Chapter 36 spring farewell

At the end of the winter of 1999, Qinghuai and I stayed in an ancient town called Lingxi.The reason why it is named Lingxi comes from a small river that surrounds the town. Because of its clear and rapid flow, the sound of the flowing water resembles a silver bell. I never knew that an ancient town could have such a wonderful name. When we were in Lingxi, we sat in the courtyard of the old theater every noon and waited to listen to the play.Among the rows of low stools, we choose the position at the back.Quietly basking in the tiresome noon sun, waiting for the troupe to arrive late.It is uncertain when the troupe will start performing, but as long as there are a dozen old people and children sitting on the benches, they will start singing.

From a distance, I watched a few actors in colorful clothes come down from the attic, walk through the narrow corridor and go straight to the backstage.Later, the sound of gongs and silver cymbals sounded, and then the actors stepped across the Hudu Gate clangingly, singing babbling with their voices hanging. In fact, I never understood what they were singing.I tried to ask Qing Huai several times what the libretto was about, but every time I found that Qing Huai had long been leaning against the reddish-brown beam and was dozing off.So I couldn't bear to bother her. She is like an elderly lazy cat, dozing off while listening to a play with those lazy old people in Lingxi Ancient Town.The laughter of the children is far away.A wintersweet exudes a delicate fragrance, and the smell lingers in the courtyard, just like the twisted and twisted branches of the wintersweet tree.

We spent fifteen days in a small three-room inn in Bell Creek.Every day, I just look up at the Lingxi Mountain behind the ancient town on the roof of the inn, listen to the opera at noon, wander around the Lingxi in the afternoon, and then repeat the stroll over and over again in the criss-cross pattern with the warm and slightly cold sunset after dinner. the two little streets. The gentle sunlight has touched life very softly. That was 1999.We are in the same high school.Before the winter vacation of the first year of high school, Qing Huai, who was at the same table, said to me, how about we go to Lingxi.So I followed her.I always feel that there are some people for me who are always worthy of my trust and follow them on the road.She turned out to be an amazing traveling companion indeed.The road I followed her has always been so beautiful.

Of course, when she was in school, she looked much more mediocre.Sitting with me, in class, I often hold the textbook and look at it, then suddenly bury my head and giggle, or stand up the textbook to block it, and then take out the pens in the pencil case and repair them one by one.I know that she never listened to any lectures.She has always been a child living on journeys and fantasies.At first I would remind her to listen to the class again and again, but then I felt that such reminders were futile, so I simply stopped doing stupid things. I am an out-of-town student in this boarding high school.Every weekend, my classmates are taken home by their parents, but I always wait until the classroom is empty, then I pack my schoolbags and walk to the school gate alone, where a peddler who is carrying a CD on a bicycle Picking a dish, sometimes you will return with a full load, and sometimes you will not buy anything.Always unknowingly, the sky becomes so dark.Carrying homework and problem sets in my schoolbag, as well as those delightful CDs, I walked slowly through the empty playground and the dimly lit corridors of the teaching building, and heard my own clear footsteps repeatedly knocking out youth. Lonely drumbeats, and finally returned to the dormitory contentedly, made a bowl of instant noodles alone in the quiet dormitory, turned on the small desk lamp, then plugged in the earphones, carefully read the books borrowed from others while eating. movie magazine.After such a short rest, I will pack up my lunch box, CDs and magazines, then take out my homework from the heavy schoolbag, and do the questions in the darkened night.

Often I worked so tirelessly until very late, and then the teacher on duty came to remind me that the lights were about to be turned off.I have always been insensitive to the passage of time, always thinking that it will give me enough light, so I often turn off the electric switch unpreparedly just when I am writing at my desk, and then I am thrown into the darkness helplessly.As if at the end of the road, or in a dark and boundless abyss.At that moment, I often feel so weak that I can't stand up.I want to encourage myself to be brave in the dark, but every time I can't find the right words.It often took a long time before I fumbled for the flashlight, washed my face and feet with the remaining hot water alone, and then climbed into bed, tossing and turning for a long time, and finally fell asleep tiredly.If I still can't fall asleep, I get up and write.But those letters were never addressed, and therefore never sent.I just repeated the beginning like this on the white letter paper with the dim light of the flashlight:

Hello, how are you doing recently? I sometimes think, if there is such a person in the world, I can miss him long enough to make me write a commemorative letter all night in sleepless nights, and then send it solemnly after dawn-then , What a good thing this should be. Come with me to Xiaoxing'an Mountains. On April 1, 1999, during the second half of the first year of high school, Qing Huai told me in math class.I gave her a very contemptuous look and said, Happy April Fool's Day.Qing Huai answered me seriously, I wasn't joking.I helplessly answered her, we are not on vacation, we are still in class...how can it be possible to travel?

To my disbelief, Qing Huai didn't come to class the next day.I think she may have really gone to Xiaoxing'an Mountains.After the seat next to me was vacant for 15 days, Qing Huai came back.Like an ordinary child who is used to being late, she walked into the classroom as if nothing had happened, took out a large stack of test papers and homework books from the drawer on the day she was away, and put them on the table, then sat down calmly, took Out of textbooks.Dozed off again shortly afterwards.And I continued to take notes diligently. That night, Qing Huai came to my dormitory with great interest, holding two peaches in her hand, one for me, and she had already bitten the other.She wants to tell me about the journey.I put down my pen patiently and listened to her talking happily.She started from the anecdote on the train and continued to talk about Linhai in Xiaoxing'an Mountains.After an hour, I finally couldn't hold back anymore, I said, Qing Huai, I still have homework to do.

The atmosphere was obviously awkward.Qing Huai said to me, I'm sorry. I looked at the math test paper that was still blank, and didn't know how to answer it. Qing Huai gently closed the door and walked out of my bedroom.From the clicks of my roommates, I knew that they were very dissatisfied with Qing Huai's disturbance.The moment Qing Huai left, I felt inexplicably sad in my heart. I wanted to go out and tell her that I didn't mean it, but I still couldn't muster the courage.So I turned around cowardly, and continued to do the questions in the midst of a large emptiness in my heart.Ten minutes later, the gate suddenly closed, and I was thrown into the darkness unprepared again.

The next day, I received a postcard from a certain military station in Xiaoxing'an Mountains in Qinghuai.The clear address on the postmark is alluring with pride.I took the postcard and said thank you to Qing Huai. she smiled.The smile is like the green forest on a postcard. In the following days, I have become accustomed to her running away like this.Every now and then the seat next to me becomes empty.When I was still diligently and regularly listening to lectures, taking notes and doing questions in the crowded classroom, I knew that she had embarked on a journey again, listening to plays leisurely like in Lingxi, or trekking through mountains and rivers like in Xiaoxing'anling.

She is a migratory bird without a hometown.Migrating endlessly, never finding a home.In other words, because there is no home, it is endlessly migrating. And after she came back, she no longer came to talk to me about interesting things during the journey.Just leave the travel notes to me and say that I will take a look.Only during the holidays, she still invites me to travel together.It was the summer vacation of the first year of high school, and Qinghuai and I were in Xinjiang. We took the train, and during the long journey, I found that there were very few Qinghuai dialects on the journey.We basically didn't talk, just looked at the scenery outside the train window for a long time alone, or read a book in our own bunk.I looked at Qing Huai's thin and quiet face, and felt that she was such a happy and lonely bird.

On the land of Xinjiang, we move forward from south to north.If you want to stay somewhere, just stay for a few days.Very laid back.The experience of carrying large boxes several times is also a unique experience brought to me by Qinghuai.It was the road from Kashgar to Ili. We slept in the body of a truck transporting watermelons, bumping all the way under the starlight scattered all over the sky.The summer night outside the Great Wall was as cool as water, we slept in the pile of watermelons, and we were silent all the time.My heart was surging, accompanied by faint worries, and I couldn't sleep all the time.But looking back at Qing Huai beside her, she realized that she had already fallen asleep with a sweet sleeping face.The eyelashes were covered with dew like wild flowers and plants.I stared at Qinghuai's silent sleep in the turbulence, and looked up occasionally, seeing the gradually disappearing earth as open as a stone, covered with starlight. Like a boat with full sails, with the south wind full of the fragrance of hyacinth in the hometown, it crosses the misty silver sea under the moonlight and heads for an unknown destiny. The summer of 1999 was wasted by us on the road.After the second year of high school, my parents no longer agreed to let me go on a trip. They said that you should take part in the school's training class for supplementary lessons, or you should review your homework better at home.Or, they just told me that the family is saving for your college expenses and can't come up with that much cash. I looked at the indifferent eyes of my parents because of their excessive enthusiasm, counted the wrinkles carved on their foreheads like annual rings, and nodded very lightly. I am still so quietly and indifferently repeating the peaceful and rigid life according to the will of fate, mechanically doing radio gymnastics with exaggerated trumpets in the crowded playground in the early morning, and earnestly capturing in the tight and dull classroom during the day Every word of the teacher, under the incandescent lamp in the classroom at night, I diligently finished one set of questions after another, sad for the unsatisfactory exam, and guilty for the soft complaints of my parents.And Qinghuai still suddenly sniggered mysteriously and innocently at the textbook in class, and then drooled and asked me to pass a tissue while sleeping, and still traveled regularly, going deep into the mountains, rivers and plains of remote areas, alone.But I always endured the punishment of diligence, and was turned off again and again, and then thrown into the darkness mercilessly.My eyes can’t adapt to the darkness very quickly, so in the few minutes that were almost blind, I saw the complete and huge darkness again and again, like an impenetrable dense net, completely covering my youth , until it gradually convulsed and fell into final suffocation after a pale struggle. I've always been able to hold back the uncontrollable tears from my tired eyes and keep them from falling out of their sockets. For if the tears fall, then my patience shall be awakened. The white birches on the campus turned yellow and then green, rustling outside the bright window, and the broken small leaves with full enamel refracted the sunlight full of youthful and carefree joy.The golden sunlight was cut into regular shapes by the window lattices of the classroom, and fell on the white walls covered with standard answers and college entrance examination information.The cry of cicadas was blown higher and higher by the hot wind, and the white shirt was agitated restlessly with the flying test papers and pages under the blowing of the fan.The seat cushion of the bicycle parked quietly in the teaching building was so hot.The naive and ignorant dragonfly stopped on the window sill in a daze, and soon left without interest. It was the summer at the end of the second year of high school. We were still insisting on making up lessons for the third year of senior high school in the classroom in the scorching sun in August. The sweat dripped down and soaked the test papers when we were studying at the desk, and the skin on the elbows and the desk were wet due to sweat It sticks together, and it hurts like tearing when you pull it. But Qinghuai has long been in Inner Mongolia, riding on the vast grassland like a dream, along the nameless stream that floats into the distance like silk and satin under the blood-red sunset, deep into the embrace of the earth, like a child who takes dreams as horses, resting on the flowing bright Xinghe fell into a deep sleep. In our world, the third year of high school is about to start.On the day after school, I received a postcard from Qing Huai as usual.I thought it was still a postcard without any words except a distant postmark and a simple address, but when I turned it over, I saw a line of striking handwriting in the message: I am not coming back. I rode home exhausted on my bike through the steaming city twilight.The dusty leaves of the sycamore trees beside the boulevard were as dying as tinfoil by the scorching sun.With the news that she would not come back in my schoolbag, I was confused, worried, and moved forward with sadness.I felt hot and tired from riding, and finally stopped under a big tree, looked up at the dusk of the summer city, and finally decided to wait for a rain in the unbearable heat and noise. That day I just sat on the back rack of my bicycle, looking at Qinghuai's postcards over and over again.There is a schoolbag in the car pocket, and a corner of the math test paper is exposed from the unzipped zipper.I watched Qing Huai's parting sadly, thinking that I could stop forever like her and not move forward.However, to my surprise, an hour later, the sky suddenly turned dark yellow, followed by a gust of wind that flew sand and rocks, and then heavy rain poured down. With the anger of being teased, I watched the pedestrians who were eager to hide from the rain running in panic and embarrassment, and the wheels also splashed puddles of muddy rain mercilessly, rampaging like a running stupid cow.I felt as if I was watching a poorly set and absurdly plotted pantomime.And myself, or ourselves, and all bystanders who think they are sober, wise and indifferent, can they get rid of the fate of being a small clown in this disappointing world? So I pushed the bicycle in frustration and continued to go home. Not far from home, I saw my mother looking for her all the way in a panic with an umbrella.When she saw me, she rushed over desperately, trying in vain to hold an umbrella for me who was completely soaked. In fact, at that moment, I cowardly cried when my eyes were blurred by the rain.I think that crying like this should not wake up Patience. Because in the rest of my youth, I still need it so much. The third year of high school came so uncompromisingly.Except that the white birch outside the window is one-year-old and withered again, I don't feel much difference. Qinghuai's postcards have covered the entire wall above the bed in my dormitory.In the nights after countless empty days, in the days after countless sleepless nights, they comforted me with long journeys and dreams, and reminded me again and again that the meaning of youth does not lie in this purgatory third year of high school, but rather This purgatory third year must be needed to forge and use it to give the most profound interpretation.Like the sharpest sword, it can only be forged by the hottest furnace and the most brutal quenching. However, in the precious years that followed, I never saw Qinghuai again.The seat next to me was always empty.Often, in the intervals between doing quiet exercises in the dormitory, I always feel that Qing Huai will naively come to me with two green and red peaches and tell me about her journey; or listen to the teacher explaining a complex analysis in class How many times, I would suddenly feel that as long as I turned my head, I could still see Qing Huai hiding behind the book, sniggering like a child... But it's all just memory. I found out later that Qing Huai's parents had decided to send her abroad, so she never had to come back.And until the last days of my third year in high school, I continued to receive her postcards, those commemorations with no other words except a distant postmark and a clear address.I am warm and grateful to know what a proud happiness I have obtained: having an address, and a person far away, who will send you the thoughts on the road. With such happiness, I ended my eighteen-year-old summer in the most shameless satisfaction. And the journey is over.Or rather, it will begin again.In the end, I carried a backpack and embarked on a long journey alone like Qing Huai, and Qing Huai was probably waiting for a connecting international flight in the terminal late at night. I will definitely cherish the scenery I was used to seeing in my youth in my memory - the white birches on the campus are yellow and green, rustling and shaking outside the bright window, the broken small leaves full of enamel refract the sunlight full of youth Carefree cheerfulness.The golden sunlight was cut into regular shapes by the window lattices of the classroom, and fell on the white walls covered with standard answers and college entrance examination information.The cry of cicadas was blown higher and higher by the hot wind, and the white shirt was agitated restlessly with the flying test papers and pages under the blowing of the fan.The seat cushion of the bicycle parked quietly in the teaching building was so hot.The naive and ignorant dragonfly stopped on the window sill in a daze, and soon left without interest. Just like Qinghuai, she will cherish in her memory the scenery she was used to watching in her youth - the excerpts of Lingxi, the long night train, the forest sea in Xiaoxing'an Mountains, the open land and starlight in Xinjiang, the vast grassland in Inner Mongolia, and those countless Endless picturesque mountains and rivers. From the summer when I was 18 years old, in the following time, I went through the postcard addresses Qinghuai sent me one by one, one by one.And every time I was about to send a postcard there, I found that I couldn't find the person who could send it to my miss on the road.Even if there was such a person, I don't know her address.After all, she is a migratory bird. So I can only write to myself again and again, telling myself that I used to walk in the memory. This was written when I was fifteen or sixteen years old, but now it seems that it is a long-winded and embarrassing pen.But I put it here without any modification, just as a mirror, or a commemoration.