Chapter 6 Ⅱ-3

twenty one Father came back from the funeral. His seven-year-old son stood wide-eyed by the window, a golden amulet hanging around his neck; his mind was full of thoughts incomprehensible at such a young age. His father held him in his arms, and he asked, "Where's mother?" "In heaven," his father replied, pointing to the sky. In the middle of the night, the grieved and tired father moaned in his lethargy. A lone lamp flickered dimly over the bedroom doorway, and a lizard was catching moths on the wall. The child awoke from sleep, groped for the empty bed, and crept out onto the wide deck.

He turned his back to the sky, and gazed for a long time in silence; his bewildered mind shot the question into the distant night: "Where is heaven?" Not a reply came; only the stars shone like hot tears in the darkness of ignorance. twenty two When the night was about to dissipate, she left. My soul tried to comfort me and said, "All is nothing." I said indignantly: "The unopened letter with her name written on the cover, and this plantain fan that she trimmed with red silk by herself, aren't they real?" When the day passed, my friend came to me and said, "What is good is true and never dies."

"How do you know?" I asked impatiently, "Couldn't this person who has disappeared from the human world be good in the past?" Like a restless child that breaks its mother's heart, I tried to tear down all shelters within and around me, and cried, "It's a treacherous world." Suddenly I felt a voice say: "Ingratitude!" I looked out the window, and a reprimand seemed to come from the starry night sky - "It's you, who thinks I've been here, and keeps pouring that belief into the void I've left!" twenty three The creek is gray and vast, and the sky is filled with yellow-brown wind and sand.

One gloomy restless morning, when the bird was silent and the nest was shaking in the high wind, I sat alone and asked myself, "Where is she?" Gone are the days when we sat next to each other; when we laughed and joked; when we met, no word of majestic love entered. I make myself small, and she wastes every minute with nagging. Today, in the gloom of the approaching storm, I hope in vain for her to come and sit with me in the solitude of my heart. twenty four The name she used to call me was like a frangipani in full bloom; the trembling of the light through the green leaves, the smell of the grass on a rainy night, and the sad silence of the last hour in many idle days, Intertwined and mixed with the sound of this title.

He who answered this title was not merely a creation of God; she recreated him for herself during these seventeen fleeting ages. Subsequent years came one after another; but the drifting days of these years no longer gathered in the space where she called that name, but got lost and wandered everywhere. They asked me, "Who should take us in?" I sat silently without finding an answer; and as they drifted away, they called to me, "Let's go to a shepherdess!" Who should they turn to? This they will not know; like abandoned clouds in the evening, they wander in the pathless darkness, lost and forgotten.

25 I feel that the short days of your love were not abandoned in those short years of your life. I am eager to know where you treasure them now, from the slowly stealing dust; in my solitude I have found one of your evening songs, which, though dead, still lingers; In the warm stillness of an autumn noon I also find the sighs of your unsatisfied moments. Your wish flew from the hive of the past, lingering in my heart, I sat silently, listening to the sound of their wings and flying. 27 I was walking along a grassy path when suddenly I heard someone calling behind me, "Look, do you still know me?"

I turned to look at her and said, "I can't remember your name." She said, "I am that first great sorrow you met when you were young." Her eyes seemed to be the morning dew still in the air. I stood silent for a moment, and then I said, "Have you unburdened yourself of all the burden of your tears?" She smiled and didn't answer.I sensed that her tears had learned the language of smiling with ease. "You once said," she murmured, "that you would carry the pain with you forever." I blushed and said, "Yes, but the years have passed, and I have forgotten it."

So, I held her hand and said, "But, you have changed." "The sorrow of the past has turned into today's peace." She said. 28 Our life sets its sails on untrodden seas; where the waves chase each other in pursuit of an eternal hide and seek. This is the unpredictable and restless sea, feeding its flocks of flying foam, and clapping its hands to break the tranquility of the sky. Love, born at the heart of this cyclic war-dance of light and dark; thy love is the green isle where the sun kisses the shy shadows of the forest, and the song of the birds courts the stillness.

30 A painter sells paintings at a market.Not far away, the son of a minister who had deceived the painter's father when he was young came to him with a heartbroken death. The child lingers before the painter's work and selects one, but the painter hastily covers it with a cloth and declares that it is not for sale. From then on the boy grew haggard with heart disease; at last his father came forward and offered to pay a high price.But the painter would rather hang the picture on his studio wall than sell it; and sitting before him sullenly, he said to himself, "This is my revenge."

Every morning, the artist paints a picture of his god, which is the only way he expresses his faith. But now, he feels that these statues are increasingly different from the ones he painted before. This troubled him so much that he searched in vain for the reason; but one day he dropped the painting in horror.Jumping up, the eyes of the statue he just painted turned out to be the minister's eyes, and the lips were so similar. He tore up the painting, and shouted: "My revenge has been returned to my head!"