In a novel by Zhang Ailing, people who once loved each other are reunited in the depths of red dust, standing on the other side of time and looking back at the past.
The woman's sigh, these years, I went forward, and I encountered anything. Male taunts, you meet nothing more than men.
The woman was not angry, nor did she deny it, but added: But later, there is always something else besides men...
This plot makes me inexplicably think of Xiao Hong, who is also listed as one of the "Four Talented Women of the Republic of China" with Zhang Ailing.
A person, a pen, wandering all the way, all the way to meet, is her wandering life.
Different journeys, different encounters, different twists and turns, she always pursues love and freedom.
Shadows look forward to, come and go, on the train of life, everyone meets and says goodbye. Xiao Hong encountered all passers-by, and did not return to anyone.
Her fate is like the heart of another wandering female writer:
If the mind has no place to dwell, it wanders everywhere.
Childhood and exodus
Life, ten years of great luck.
Before the age of ten, Xiao Hong had not seen the cruelty of life.
She spent most of her childhood in the back garden, hanging out with cucumbers and eggplants, playing with flowers and bees, and frolicking with her grandfather, who "often laughed like a child."
At the age of nine, her mother died of illness, which became the first emotional fragment of Xiao Hong's life.
After graduating from primary school, Xiao Hong wanted to continue her studies, but her father would not allow it. In desperation, she threatened to become a nun, and her face-loving father could only compromise and send her to Harbin First Girls' Middle School.
While in middle school, my grandfather died. Grandfather let Xiao Hong know that in addition to coldness and hatred, there is warmth and love in life. She therefore regarded these two things as a permanent pursuit.
Twenty years old is a watershed moment in Xiao Hong's life. That year, she left her desolate home, as she wrote later in an article:
"When I was twenty years old, I ran away from my father's family. Until now, I have lived a wandering life. ”
In order to resist her father's marriage contract, Xiao Hong, with the encouragement of her cousin Lu Zhenshun, went from Harbin to Beijing.
The two have known each other since childhood, which can be described as a green plum bamboo horse. In the season of the beginning of the love sinus, coupled with the spirit of youth, Lu Zhenshun, with a spirit of self-sacrifice, dropped out of harbin and went to Beijing to settle down first, so that Xiao Hong could defect to him.
A pair of newborn calves, in the city of the newcomer, live together and grow together. They soon met new friends, exchanged ideals, imagined the future, and talked and laughed in the simple house of the dark alley.
Xiao Hong naively believes that as long as there are like-minded partners, there is no end to the road. She longed for the peach blossom source thousands of miles away, but ignored the dilemma in front of her.
Xiao Hong's "retrograde" caused the family to cut off financial support, and Lu Zhenshun soon received an "ultimatum" from his family. But she didn't want to give up, struggled to survive by selling old books, ate and drank, had no money to buy a tram ticket, and walked a long way to school every day.
Laughter sometimes, sloppiness and loneliness sometimes. Looking back on these years, Xiao Hong wrote:
The hut was lonely, and I read the Psalms and spent the Mid-Autumn Festival by myself. I thought about it, and I didn't want to think about it anymore, looking at the cold walls on all sides, looking at the sky outside the window.
An emotion, without a firm will, without enough money, it is difficult to maintain with a lonely courage, even if it is a green plum bamboo horse.
Under the pressure of his family, Lu Zhenshun chose to surrender. At the beginning, it was he who supported Xiao Hong's escape, and in the end, it was he who first submitted to the family.
I don't know if Xiao Hong secretly regrets it: why do you trust men so easily?
From south to north, a short dream.
Cohabitation and abandonment
Xiao Hong's escape ruined his reputation and his family. As a "sinner" of the family, she was transferred to a remote tunzi.
Some birds are willing to be imprisoned in cages for ready-made food; some birds prefer to fly freely. Xiao Hong, a bird born in the sky, avoided the surveillance gaze and eventually waited for an opportunity to escape.
The price was paid for it – living on the streets, starving, blowing cold.
She did not want to turn to relatives and friends, preferring to go back with a strange wife and spend the cold winter night with broken cotton wool.
Just when the mountains and rivers were doubtful and there was no way out, the rich young master who had been betrothed to her and dissolved the marriage contract, Wang Enjia, appeared again.
Like Xiao Hong, Wang Enjia was born in a landlord family in the northeast, his father had status, his family was wealthy, and he himself was a well-mannered primary school teacher. If Xiao Hong is a well-behaved woman who obeys her words, the two are in the right place.
She could run away from marriage in order to rebel against her father's tyranny, or she could back down in order to gain an autonomous life.
Perhaps, in order to get the opportunity to study in Beijing, or perhaps, the care of men out of lust tends to make women in distress feel loved.
As a new woman in the Republic of China period, Xiao Hong longs for freedom and pursues independence, but she is like a blooming Lingxiao flower, climbing the trunk of a tree that can be reached.
Hungry and cold, she moved in with an awkward man, her ex-fiancé.
With financial support, Xiao Hong's body is renewed - leather coat, mink collar, she took brandy and horseshoe lotus, to Beijing to visit old friends, very fancy.
However, the matter of reading did not come true as desired, and she and Wang Enjia returned to the northeast.
Outside Harbin Road, there is a Dongxing Hotel, where the two live. At first, there may have been a deep love and honey, he also gave her a mountain alliance and sea oath, and after more than half a year, he began to get tired.
Wang Enjia left the hotel on the pretext of returning home to get the money, and The Yellow Crane never returned.
What did this man who did not believe what was left for Xiao Hong?
More than 600 yuan of accommodation arrears, as well as the fetus in Xiao Hong's belly.
She originally thought that she had an emotional reliance on the road and regained the opportunity to study in Beijing.
In the end, it is the unladylike encounters that make themselves even more embarrassing.
Naïve, she believed in the wrong person again.
Love and betrayal
The acquaintance of Xiao Hong and Xiao Jun is dramatic.
When she was in debt and pregnant with Liujia, he appeared—
Xiao Hong wrote a letter to the International Association For Social Cooperation, and Xiao Jun was entrusted by the editor-in-chief to send her a few books.
In the musty attic, he saw Xiao Hong with a big belly and a shawl, saw her poems and paintings, and listened to her tell about the past and the present.
Regarding how he felt at that time, Xiao Jun wrote in his memoirs:
At this time, I seemed to feel that the world was changing, the seasons were changing, people were changing, and at that time I thought that my thoughts and feelings were also changing... What appeared in front of me was the most beautiful of the women I have ever known!
When he was leaving, Xiao Jun left the five dimes that were originally used as the fare on the table and walked ten miles back to the residence.
The next day, Xiao Jun came to the hotel again. This time, the two went to love together.
Escaped from the hotel, gave birth to a child of a negative man, and gave it away. Since then, Xiao Hong and Xiao Jun have joined hands to open a new page in their lives.
In the hotel, there are no teacups, drink with hot water from the washbasin, you take a sip, I take a sip. Because of the shyness of the pocket, watching the guy remove the futon sheets, the two laughed and leaned forward and backward.
Xiao Jun made money as a tutor, and the two of them immediately left the restaurant.
Filling her stomach, Xiao Hong bought two more pieces of sugar. Lying on the bed, sucking on the sweetness, the two were childishly more than tongues, and the red candy he ate was the red tongue, and the green candy she ate was the green tongue.
On the days of eating and drinking, they often walked by hugging and kissing on the grass mattress.
The years are like two lyrics: "We can hug and warm, and we can survive by snuggling, even in the ice and snow of the world." ”
In the chaotic world, they traveled to many places together, wandering from Hal to Qingdao, going to Shanghai to meet Mr. Lu Xun together, going to Wuhan to start a journal together, and migrating to Linfen to teach together...
Together for five years, the two lived and died together, shared hardships, and were both lovers and close friends.
In fact, the two did not have a temperament, she was as weak and sensitive as Lin Daiyu, and he liked a lively woman like Shi Xiangyun.
Diet men and women, stumbling. During her trip to Japan, he briefly empathized.
More importantly, the pursuit of life is not the same. He had a vagabond and warrior temperament, always yearning for guerrillas and resistance, and she only wanted a stable desk to write quietly.
Since no one wants to fulfill anyone, they can only go their separate ways and go their separate ways.
He began by saying, "Love is love, and if you don't love, you throw it away." ”
She finally sighed: "I love Xiao Jun, but it is too painful to be his wife!" ”
In the words of their friend Nie Cyan, Erxiao fatally broke up.
Tie the knot and say goodbye forever
Fate wants to trick anyone, and it will make her fall twice in the same place.
When she met Xiao Jun, Xiao Hong was pregnant with Wang Enjia's child, and when she regretted marrying Duanmu Hongliang, she was pregnant with Xiao Jun's child.
Duanmu is weak and bourgeois, and he is willing to express his appreciation for Xiao Hong's works frankly and unreservedly. This sense of identity, she had never received from Xiao Jun.
Children are long and complicated. In short, Xiao Hong's emotional balance tilted in favor of the late Duanmu Hongliang.
In the movie "Golden Age", Xiao Hong muttered to herself at the wedding that she did not have excessive luxury for Duanmu, and only wanted to live a married life of ordinary people.
She hopes that there will be no quarrels, fights, infidelity, and ridicule in her marriage, only understanding, love, and consideration.
Such a simple desire is also difficult to have, because of the times, but also because of the individual.
Duanmu said he wanted to be a war correspondent, so he was ready to go to the front. How disappointed Xiao Hong was when she heard about this plan, he didn't care.
Since then, Xiao Hong has taken a boat alone, crossed the river alone, and prepared to enter the river with a friend alone. As her friend later confided:
I was always walking alone, I used to be in the northeast, when I went to Japan after I arrived in Shanghai, and now I went to Chongqing, I walked alone, as if I was destined to walk alone.
Later, when Japanese planes bombed Wuhan, Duanmu took the only ticket he had as his own, boarded the ship and left with his friends, saying that Xiao Hong was inconvenient, staying and waiting for other ships...
If you love, you would rather give up the opportunity to escape, but also stay with your lover to live and die with your lover, right?
Can abandoning one's lover and fleeing alone count as abandonment?
The unwelcome baby, life and death are a mystery, and the answer is known only to herself.
Later, the war forced them from Chongqing to Hong Kong. Because at that time, someone invited Duanmu to Hong Kong to compile books, and Xiao Hong was also eager to find a stable writing environment in the distance.
In Hong Kong, love is disillusioned, lonely, and illness knocks her down, and the flames of war that make her flee again and again are also chased and invaded.
Xiao Hong suffered from tuberculosis, was misdiagnosed as a laryngeal tumor, and underwent removal surgery in vain, bringing more pain and trouble.
The war outside the window is raging, and the lover inside the window is seriously ill, but Duanmu wants to break through at this time and disappears again and again. This made Luo Binji, who was accompanying the hospital bedside, unable to understand, and he asked Xiao Hong, how can such a person live together for three or four years?
She probably understood that men were unreliable. Discouraged by this, that's why I said:
"If the muscles and bones hurt badly, the skin will become numb with a little blood."
On January 22, 1942, Xiao Hong died in Hong Kong. He died on December 31, 31 years old.
Biography says she died of illness, with the horrors of war. Perhaps the deeper reason is to die from the emotional arrow through the heart.
Before dying, she took out a pen and paper from under her pillow and wrote down her last words: "I will be with the clear water and blue sky forever, leaving the half of the "Red Chamber" for others to write." ”
Rolling red dust, the place that can't be reached is called far away. The mountains are long and the water is wide, and the place that cannot be returned is the hometown.
From another point of view, Xiao Hong was freed from illness and war and returned to the eternal hometown of life, the silence of the sky full of stars.
Author | Jiang Xu, a post-80s woman, cooked characters to cure hunger and borrowed a pen to draw a heart.
Image | "Golden Age" stills, network (if there is infringement, please contact to delete)