Chapter 85 Crescent moon and the glimmer of city lights

After sending "Standing on the Bing-Liu Xinwu's New Novels Collection" to Ma Guoxin, he wrote to me quickly, saying, "First of all, I read the illustrations you drew yourself. Your black and white lines have both the charm of Mr. Feng Zikai and the vigor of Picasso, is it true?" "Hobbies in middle school", these faint six words, lead to many memories of me.Ma Guoxin and I were classmates in Beijing's 65 Middle School for three years. That school was quite unique at the time - it only had a high school but no junior high school. The school building was an office building with two beautiful spaces on the top floor. The gymnasium with wooden floors is about the size of a tennis court; one is a library with a large reading room, and the library in the back has a considerable amount of books.Ma Guoxin and I have the same hobbies, as he said in the above letter: "Thinking about those years, although there were constant political movements outside, there were still many places to be free and easy during the three years of high school, such as going to the Sino-Soviet Friendship Association. Listening to reports, watching movies, reading all the classical novels while standing at the bookstall in Dong’an Market, visiting the exhibition hall of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Xiaoweiying almost every exhibition, and remembering that you and Shi Jieqi participated in the library group and helped sort out the books I read a lot of books along the way..."

Yes, at that time the school set up a variety of extracurricular activity groups. I don’t remember which group Ma Guoxin signed up for. When he read classical novels, he would go to the front of the bookstall in Dong’an Market to read them.We joined the library group, and reading books is much more convenient than him.He mentioned that another classmate, Jieqi, was a girl. In our era, most middle schools in Beijing had separate schools for boys and girls. It was rare for boys and girls to be in the same class or even at the same table like No. 65 Middle School. .Shi Jieqi and I both love literature, and we signed up for the library group together in order to read more Chinese and foreign literary masterpieces.At that time, the types and speed of publications in the publishing industry were far fewer and slower than they are now. Taking the publication status of foreign classics as an example, a lover can publish one and read the other, and absorb them all.

Members of the library team participate in the registration, labeling, and shelving of newly purchased books, and at the same time have the convenience of priority borrowing.I remember once I came to see the new translated novel published by the People’s Literature Publishing House, which is "Henry Esmond's History" by the British writer Thackeray. The team members didn't argue with us, because they haven't even read Thackeray's masterpiece "Vanity Fair".Shi Jieqi and I were vying to borrow the new book, when an amiable voice sounded beside us: "Let Shi Jieqi see it first, she has a plastic book protector." It was Mr. Jin from the library who spoke, our library team counselor.At that time, plastic products were considered to be very advanced and rare things. Somehow Shi Jieqi had such objects. I was jealous, but there was nothing I could do.

Teacher Jin asked Shi Jieqi to read the book first, in fact teaching all library team members to love books, but his teaching was never airy, reasonable, or wordy.Forty-six or seven years later, I still clearly remember his appearance, tall and tall, dark skin, thin lips, slender fingers, and a faint smile on his face.There are two words in his whole demeanor: serenity. One day he saw that Shi Jieqi and I were vying to borrow a thick new book first, so he came over and asked with a smile, "Why do you always like big thick books?" Shi Jieqi and I couldn't tell for a while. So, I just feel that there are university questions in the big thick books!Teacher Jin took down two small volumes from the bookshelf and handed them to us respectively. He suggested: "Read it. If you like it, you can recite a few paragraphs. It's very refreshing." It belonged to Tagore of India, while the one for Shi Jieqi belonged to the same writer.

It was translated by Zheng Zhenduo. Together with his short preface, the book only has 39,000 characters and 64 pages.I read it under the lamp that night, and I felt that Fang Fei, whose eyes were full of flowers and plants in the garden, was filled with indescribable emotions and indescribable sentiments.Read it once and want to read it again.Within a week, I actually reviewed it many times, and could recite several sentences without any effort at all, such as: "Every day I put the paper boats one by one in the rapid stream/I write my name and my name in big black letters. The name of the village where I live is on the paper boat/I hope people who live in other places will get this paper boat and know who I am/...It is late at night, and I bury my face in my arms, dreaming that my paper boat is in the starlight at midnight Float slowly to go / The fairy of sleep sits in the boat with a basket full of dreams".Later, Shi Jieqi told me that it seemed that she had smoked her heart with gardenia flowers.

I am really grateful to Mr. Jin.It was also him who found out Feng Zikai's life comics for me when he knew that I still like to draw.At that time, our cultural policy was against Western modernist art, but because Picasso, a modernist painter who settled in Paris, was politically left-leaning and joined the Communist Party at one point, he painted the emblem of the dove of peace for the World Peace Conference hosted by the socialist camp. Therefore, his Some abstract paintings can also be printed in my country, and Mr. Jin also found them for me to observe.Ma Guoxin only knew that I was influenced by the painting styles of Feng Zikai and Picasso, but she didn't know that there was also a favor from Teacher Jin.

Zheng Zhenduo said in the translation preface that he first read these prose poems of Tagore in "The Crescent Moon and the Twilight of the City Lamp". Chinese lanterns and torches, but the glimmer of the crescent moon and city lights that Teacher Jin gave me still flashes in my heart?At that time, Mr. Jin was about 40 years old, and he should be an octogenarian now. I would like to ask: where are you?Can you still hear me?I am reading to you: "When the rain and thunder thundered in the sky / When the June showers fell / The moist east wind walked across the wilderness / Played the flute in the bamboo forest / Then groups of flowers suddenly ran from no one knew where Come out/dancing wildly on the green grass..."

[Note: The "de" in Zheng Zhenduo's translation cited was printed according to the original, and there was no strict separation of "de", "di" and "de" at that time. ]