Chapter 2 Nantaiji

Since when there was wind on deck no one can tell.First, the face is brushed like a fan, then the elbows are soaked like water, and finally the armpits are bulging like flying.Of course, no one wants to fly away like this.The boat was full of sea passengers, and they put on jackets or sweaters one after another.Dusk also said it was cold.So more gulls flew over to work overtime, shuttling back and forth, as if they really wanted to weave the dark colors into something thicker and denser.No more glitz and gold, the sea burial ceremony at sunset is coming to an end, and the southwest is still holding a few bundles of ponytails, which grow longer and thinner.Withdrawing his Miao Miao eyes, he realized that the huge continent had already collapsed, drifting farther and farther, and could no longer catch up.With a red hat and a yellow chimney, this three-story milky-white ferry is sailing out of the water alley lined with buoys, heading towards the vast ocean.

There are still more than a dozen gulls, following the rolling white waves at the stern, sometimes swooping down sharply, vying for food in the water.The poor ballerina, with a yellow beak and white feathers, clean and slim, is spreading her powerful wings, skating rhythmically on the back of the wind, following the lightest and softest curves.The back of the wind is wide and icy.The tongue of the wind smells of salt water.In the bottle of the black-clothed witch, the night is getting thicker and thicker.On the ocean surface at the 41st latitude north, there is still a layer of frosted glass, resisting the freezing darkness.When you enter the high seas, you can't touch or hold anything.We surrender ourselves to the ship, and the ship surrenders itself to nothingness, a complete nothingness for which no one is responsible.In the blue darkness, the vastness of the sky faces the vastness of the sea, and the vastness of the sea still faces the vastness of the sky, and it is unclear whether it is the sky wanting to touch the sea, or the sea wanting to drown the sky.

The wind was strong on the front deck, and the passengers moved to the back deck one after another.Several pairs of figures were waiting in the corner over there.A young mother, with her baby in her arms, was leaning against the side of the boat to my left.In the twilight, the bridge of her nose was still protruding, lining a gray face that was about to melt.Both the mother and the baby have slightly brown blond hair, and some faint waves are reflected in the mother and daughter's smiling pupils.A white-haired old man was stuck in a leaky cool chair, puffing on his pipe in a daze.The seafarers chew their insignificance in their own isolation, and face the unsolvable mysteries of the sky, the sea, and the night.Empty, the simplest space and time are the most difficult to understand, but also the most readable.Just like at this moment, from here to the Cape of Good Hope to the Long Fjord of Norway, hundreds of millions of cubic meters of Bihong contain the same amount of water. From high-latitude breakwaters to low-latitude docks, there are astronomical numbers of sharks, whales, herring, What on earth are cod and dolphins thinking?Greek mermaids are old.The Spanish ship sank.Pirates have disappeared from the high seas, gold coins have not rusted, and greedy eyes have been ground to pearls.The same saltiness has been going on for centuries, what are the aquariums thinking?Like at this moment, what am I thinking?Read the sky, read the night, read the sea.Three thick and empty books, you read and read, you still don’t understand anything but you still love to read, even though you have read every coral and every star.A three-hour voyage, brief yet eternal, from coast to coast.From coast to coast, you reach out to the past and the future.Leaving my body in the present, saying that the land does not exist, time is still, and space is annihilated, so that I can calmly organize my soul.Because this is just a transition, what is gone is gone, what is coming is like the future, you are yourself without care.Everything is pure and transparent.Space annihilation.Time stops.Also, I'm really tired.The couch sank into a soft basin, what a safe basin.I think, I really should go down.

I don't know how long I slept.I only know that when I wake up, the ferry whistle is still trailing, and the echoes of the harbor are echoing. "South Taiki is here." A middle-aged American lady smiled at me.In a hurry, I picked up my luggage and joined the passengers who disembarked, and set foot on South Taiki Island along the pontoon bridge covered with seaweed and clams.In the bitter sea breeze, a few scattered street lamps weakly resist the surrounding darkness in the shade of the elm trees and the old houses.The street that opens to the pier is becoming less and less crowded.I walked along the red brick sidewalk, into the seventeenth century.After groping for more than ten minutes, I had to admit to myself that I was lost.A policeman was standing by the fire hydrant across the street.I pass an old 1957 or 1958 Ford and walk up to him.

After looking at me suspiciously for a while, he said: "Are you looking for a hotel? Turn left in the small alley ahead, go to the end, and then turn right. There is a good hotel." Following his instructions, I entered the small alley, but after a few minutes, I lost my way again. In the cold street lights and tree shadows, the cobblestone road and red brick road in the enchanted array were all winding and narrow, with one foot high and the other foot low.This alley looks like that alley pretending to be another vague alley.Once I broke into a narrow street, looking around in a daze, the street lamps like will-o'-the-wisps set aside a hazy side, and I leaned closer to identify it carefully, and the six letters "Coffin" were impressive!Panicked and hurried out, still in doubt, I recalled that I had seen the "coffin street" in the first few chapters of the book.Fortunately, we turned another corner and found a "colonial inn".Fortunately, the hostess of the inn is a little brown-haired and blue-eyed woman who loves to laugh. There is no strange association in her amiable smile.After negotiating the price, I signed my name on the passenger registration book: Pai Chin.So the pair of blue eyes said: "Mr. Pai, let me take you to your room." Xinran, I followed her upstairs and walked through the long corridor, secretly amused, that is just the Roman word for "white whale" in Chinese Pinyin.

It was midnight when everything settled down.what a long day.Kicking the New England roads from the red sun, more state lines crossed than thresholds crossed, three hundred miles of galloping, two and a half hours of sailing, every muscle surrendered to fatigue.After showering, the double bed is extra wide and soft.Before long, the Atlantic Ocean rocked South Taiki into a small cradle. Regaining consciousness again, I felt very cold, and the pattering andante came from the ancient brick road below.It is raining on the island.The cold and damp rain came in through the window, carrying the fresh and clean plant fragrance.Pulling up the blanket, I sniffed it greedily for a while, but I couldn't distinguish any other ingredients except for the exquisite Qiangwei Qingfen, which was a little bit stuffy.It was still dark outside.He took out his luminous watch and found that it was not yet four o'clock.The aroma of roses is particularly refreshing, and when I think about it, my mind is refreshed, and I can't fall asleep anymore.Just like this, I stranded myself on the reef of the night, yesterday is in the past, and today has not yet begun.So alone in the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by exotic ichthyosaurs, listening to the turbulent ton of blue around me, there is nothing but a blue with greater pressure flowing under the blue, I should be the only Chinese on the island , although it is separated from China by an entire continent plus an entire ocean.Insulation within insulation, transition within transition.The rain is getting heavier.The cold air seeps into the thin blanket.Deciding that he couldn't sleep anymore, he simply got up, put on his heavy jacket, and closed the casement.There was no news of daybreak in the street.Sitting at the table by the window, turning on the wall lamp, I wanted to write a long air letter, but there was not enough letter paper.Then I picked it out from the handbag, and turned to the chapter "South Taiki", and Melville Shen Xiong's bass vibrated the air in the room.

"South Taiki! Get out your map and have a look. See what corner of the world it occupies; see how it stands there, far from the mainland, more solitary than a pillar lighthouse. You see—only a mound, An elbow of sand; no background but the shore. You can fill blotters with sand here in twenty years. The joker once told you that the islanders grow weeds because There was no weeds on the island; Said thistles would be brought from Canada; Said the islanders had to go overseas to order a cork to seal a leaking barrel; Said they carried wood chips to and fro on the island, as they did in Rome It is the same as the fragment of the original cross; it is said that the islanders plant grass in front of the door for shade in summer; it is said that one blade of grass is an oasis, and three leaves in a day are considered a grassland; it is said that the islanders wear quicksand shoes, like Rab It is said that the Atlantic Ocean shut them up, tied them up, surrounded them in all directions, blocked them, and separated them into a pure island. No wonder the chairs and tables they sat on found small clams stuck to them, like sticking to the backs of tortoise shells. That's the case in A. These sensational and alarming words mean that Nantaiji is not Illinois.

"No wonder these Nantaiji people who were born on the shore want to ask for life from the sea! At first they caught crabs on the beach; when they were more courageous, they waded out to catch mackerel; with more experience, they went out to sea to catch cod; In the end, they dispatched a whole fleet of giant boats to explore the world of water, circling the country of Ze or viewing the Bering Strait from a distance, regardless of seasons and sea areas, and to the most majestic water world in the Old Testament. Endless challenges of majestic herds, the weirdest and most grotesque herds!

"And so these naked South Taikis, these hermits of the sea, set out from their anthills on the sea, to ravage and conquer the world of water, like so many Alexanders; Divide Poland among the three states. Let the United States annex Mexico to Texas, swallow Canada and then Cuba; let Britain occupy India, and hoist their fire flags on the sun; Because the sea belongs to the Nantaiji people, they own the sea, just like the emperor owns the empire, and other boats can only pass by. Nantaiji’s merchant ships are extended bridges, and Nantaiji’s armed ships are floating fortresses. Even pirates With the privateer crew, they roam the sea like thieves on the land. After all, what they plunder are only other ships, the wandering land like themselves. They never want to live directly in the bottomless ocean. South Taiki people, only they can Live on the sea and make noise on the sea; only they, as recorded in the Bible, go to the sea in boats, plowing the sea back and forth as if they were their own big farms. The sea is their home, the sea is their business, and Noah's flood It cannot be interrupted, although it drowns hundreds of millions of souls in China..."

That's true.Melville only said that Noah avoided the flood, but he didn't hear about Dayu's control of the flood.With a snigger, I continued reading: "The South Taiki live on the sea like grouse on the plains; they hide among the waves, they climb the waves like antelope hunters climb the Alps. Homeless seagulls on land converge at sunset Wings, tossing and dreaming among the waves; so, when the night comes, the South Taikes, out of sight of land, lie down to rest with their sails furled, and under their pillows the herds of walruses and whales rush to and fro." I don't know when the rain has stopped.People began to move in the street below.Soon, there was the sound of rumbling cars on the cobblestone road.The yellow halo of the wall lamp appears faint in the fading dawn.I closed the 800-page book, turned off the wall lamp, and walked towards the reddish dawn, and pushed the casement open.Rose's breath floated in the air, and there was still the smell of wet rain rippling from the mud.In the morning, it is so tender and brand new, without a single wrinkle.There is a row of big elm trees in the street, with fresh green hair hanging down, and the leaves in the backlight are stacked with different layers of emerald black.Breathing the transparent air, suddenly, I felt hungry.

Coming out of the "Colonial Inn" and meeting me outside on a bright and cool morning, I immediately felt clear-headed, my lungs were pure, and every breath was a new birth.Walking out of the narrow alley, the shadows of green trees covered the whole body, the shadows of maple leaves overlapped with the elm trees, in the golden sunlight just out of the furnace, all of them shook off with one slap.On the streets paved with rough cobblestones, the morning light was so bright that it made people's eyebrows sultry.The red brick sidewalks on both sides are shaded by trees full of anchovy.Vegetable sellers, melon and fruit sellers, and flower boys set up their respective stalls in the mist, exuding vitality.The faint mist can't be folded together, can't be dragged and broken, and hangs a net of light in the windless air. The street is slanted open to the port, the blue horizon is divided by the uneven masts, and the white-painted hull is doubly dazzling against the sun.The Stars and Stripes fluttered over the Federal Post Office.St. Mary's Catholic Church rises majestically from the colonial white rooms.I finally walked into a seafood restaurant, ordered a bowl of clam chowder, and sat facing the sea.There are more than a hundred exquisite yachts and fishing boats moored in the harbor. Between the thick masts and masts, the white of the boats and the blue of the water contrast vividly and dazzlingly.Outside the harbor, there is the runway of gulls, the avenue of whales, and the Atlantic Ocean, which is full of blue and blue.This is South Taiki. Before the middle of the nineteenth century, this was the Carthaginian Empire of fishermen and the capital of the world's whaling industry.In 1840, Nantaiji in its heyday lit candles for most of the world. At that time, in the harbor in front of you stood the shadows of seventy three-masted whaling ships.Before that, four Indian tribes lived on the island.Then came the Quaker immigrants in the seventeenth century.Then someone bought Nantaiji for thirty gold pounds and two beaver hats.But that was a long, long time ago.Close the thick one, and it will all be covered.If you don't believe me, you can ask the Atlantic Ocean, it must have turned into a kind of forgetful blue, and it has completely wiped out everything. "Hey, you ordered clam chowder!" The stiffly starched waitress's white dress covered the view of the harbor. After eating the clam soup, I walked slowly back to the city center along the already awake street, and rented a convertible car from the only car rental agency on the island.It was an old Chrysler, tall and blunt, with a square head and big ears. In terms of age, at least it was produced before 1956 or 1957, and it could be my car. More than a little Dodge's uncle.I had no choice but to pay a deposit of 50 yuan, stepped on the ostentatious bridge, leaned on the side, and rushed out of the city all the way. After passing the Baptist church and the seventeenth-century old mill that once set off the Dutch style, the old Chrysler turned into one red brick alley after another.Clumps of white roses and red roses in full bloom climbed out from the milk-colored low fence, calmly making the morning fragrant in the windless sunshine where spiders spin silk.The brighter and more brilliant flower clusters cascade down from the light blue sloping roof to the gate or summer corridor, splashing a lot of foam.It was already past nine o'clock, and there were still many beautiful buildings with red roofs and white walls, unable to come out to bask in the sun in the deep shade of elm trees.Once out of Orange Street, the highway stretches out on the sandy shore, extending toward Sconeside.I stepped hard on the gas pedal, and immediately called a long sea breeze, from the tidal water.The open convertible car rises against the wind on the even more unsheltered wasteland. My sideburns, my limbs and my thousands of pores are all blown up by the wind, turning into a strange kite.What Melville said about the rare phenomenon of a grass growing into a forest is really an exaggeration.Perhaps this was true a hundred years ago, but on the coast in front of you, although the island is small and windy and tall trees are difficult to grow, there are still a lot of thistles and low shrubs between the shallow swamps and depressions.The sand undulates into gentle mounds.Except for a single lighthouse left alone and a few piles of pale black blocks left behind by the world, there is only a piece of blue nothingness called the Atlantic Ocean, from here to Europe.The huge sea beast that swallows the ocean currents is still in the blue field of nothingness, spraying water jets, facing the sun and moonlight and the astrology that Noah used to look like.The nineteenth century never seemed to happen, just a majestic rumor, and Melville's joke was too big.Queek, Tustego, Ishmel and Captain Ahab.Old beard Mai, it really seems to be the case. Soaked in pure blue for a long time.The sky is blue, the sea is blue, the hair is blue, the eyes are blue, the memory is blue, the nostalgia is blue, and blue again.The sky is an enamel lid, and the sea is an enamel box. Cover me in it, trying to curse me into a blue lunatic with blue face and blue teeth. When I lift the lid, even my mother can’t recognize it me.My heart trembles with desolation.The sun in Taiwan is on the opposite side of the sphere of water and land. When he comes to rescue me, I am afraid that I will be dying of blue hair, and I will die with blue hair, and I will not even leave the blue will.On the fine sandy shore, there are anchovies pecked empty by gulls, and the stench of rotting fish stretches for miles.I know that death does not have to be black.Babadi rushed to this deserted island from New York, but he didn't see the white whale filling the space between the sky and the earth, he didn't see the team of giant whales drumming the waves, no, he didn't even see a whale tail, only Picked up the carcasses of anchovies all over the bay.I'm over a hundred years late.Unless you knock on a blue door and watch the sea god under Chihiro, you will never see the nineteenth-century whaling heroes, the pirate ships that sacrificed their treasures, and the fleet that opened up the sea for the Virgin Queen. Nope, creamy and sexy mermaid.The sea is the richest miser, the witch who never tells her secrets.I'm thousands of years late. I think I'd better go back.The wind picks up.The waves are rising.The blue-eyed witch's incantation became more and more fierce.Why dispatch so many sea miles to threaten a stranger who is desolate enough?The blue universe is separated by 360 degrees, isolating everything on the blue side and me on the blue side, in a oblivion that is neither ancient nor modern.Because ancient times are locked in the tower, and my motherland is locked in my chest, tuberculosis is locked in my chest.Because modern New York is dizzy at high speed, and New York is like an anteater sucking people.Because you are unrealistic and immature, a foreigner, just to worship a man's blood-filled pen, a style as strong as an ax and wild as a monument, and you are willing to be a prisoner of the sea god in the water prison of the Atlantic Ocean .Because like the weight-carrying hand, you are also addicted to cutting and cutting, always wanting to chop your own voice on an expressionless stone wall.For like it, you also suffer from epic megalomania, fancying that you must drink the sea to quench your thirst and chew the mountain to satisfy your hunger, that your breath is the weather of the gods, and that your fantasies are reality. The convertible flapped its wings again amid the shouts of blue, heading for South Taikey Harbor.All the waves rolled over to intercept.The return ticket is still in my pocket and the ferry is still in port.This is the only chance to jailbreak.The wind is getting weaker and the waves are becoming less audible.Entering the city, stopped in front of the Whaling Museum, kept the engine on, let Chrysler murmur like a big sick cat.I still want to cross the one-way street of the nineteenth century again before leaving.My heart swelled as soon as I stepped into the large showroom of branched beams.The twentieth century was shut out.This is the data room of the ancient whale industry epic.Hundreds of years ago and thousands of years ago, the ebb and flow of the tide, the struggle between man and the sea and the hand-to-hand fight of the majestic black herd, the rhythm came from every relic.Tears overflowed from my eyes.Tears are salty, and tears are an answer to the sea, saying, I came from salty water and I cannot forget it.Walk under the hoisted rigging and anchor chain, between the quadrant and the sextant, between the model barque and the logbook and the spotting telescope, towards the authentic whaling clipper , the ears are the wind of the nineteenth century, the waves from Cape Cod to the Cape of Good Hope to the South China Sea.I seemed to breathe the horror and hopeless rage that Captain Ahab had breathed.Looking up, on the wide wall nailed by horizontal planks, the sharp short fishing forks are arranged in a strict order, and two long iron forks are leaning obliquely in between.This is a whaler's weapon rack.These bloodthirsty murderers still maintain the silence of metal hostility, the silence of clank and clank, although they are familiar with the physical strength and desperate will of the fork thrower, the panic and despair as black as the mountains, and the blue mud of more than ten acres. The kind of chaos that became a whirlwind. Looking back under a huge shadow, I saw an unprecedented double-headed mace standing upside down head down and tail upside down, blocking my way. roots.His gaze climbed up the pillar, crossed the thick beams, and ended on the roof at the tip of the pillar.Two rows of giant teeth are deeply embedded in the gums, and a hard card is nailed between the lowest teeth, which reads: "The largest whale jaw in the world, eighteen feet long, with twenty-three teeth on the left and right sides. The male whale is eighty-three in length. feet.” So here is the chopping board for the fish, the gate of hell for the fisherman!The Tatuti buddies, the Quegeeks, can't come back when they walk past.The one-legged captain walked over and couldn't come back.I came and went—the ferry's whistle sounded suddenly, shaking the entire harbor, and most importantly, breaking the potency of the blue-eyed witch's spell, breaking my disorientation and dizziness just in time.The mainland is calling me beyond the chopping block and the gate of hell, and everything in the future is waiting for me outside the gate.Because, the whistle sounded again.Nantaiji, I think I should go. Note: Nantucket is a small island south of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in the northeast corner of the United States. It is 14 miles long, 3.5 miles wide, and about 30 miles from the mainland.From the seventeenth century to the middle of the nineteenth century, Nantaiji has been one of the world's whaling and candle making centers.The island is the setting for several opening chapters of Herman Melville's immortal tome (Moby Dick).On June 30, 1965, I went to the island for a visit so that I could better grasp the atmosphere when translating.The passages of the chapter "South Pacific" quoted in this article were originally arranged for artistic effect, so they are quite abridged. Fortunately, please don't blame me for the incomplete translation.