Chapter 4 4. The door of childhood

4. The door of childhood 22 I think, as a painter, Z's life should have started one afternoon when he was nine years old, similar to the winter afternoon I experienced.It begins with a feather enclosed in a porcelain vase.A big bird's feather, white, elegant, vigorous, and elegant.It started with a snowmelt season, a cold weekend.It started with the fascination for a beautiful building and the surprise when walking into it.It started in a spacious room in that beautiful building, where the afternoon sun passed through the floor-to-ceiling windows and spread flatly on one side and the other on the floor. There it turns to an empty green, and then to a faint purple just before it disappears.It all started when, for the first time in his life, he went alone to a friend, a girl his own age—a woman, also nine.

It was a building we had never entered.We, me and Z and maybe some other kids, we watched it build, it was so beautiful, we all imagined the inside of it.But a few decades ago, it was still a kind of interior that the children of common people could not imagine. Among the large areas of dark and old houses, the alleys are like a net.The snow shrank and melted ugly on the side of the road, dripping leisurely on the eaves of centuries-old houses.The air is fresh, the sun is very far in winter, and the air is bitingly crisp.Walking through the short and long narrow alleys alone, walking through the tall and short old houses alone, putting both hands into the sleeves, and putting hands into the sleeves from time to time with cold sore ears.Turning east and west and winding around, there are still endless narrow alleys and old houses. I doubt where I have gone. I am about to doubt and doubt, and suddenly I see an orange building. It is not high, but it is very Big, brilliant like a ray of evening sun.A beautiful and unexpected house in which I was almost lost when I was nine years old.I thought I would find a straight corridor when I entered the building door, and I could see all the rooms on both sides, but no, there are winding passages, halls and rooms, and the space is arrogantly and strangely divided.Everywhere is so elegant and dignified, and there is a noble mystery in the quiet, which makes people slow down and hold their breath.

I have never seen so many doors, closed doors everywhere I go, sometimes there are seven or eight doors, countless doors, and there are no windows on the doors. Go to the game, (come and try, see which door is a beautiful woman and which door is a tiger).A door was opened, and there were clothes inside, rows and layers of men's ties and coats, and women's long skirts and leather shoes, with a faint smell of camphor.Pushing open a door, the walls are covered with light green tiles, and there is a bed behind the transparent curtains. I thought it was a bed but it was not. There was a faint fragrance in the darkness, and it was a bathtub that was also light green.Pushing open another door, there is a circle of low cabinets standing against the wall inside, and the glass cabinet doors are full of artworks: small houses made of wheat straw, naked women carved in stone, copper or glass bottles , Wooden head portraits... there are more things that I can't name.Exit and push open another door, there is a cat with 10,000 books inside, a sleeping cat, and 10,000 books neatly arranged on rows of bookshelves.There are two more doors inside another door, there is a faint but bright light, and there is a pot of quiet and warm flowers.There was a slow piano sound coming from the door next to the flower. I knocked, but no one answered. I pushed it, and it opened. What a big place!On the other side of the sofas, at the end of the flat and wide carpet, I saw the back of a woman sitting upright in the distance, and asked her, she didn't answer anything, she didn't hear anything, she just tilted her head and walked away. Her long hair and the loose sound of the piano covered her face.I didn’t dare to ask any more, stepped back, stood there not daring to move, stood at a loss by the door, amazed, terrified, maybe even ashamed, and I remembered that place forever.But that place, in the long-term memory, can't be changed or even seems to be non-existent, but the astonishment, horror, and self-ashamedness really remain in the impression for a long time.The painter Z must be the same, he must have remembered that scene, and in the future, he will show those doors, windows, carved walls, the leisurely cat and the pot of enthusiastic flowers in his paintings upside down, twisted and interlaced at will. On the canvas, it is like the ease and strangeness of the piano sound. (That's one of the hundreds he's still not satisfied with. I'll see it decades from now, and I'll be reminded of an experience both he and I might have had...) If even the door to get out I can’t find it anymore, and if I’m already nine years old and can’t cry easily, I have no choice but to walk along the winding corridors, pushing open the closed doors one after another, and I want to go home.I can always hear faint piano music, walking out one door after another, I want to go home.Walking out one door after another and forgetting about the girl I was looking for, I only want to go home.Finally walked into that room - writing night, as if I followed Z into that room.

When Z was nine years old, he walked into that room and saw the feather of the big bird.The window lattices against the light are light gray, and each piece of glass is dazzling and soft with the light of water mist and ice.No one, nothing else, only the porcelain vase with a feather in it, and the log-colored square platform on which the porcelain vase was placed.This may just be Z's impression after many years.After years of erosion, that impression has been constantly changing.In the life of the painter z who was lost, he would try to paint the impression of that early life countless times, and only then would he realize how elusive it is to grasp that moment.There was no one, but the door of this room was open, and the faint sound of the piano could not stop coming. He walked in, with a dreamlike rhythm.There was nothing but the square table, the porcelain vase, and the big white bird's feather. The room was wide and even empty. He walked over and seemed to recognize something with the innate sensitivity of a child.Perhaps this is the guidance of fate, all the doors are closed and only one door is left open leisurely, Z, with a painter's predestined sensitivity, discovered the beautiful and lonely feather in the winter light that filled the room.In the shadow by the window, it is extremely white, big and long, with a firm and steep upper end and a soft and elegant end, leisurely but turbulent.The excitement of the artist who will come sooner or later leads Z, slowly approaching or standing next to it in an instant, like a long separation, like a reunion, like a relationship in a previous life, facing it silently, forgetting where it is, forgetting I went home, forgot my timidity, stared blankly at the feather, stared at it, and stared blankly. For a while, loneliness was praised, melancholy was respected, and a melody that had been stored for a long time finally had a beat.Likely, at this moment the painter's future was decided. Z's small figure was motionless in the light of the setting sun at that moment, like a believer listening to an oracle.It was as if everything had been annihilated by the presence of that feather, and everything was eclipsed and insignificant, except for the strands of that feather, which were swaying and fluttering gracefully and noblely, and would always be noisy and tumultuous in his life.

23 If it had stopped here, O said, the result could have been very different. O smoked a cigarette occasionally during the last two years.The smoke drifted in front of her, so I couldn't see her face clearly. Like that wonderful game, O said, you push this door and you don't push that door, and if instead of this door you push that door, and walk in, it makes all the difference. Why is it different? O said: No, no one can know what will be inside the door that has not been opened, but from the two doors will go to two different worlds, and even the two worlds will never intersect.

What is she referring to?Or, who is it referring to? O pretended to be detached and blew away the smoke in front of his eyes, taking the opportunity to avoid my gaze. I admit that at that moment I felt something bordering on schadenfreude: this was the first time O was evasive when it came to Z—the charming Z. 24 Once I asked O: what has Z been painting recently? O said: In fact, he has been painting that afternoon. that feather? No.It was that afternoon. What Z really wanted to paint all his life was that cold afternoon. Does it make a difference? It's entirely possible that the afternoon didn't end with that feather.

25 The female teacher O, she believes that the future matters are more important, and the painter Z must have encountered something there. What have you encountered? It must be the same thing as that feather, which made him unable to get rid of it for the rest of his life. What's up?Ok?What kind of thing? No one knows except Z. But have you noticed? Z went there to find a girl. Yes, yes, but he never mentioned it again. 26 Probably a pretty girl.She often enters a boy's dream with her beauty.If one day a boy draws a picture, the adults all praise him for his good drawing; if one day he draws a running horse and he believes that it is a real horse, he suddenly has a feeling of excitement. Desire: To surprise the girl in the dream, first look at the horse in surprise, then slowly raise her surprised eyes to him.That was the boy's first passion.It was no longer always that he looked at the girl in surprise—this matter could also be reversed, and that was the moment when the boy first pursued his dream.He hid that dream in a place that he himself had never discovered, and set off on a winter afternoon...

Or maybe the girl wasn't pretty.Not because of pretty.Just because of her voice, a song she sang, tears she sang that song, and feelings she couldn't control while she sang that song.The voice flowed from the quiet stage lights of a summer night into the boy's day and night dreams.If this is the case.If he is always imagining the place where the clear voice lives, if the imagination of that place is endless with silence, if that place becomes magical and inscrutable day by day, if even the neighbors there become The most enviable person in the world is the first commotion in a boy's heart.He didn't know the origin of the commotion, but every morning and every evening, the days were no longer the same as before, which was the starting point of the boy's dream.After all, there must be a starting point, and it may happen to be in the season of snowmelt...

But maybe for other reasons.It can be for any reason.If that season comes, the boy's fantasy will come to dream by any means.For example, the joy and cheerfulness of the girl, or the gentleness of her mother.Like how the girl behaves and talks, or just where she lives means mystery or nobility.For example, the girl's bravery and justice, she once defended the boy's dignity when he was insulted and ridiculed, or just showed her standing with him with her eyes.For example, the girl's delicate and stubborn sympathy, she used to accompany the boy all the way home when he was afraid to go home because of something.For example, the girl is gifted with the strength of the opposite sex, she uses simple and firm orders to make the arrogant boy dare not act rashly.All this, and more, might stir up the inevitable commotion of the boy who set off on a cold afternoon to prove his dream.

Who is the girl that painter Z dreamed of? The scene where the painter Z set off to find the girl is very similar to an experience I once had.The girl he used to go to and the one I went to got mixed up on writing night. Z or me, is that time too early?Nine years old seems too early. The nine-year-old boy started his life as a man with a childish excuse, using a small trick as a reason to start.There is a beautiful and secluded house in the alleys among the gray, low and boundless old houses.It was an unexpected house, and I was a little scared.I was a little afraid of the emptiness and heaviness.It was a place of bottomless elegance and strangeness, I was a little ashamed and wanted to go home.The haunted corridors lead to no one knows where, countless doors, countless closed doors, the halls and rooms are divided strangely, and the thick roof and walls block the sound and swallow the sound, which makes people uncomfortable. Dare to speak.That girl, but that girl was also nine years old, she didn't take it seriously, she chattered and laughed, jumped in front of me and led me (or led Z in the same way).

come go to my room Go Wow Z bring it on "Ha! Why are you here?" she said happily. This is where my aunt lives do not don't go there Z no one there "Hi-! How did you come?" she said cheerfully. that's my brother's room shhh let's ignore him my sister lives here She's not here right now, she's practicing piano over there Did you hear that? her piano "When did you come? Hey, where were you going?" she said happily. That's my mom (gentle and suave) whee She hasn't seen you coming yet My dad (10,000 books, 10,000 unfathomable books) he is my dad Oh Z don't bother him let's go to my room Walk let's go "Oh——, why are you here? Did you pass by here?" She said happily.her room.I followed her into her room.Her room was better, not so big and empty, not so heavy, and the sound flowed as usual.She took out all her colorful books, flipped through one by one, and excitedly told the stories in the books.Tell me?I looked around, and everything there was newer and more charming than those stories.I didn't speak.I don't know what to say.The boy forgot that little trick.The nine-year-old painter probably didn't use the last long-planned excuse that the "real horse" had been sleeping in his pocket.I didn't say anything to the girl from beginning to end.I can't recall what to say.I was just surprised. I stood, turned my head and eyes constantly, sat down, and walked to the window sill to look out.It was an unusual time.The boy obeyed the command of the nine-year-old woman, he did what she told him to do, and he answered what she asked, but he didn't understand what the girl said... but.But if the sound of the piano stopped far away at this time, a line of light footsteps sounded and the door opened, and the girl's sister walked in, no matter the appearance or expression, it would make people feel cold-cold, but beautiful.She saw the boy, she saw Z but she didn't look at Z, she just said to the girl, "Why did you bring him in, eh? How did you bring them in?" (Them, why did she say them? Who are they? Me, who else? Who?) The girl's happiness disappeared, and she lowered her head and muttered.If, if her brother came again after her sister had gone—a quiet youth, or gloomy.He just glanced at Z, but that glance was very careful, and he didn't say anything, so he turned and left without saying anything.When the door closed gently behind him, leaving only a narrow gap, the girl whispered to Z: "Why don't you go home. Okay? Why don't you go first." The boy Wanted to say I'll come back tomorrow. Z thinks about tomorrow, tomorrow is not too far away, and he hopes that he will come earlier than today and walk faster on the road.Then, a woman's voice outside called her nanny: "Auntie—" "Auntie—" The voice was elegant and solemn, flowing steadily in the deep corridor. Z would think that it was the girl's mother.But her mother didn't show up, it was her aunt who came in.Auntie's strong southern accent rang for a long time.After the noisy southern entrance rang for a long time, the nine-year-old girl walked ahead silently, sending nine-year-old Z away.Even up to this moment, Z's dream was still pure chaos.However, if fate insists on opening another door for such a boy, if it chooses Z and abandons me, Z may hear a voice that I have never heard before walking out of the winding hall: "How did she bring in the child from outside... who asked her to bring him home..." It was probably such a voice.At the end of that winter afternoon, Z encountered such a sound.I was abandoned and I walked out of the charming house, but Z was a little slower in the same experience, he was a little bit late, and he found that the "real horse" fell out of his pocket and fell on the smooth floor On the way, he turned around to pick it up, and a gust of flowing air opened another door for Z, and the voice remained in the heart of the nine-year-old boy forever: "How did she put those wild children... the one outside?" The children...brought in...and told her not to bring them into the house again..." (Oh, it's them again. This time I kind of understand who they are referring to.) If so, the artist Z's The dream met a direction in the echo of the nine-year-old year. 27 Is this what O said "if you had pushed that door instead of this one, the result would have been very different"?This is what O said "from two gates leads to two different worlds, the two worlds will never even intersect" right?What did O know about that cold afternoon?There is no way to prove it. Painter Z was walking home at the age of nine. At that time, the sun had already set, and it was getting dark. It was colder than when he came, and the melting snow on the eaves of the old houses along the way was frozen into ice again. Now, when I was several times older than nine years old, and accompanied Z on the way home, I saw the first moving confusion in the boy's eyes.I heard his footsteps suddenly urgent and sometimes slow. Z must have thought of his innocent mother.I heard his breathing was like the whirling wind in the alley, gradually lifting strands of desolate resentment.But Z’s first resentment in his life was probably directed at himself: Why do you miss going back (still!) to look at that beautiful house that has disappeared into the night.From that cold afternoon until night, it made no difference who the bleak resentment chose or spared.This doesn't seem to affect having some warm afternoons and happy weekends in different locations at the same time.The structure of the world remains largely unchanged, and the ratio of cold to warm remains largely unchanged.But that's not to say that the cold winds at the poles don't cause heavy rains at the equator.Nothing is impossible as God's human drama continues to be written. 28 For example, where was O at that time?Where was O on that cold or warm weekend? By the time Z was nine, O was already in existence, and O was probably four.When that elegant and fluttering feather suddenly entered Z's field of vision, where was O at that moment?She was probably still in the south, looking at the melting moonlight, or hearing the rain hitting plantains for the first time.Or she has come to the north from the south, in the warm arms of her parents, with her eyes wide open, listening to the north wind whistling outside the window.If she was in that beautiful house, if she was that little girl (but not nine but four), it seemed to me that nothing was impossible.When Z was stunned and speechless in front of the big bird's feather, or when what happened later, when Z was walking home and hating himself, the little girl 0 was do what?What are you thinking about?She would do and think that a four-year-old girl might do all the possible things, but she could not know that an event closely related to her fate was happening in this world.Although it will take a long time, decades, and uncountable karma before the din of that incident will reach her and affect her life, but in just a few decades On that cold afternoon before, the destination of the little girl 0 could not be changed.If you look at the future from the position of a four-year-old 0, you will say that her future is uncertain, and you will say that her future is unlimited. Can see a destiny.All life is the same, all people are the same. We all do. Whoever's history we try to probe a little bit, we have to take an attitude about "history."I used to believe that history does not exist, and all so-called history is just speculation about the past (the posterity versus the predecessors), based on our own situation.I don't intend to abandon this understanding, I want to reconcile another understanding: history exists again, if we are born with a prescribed situation.If you wake up from nothingness (the immeasurable nothingness) and see that you have been placed in a criss-cross network, you are woven on a given network node (you can't see the origin of the veins) and where to go, this is God's impromptu weaving), then it proves that history does exist.There is no need to overthrow the two understandings of the relative needles and peaks. 29 Where does the immeasurable nothingness end?Ends with "I". I wake up, I open my eyes, nothingness dissolves in an instant, and I see the world. From the knot of the web the world prepared for me nothingness begins to dissipate, from the knot of nothingness to dissipate the world begins to expand, expand my hope, or expand with my hope... 30 I still remember my first hope.It was a Sunday, and it lasted from morning to afternoon, until it was dark. My mother promised to take me out that week, but I can't remember where, it might be the zoo, it might be somewhere else.Anyway, she said yes a long time ago, and took me out on that Sunday, and there was nothing wrong with it; one can never go wrong looking forward to a day for the first time in one's life.And that's what my mother said that morning: Go, of course.I think in the end it made me look forward to it.Get up, brush your teeth, eat, it is a spring morning, the sun is shining.go?Wait a while, wait a while before going.I ran out and stood at the gate of the street, waiting for a while, I hid behind the gate for a long time, I knew it would not be that simple for a while, I had to hide for a while without making a sound.My mother came out, but I forgot to scare her, why is she carrying a vegetable basket in her hand?You said go!Wait, after buying the vegetables, I will go after buying the vegetables.Do you go as soon as you finish shopping for groceries?Ok.It's not a good time.I jumped on the bricks, hopscotch, and waited for my mother to come back.I looked at the sky, watched the clouds go, and waited for my mother to come back, anxious and excited.I squatted on the ground and poked an ant nest with a branch, and crawled to find more ant nests.I was the only child in the yard and no one played with me.I squatted in the grass and flipped through a pictorial. It was a movie pictorial that I had seen many times. There were a group of girls older than me, all of whom were very beautiful.I squatted in the grass watching them, imagining their home, imagining what they were doing at the moment, imagining their brothers and sisters and their parents, imagining their voices.Last year's wild grass was green again, and the yard was huge and empty.When my mother came back from shopping, she ransacked the box and opened the cabinet again.Let's go, didn't you say to go after shopping for groceries?Okay, okay, don't you see that I'm busy?That's weird, should I be justified?Isn't it, I haven't been waiting, didn't my mother promise?I followed my mother's legs all morning: go?Go, go, why don't you go?Let's go... I just kept chasing after my mother's legs, watching her finish one thing and do another.I am not as tall as her legs, and those two non-stop legs are still dangling in front of my eyes. They don't stop, they tripped over me several times, and I almost got caught between them several times and knocked them down.In the afternoon, my mother said, in the afternoon, wake up and take a nap before going.Go, mother said, in the afternoon, you must go.But this time blame me, blame myself, I overslept my afternoon nap.When I woke up, I saw my mother was washing clothes.It's not too late to go then.I look at the sky, it's not too late.Are you still going?go.let's goFinish the laundry.This time it cannot be forgiven.I don't know how long that pile of laundry will take, but Mother should know.I squatted beside her and watched her wash.I said nothing, looking forward to it.I think I will not leave half a step, and I will not oversleep again, I think that as soon as the laundry is done, I will pull her up and leave immediately, and she will never be allowed to delay any longer.I looked at the clothes in the basin and the clothes outside the basin, I looked at the sun, I looked at the light, I didn't say a word, I looked at the clothes kneading in the basin and the foam that burst, I felt the light around me gradually dimming, Gradually it became colder and gloomy, and it became farther and farther away and more and more ethereal. I didn't say a word, and suddenly I understood a little bit.I can still feel the long and rapid changes in the light, the lonely and melancholy dusk, and I can hear the sound of my mother rubbing clothes, which is endless like the footsteps of time.that Sunday.On that day.The mother found the boy squatting there motionless, and found him crying, weeping silently.I felt my mother shake off the water from her hands in panic, and pull me over and into her arms.I heard my mother saying, kissing me and saying, "Oh sorry, oh sorry..." That Sunday, I was supposed to go out, but I can't remember where.The boy squatted next to the big and heavy laundry tub, nestled in his mother's arms, closed his eyes and stopped looking at the sun.The light is irretrievably fading, and it is desolate. I honestly believe that such a memory will also be the memory of little girl O.Whether in the south or in the north, the little girl O will definitely have such memories, but her yard may be larger and more empty, her grass may be larger and deeper, and her sunset may be more beautiful. Bigger and more silent, her mother, like my mother, embraced a silently weeping child in her arms in panic.However, during his lifetime, O couldn't break free from the sorrow of the fading light.There are always such people, and I often feel their existence in the cruel spring, whether it is a prosperous place or a remote place, their desolate hopes are scattered everywhere in the world. Oh, whether she is dead or alive, from the net that the world has prepared for me, she is a child squatting in the weeds in spring, squatting in the deep sunset, obsessed with a beautiful dream. O has never been able to get out of the spring grass and the deep sunset all his life, and cannot accept the irreversible disappearance of a beautiful dream. leave this world. What about Z?During that winter afternoon and night, he didn't shed tears, and no one took him into his arms. He heard a news from the world through another door, news that entered the sensitive heart of a boy, It will grow louder and louder, and this is the difference between Z and me and O.This seemingly small difference is the starting point for God of Destiny to exert his great imagination.