Chapter 16 Embers

There has been a considerable distance between me and Hong Kong—thousands of miles, two years, new things, new people.What I saw and heard in Hong Kong during the war was only because it had a personal and profound impact on me, and I couldn't talk about it at the time.Now, I have settled down, at least I won't be incoherent when I mention it.Yet my impressions of the Battle of Hong Kong are almost entirely limited to irrelevant matters. I have no desire to write history, and I am not qualified to comment on the attitude historians should take, but I always hope that they will say more irrelevant things in private.Things like reality are not systematic, like seven or eight chatterboxes singing at the same time, each singing on its own, creating chaos.In the incomprehensible din, there are occasional moments of clarity that make people sad and bright, and the tune of the music can be heard, but it is immediately overwhelmed by darkness, drowning that little understanding.Painters, men of letters, and composers connect sporadic, serendipitously discovered harmonies into artistic wholeness.If history pays too much attention to artistic integrity, it becomes fiction.Like Wells' "Outline of History", the reason why it cannot be included in the official history is because it is too rational, and it describes the struggle between the small self and the big self from beginning to end.

A resolute view of the world, whether political or philosophical, is always annoying.The so-called "joy" of life lies in those irrelevant things. In Hong Kong, when we first got the news of the war, a female classmate in the dormitory became anxious and said, "What should I do? I don't have proper clothes to wear!" Different outfits are required, and everything from a water dance to a big dinner is well prepared, but she doesn't expect to go to war.Later, she borrowed a large black cotton gown, probably not very attractive to the air force flying around her head.When fleeing, the students in the dormitory "went to their own future".When we met again after the war, she had cut her hair short and put on a man's Filipina hairstyle, which was all the rage in Hong Kong, so that she could pretend to be a man.The different psychological reactions of each person during the war are indeed related to clothes.For example, Su Leijia.Su Leijia is a Shih Tzu from a remote town in the Malay Peninsula. She is thin, brown and dark skinned, with sleepy eyes and slightly exposed white teeth.Like all convent-educated girls, she was shamefully innocent.She chose medicine, which requires dissection of the human body. Does the dissected corpse wear clothes?Su Leijia once worried about this level and asked people about it.This joke has long been known in school.

A bomb fell next to our dormitory, and the dormitory supervisor had to urge everyone to avoid going down the mountain.Su Leijia did not forget to tidy up her most expensive clothes in the emergency. Although many knowledgeable people tried to dissuade her, she still managed to carry that cumbersome big suitcase down the mountain under the gunfire.Su Leijia joined the defense work and served as a temporary nurse at the Red Cross branch. She squatted on the ground in a brocade cotton gown with red copper and green longevity characters, chopping firewood and starting a fire. Although it was a pity, it was still worth it.That smart attire gave her unprecedented self-confidence, otherwise, she wouldn't have mixed so well with those male nurses.She endured hardships, took risks, and joked with them. She gradually got used to it, talked more, and became more capable.War was a rare education for her.

As for most of our students, our attitude towards the war can be likened to a person who dozes off while walking on a hard bench. Although he is uncomfortable and complains endlessly, he finally falls asleep. . We ignore what we can ignore. We go through life and death, ups and downs in the most colorful experience, we are still us, spotless, maintaining the typical life of the day.Sometimes it seems a bit abnormal, but after careful analysis, it is still a consistent style.Like Evelyn, she came from the mainland of China and has experienced many battles. According to her own words, she is hard-working and used to fear.But during the bombing of our nearby military fortress, Evelyn was the first to be unable to take it anymore. She became hysterical, cried loudly, and told many horrible war stories, scaring the faces of the female students next to her.

Evelyn's pessimism is a healthy pessimism.The food stock in the dormitory seemed to be running out, but Evelyn ate much more than usual, and advised us all to eat hard, because there would be no food soon.We did not want to try our best to save money and try the rationing system, but she resisted it in every possible way. She sat on the sidelines and wept when she was full all day long, and she became constipated. We gathered on the lowest floor of the dormitory, in the dark box room, only to hear the machine gun "Tu la la pat" like rain on lotus leaves.Because she was afraid of stray bullets, the little eldest sister dared not go to the window to face the light and wash the vegetables, so our vegetable soup was full of worms.

Among the classmates, only Yan Ying was brave enough to risk her life to go to the city to watch a movie—a colorful cartoon—and then took a bath upstairs alone when she returned to the dormitory. Splashing water and singing, She listened to the singing and became very angry.Her indifference seemed to be a mockery of the horror of the crowd.The University of Hong Kong has closed its offices, and students from foreign lands are forced to leave their dormitories and become homeless. If they do not participate in the work of guarding the city, they cannot solve the problem of accommodation.I followed a large group of classmates to the Air Defense Headquarters to sign up. After signing up and getting my badges, I encountered an air raid when I came out.We jumped off the tram and ran to the sidewalk, huddled in the door opening, and a little doubted whether we were doing our duty as anti-aircraft members. ——What is the responsibility of the air defense officer? Before I had time to figure it out, the battle was over. —The doorway was full of people, people who smelled of brain oil, cottony winter people.Seen from the head of the man, it is a clear light blue sky.An empty tram is parked in the middle of the street. Outside the tram, there is a faint sun, and inside the tram, there is also the sun—this tram alone has a kind of primitive desolation.

I felt very bad—was it possible to die among a group of strangers?However, what good is it to die with one's own family members and have their flesh and blood bombed to pieces?Someone shouted an order: "Touch the ground! Touch the ground!" Where is there room for people to squat down?But we knocked on each other's backs, and we squatted down after all.The plane swooped down, bang, right overhead.I covered my face with the iron hat of the air defense officer, and it was dark for a while before I realized that we were not dead, and the bomb fell across the street.A young shop boy who was injured on his thigh was carried in, his trousers were rolled up, bleeding a little.He is pleasant because he is the center of attention of the crowd.The people outside the door were at first unable to open the door by beating on it, but now they became more confident and yelled: "Open the door, someone is injured here! Open the door! Open the door!" No wonder the inside dared not open it, because we are too Complicated, anything can be done.The outside was so angry that they scolded "no one cares." After all, the door opened inside, and everyone rushed in. Several ladies and maids were dumbfounded and dared not make a sound. Did the cages in the hall become short afterward? And know.The plane continued to drop bombs, but gradually moved away.After the alarm was lifted, everyone desperately ran over the tram again, fearing that they would not be able to catch up, and sacrificed a tram ticket.

We got word that Francis, the history professor, had been shot -- by one of their own.Like other Britons, he was drafted into the army.That day he went back to the barracks after dusk, probably thinking about something, and the sentry fired without hearing the shout of the sentry. Franz is an open-minded person, completely Chinese, he can write Chinese characters well (but he doesn't know the order of his strokes), and he likes to drink.I once traveled to Guangzhou with Chinese professors and went to see a little nun in a nunnery with little reputation.He built three houses in a sparsely populated area, one of which was dedicated to raising pigs.Electric lights and running water are not installed at home, because material civilization is not in favor.There is a car, dilapidated, and it is used by servant Ou to buy vegetables and go to the market.

He has a child-like rosy face, porcelain blue eyes, a protruding round chin, thinning hair, and a tie of faded blue Ning silk around his neck.During class he smoked like a chimney.Even though he was talking, a cigarette was always hanging dangerously on his lips, up and down like a seesaw, but it would never fall down again.He flicked the cigarette butt out of the window, flying over the female student's fluffy curly hair, threatening to catch fire. He has a unique insight into history.The official script is read by him in a fancy way, and it looks very funny. We get a little historical intimacy and a concise world view from him, and we can learn a lot from him.But he died—the most nameless death.First, it is not a sacrifice for the country.Even if it is "glorious martyrdom", so what?He had little sympathy for British colonial policy, but he took it lightly, perhaps because there was more than one stupid thing in the world.Whenever the volunteers practiced, he always procrastinated to inform us: "I can't see you next Monday, children, I'm going to practice martial arts." Unexpectedly, "practicing martial arts" actually cost him his life—a good man Sir, a good man.The waste of human beings... Many people have already said that the facilities in the besieged city are bad and chaotic.In the government's cold storage room, the air-conditioning pipes are in disrepair, and there is a mountain of beef. They would rather watch it rot than take it out. Those who do defense work only get rice and soybeans, no oil, no fuel.The air defense agencies everywhere are only busy fighting for firewood and rice, trying to feed their personnel, how can they have time to take care of bombs?I didn't eat anything for two days in a row, and went to work in a hurry.Of course, someone who is not doing his duty like me deserves to be wronged.I finished watching it under fire.I watched it when I was a child but failed to appreciate its benefits. I always wanted to watch it again, and while I was watching it, I was worried whether I would be able to finish it.The printing is extremely small, and the light is not enough, but when a bomb falls, what do you need your eyes for? ——"If there is no skin, how will the hair be attached?"

During the 18 days of the siege, everyone had that unbearable feeling of four o'clock in the morning-a shivering dawn, everything is blurred, shrinking, and unreliable.I can't go home, and when I go back, maybe home doesn't exist anymore.Houses can be destroyed, money can be turned into waste paper in a blink of an eye, people can die, and even oneself is in danger.It's like "Desolately go to love, flood into the smoke" in Tang poetry, but it's not like the emptiness and despair here without care and care.People can't stand this, and they are eager to cling to something solid, so they get married.

A man and a woman came to our office to borrow a car from the Director of Air Defense to get a marriage certificate.The man is a doctor, and he may not be a "good-eyed and kind-eyed" person on weekdays, but he looks at his bride from time to time, with only a sad look in his eyes.The bride was a caretaker, small and pretty, with red cheekbones and beaming. No wedding gown was available, but a pale green silk jacket trimmed with dark green lace.They came several times and waited for several hours, sitting and looking at each other in silence, smiling all over their faces, which made us all laugh.We should really thank them for bringing us unwarranted happiness. At last the battle is over.It is a little uncomfortable to stop for a while, but the peace makes people disturbed, like being drunk.Seeing the plane in the blue sky, knowing that we can admire it with our faces up and not have bombs falling on our heads, just because of this, we think it is very cute. The trees in winter are as melancholy and thin as pale yellow clouds; The clear water coming out, the electric lights, and the bustle of the streets, these are ours again.First, time is ours again—clouds, nights, seasons of the year—and we can live for a while, so why not drive people mad with joy?It was because of this special post-war mental state that 1920 was called "the year of fever" in Europe. I remember how after the fall of Hong Kong we searched the streets for ice cream and lip balm.We crashed into every eatery to ask if there was ice cream.Only one family promised that it might be available tomorrow afternoon, so we walked ten miles to fulfill the appointment the next day, and got a plate of expensive ice cream, which was full of ice shavings.The street is full of stalls selling rouge, western medicine, canned beef and mutton, looted suits, sweaters, plain silk curtains, carved glassware, and whole bolts of woolen cloth.We go to the city every day to buy things, which is called shopping, but in fact it is just to see.Since then I have learned how to buy things as a pastime. ——No wonder most women enjoy it. Hong Kong has rediscovered the joy of "eating".It is strange that a most natural and basic function suddenly receives too much attention and becomes obscene and abnormal under the intense light of emotion.In post-war Hong Kong, every five or ten steps on the street, there would be a well-dressed man who looked like a foreign company clerk, frying a kind of hard yellow cake on a small stove.The city of Hong Kong was no more promising than Shanghai, and new speculative ventures developed extremely slowly.For a long time, the food on the street was still monopolized by the little yellow cakes.Gradually experimental sweetbreads, triangular cakes, suspicious coconut cakes.All the schoolteachers, shopkeepers, and paralegals have all changed their careers to become bakers. We stood on the stalls and ate fried radish cakes, and the bruised corpses of poor people lay under our feet.Is it the same in winter in Shanghai?But at least not so sharply sure.Hong Kong is not as refined as Shanghai. Because there is no gasoline, all the car dealerships have changed into restaurants, and there is not a silk shop or pharmacy that does not also sell pastries.Hong Kong has never been so gluttonous.The male and female students in the dormitory talk all day long about eating. In this carnival atmosphere, only Jonathan stood alone, full of contempt and resentment.Jonathan is also an overseas Chinese classmate who once joined the Volunteer Army and fought in battle.He wore only a collared shirt under his overcoat. His face was pale, with a lock of hair hanging between his eyebrows. He looked like the poet Byron, but it was a pity that he had a serious cold.Jonathan knew about the fighting in Kowloon.What made him most angry was that they sent two college students out of the trench to bring in a British soldier—"Two of our lives are not worth one of theirs. They promised special treatment when they recruited soldiers, and let us be under the jurisdiction of our own professors, promised It's nothing!" He probably thought the war was an excursion to Kowloon organized by the YMCA when he threw his pen into the army. After the armistice we worked as nurses at the "University Hall Makeshift Hospital".Except for a few ordinary patients brought in from major hospitals, most of the rest were coolies who had been hit by stray bullets and robbers who had been injured when they were arrested.There was a tuberculosis patient who had a bit of money, so he hired another patient to take care of him, and sent that person out to buy things, and ran around the street in a hospital uniform with a toga and long sleeves. They were all thrown out.Another patient was discovered hiding a roll of bandages, several surgical knives and forks, and three pairs of hospital uniform trousers under a sheet. Rarely has such a dramatic moment.The days of the sick are slender and impatiently long.The superiors sent them to pick rice and remove the sand and weeds, because they had nothing to do, and they seemed to like this monotonous work.Over time, I developed feelings for my own wound.In the hospital, the individual traumas represented their entire personalities.When applying medicine and changing cotton every day, I saw them gazing at the newly born fresh meat with gentle eyes, as if they had a creative love for it. They lived in the dining room of the boys' dormitory.The house used to be full of noise—Carmen Miranda's Brazilian love songs on the gramophone, and the students threw bowls and scolded the cook at every turn.Now there are thirty or so silent, irritable, smelly people lying here, unable to move their legs or use their brains because they have no habit of thinking.There were not enough pillows, and their beds were pushed up against the pillars, on which their heads rested, their necks at a ninety-degree angle to their bodies.Just lying there helplessly, eating red rice twice a day, one dry and the other watery.The sun illuminates the glass door, and the air-raid paper strip pasted on the glass has been torn off more than half after the wind and rain, and the mottled white marks are like little paper figures of witches and demons, especially at night, when the dark blue glass appears Silhouettes of grotesque little white sprites. We are not afraid of working the night shift, although the hours are very long, ten hours.There was nothing to do at night.When the patient defecates, we just need to go out and call the handyman: "Ping on the 23rd." Read a book behind the screen, and have a late-night snack, which is specially delivered milk and bread.The only regret is: nine out of ten patients died in the middle of the night. There was a man who suffered from a foul-smelling erosion on his shin bone.The pain was extreme, but the facial expression was close to ecstasy... His eyes were half-opened and half-closed, his mouth was opened and he smiled as if he couldn't catch the slightest itchiness.All night long he called: "Girl! Girl!" long, trembling, with a melody.I ignore it.I am an irresponsible, unconscionable caregiver.I hate this man because he suffered there and finally a room full of sick people woke up.They couldn't see the past and shouted "girl" in unison.I had to come out, stood gloomy by his bed, and asked, "What do you want?" He thought for a while, and then moaned, "I want water." He just wanted something for him, and he didn't care about anything.I told him there was no boiling water in the kitchen and walked away again.He sighed, remained silent for a while, then called out again, but couldn't move, and hummed: "Girl...girl...hey, girl..." At three o'clock, my companion was dozing off, and I went to boil the milk, carrying the fat white milk bottle across the ward to the kitchen with an old face.Most of the patients were awake, looking at the milk bottle, which was more beautiful to them than the iceberg lilies. Hong Kong has never had such a cold winter.I used soap to wash the uncovered brass pot, and my hand hurt like a knife.The pot was greasy with grease, the servants used it to cook soup, and the sick people used it to wash their faces.I poured the milk in, and the copper pot sat in the blue gas flame, like a bronze Buddha sitting on a green lotus, clear and bright.But the drawn "Girl! Girl!" tracked into the kitchen.Only one white candle was lit in the small kitchen, and I watched over the boiling milk, panicked and angry, like a hunted animal. We all rejoiced the day this man died.When it was almost dawn, we handed over his funeral to an experienced professional nurse.I shrank myself into the kitchen.My companion made a batch of small bread baked in coconut oil, which tasted like Chinese rice cakes.The rooster was crowing, and it was another freezing white morning.Those of us who are selfish live on as if nothing had happened. We read Japanese in addition to work.The teacher who was sent was a young Russian with clean-shaven blond hair.During class, he often asked female students their ages in Japanese.She couldn't answer for a while, so he guessed: "Eighteen? Nineteen? Not more than twenty? Which floor do you live on? Can I come and visit later?" She was thinking of an excuse to refuse, He laughed and said, "English is not allowed. You can only say in Japanese: Please come in. Please sit down. Please have some snacks. You can't say get out!" After telling the joke, he himself flushed red.At first, the class was crowded with students, but gradually decreased.It was so little that he finally lost his temper and changed his husband. The Russian gentleman saw the pictures I drew, and he only admired one of them, which was the portrait of Yanying wearing only a petticoat.He was willing to pay five Hong Kong dollars to buy it. Seeing our distressed faces, he quickly explained: "Five yuan, not including the frame." Due to the induction of the special atmosphere during the war, I drew many pictures, colored by Yanzakura.It seems too shameful to look at my own works and praise them with joy, but I do know that those paintings are good, they are not like my paintings at all, and I will never want to draw such pictures in the future.It's a pity that it is a little confusing to read.Even if it takes a lifetime of energy to write annotated biographies of those messy and overlapping heads, it is worthwhile.For example, the irascible second landlady, with cross-eyed protruding like two faucets; Whore, the ends of red stockings and garters peeking out from under her clothes. In one picture, I especially like the colors used by Yanying. They are all different blues and greens, which reminds people of the two lines of the poem "the moon and pearl in the sea have tears, and the sun in the blue field is warm and the jade produces smoke". While I was drawing, I knew that I would lose that ability soon.From there I learned the lesson—the old lesson: do what you want to do now, before it may be too late. "People" is the most uncertain thing. There was a young man from Annan who was a somewhat famous painter among his classmates.He complained that after the war his lines were less forceful.Because I cook by myself, my arms are exhausted.That's why we always feel miserable when we see him fry eggplant every day (he can only make one fried eggplant). When the war started, most of the students at the University of Hong Kong were jumping and dancing happily, because December 8 was the first day of the exam, and being exempted from the exam was a once-in-a-lifetime event.That winter, we finally had enough hardships, and we knew the seriousness better.But the word "severity" is also hard to say... After removing all the superficial words, it seems that there are only two items left: diet, men and women.Human civilization strives to break out of the circle of pure animal life, but is the effort of thousands of years in vain?It is true.The non-local students in Hong Kong are stuck there with nothing to do, they just buy food, cook food, and flirt all day long—not ordinary student-style flirting, which is mild and sentimental.In post-war dormitories, male students lie in bed with their girlfriends and play cards late into the night.Early the next morning, before she got up, he came again and sat on the edge of the bed.From the next door, she heard her screaming delicately: "No! No! No, I don't!" until she got dressed and got out of bed.Phenomena of this kind give people different reactions—maybe it will make people go back to Confucius in horror.After all, considerable restraint is indispensable.Although primitive man is naive, he is not a full "person".The hospital director was extremely concerned about the possibility of "war children" (illegitimate children born during the war).One day, he caught a glimpse of a female student sneaking out of the dormitory carrying a long package, and he thought his nightmare had finally come true.It was only later that I learned that she had transported the rice she got from work out to make money. Because there were many hooligans on the road, she was afraid of being robbed halfway, so she disguised a bag of rice as a baby. In theory, more than 80 young people who escaped from death gathered here, and because they escaped from death, they are full of vitality: some eat, some live, and there are no external entertainments to distract them; Professors, no matter if there are none), but there are many books, various schools of thought, the Book of Songs, the Bible, Shakespeare—the most ideal environment for university education.However, our classmates only regarded it as a dull transitional period—the past was the pain of the war, and the future is sitting on the mother’s lap crying about the pain of the war, clearing the tears that have been held back for a long time.For the time being, there is nothing to do but scribble "Home Sweet Home" all over the dirty glass windows.Marriage for boredom, boring as it is, is a little more positive than this attitude. People who lack work and leisure have to marry early.But just look at the crowded wedding advertisements in the Hong Kong newspapers.There are also some students who are married.The average student has little idea of ​​what people really are, and once they have had the chance to scrape off a little of the superficial skin and see the cringing, ticklish, pathetic, ridiculous man or woman underneath, they will most likely fall in love with their first discovery.Of course, love and marriage are beneficial to them, but it is the tragedy of youth to automatically limit the scope of their activities. The car of the times drove forward with a bang.Sitting in the car, we may pass only a few familiar streets, but we are also thrilled in the firelight all over the sky.It's a pity that we are only busy looking for our own shadows in the fleeting shop windows-we only see our own faces, pale and small: our selfishness and emptiness, our shameless stupidity-everyone is like us , yet each of us is alone.