Chapter 14 a clog

The pale golden sunset, like this ship, lazily stops on this rectangular piece of sea water.The gray doors of the warehouses on the docks on both sides have been tightly closed.The noisy voices of the whole afternoon have been quieted down, only the sudden evening wind is blowing the messy straw ropes and dust on the pier. I leaned silently on the railing of the boat, surrounded by a piece of emptiness—heavy, time passed by minute by minute, and the vast night covered it. Looking up sharply, I saw a wooden clog floating on the water not far from the boat, which had been soaked into dark brown by the sea.On the swaying waves, rocking, rocking, slowly moving outward, as if trying to rock out to sea!

what!My friend in distress!How did you know I was leaving quietly?How do you know that I can't leave those friends who put you under my feet?You jumped into the sea from the shore and escorted me by the side of the boat all the way? Over the past few years, the sleepless nights in Tokyo—I was only accompanied by the sound of rain on the tile eaves, the moonlight outside the paper window, and more emptiness—heavy and dark nights; During the sleepless nights, I heard the clogs of Jiada Jiada, passing by my building one after another.This sound, stepping on the gravel road, is empty and solid; it is not like the Japanese officer's boots on the Dongdan playground in Beijing that I have heard before, and it is not like the sound of Japanese officials and gentlemen in the lobby of the Beijing Hotel. The sound of leather shoes.This is the sound of the empty and solid clogs of the working people of Japan, who are inseparable in the wind and rain... I folded my hands and pillowed them behind my head. Looking up slowly, I saw the sad and haggard faces of old men and women in coats and white smocks; face; I saw the melancholy faces of youths and girls in square hats and short skirts... These faces, which I kept seeing in the streets and alleys during the day, all converged at this moment, and suddenly appeared in front of my building. Dagada walked by.

"Friends in misery! In this long dark night, where is hope? Where are you going in such a hurry?" In the tossing and turning of insomnia, I always thought so painfully. But Lu Xun's few words often pierced into my dark heart like a flash, "I think: hope doesn't matter at all, and it doesn't matter at all. This is just like the road on the ground; in fact, there is no road on the ground, and there are too many people walking. , and it becomes the way.” In this way, the sound of the empty and solid clogs stepped across my rocky thoughts night after night; one sound at a time, one step at a time, stepped on a solid and flat road for me, leading me from the night to the until dawn!

More than ten years have passed, but I still often think of the clogs on the water next to the pier in Yokohama, Japan at that time.For me, it symbolizes the working people in Japan, and it also reminds me of a period of life in Japan during those years, which arouses many complex emotions in me. Since leaving Japan that day, I have been there twice.At this time, the Japanese people are not only my friends in suffering, but also my friends in my struggle. The joy and sorrow in my heart are quite different from those of ten years ago.However, when the people who went with them brought back some souvenirs related to Mount Fuji or cherry blossoms, I collected some small, nostalgic toy clogs... June 8, 1962, Beijing.

(This article was originally published in the July 1962 issue of "Shanghai Literature", and later included in the collection of essays "Sakura Praise".)