li [Jili]?
I was startled, my ash-like string of memories seemed to be glued together by a strange glue, and I was anxiously reminiscing about the past, as if I was staring at a snow-white wall looking for blind spots. I vaguely remember that I met the Li [Jili] that Qi said it was a long time ago, probably in 1987......
How do you know my name, though?
Don't pretend to be garlic, Gefei. It's only been a few years since you've left the city to come to this stinking gutter next to the sawmill, and your mind has collapsed like this, I came to you three months ago, and you promised me your novels, and you promised me other things. Your memories have been ruined by the novel.
After saying these words, Qi sat quietly with his hands down, as if waiting for me to sink into the dream of the past, and as if waiting for me to break free from meditation.
Gradually, the red image in front of me blurred, but immediately it became unusually clear again.
Well, I know you, I say (actually I want to say: I know you, forget it).
Chess looked satisfied, and she suddenly raised her hand and stroked the deepest wrinkles on my face - this was a ritual, a ritual that we already knew, and I don't think it would be a "can't help it". But I immediately smelled the smell of rotten eggs released by the proteins the moment my skin touched. I think the smell is good. Chess looked at me and spread the clip on her knees, and she kept paying attention to my demeanor as she looked at the paintings, and I think she must have wondered if I was looking at them too. She picked out one of those paintings and handed it to me, the one that depicted autumn in the park.
What's on this painting? Chess asked.
A person's back
What else?
Withering
What do fallen leaves symbolize?
A person's back
Qi didn't ask any more, she said that you don't know anything about painting and fell silent. After a while, Qi said:
You don't look like Lee [Jili] at all
Li [吉力]?
He not only knows how to draw, but also how to open sealed cans, how to treat psoriasis, and even - he doesn't know how to give birth
Immortal?
Not being born is a philosophy, chess theory.
I don't understand.
At night, the chess did not leave my apartment. Of course, there is no such thing as a man and a woman at night in a secluded place. She listened quietly to me all night as I told stories, stories about my marriage. I think chess's ingenuity led her to guess that there must be some kind of obstacle in my mind, or what she would rather call repression. Is this something we only find out when we look at the paintings? Throughout the evening she acted as a listening psychoanalyst, perhaps not only out of pity for me, but I seemed to see that we all believed in this maxim:
Memories are power
At night, strange celestial phenomena did not appear. The pebble beach at the "water's edge" turns into an icy pure blue. It's like a blue crystal powder that precipitates after the chemical reaction of several substances in a chemical experiment. The cold light of these agate-like blue stones is very different from the atmosphere of the story.
And then? Chess asked
Later—I tried to tell the story in a plain and truthful tone, because I thought that any addition would undermine its purity.
Later, I stopped next to the old woman who sold wooden combs.
It was April, and spring came late. I saw the snow and mud frozen together, the tall city buildings blocking the cold currents from the south, and the sound of a loud wind. The neon signs of the abandoned shops are covered with cone-shaped ice edges. I was seduced by a beautiful woman at the Penguin Hotel, and before I knew it, I followed her halfway through the city. I think it was common for me to be bewitched by a woman at my age, but I decided to follow her for a while, just because I liked the way she walked. Her chestnut-colored boots are staggered, her knees are slightly bent, her legs are brown, the folds of her brown-brown trousers are grooved, the rounded force moves down from her hips, the folds are restored, and her waist is light red, her pale yellow depression and crotch are acutely angled, her back is garnet-red, the wall is plate-like, and her body is slightly inclined to the left and right, and her body is between dancing and stiffness, and she undulates and bumpers clumsily and elastically.
I thought that such a woman walking in the wind was going to bake by the fire or bathe in the bathtub, and I was about to think about it when she suddenly stopped. I also stopped by the old woman who was selling combs.
Buy a wooden comb?
Then something bizarre happened.
I think the woman stopped on the street for no reason because I had a conjecture in the back of my mind that I thought was lewd at the time—like nakedness or something. But then I thought that the woman had stopped on the sidewalk because something had happened to her, not my mind.
Buy a wooden comb?
I wondered if I should buy a wooden comb, and I had a vague sense that she would soon be back. She did turn around. Her gaze seemed to be on me, and it was as if she was looking elsewhere. I avoided her gaze. I know that telepathy was all the rage in the city, and people could use their minds to drive their fantasy lovers to them after training for three months in a place called a "telepathic center." There are some highly attained psychic masters who can also connect minds with the stars. I realized in my heart a faint sense of fear that only occurs when a criminal picks a lock and steals in the clear moonlight.
I felt her coming towards me again. It was as if the signal of her movements emanated from her before she could act, piercing through the frozen winter air and foretelling me.
Now, she's coming towards me.
I looked at the police officers shivering in the cold wind on the sentry box. The pedestrians walked their own way, not noticing what I was encountering.
What is she doing walking towards me......
She walked in the same posture as I had seen her in her back, her demonic power flowing like a spring from the folds of her pale yellow, dark brown, chestnut tree-colored garment. I waited for her to approach, my mood was not relaxed at all, her legs moved lightly forward, and I suddenly had a feeling as if she was still and I was approaching her.
She stopped in front of me and leaned down towards the ground.
She picked up a shiny boot spike at my feet.
And then - chess asked.
I never saw her again, she picked up the boot spikes, turned away, and disappeared into the crowd.
The chess-like gaze on me made me feel uncomfortable. You have a narcissistic complex. I said probably. Chess was silent for a moment, and continued, as if the matter was not over yet. I said, "What's the matter?"
Your affair with that woman.
I couldn't help but be stunned.
The woman picked up the boot spikes and walked towards a bus stop, she got on a tram bound for the suburbs, you didn't catch the bus, but you called a taxi to follow her to her residence in the suburbs - said nonchalantly.
It was exactly what Qi said it was, but she got one inconsequential detail wrong: I didn't have enough money to call a taxi, so I rented a bicycle and went to the countryside.
But, I say, how do you know it's not over yet?
According to the love formula, chess said.
The love formula?
I don't think it's a corollary of the so-called love formula that Chess is talking about, it's all dependent on my narrative rules. The reason why I am reluctant to tell such a story is because there is an extremely secret corner of my heart, and it makes people feel unhappy to think about it, so I will talk about it below.
When I went to rent a bicycle at the car shop, the sky was already snowing. Snowflakes spread the seeds of a cold snap in the city under the guise of spring. The road leading from the city to the suburbs becomes very narrow in a moment. Gradually, the pavement was exposed under my wheels, which was a mixture of dirt and coal. Pedestrians and vehicles gradually became scarce on the road, and the snowflakes that fell on them quickly accumulated into white patches. Farmhouses on both sides of the road and a stretch of jungle suddenly came into view. The tram in front of me wasn't going fast, and my bike was chasing it at full speed so that it wouldn't disappear from my view.
By the time the tram stopped at the suburban station, it was getting dark. I think it was the howling northwest wind that brought the night forward with heavy snow. When she got out of the car, she walked along a low-lying road towards the flickering and dimly lit cottage in the distance, which showed a dark shadow in the evening snow. The road wasn't very narrow, but the ruts of the wheels and the round holes of the horses' hooves froze in the snow to form deep grooves on which my bicycle wheels often slipped, making the black clatter of fenders and frames. She walked unhurriedly about twenty feet away from me. It was as if we had been walking on the road for a long time, but it was hard for me to see the end of it in the lost snowfields of the suburbs. My bike chain has been shaken off a few times by bumpy roads, but the last time it came off. My hands were numb from the cold. It took me a lot of time to put it back together. This time. When I stepped back into the car, her figure was already blurred in the distance. I pedaled the bike so hard that it stumbled forward like a blind horse.
At this moment, another person on a bicycle appeared in front of me. The man crouched on the cart and looked small, as if he was hurrying forward. On such a silent snowy night, it makes me feel dear to meet it. Its figure arced in a beautiful arc on the pavement. In the dark, it resembles a black butterfly, or a bat
Once again, my wheels slipped to the edge of the road. There seems to be a deep ditch between the road and the fields, and I think it was probably dug by the farmers to provide drainage pipes.
When my bike was wrong with it, I felt the sleeve of my right arm rub against the one on its left, and I felt like I heard the slight sound of a brush rubbing against the down cloth.
The figure of the woman in front of me finally appeared before my eyes again. I couldn't tell her chestnut boots and the ruffles of her pale yellow-dark brown waist and the rhythm of her rounded hips splitting into watercress on a snowy night. She wriggled like a puddle of ink on a beige canvas. I don't know if her house is in the village where the lights flicker I can faintly see, or what kind of strange place I'll be taken to by her. But I seemed to have a sense of foreboding, and the bitter wind of the winter night and the barking of dogs in the distance made my breathing shorter and shorter.
After about twenty minutes or so, she walked onto a narrow wooden bridge. The bridge is not strong on a wide river. When I came to the bridge, I hesitated. Because I didn't see the boot prints on the bridge that she had just walked past. Those semicircular boot prints suddenly disappeared by the river. I think. Perhaps the snow had covered the boot prints – the bridge deck was covered in a thick layer of snow. I had to slow down while pushing my bike.
The dark river flows silently under a lonely wooden bridge. I tried my best to find her shadow on the bridge.
This is a main bridge with a handrail on one side. The iron chains of the handrails are connected to some staggered wooden stakes. Like the wreckage of a ruined fence, the northwest wind constantly blew away the snow on the chains, which made the sound of heavy metal slipping in the wind. I occasionally held on to the chain, for the edge of the unhandrailed side of the bridge was already quietly sewn together with the shadow under the bridge. The night was getting darker. The lights of the cottage that had been attracting me in the distance suddenly went out at some point. As if in a dream, I was sliding down a very high ice slope. I felt as if the woman in the chestnut boots had reached the other side, but I felt as if she was still on the bridge not far in front of me—the night and the wind and snow separated me.
My rubber shoes rubbed against the snow on the wooden bridge, and I was not in the same bad mood as when I first walked on the bridge, perhaps because I was convinced that the other side was not far away, and judging by the slight downward curve of the bridge deck, it was no more than three or four feet away from me. But at that moment, I stopped. Because I couldn't see the gray outline of the bridge facing forward. I had to fumble with the bridge's chains to move forward, but suddenly I felt like the bridge's chains were gone. My head was dizzy. I hesitated for a moment and turned back.
A figure with a lantern approached me. The light was like a fluffy chick in the thick darkness.
As he approached me, I saw that he was carrying a lantern. He was an old man with a gray beard. He stopped in front of me, his long beard covered with glass ballast ice edges.
You can't go forward on this bridge
Why
It was swept away by a flood twenty years ago.
The old man held the lantern in his arms, took out a dry tobacco pipe from his waist, and lit a fire. In the dim light of the lanterns, I saw the snow falling silently. The old man took a few puffs of his cigarette. Point your finger at the river in the distance:
There's a concrete bridge over there.
I glanced at where the old man was pointing, and shivered in the wind.
A woman had just crossed the bridge.
No woman has passed from here.
Who are you?
The old man ignored me, he expertly pinned the pipe to his waist, handed me the lantern, and took the bicycle from me. We started walking back. I think he was probably a bridge watcher.
I stood guard at the head of the bridge, and advised everyone who went up the bridge in the dark, and whoever did not listen, and who did not listen, was destined to go to the river.
But just now a woman had crossed the bridge.
I didn't see any women coming.
We have come to the bridgehead. I handed the lantern to the old man. Snowflakes fall on the glass cover of the lantern and turn into water droplets. The old man said you get in the car, I will hold a lantern to shine on you for a while, and when he spoke, the exhaled air column quickly condensed in the air, like the light of a flashlight. As if I remembered something again, I said to the old man:
Why don't you tear down the bridge?
There will be an even bigger flood.
As I stepped on my bicycle, the old man said to me, "If there is no woman crossing this bridge, you may be dazzled by the snowy night, and the light of the snow will give people the illusion that they will lead people into the abyss."
I said goodbye to the old man, who held a lantern at the head of the bridge and shone on the frozen road. After a while, the light behind me disappeared and I fell back into darkness.
I thought of the woman in the chestnut boots again—I seemed to see her on the wooden bridge. Where is she now? Who is that old man? What kind of bridge is that? Maybe when the weather clears, I'll have to go back to the bridge and have a look. I was thinking about it when the bike started beating violently again. I remember this part of the road. The road surface was pressed into deep grooves by the wheels and horses' hooves, and the wheels kept slipping on the top. I remembered the biker, and the sound of the brush I rubbed against his sleeve on the down cloth ringed in my ears again. The thought of the cyclist who slanted like a butterfly lightened me a little, for I was able to connect myself to reality through it, and I wondered if I had lost my mind and was in what an old man by the bridge called the illusion of a snowy night.
My bike shook even harder, the wheels felt like they had hit a hard object, I almost fell off the bike, and my curiosity and inquisitive mind made me stop and see what it was.
It was a bicycle that was lying crooked on the side of the road.
What I saw next may have already been guessed. She was restless in her chair at my "water's edge" apartment. One moment she picked up her folder, the next she looked at the ceiling, showing extreme displeasure with my story.
It's a very vulgar ending. Chess said.
You find the bicycle on the side of the road, you immediately realize that it was you who knocked her down in a hurry while chasing the woman in chestnut boots, and you start looking around for its figure, and finally you find its corpse in the ditch where the drainage pipe is buried on the side of the road, and its body is frozen and stiff, and its face is covered with snowflakes.
That's right.
I began to fall silent. Chess also held his chin blankly and stared at the blue pebble beach at the "water's edge". It's night now. I felt a slight chill as the cool air from the "water's edge" crept up the ramp of the water in the distance towards the apartment, creeping over the panes and into the room. I let out a long yawn, and in contemplation, my black eyes suddenly rolled towards me, and I said indistinctly: Are you sleepy? I said no. I think it is not appropriate to sit alone in front of a girl at night when it is quiet, and to ask for something like sleeping. I think we've all lost track of time, and maybe we'll be sitting like this until dawn. I'm trying to find some irrelevant topics to lubricate the somewhat awkward atmosphere that is now somewhat awkward. I felt like my brain was an empty vessel stuffed with straw and shaved ash. It was at this time that I thought of the Lee [Jili] that I talked about when I first met him.
How did you meet Lee [Jili]? I say.
A blush slowly appeared on Chess's face. She seemed to be immediately immersed in happy memories. Her damp eyelashes were jagged like a row of reeds covering her black and white eyeballs. She told me in an empty and poetic tone like a wife: she first met the boy named Li Pu.
Who is Li Pu? I asked.
Son of Lee [Jili].
I pondered the impression of this boy who was called "Li Pu" in chess in my memory. I remember in 1987, when I was a guest at Lee [Geely's] country house, we saw a boy snowball on the snow in the back garden through the crystal glass of the living room. I wonder if that little boy playing in the snow could be the Li Pu of chess?
Chess's eyes were still fixed out the window. Her eyes sparkled as if they were about to burst into white or black juice. I think all women sink into the memories and imagination of their lovers, probably with such a pretentious demeanor. For women, life is sometimes just imagination.
I really feel sleepy. I lit a cigarette, but it didn't sober me up. I leaned against the white walls of my apartment and fell asleep. The night at the "water's edge" is very quiet. The breeze gently blows the curtains and the tide flows rhythmically across the pebble beach. In my chaotic and heavy sleep, I seemed to hear Qi calling my name, and her childlike voice seemed to come from a distant place. The sound of her clothes rubbing against her chair. Chess seemed to be in a state of anxiety again, her erratic shadow lingering in front of my eyes. I drifted off to sleep.
A long time has passed. The chess gently pushed me awake.
The woman—
What woman?
The woman in the chestnut tree boots—
How?
Didn't you see her again?
It wasn't dawn yet. Chess stood across from me with fluffy long hair. Some of the sweat was dripping down the ends of her hair. I heard the breathing of the chess strongly. I think she's probably covered in the web of suspense and detail of the story. Her oversensitivity to the story predestined me to talk about the following events. These things have been a long time away from me, but every time I revisit the sun and air from many years ago, I feel as if I can reach out and touch it. I can't help but reminisce. Even on such an ordinary and quiet night, if I don't mention it, the migratory birds at the "water's edge" will reflect their clear shadows. I hesitated a little when it came to deciding how to tell the chess. Because it involves not only myself, but also the book I am writing at the "water's edge", and my wife, who died of a cerebral hemorrhage many years ago.
My reunion with the woman in the chestnut boots was an unexpected coincidence. In the spring of 1992, I went to the suburbs to revise a novel on the part of the Black Duck publishing house. I live in a small white building on the shore of Gesong Lake. This newly built small building is unoccupied, because the water pipes have not yet been installed, the facilities of the rooms are very incomplete, and the garden in front of the building is still deserted. After the completion of the small building, some surplus building timber and reinforced concrete fruit pillars were placed horizontally and vertically around the building, which made people feel a little depressed. Before I came here, several directors and deputy directors of Black Duck held my right hand in a sore and sore way; I'm sorry that the conditions are very poor, and even the toilet that pees has not been shipped yet, so you can do it.
My bedroom had a big balcony facing south. It's early spring, and when the sun is shining on the balcony in the afternoon, I'm smoking there. In the distance, white clouds hung low and thick, silently above the surface of the lake Haohan, the water had become polluted by acid rain and the exhaust fumes and debris excreted by the city, and the primeval forest on the swamp on the edge of the lake was covered with a grayish yellow color. There are several white cranes and herons hovering close to the water. Every evening at dusk, I always saw a few gardeners busy in that garden, pulling out the thorns and weeds that had grown on the wasteland, and planting calendula and irises on it. I sometimes come to the garden and talk to the gardeners. These old men, who were as silent as the land, looked very difficult to answer my question. They weren't as interested in farming and the weather as I was. Whenever I had time, I went to the garden to help them weave bamboo hedges in the flower beds and water the Admiralty and irises. When the garden was full of splendid marigolds and irises, my novel was almost finished, and time passed quietly during my time at the Song Lake, and this zone away from the noise of the city gave me a calm mind and a wonderful feeling, but something that happened soon afterwards left a gloomy and unpleasant memory in my heart.
This afternoon, I went for a walk by the Lake as usual. The withered yellow grass by the lake is sprouting. The freshly turned dirt crawled like waves across the vast fields.
I feel like I've come a long way. I looked back at the sparkling lake, and the small white building built by the water was no longer visible. The warm sunshine was mixed with a hint of the north wind, which made me feel a little cold like the night that had not yet completely faded in the morning. The ground beneath my feet gradually appeared some beige, grayish-white bird droppings. I stopped next to a goat that was drinking water by the lake, because at that moment I heard a very indistinct cry. I looked around for a moment, and there was not a single figure in the wide, high field. I lit a cigarette and walked on, and soon I saw a tall man and a woman rolling together on a slightly sloping slope. They rolled down the hillside, the woman's tea-green turban falling off the slope, her long hair falling loose and covered with grass clippings and dirt.
By the time I rushed to them, the man had already let the woman go. The woman lay prone on the ground, sobbing softly. I walked up to the man and was about to grab him by the collar to ask for an explanation, but he kicked me in the knee first, and I fell to the ground for three minutes. I got up from the ground groggily, and the man had already walked up the slope. Several rows of tooth marks on the woman's face were still oozing blood. She buttoned up her shirt and stumbled to pick up the tea-green turban from me. She smiled apologetically at me:
That's my man.
My skull "popped" as if the joints had been misaligned, and I suddenly realized that she was the same woman I had met at the Penguin Hotel a few years ago, and my eyes were reproducing the action of leaning over and picking up the headscarf, as if it were superimposed on the posture of the boot spikes that I had already frozen on the screen in front of me. This woman felt like she had tried to forget her. Today she suddenly appeared in front of my eyes, and I felt my chest twitch for a while. She looked at me with tears in her eyes, and she seemed to think that I was a little familiar, and her strange eyes revealed doubts and suspicions.
I looked at the man who had gone away, and then at her.
Why were you crying just now? I asked.
He ——, woman a little speechless, and her face flushed.
He just hurt me.
The woman put her headscarf on her head and hurried after her husband. I walked down that slope. I saw the tall man walking hobbly across the field, his legs and feet not looking very nimble. Sure enough, he fell in a shiny ditch in front of him in a moment. The woman ran a few steps forward, then turned back and called out to me from a distance:
He's a cripple—
Lame person? I smiled wryly; He just kicked me hard in the knee.
I played with a nickel coin in my hand and walked back along the edge of the lake. The woman had already run to the man. Their figures grew smaller and smaller before my eyes. Between us, the damp wind blew across the endless fields, and I watched in the direction in which they had disappeared—the dark red light of the sun, which set to the west, illuminated the dense white forests and the white roofs of the cottages. I think they probably live in a village not far from my little white house.
For the next few days, I never saw them again in the fields of this area. Every afternoon, my shadow accompanied me to this slope, far from the White Building, and I waited for the woman to come and plough the fields. The wheat has grown very tall, several heavy rains have poured it, the fields are full of the fragrance of greenery, and swarms of bees have flown in to herald the warmer climate. But the figure of the woman never appeared.
A managing editor at Black Duck came to see me on the shores of the Song Lake, and I told him that I was only halfway done. I don't think I'm going to leave here until I see that woman again.
I gradually felt lonely and bored in the small white building. One day, an old gardener promised to take me to a village near the White House for a drink. We walked one after the other on the narrow ridges. On the way, I asked the old man about the situation in the village, and at the same time I asked him to recall if there was a woman in the village who often wore chestnut boots. The old man said that there were many women in the village, but he did not know what color boots they were wearing.
The hotel is right at the entrance of the village. I inhaled the smell of wine in the evening breeze and walked into the wooden fence of the hotel courtyard gate. Beside the fence, a man with a mud-yellow skirt around his waist was digging out of a vat of sake lees. The walls of the hotel used to be painted with a row of large crimson letters, which had become illegible after years of exposure to the elements. I almost lifted the curtain and walked into the hotel when I saw the lame man sitting in the corner. He seems to be drunk.
The dim lights of the hotel were shrouded in a mist of low-quality tobacco, and the damp floor smelled of rotting mold cakes. I asked for a bottle of Yanghe Daqu and sat down next to the table closest to the wine cabinet. There was no one in the hotel, and the old man who looked like the owner of the shop was napping with two rattling steel balls in his hands.
The lame man was drinking alone in the corner. His back seemed to be a little hunched. The tanned face is carved with the grooves of aging. His beard was curled and stained with drops of wine. His tall body sat steadily, as if he was forever listening, and it was only when he reached out and fumbled for the bottle on the table that I saw his smoky fingers tremble.
When the woman came to the hotel, I didn't notice it at all. When some glassware resembling a wine bottle or glass smashed on the floor, making a loud breaking sound, I saw in a hazy drunkenness that the woman was lifting up the lame man who had collapsed under the table. The lame man staggered to his feet against the edge of the table, leaned his face close to the woman, and spat in her face. The woman was just about to take off her headscarf to wipe away the phlegm when I saw the lame's hand wave in front of her eyes, and the woman fell on the wet floor of the hotel. The woman lay like a puddle of ink on the ground reflecting the dark green light of the hotel. She squirmed her limbs and propped her hands on the ground, her muscles swaying like water in a cup. By this time I had gone up to her, and I took one of her hands and picked her up, and the man had fallen asleep on the table. The slender blood mark on the woman's neck, scratched by her fingers, resembles a beautiful centipede. The woman ran her fingers through the tips of her wet hair, walked over to the table and pulled the man, while her pitiful eyes glanced at me, I walked over and picked the man on my back, and the woman picked up one of the rubber shoes that the cripple had fallen off from the ground, and we walked out of the hotel. The shopkeeper was still playing with two shiny steel balls in his hands, and a thick wisp of saliva hung from the corner of his mouth. We walked to the wooden fence gate in the courtyard, and a dark figure was still digging out the lees in a huge vat. I felt as if time stood still in this hotel.
On the way, the woman did not speak. In the dark of night, a dog barked fiercely at the head of the village.
Her home wasn't as scruffy as I thought it would be. I had been choking on the smell of alcohol from the man on my back on the road, and when I sat down in front of the bright window of her bedroom, the woman had settled her husband in bed. The woman beckoned to me, and we came to a small guest room outside. She made me a cup of tea. I stroked the edge of the teacup and turned it, and the woman sat down across from me, her hands clasped to her chest, staring at the table in a daze. Then I stood up, and the woman followed suit: You have a cup of tea and then go. I said I'd like to take another look in your bedroom. The woman hesitated for a moment, then said, "Okay." We went back to her bedroom. I saw a pair of shiny chestnut-colored boots neatly placed in front of her bed: her chestnut-colored boots were staggered, the knees slightly bent, the brown - brown - the folds of the trousers were grooved and rounded, the rounded force moved down from the hips to restore the folds, the waist was light red - light yellow depression and the knees were sharply angled, the back of the garnet red wall was plated and slightly inclined to the left and right, and the body was between dancing and stiffness, clumsy and elastic undulating and bumping. My eyes flashed a few times as I came out of the bedroom. The woman said did you lose something? I said no. We sat down in the guest room again. I think it's been many years since I met this woman once in a while at the Penguin Hotel, and it is clear that there is no point in rewatering this dead tree of youth in my memory. I looked at the clear eyes of the woman in front of me, and there was a sour salty taste in my mouth. I lit a cigarette and handed her another. She took a heavy breath, the corners of her eyes becoming a little moist. The rising smoke cut and swirled on the fluorescent tubes, which sizzled.
The smell of tobacco made me feel unusually sober in the thick of the alcohol, and my face was a little hot. The woman's posture of smoking was beautiful, and her white hand holding the cigarette was shaking in front of my eyes. We heard the long snoring of the man in the back room.
The first time I saw you was seven or eight years ago. I say.
Seven or eight years ago?
I met you outside the door of the Penguin Hotel.
Penguin Hotel?
Then I followed you out into the street.
What street?
Then you stop in front of an old man who sells wooden combs.
An old man selling wooden combs?
You picked up a boot spike in the street at my feet.
Boot spikes?
You then get on a tram bound for the suburbs.
What did you say?
It was snowing heavily that day, so I rented a bike and chased the tram.
I don't understand.
It's already dark after you get out of the car.
You're drunk.
Then you get on a wooden bridge and disappear.
You're drunk.
You're drunk. The woman said to me gently: "There are no penguin restaurants, no streets, and no old men selling wooden combs in our place." You're drunk, or you're mistaken?
I said I met you in the city.
The woman smiled, she reached out and picked up the teacup in front of me, took a sip of tea, and gently spit out the tea leaves:
I haven't been in town since I was ten years old.
The night was already deep. I stared blankly at the ceiling. The details of that snowy night when I followed the woman to the countryside were once again clearly presented to me, and I looked at the beautiful woman in front of me, she was sincere and calm, and her face showed the shyness peculiar to the simplicity of a country woman. She stood up and filled my teacup with water, then asked me if I was feeling cold and if I wanted to close the window. I said no.
So, I said, do you have a collapsed wooden bridge here?
There is a broken bridge in the direction of the city.
It was washed away by a flood, right?
No, it was someone who stole the wood.
The woman seemed to remember something suddenly, and she told me something like this: One night, when the snow was falling heavily, my man had passed by the wooden bridge when he was returning from drinking in a neighboring village. He walked to the bridge with a lantern, and he saw some rubber shoe prints and bicycle wheel ruts on the wooden bridge. He held up the lantern and shook it towards the bridge, but no one could be seen. He saw that the chain on the side of the bridge was covered with snow, and in some places there were signs of hand scratching. The shoe prints and ruts on the bridge deck had not yet been completely covered by the snow. He thought maybe someone had just crossed the broken bridge with a bicycle. But that day he was so drunk that day, and his legs and feet were not good, so he didn't go up to the bridge to see it. The next day when the snow cleared, people scooped up a bicycle and the body of a young man from the river.
The woman yawned and finished the matter.
I said I should go.
The woman did not squeak. Her silence seemed like a subtle way of trying to keep me, I thought. I sat still.
Where do you live? The woman asked.
I told her about the white building.
The woman seemed to know the building. The woman said that the night was already deep, and that in the spring the wheat and rape had grown taller, and that some wolves were wandering around the wilderness at night, or they would have gone to-morrow morning.
We sat in the guest room until dawn.
The night at the "water's edge" quietly faded. At dawn, I didn't even notice it. Now sunlight shines through the glass windows of the apartment onto the orange-red clothes. In the clear and warm light of the morning, I saw that Qi's face was a little haggard. I asked her if she was hungry? Would you like a cup of coffee? Chess nodded. I got her coffee from the kitchen, and Chess still seemed to be thinking about my story.
You and the woman sat until dawn? Chess asked me with a plastic spoon stirring gently in the cup.
That's right. I say.
Were you a little drunk that day?
Yes.
You didn't touch the woman? Chess smiled mysteriously.
It was a little cold at dawn, and she put her man's coat on me, and I grabbed her hand in the confusion, but she immediately withdrew her hand like some water had run through my fingers.
I'm honest about chess.
I find your story a little special. Chess said.
How?
Your story is always a circle, and while it unfolds the plot, it also means repetition. As long as you're happy, you can go on forever. But go on.
I took a sip of my coffee and continued to describe what happened next.
Late one night, it suddenly began to rain heavily in the area of Geyao Lake, and the rain did not stop until the next morning. I sat on the bed with a thin quilt and smoked. Now the rainy season has arrived. I saw that it was over a green field, and the rain curtain hung like a dense curtain of beads. The strong wind blew the wooden fence gate of the White House with a bang. I listened to the sounds of the heavy rain and fell asleep again. At noon, I heard someone slamming the door downstairs. I think it was probably the gardener in the garden of the White House. But it's raining so hard, what is the gardener doing? The slamming of the door grew louder and louder. I lazily put on my clothes and went downstairs to open the door. I gently flicked the latch of the door, and the wind poured into the house. I've fought several cold wars in a row.
The woman stood in the rain.
Her clothes were soaked with rain. There were constant droplets of shiny water rolling down her long shawl hair. She told me that her man was dead.
I put on a raincoat and followed her out of the white building.
Heavy rain blurred the outlines of the village. We ran on the narrow, muddy ridges towards the shadowy cottages. The woman fell down several times on the road due to her anxiety and panic, which slowed us down. The woman said that her husband had gone to the small hotel again the previous night and had returned in the evening and had fallen beside a manure pit in the village. The next morning, his body was found by two elderly men who were cleaning the gutter drainage. His face was pale with rain, and his ears were filled with dung. I grabbed the woman's hand—her little hands were as cold as an eel, and my thoughts seemed to be disturbed by the rain. There was a blank slate.
When we came to the village, I saw a few middle-aged men walking into the fields with their sleeves and shovels tied with red cloth. The woman sobbed and said softly that they were going to the cemetery to dig a pit.
The woman's yard still looks clear. The heavy rain washed the yellow mud floor hard and flat, and there were some sparse shoe prints on the ground. There was a man who looked like a carpenter, sawing a piece of wood from a blooming hazel bush. There was the sound of coffins tinkling in the room.
The man was lying on a dilapidated door panel. His body had been cleaned up by several elderly women. He wore a stiff squirting uniform, and his bearded face looked clear and rosy. The men who nailed the coffins next to the corpses seemed to be completely immersed in the skillful operation, the hammers pounding on the corroded wooden planks, and the loose sawdust constantly beating as they oscillated. A witch-like woman walked up to the corpse and knelt down on her knees, she raised her hands high, and was about to cry, when she suddenly remembered something, and her gray eyes rolled at me: nails are not enough. I went to the carpenter in the yard and found nails, and the witch looked at me again: to find some more rope, and as soon as I turned around, the witch threw her hands up and slapped them on the ground, and began to weep bitterly.
When I went to the room to look for a rope, the woman followed me closely, her trembling body clinging to me.
As the corpses were in place, the wind, which had been howling all night, suddenly stopped, and the rain was still dripping down. The room was silent, and the woman crouched on the edge of the coffin, staring at her man's body for a long time. Her cries infected the dusty air in the room. The men who nailed the coffin threw the hammer on the ground, patted the dust off their hands, and squatted aside to smoke.
A long time has passed.
The woman's voice was a little hoarse. I saw her weeping, her clear eyes fluttering and looking around, a spider's web hanging under a beam like a chest ring target, and a blue-green spider clinging on a thin silk thread, like the hem of a bell swaying in the breeze. It dawned on me that this woman's grief might be faked. After a few more moments, the carpenter made a gesture at me, and we lifted the lid of the coffin, which resembled the dome of a tunnel, and lightly placed it on the coffin. The witch came and helped the woman away. The moment the coffin was closed—the men with the nails approaching the coffin, ready to nail it to death—I suddenly saw the body in the coffin move. I'm sure I'm not mistaken, if the muscles of the deceased's face twitched or his knees trembled, it was probably due to what is often said to be a nervous reaction. But I did see the corpse raise his right hand and unbutton the collar of his shirt - he might have felt too familiar in his stiff beep uniform.
I didn't squeak.
On the day after the funeral, I didn't leave the woman's house. The woman told me that she was scared when she was alone at night. She asked me to stay with her for at least three days.
On the evening of the third day, the rainy season continued.
The woman sat across from me, her eyes slightly reddened. The lengthy topic between us has been talked about for the first two nights. I feel like time passes quickly in chattering conversations. And in the face of silence, our mental strength seems very fragile, and I am still thinking about the death of that man. His death was somewhat strange, and sometimes I think it might be a conspiracy.
Your man is drunk to death, how did you remember to go to the White House to find me? I say.
I don't know.
He didn't return late at night, why don't you go to the hotel to have a look?
Don't mention it—
The woman smiled at me charmingly. I think she smiled a little hard. But my heart throbbed a little, and she spread her hands flat on the table, and I hesitated for a moment, my palms facing down, gently sliding towards her soft wrists. It is not convenient to describe what we did next, but there are some minor elements that have little to do with that kind of thing itself, which are described below and will be used as the end of this story.
Outside the window, the rain was getting louder and louder. The woman's sighing gaze stared at me for a long time, and as she leaned down to help me untie my shoes, a trail of thunder exploded in the sky. My legs twitched. The woman looked up at me, then lowered her head to untie her shoes. The two of us lay down on the bed, and I felt a little damp from the rainy season. I stumbled upon her frog-skin-cold skin and smelled the mothballs scattered in her hair. I stared blankly at the top of the tent, not moving for a long time.
I listened to the wind and rain outside, holding my breath.
What are you thinking? The woman said.
There seemed to be a strange sound outside.
What was that?
A woman is crying. I say.
It was the sound of the wind slipping through the treetops.
No, it's someone crying.
Where?
Insisato.
The woman and I rolled over and got out of bed. I wrapped myself in a blanket and pushed open the door with my shoes on and went out into the courtyard. Nothing could be seen in the yard. The woman turned on the flashlight. As the pale pillar of light slowly moved, I saw the old chickens, the wooden hazel trees swaying in the wind, and the gutters of the walls and gutters with the black water of the filth.
Probably a cat - the woman said. She pulled me into the house and closed the door.
We lay down on the bed again. The woman reached out and pulled out the light. Soon after, the cry returned, as if it came from a sickbed shrouded in death, and as if it came from a river farther away. The cry was still faint, and I felt that my head was gradually swelling in the sound of this weak beat.
The second time I got out of bed, the woman was lying still.
I opened the door to the courtyard. A dazzling lightning bolt appeared silently in the sky, and the dark green fields and the wide lake in the distance were illuminated by lightning at once.
At the moment of the lightning, I saw a young girl standing in the middle of the courtyard, her naked body clearly reflected in the puddles on the ground. Her baby-like face was covered with tears.
My memories are like a rusty chain, broken like ashes. The moment my memory faded, I was reminded of watching my sister bathe in the tub when I was six years old, and at the same time my ears echoed with the dreamlike night snow, and the faint sound of the down cloth rubbing against the four-grooved frozen road. The rest of the rest is not known. My hand holding on to the door frame slipped limply - I fainted by the door.
When I woke up, the woman was guarding my bedside. Her deep, warm eyes like a mother were watching me. She smoked quietly and smiled at me. I also asked for a cigarette to light up, and the rich smell of smoke slowly calmed me down.
What did you just see-
I told her everything I saw.
You're less daring than me, it's all your hallucination, you're tired. The woman said.
I said that when I was asleep just now, I had a strange dream. What dreams? The woman asked. I dreamed that your body was floating on the river under the broken bridge, and your breasts were covered with grass. Someone at the head of the bridge is singing "Roses, Roses Bloom Everywhere".
The woman smiled wryly.
Shall we get married? I say.
All right.
And then you married that woman? Chess let out a long sigh of relief.
Yes.
It's noon around the water's edge now. The blazing sun turned the brownish-red pebble beach gray after the tide receded. When I asked about my marriage to the woman, I said that she had died on the day of the wedding. The date of the wedding was chosen according to her wishes, and it was her thirtieth birthday. We were drinking wine in the sweet and serene candlelight, when she suddenly said "the lights are out" in a row, and the cerebral hemorrhage blurred her vision, and I watched her ruddy face turn sallow, but I knew that it was irremediable.
Chess got up from her chair in my apartment, she must have known that there was no room for my story to extend anymore. She said it was time for her to go. She also said that this afternoon she was going to "City Park" to attend the unveiling of a large futuristic sculpture. She said that the sculpture was made by Li Pu with some young artists who call themselves the "Huixing Group," and she said that she would come back to her apartment "by the water" to see me sometimes.
When she was parting with me, I felt as strange to her as she was when she came. Holding the canvas-wrapped album, she hurried out of my apartment "by the water" without saying goodbye.
I'm still writing that prophetic book of St. John. The "water's edge" area is as silent as ever. The pebbles of the "water's edge", densely laid diagonally on the shallow sand, look like flesh-red eggs during the day, and turn blue-blue at night. Chess once had ulterior motives to refer to the "water's edge" as a stinking ditch next to a sawmill, and I was once haunted by her words. Once, I walked north for a whole day along the waterline of the withered white thatched ears of the "water's edge", and found nothing to see the woodworks. When it came back to the apartment. It's late at night. In the sky of the black hole, the stars with their shiny tails spinning and the moon in the shape of an irregular cherry appeared. It feels like a long time has passed. Chess never came to the apartment. I sat in my apartment window every day and watched the frost fall from the high edge of the house that night.
I look forward to chess every day.
I don't know how many winters, summers, springs and autumns have passed. One day, I finally saw Chess walking along the shallow pebble beach at the water's edge towards my apartment. She was still dressed in an orange-red (or brownish-red) blouse, her feet making a sound of falling in the rocks, her rising breasts scurrying untamedly. She held the canvas-wrapped canvas folder in her arms, and from a distance, it looked more like a mirror, and I sat in front of the door of my apartment, waiting for the chess to approach me.
Chess walked to the intersection of the door to my apartment and stopped suddenly. She looked at the clear, wide water, and then turned to look at me. I think she was probably motioning for me to come over. I walked over to the chess.
Is there water? Chess said.
She must have been thirsty in the midday sun, so I brought her water. She craned her neck to finish her drink, wiped her lips, and handed me the cup.
Did you show me the painting again? I say.
What?!
She looked at me indifferently as if she hadn't heard me clearly.
That's probably a new painting by Li Pu for you. I say.
What Li Pu? Chess said.
Lee [Jili]'s son——
Qi smiled helplessly, and she said that I didn't know Li Pu or Li [Jili], and no one had ever painted me - who are you?
——, said, didn't you come to my apartment some time ago? You showed me what you said were Li Pu's paintings, and those paintings painted some fallen leaves and telephone poles, and we were telling stories at night, and we stayed up all night—
I struggled to find every detail of that first encounter in my memory. However, Chess stubbornly and politely interrupted me.
My name is not chess, I am a passer-by, it is hot, I ask you for a glass of water, you must be misremembering.
So—I pointed to the picture clip she was holding in her arms.
The girl rested the canvas wrap on her lap and expertly untied the turquoise straps.
It was a shining mirror.
The girl rewrapped the mirror and tucked it in her arms, brushed her long loose hair, waved her hand at me, and turned away.
The girl's figure is far away from me.
Flocks of brown birds flutter their wings and skim the silvery, steely, steel-blue sky of the "water's edge", and whistle like a song on the brown and red sand with no end in sight. These brown migratory birds fly over the "water's edge" apartments every day, but they never stop.
Ge Fei (1964-), male, real name Liu Yong, is a native of Zhenjiang, Jiangsu. In 1981, he was admitted to the Chinese Department of East China Normal University in Shanghai and stayed on to teach after graduation. In 1984, he began to publish works, and wrote the novels "Jiangnan Trilogy" and "Wangchun Breeze", the short stories "Lost Boat", "Encounter" and "Invisibility Cloak", and the monograph "Literary Invitation" and "Snow Hidden Heron" and so on. The novella "Invisibility Clothing" won the 2015 Lu Xun Literature Award and the Lao She Literature Award, and the novel "Jiangnan Trilogy" won the 2016 Mao Dun Literature Award. In 2021, Ge Fei was shortlisted for the National Book Award for Translated Literature with the English version of "Peach Blossom with a Human Face".