"It's true."
In the midst of thousands of people, in the endless wilderness of time, there is no step earlier, no step later, just caught up, then there is no other word to say, but to ask softly: "Oh, are you here too?" ”
This literary and artistic discourse comes from Zhang Ailing's essay "Love". Just three hundred words of articles, written a person's long life -
A woman who was abducted and then resold, walked through the mountains and rivers, and went through countless storms. When Shaohua dies, she will still think back to the love of her youth.
The twists and turns of love have not yet begun, and they have ended. The life of singing and sighing makes people feel like a novel and a drama when they read it. However, this is a real story.
So, she wants to emphasize at the beginning of the article: "This is true. ”
The reason why it is true is because Zhang Ailing heard this story from Hu Lancheng. The woman who was abducted was Hu Lancheng's righteous mother.
At that time, the two were in love, and as soon as they had free time, they would get tired of getting together, chatting about Chinese and foreign literature, reading Western picture albums, Japanese prints, Korean porcelain, and ancient Indian murals.
When he met Zhang Ailing, Hu Lancheng felt like a piano with a broken tone, and obtained a tuning column.
They also talk about private conversations and each other's past. Hu Lancheng later said in the book that during those years, the two of them were together and could not finish talking.
Many years later, Zhang Ailing's dust settled in the United States, and Hu Lancheng drifted into exile in Japan. They are both old, looking back at the years in the text. He detailed this true story in the book.
If the two essays are compared to painting, Zhang Ailing's essay seems to be freehand, concise and subtle; Hu Lancheng's memories are craftsmanship and exquisitely crafted.
The same story, under different brushstrokes, produces a different texture, but contains the same situation:
What is missed is called love, and what is experienced is life.
Love that you miss after meeting
"There is a girl from a well-off family in a village, born beautiful..." In Zhang Ailing's pen, the story begins like this.
In Hu Lancheng's memory, the heroine of the story has simply raced through a treasure scroll.
This woman, her husband's family name is Yu, and everyone calls her Spring Girl. Regarding the life of the spring girl, she herself told the righteous son Hu Lancheng.
Her original home, in Tangqi, Hangzhou, her father was worshipped in the pawn, which was equivalent to the outside of the opera.
Maybe she was spoiled since childhood, maybe by nature, she was very delicate. When she was a child, the pawn guys held her and played, and she had to ride on her shoulders. The adults discouraged the girls from doing this, she didn't care, she wanted to ride.
There was an older brother above, smart and clever, who learned to vote as a teenager. There is also a younger brother below, who also looks like a pink mess.
In the old society, there were many men and women, and the old lady of this family loved her daughter the most. Summer nights are cool, and my mother also has to cover her with a curtain, afraid that the moon will tan her skin.
In a human relationship, she went to the banquet with her sisters, dressed in a hundred embroidered skirts, with gold branches and emeralds on her head, dressed in flowers and branches. During the Lantern Festival, she invited her friends to see the lanterns, laughing and talking, and everyone sat around to admire the lanterns, eat tea, and eat melon seeds.
Tangqi is a beautiful land, and every time she goes out at a festival, she becomes a scenery in the landscape. The family is well-off, the good looking, the person who comes to the media breaks the threshold.
At the age of twenty-two, she met the unforgettable love of this life, which was also a turning point that changed her life's destiny.
One day, she went to dry her hand towels in the trees in the back garden. The spring light was as promised, and my mind was shaking, so I strolled to the river to see the apricot blossoms.
"Not a step earlier, not a step later, just in time," the teenager was there, as if waiting for her. She knew that he was a relative of the neighbor's family, and she was also a matchmaker.
Perhaps because of shyness, perhaps out of reticence, she did not even respond to the simple greeting of the other party. However, my heart was both surprised and happy, and I also felt grateful. Because of meeting him, she clearly realized that she was a daughter.
Speechless at the moment, he turned and fled back. But I don't know that this turn is an eternal stumbling. It was the first and last time they had met.
Some encounters are only temporary, but missed are a lifetime.
It's like a lyric: Some people, once missed, are not there.
A life of being abducted and resold
Sima Qian said: "The world is bustling, all for the benefit of the world, the world is bustling, all is for the benefit." ”
Some people can disregard the morality of family affection for the sake of financial gain, innocent people, so they will be planted in the hands of their own people.
In April of that year, the apricot blossoms fell and the apricots were ripe. The uncle of the spring girl came and said that he had taken her niece to live in his house for a while and embroidered with his cousins.
I don't know whether it was the gambling loss and debt, or other reasons, he did not bring the spring girl to his home, but sold it to a rich family in Shaoxing City as a concubine.
Chun Girl rarely goes out on weekdays, she does not know the sophistication of people's feelings, people's hearts are unpredictable, probably did not dream that she was abducted and sold, and the person who sold her was her uncle.
On her wedding night, she cried in the cave. In that case, it may be like a line - you shout, shout through the throat and no one hears. In a hurry, she slapped the rich young master.
This slap ended the forced marriage.
Later, Chun Girl was resold to a man surnamed Zhang in Shangyu, Zhejiang. Mr. Zhang's family is well-off, Sven, good at silk and bamboo, very elegant and elegant, and mainly cherishes her.
Unfortunately, within three years, Mr. Zhang died of illness. After that, she was resold to the Yu family.
The Yu family made a fortune in the salt and firewood business and was very famous in the local area. The man surnamed Yu belonged to the children of a peasant family and had a local atmosphere. When the spring girl first saw him, she thought he was a butcher in the pork business, and she also sighed that a flower had fallen into the dirt.
Although he lacks some of the fun and romance of life, Mr. Yu is a kind person and relies on the spring girl for everything. Although he is unwilling, he has already calculated a good home in comparison.
A woman with a troubled fate finally settled in the ordinary family after wandering and turning. This kind of encounter, which fell into Hu Lancheng's eyes and the end of the pen, was:
"From then on, no matter how flashy she was, her whole life was only that of a righteous father."
This reminds me of a sentence of similar meaning in "Dream of the Red Chamber": "Even if it is a case of Raising Eyebrows, it is difficult to reconcile in the end." ”
Whether it is fiction or reality, the short is life, and the long is the tribulation.
In a life full of tribulations, what is lost is love, and what is desolate is life.
Became Hu Lancheng's righteous mother
Until he was in his fifties, Mr. Yu did not have a son and a half daughter, so he recognized Hu Lancheng as his son.
The teenage Hu Lancheng met the righteous mother Chun Girl: "Born with hanging eyes, water snake waist, like the Dan character of the Beijing opera picking jade bracelet." ”
In his impression, the righteous mother is not only beautiful, but also competitive in doing things, just like Wang Xifeng in "Dream of the Red Chamber".
The first time Hu Lancheng went, she was spinning and weaving in front of the church, wearing light filial piety.
He knelt down, saluted, called out to his mother, and she laughed and picked it up, and then hurried to the room to take out the silver collar, and put it on his neck.
Such a move, in the young Hu Lancheng's heart branded a word: fierce.
He was later able to go to Hangzhou to study, all thanks to the Yu family's financial support. When I went home on vacation, I lived in Yu's house most of the time and followed my mother.
She embroidered flowers under the eaves, went to the grain field to dry the grain, and delivered food to the field, and Hu Lancheng was willing to follow behind. She made him a pen bag of red peach and green leaves, told him the story of the han men who did not forget to fulfill their filial piety, and she always wanted to dress him up as a reading official in the play.
Among them, the mind and intention, Hu Lancheng naturally understood. It's just that he has his own ideas and pursuits, and he doesn't want to be the golden partridge embroidered by others.
When the righteous father died of illness, the righteous mother was busy fighting with the nephew who coveted the inheritance while taking care of the funeral. In and out, falling in hu Lancheng's eyes, the righteous mother is a strong woman.
After finishing the work, Hu Lancheng was ready to return to school, she gave a tuition fee, made some instructions, and every sentence was a true truth.
Later, Chun Girl not only appeared bitter and hard to Hu Lancheng and his wife, but even abused her own children, a bit like Zhang Ailing's Cao Qiqiao.
In her old age, she is more aggressive and fierce. Others may not understand why.
Most of her life has passed, and she finally found her mother's home. There is no joy brought by the reunion, but it is the desolation of loneliness - her parents are still alive, some of the brothers are deceased, the family road is down, but she is asked to help.
The mother's family went to yu's house to walk around, and they had to accept her smiling face. The more they accepted, the angrier she became and the less good she looked.
Hu Lancheng said: "She felt that her life was really wronged, a hundred times more wronged than before she thought." ”
What did you think before?
After reading this story, I remembered a sentence in "Grass in Vain": "The human heart is a flower that does not wait for the wind to blow and falls." ”
A person's fate, like the wind blowing flowers and thanks, zero falls into the book text, whether it is three words or two words or a series of articles, is an abbreviation of real life, bitter and bitter, paper short and long.
Even if you live a very wronged life, have a lot of resentment, even if you trek through the mountains and waters, you can never go back, if you can have a love, even if it is a short and thin love, it is enough to make people miss it, like a piece of sugar hidden in their hearts.
In real life, I once heard a female elder imagine in her memories - if she had not rejected that person at the beginning, she might have married him, and her life would have been as bad as it is now...
I listened silently, not refuting, but thinking in my heart that it might really be smoother than it is now, and it may be more annoying than it is now. Life is a tree full of possibilities, who is right?
What has not been obtained is always the best, and the human heart has always been like this.
Now, I am gradually able to empathize with the reverie of the better. I have suffered too much in life, suffered a lot of sins, experienced life, missed love. Since it is just a fantasy, why don't you want to be better?
Between encounters and misses, it is also a kind of bitter pleasure to have an empty and hazy sweet past.
In the story, the spring girl who often talks about spring nights, peach trees and young people after she is old is like this.
Author | Jiang Xu, a post-80s woman, cooked characters to cure hunger and borrowed a pen to draw a heart
Pictures | Network (if there is infringement, please contact to delete)