Chapter 2 Rose Island (2)

1. Goodbye, Time When a person is dying, he experiences tidal breathing, she said.It was the last breath before life stopped.It was very turbulent.Like the sound of the sea. She said, Sue, you won't hear this.The sound of the sea you hear is alive.is hallucinatory.And the voice I heard belonged to death.It is true. She and Su went to see the train station in Da Lat.The railway station on the top of a mountain nearly 1,500 meters above sea level can only drive a short distance symbolically.But there are still passengers.The married bride and her family are sitting under the eaves outside the waiting room.A timetable is posted on the wooden door.They wait for the 2:30 train.Just a ceremony.

In the scorching afternoon, the sun was shining brightly.The bride's white veil trailed in the sand beneath the wooden chairs.Su walked over and handed her a pale pink rose in his hand.She said, I want to take a picture of you.She said "would" instead of "want". She took out the Hasselblad from the camera bag, squatted down, and used continuous shutter to take pictures of the bride under the shadow of the porch eaves.Her brand new wedding dress, and the Egyptian blue wooden door on the back full of traces of time.She shifted angles, her body like a swift leopard, full of brutish vitality.Her face entered a state of concentration in an instant, forgetting the existence of the world.

On the edge of the platform, a train car was abandoned and scratched with rust.The railroad track stretches across the open space covered with weeds. In the distance, there are poppies in full bloom, swaying gently in the wind.The sky is so blue.There is an old time frozen here.They have not spoken. Su told her that as a photographer, the only happiness lies in the acquisition of time.If beauty only exists for one second, then my observation of it will increase to two seconds, and then click to freeze it.she says.Of course, most of the time, like most people, I was just wasting negatives and potions.

A good photo should be able to leave behind the hopeless beauty of the world.The kind of time that goes by. Just two years ago, Sue started a career as a freelance photographer, traveling and shooting with his camera.She lives in Shanghai and worked for several well-known fashion magazines at the same time, including various commercial orders such as fashion and advertising.She has her unique style and reputation in the industry.Then she quit her job, set up a studio, cooperated with a publishing house, and made photobooks according to the theme.This year, her theme is the sea.She came to Vietnam.Her book uses the title of a song by the British band Cure: From the edge of the deep green sea.

On the hot and long summer journey at the equator, the encounter of two women.They are all over 25 years old, traveling alone, ignoring the past and history.The two never spoke.One is a photographer, in Shanghai.One is a writer who no longer works, in Beijing. She didn't explain why she stopped writing, and for a year she spent sleeping, cooking from recipes and walking.In the film's appearance, she becomes a traveler.The only Chinese woman among the ghosts on the whole bus.His face bears the traces of a long-term solitary life.Her rucksack was huge because it contained all the small and familiar items, including the pillow.This is the case with insecure people.Transfer with all your old stuff.

She is the woman who appears in every book.They are one person.He is the only one who is leaving, walking and saying goodbye.This is my writing.is the only reason I write for it. She sleeps on the bus.Like those ghosts, sleep with clothes tucked under the neck.Curl up your bare feet in a chair, or stretch them out in the aisle.When she woke up, she drank a large bottle of drinking water.She rarely eats.She spends most of her time gazing out the window at night, but nothing interesting.just calm. Her journey is destined to be just an endless road.Feel free to stop by.Can disappear at any time.

Sometimes we all feel sad like this, but never express it.It's like we never talk about love.never.Love is closed, tabooed, delayed and put on hold.This kind of love is the only salvation in my hands.So I am consumed by my sin. She saw her father standing at the school gate.She studies in a primary school in the suburbs.The school was in a ruined temple, and there was an open-air courtyard covered with weeds with yellow flowers.She was fostered by a family of cotton farmers, and her father came to pick her up every Saturday evening.He put her on the front bumper of his bike.The two rode on the road.The fields beside the road gradually darkened.How young and strong my father was then.They didn't speak a word on the way.

She heard voices in her ears.Swish Swish Swish.The tires of the bicycle rubbed on the gravel road.Her father's chin was resting on her hair, and the night breeze was cool and the sky was full of stars.She was getting tired.Feeling her father resting on the handlebar with one hand and her face in the other.So she fell asleep. Woke up in the middle of the night and saw the bus parked at a gas station in an unknown town.The ghosts lined up to go to the bathroom, then stood in twos and threes in the dark smoking cigarettes.The carriage was hot and stuffy from the standstill.She found that her forehead was covered with sticky sweat.She stepped over the pile of backpacks in the aisle and walked out of the car.She put her face close to the faucet and splashed cold water on her face with her hands.She stopped the gag in her chest.

The weather continued to be hot and humid.In this country, the year is only divided into dry season and rainy season.Tropical heat controls the body and nerves like a disease.Every day, countless ghosts walk around carrying huge and dirty backpacks.They come from Thailand and Cambodia.Big-toed boots covered with mud and wind and dust were tied to the rucksack with ropes.The caucasian girl's face was tanned carmine.That kind of red, as if it would swell out from under the fragile and soft skin at any time, and huge drunken flowers would bloom.The cheeks, cheekbones, and nose are all densely packed with small brown freckles.

What a sweet sin sunshine is.Get close to it, get into it, melt it.They gazed greedily at the burning bright sky, squinted their eyes while applying sunscreen, and whispered, oh my.Oh my God. My God. The sunshine in Vietnam in March is more like a rainstorm.Direct, intense, with no escape.When I looked up, I felt suffocated. In Hanoi, she met Su. This is the city she likes so much.Sunshine blinds people.A used bookstore in Pho Hang Bac.Hot weather.The ceiling fans in the store flicked slowly.She is reading an Indian novel.She has nothing to do in Hanoi, reading and wandering to pass the time, but she is absorbed in it and has no intention of leaving.Su came to find LP's old books.Her plan was to travel along Vietnam's coastline from north to south.

On Su's jet-black long hair were a few pure white jasmine flowers.Her skin was dark, wheat-colored, and rough.The forehead is high, the face is slightly flat, and the eyes are very bright.She looks like a Vietnamese woman.Smiles are rare.Smile.A smile that seems to disappear in the water. They started to speak Chinese.The conversation is about photography.He doesn't talk much.A fruit seller carrying rattan baskets walked slowly past the door, and Su went over to buy a few plums.Su poured mineral water on it to clean it, then handed it to her to eat.Deep red overripe plums, soft to the touch, with tiny fresh green leaves remaining on the side.She took one.Take a bite, and the sourness enters the bone marrow.She is calm. Su said that sometimes I feel that I have no connection with this world, but then I realized that maybe I was too addicted to it.Or you may be stuck with it already.They sat at the old wooden dining table in the bookstore.Two cups of iced coffee are on the table.Twilight shrouded over, the hustle and bustle of the city streets and the heat wave have not yet subsided.One of her hands was cupped over the glass.Clean hand creator's fingers.There is a simple and carved silver bracelet on the thin wrist. Before she entered Vietnam, she stayed in a small town called Dongxing in Guangxi.She stayed there for a day because she had to apply for a health certificate.At night, I slept in a hot and humid room in the traffic hotel.Chronic insomnia.So he walked into the street alone.Sit on a low bench and drink sugar water.Dried longan is boiled with eggs.The owner is a young man, sitting quietly under a tree in a daze.The town is extremely quiet, with occasional bicycles passing by, and the sound of tapping machines from the tailor shop opposite.The girl from the shampoo shop, with bright red lips, stood at the street corner with a dazed expression on her face.She went to the playground of the elementary school again, sat on the old stone steps, and watched the children play football under the moonlight.They run.Then disappear. She has turned off her cell phone.There won't be any calls.Everyone has nothing to do with her. She felt that she could disappear in this small town. When she was sleeping, she wrapped herself in a white sheet and curled up tightly.She sleeps like a baby in the womb. You protect yourself like this.You don't love anyone.She saw his disappointed face.There was no way he could hug her.she leaves.last man. She asks Su to go to a water puppet show.She sat in the dining room waiting for Sue.It is a small restaurant that I have been going to all the time, the name is Hanoi Rose.A large terrace on the second floor facing the street.Downstairs is a clothes shop, and you have to go through narrow wooden stairs to go up.As night falls, gangs of expats gather here to drink beer and eat light Vietnamese food.The lights on the side of the road are slightly dim, and there are billboards and jumbled wire poles standing beside it.The dilapidated French Colonial flats across the street had clothes hanging to dry.The flowers planted by someone's family are in large clusters, weird and coquettish.The green French wooden windows and bright yellow mottled walls leave traces of time. The day market downstairs has been evacuated, leaving behind the smell of garbage and rotting vegetables.Long-stemmed Vietnamese roses were shriveled and discarded, lying across the pavement.Motorcyclists gathered at the intersection.The voices of the streets have not yet subsided.The air smelled of jasmine, beer, tobacco, dust, perfume, sweat.I don't know which CD store played music again.The bass saxophone played slowly, and a husky and quiet male voice sang, I saw your face shining my way... Sitting at the big stout wooden table, she ordered sour bamboo shoots, mixed vegetables and grilled fish.She drinks lemonade.A large glass of water, put ice cubes, and two slices of green lemon.So clean and simple.A clean and simple life, she can only get after the age of 25.I have a house for one person.There is a city of one person.With a journey. A ghost on the table next to her asked her to borrow a lighter.He wore a thin checked cotton shirt, short blond hair, and sensitive eyes.When he returned the lighter to her, he asked her, do you like Vietnam.She said she liked it very much.He said, are you Japanese?She said, no, I live in Beijing.He said, you look a lot like a Vietnamese woman.Your eyes are just like theirs.so bright. she smiles.In Western fashion, a woman shrugs her shoulders and raises her eyebrows.And she just turned her face sideways, lowered her head and smiled.She told him that her hometown is in southeast China.Jiangnan.She used to write.If a woman wants to make herself beautiful slowly, she needs to go through the origin of life.And these origins are also the roots of suffering.like a river.Never stop.Eventually flow into the sea. When I was 10 years old.Father and mother quarrel at home.I still live in an old house with a small kitchen.Sweating in the summer.The mother kept talking, but the father remained silent.Finally unable to hold back his anger, he slapped his mother, and then his father walked out of the room and rode away.Mother smashed all the bowls in the kitchen.The ground is full of white and broken tiles.cry.She stands outside the door.watch.The moonlight shines on her face through the tall sycamore leaves on the side of the road.She never hugged them again.All the sycamore trees on the side of the road were cut down.They moved.After that, my father never hit my mother again.He doesn't say anything.silence. Never hugged.father and mother.Father and her.her and mother. She walked to the field in the outskirts alone.Lying alone in the harvested rice fields, watching the birds in the evening sky.She is lost.She ate cold rice vigorously in the middle of the night, grabbed it with her hands, and stuffed balls into her mouth until she choked with tears.Afterwards she often felt hungry.Need to eat a lot.She was so silent then. None of them spoke.Su. I started dating when I was 16.And a poor student in a garbage middle school, a tall and handsome boy.I read books and participated in competitions in key middle schools.He just likes playing pool and having sex.We are completely different.But I was desperate to let myself be loved.We kissed in the corridor late at night.He hugged me so painfully.so painful. I don't love him at all. Growing up is such a painful thing.Su.At that time, I always thought, when will I be rich.When can I leave. Then one day, I leave. Su left a note at her hotel, saying she was about to board the night train to Hue.She said, my last stop was in Saigon.I think we'll meet again.Su left her a small album of handmade gouache. Wild Plants of Ha Long Bay.Page after page, there are wild flowers blooming in the weird and beautiful Xialong Bay valley.There are Latin flower names.The painter is a woman.Extremely simple and elegant brushstrokes. They have to go on their own.Solo travelers value freedom and are never bound by anything.She wasn't ready to accept Sue's leaving without saying goodbye.So follow her route.Just to meet her again unexpectedly during the journey. Sometimes it's in roadside restaurants where you stop for a break.Sometimes it's in a coffee shop by the sea.Sometimes it's on a sunny street.She saw Sue.Su was always alone.In the crowd, she is so lonely and white, like a camellia. Every time they look at each other from a distance.The distance of the line of sight is like a flame submerged in darkness, too sharp.Then they separated again. In Da Lat, she stayed in a small hotel near the stop of the tour company's bus.Remote high terrain.A small, sloping street.When you open the window, you can touch the rocks and vegetation on the mountainside.It is a family hotel built on the mountain.The small winding corridor is dark and cramped.The wooden window frames are French-style with a small grid and a small grid, and there are many windows.The evening wind rattled the wooden door on the terrace.The wind howled throughout the empty room. She took a nap in the afternoon, and when she woke up, she saw the faint mountain shadow in the distance.The ghost on the opposite balcony is sitting on a swing reading a novel.In the courtyard a man was chopping wood.There is a pungent aroma of wood and flowers in the air.The twilight of the town was dim, and dogs barking could be heard faintly. She lay on a clean white cotton sheet, closed her eyes, and listened to the sound of the wind. There should be no music in movies.If there is, it should be available all the time.In every moment without lines. or completely empty.Either until overflowing.I tend to be like this.There is no end without extremes. As I got older, I gradually fell in love with the violin. The piano is only for teenagers, because it is too clear and clear.Not ambiguous enough. They had dinner together.It is Long Hoa near Da Lat Central Market. The restaurant was owned by a Vietnamese woman married to Europe, apparently from a well-to-do family well educated overseas.The dining room is decorated with porcelain, rose flowers, candlesticks, lamps and couches.And ancient Chinese poetry. Sue invited her to dinner.She said she loves the store's handmade yogurt and lotus salad.They were all wearing white clothes that day.Sue is a denim shirt, she crosses Nansi. Women who like to wear white, they have self-confidence and act like no one else.This kind of self-confidence may come from having many things that ordinary people cannot achieve.Or maybe it comes from having nothing but wanting nothing.Su has experienced countless prosperous scenes, but he still only likes to wear a pair of straw sandals with hemp soles barefoot.She has her normal heart. They drink iced lemonade.Relatively smoked.Silent. There are noisy crowds on the street outside the door.The night market in Da Lat was so lively that I lost sleep. The 56-year-old father stood in the lobby of the airport wearing a coat.He looked fat and old.Her plane was delayed, leaving him there for nearly two hours.It was afternoon, and the sunshine in the south brought warm humidity, which was completely different from the dry and cold in the north.Father came out from a small and cold corner.A soft smile on his face.She only goes home during the Spring Festival and stays for about two or three days.Father's smile.The joy of seeing her.The whites of my father's eyes were cloudy.She noticed the whites of her father's eyes.My heart skipped a beat. She thought of this scene again and again.When she saw him, she felt such pain in her heart, but she didn't say anything, she just said, you have been waiting for a long time, and walked straight out of the gate.He followed behind, walking very slowly because of the relapse of the leg disease.But he was so happy. They don't hug.When she was in high school, the school held a parent-teacher meeting, and her father's legs could no longer walk up the stairs.She subconsciously supported him, and he pushed her hand away.He never wanted to show any vulnerability in front of her. At 17, he took her on a trip.They go to Suzhou.Father was reading the newspaper in the train, page after page, rattling.She was sitting opposite him, wearing a white school uniform and blue skirt, looking out the window.They each took a Polaroid photo under the Tiger Hill Pagoda.My father ordered ribs and greens in the diner, and put the ribs in her bowl.He didn't know how to make her happy.They slumped to eat.In the middle of the night she slept in a dark single room in the hotel, crying against the wall.Later she exiled him in a city far away from her, and exiled herself in a city far away from him.Her life is a wandering in a foreign land.One city, another city.writing.stranger.Danger.not safe.man.bid farewell.And the long, long loneliness. They don't speak.Their pain is a mirror for each other, seeing each other clearly, pity each other, but can't reach out.Never confide.Argument, separation, indifference, stubbornness.It can only be maintained in this way.That's it.Some people, they love like this.Their love is separated on both sides of the strait, and they can only wait and see, not close. Su.That kind of feeling is like my father's leg disease, a congenital disability, and the pain becomes more and more painful as he grows older.Sometimes it's shameful and untouchable.such pain.As if fate. They went to the cinema to watch a Korean movie.The only movie theater on the top of a mountain in Da Lat has a very marginal name called Three and a Quarter.Maybe four and a third.She didn't remember.But she remembered that in the dark and stuffy movie theater, she shed tears.These tears had nothing to do with the comedy plot being staged, had nothing to do with the few spectators scattered in the empty theater, and had nothing to do with the silent Su beside him.She was like this a long time ago, she would easily leave the situation around her and enter some boundless silence.Therefore, she often does not remember what other people said to her, she only remembers the smells and sounds she faced at a certain moment.She gets distracted easily. When they walked out of the cinema, the lights of the night market outside and the crowd were boiling.French high-end restaurants are shining with neon lights, prostitutes by the lake are waiting calmly in high heels, silk shops have whole bolts of satin and fabrics, on the side of the sloped road, open-air coffee shops are full of local Vietnamese men and women .