Chapter 24 Chapter Twenty-Four

Coming out of a friend's house in the drizzling rain you walk into the La Motte-Picue metro station.You put away your wet umbrella and want to see the Eiffel Tower at night.You can see nothing but darkness rolling in the sky. You're standing amidst the wind blowing from the cave and the swarming litter.You looked at the yellow invalid tickets all over the place and thought they were the wings of dead dragonflies.She didn't die, what died was the summer sun, the flowing water in the canal, the dragonflies and the reeds, but you no longer have the courage to look for her in the past.When you took out your monthly pass, you touched your heart. It was still beating, but you knew it was already dead.

In the bright living room of a friend's house, a group of Chinese and French talked about the "Cultural Revolution" together. The topic of the "Cultural Revolution" is probably the same as wine, the longer it is stored, the more interesting it will be.No one feels the absurdity of talking about it while sipping Bordeaux and chewing cheese.During the farewell, someone suggested to sing a song that both the French and the Chinese could sing, and in the end they sang "Mao Zedong came out of China" in unison. You stand on the escalator and feel that all this is unreal, and you go down slowly to the ground, the more you are in a trance.Even if you fall headlong on the subway tracks, you will think that the world in front of you is a mirage.The only thing that touched you was an anecdote about Mao Zedong's later years told by a Chinese doctoral student.His father was a powerful senior official during the "Cultural Revolution", so there is no doubt about his words.He said that Mao Zedong had fallen into a deep loneliness in his heart a few years before his death. Every year on the night of the Spring Festival, he had no relatives by his side, and of course he would not visit anyone.He sat alone in the old courtyard of Zhongnanhai, asked the guards to buy countless firecrackers, and quietly listened to the crackling of the firecrackers from night to dawn.

You sat in the subway car and savored his loneliness. At this point, you discovered his shining humanity, which was actually connected with your remaining humanity.He and you were equally deprived of happiness from diametrically opposed causes and you ended up feeling sorry for him because he had the same disease as you.You think you too should go somewhere and get some firecrackers to pass the days ahead. At this time, two beautiful French girls entered the carriage with guitars in their arms.It's "for art" and "for your entertainment" again, but you're surprised to hear the melodious Neapolitan folk songs.The sand bells made of Coca-Cola cans sounded like the rhythm of the waves, and a car of people rushed to the sun in a boat.The red-haired French girl who sings is like the red flag of May 1968, flying from the Latin Quarter to this subway car.You are so immersed in their singing, piano and beauty that you miss the stop.You have to listen for a while.Under the guidance of that red flag, people who love art will eventually destroy all art with the hands that create art.This is your experience not your foresight.You follow the flow of people onto the ground, and it doesn't matter which station it is.The weather in Paris is the same as the women in Paris, and you actually see the stars shining lonely again.