Chapter 14 Thirteen. In the dark, those years of me

Early the next morning, I started to walk all over the street, trying to find a tour guide in a travel agency to rent a car, but after several travel agencies asked, I couldn’t afford the amount of renting a car. My budget was within 1,000 yuan, but This amount was resolutely rejected. In the case of limited English communication, I adopted the most polite way to bargain: I wrote down the price that both parties could afford. In order to impress the boss of one of the travel agencies, I even said disgustingly I wrote "China" and "Nepal" on the paper full of numbers, and then drew a heart between the two words, hoping to impress him with the aura of diplomatic relations between the two countries, but the boss didn't like this, just Smiling and said: "I love you honey too, but one hundred and fifty dollars? Impossible (impossible)."

At the last travel agency, the boss who looked like an ascetic monk looked at the number I wrote down, pondered for a long time, then nodded sadly, and looked at me with an expression of enlightenment: "Understood, you can only pay That's a lot of money, right?" I nod. "Don't you want to go to Chitwan? There, the royal park, is beautiful." "There's not enough money." The boss shook his head: "Enough, come on, honey, come and tell me your requirements for this trip." I lowered my head and thought for a while: "Be comfortable, eat well and live well, oh and also, I don't like walking, I have to take a car everywhere, don't let me walk."

I only have a budget of 150 US dollars, so I made a request of 1,500 US dollars, but unexpectedly, the boss nodded: "No problem, my baby, take a car all the way, the hotel in the forest, everything will be arranged for you Okay, Chitwan, Pokhara, let’s all go, don’t rent a car, it’s not good, it’s dangerous, we take a special car, the driver is good, the road is safe.” "So good? I only have one hundred and fifty dollars..." "Welcome to Nepal, baby. (Welcome to Nepal, baby.)" The boss smiled like a Labrador. An hour later, when I was sitting on the roof of a local long-distance bus, I recalled the boss's words "Welcome to Nepal." It was deeply unpredictable and unpredictable.

As for why they had to sit on the roof, it was because the compartment was full of chickens. As soon as the car pulled into the station, the Nepalese grandpas beside me squeezed into the car desperately, grabbed the seats, put the chicken and duck coops in their hands, and then climbed to the roof to grab a seat. Therefore, the whole car The panoramic view of the car is: the chickens and ducks sit in the car to watch the scenery, and the big living people sit on the roof of the car. I just sat on the roof of the car. Although the scenery on the road is magnificent, and the snow-capped mountains are looming not far away, I have no intention of admiring it. The driver drives this broken car smoothly. If it wasn't for the aunt sitting beside me gesturing to remind me to tie my wrist to the railing of the car roof with a backpack strap, I would be in danger of being thrown off every minute. Beware of the small-scale sandstorms rolled up by tata vehicles (a local giant truck) passing us.

The situation is so precarious, but the uncle sitting behind me is still smoking one cigarette after another leisurely. The smoke filled the air, and I gradually relaxed. The aunt sitting next to me stared at me with a serious face, looking at me from top to bottom, as if doing some research, sitting next to her was a girl about my age, like her daughter, wearing a dusty suit Sari, leaning her head on her mother, looked at me shyly. "Your daughter (your daughter)?" I asked my aunt. The aunt suddenly showed a super bright smile and shook her head, expressing that she did not understand what I said.

The girl understood the English sentence and nodded seriously. At this time, the aunt put her hand into a cloth bag not far away, and began to grope non-stop. On the crowded roof, people were next to each other. The buttocks are dangerous. When she moved, the eyes of the entire car roof were focused on her. The aunt finally took out her hand from the tattered cloth bag, and there were two more oranges in her hand. The aunt looked at me and stretched out the hand holding the orange to me. I was taken aback, a little flattered, and stared blankly at the aunt's rough hands and the oranges in her hands.

"Eat." My daughter looked at me and said softly. I took an orange, and my aunt smiled happily. The daughter took another orange in her hand, peeled it petal by petal, and handed it to her mother. My daughter asked me in blunt English while eating: "Where are you going (where are you going)?" "Chitwan." The daughter nodded vigorously. After being silent for a while, I turned to ask her: "Where are you going?" The daughter pointed to the distant mountain at the end of the road, "Home." After the daughter finished speaking, she looked at the aunt beside her. The aunt was eating the orange with satisfaction, and the daughter gently rested her head on her shoulder.

At that moment, I also wanted to go home very much, and I really wanted to rest my head on my mother's shoulder. It’s been too long since I’ve been home. In that small town in Shanxi where my parents were, I tried desperately to remember the streets and landscapes of the foreign land, and tried to blend in with them. The car drove halfway and passed a small town. The grandpas and aunts in the car got out of the car with chickens and ducks, and many seats were vacated in an instant. I was lucky enough to sit in Chitwan, but the car was still full of tears. The smell of chicken shit, so most of the time, I stuck my head out of the car window, letting the wind blow my cheeks and shivering like an overexcited dog for the first time in a car.

After a six-hour drive, I arrived in Chitwan, near the Chitwan mountain area in the evening. My nostrils were filled with dust, and my eyes were brightened. The river bed was spread flat in the jungle, in a piece of green, and the setting sun set everything in sight. Covered with a layer of light, behind the large expanse of wilderness is a dense tropical rainforest, and the surroundings are so quiet that people will consciously shut up. "A warm heart unfolds like a ball of wool." I read such a sentence from a novel called "Blue Mountain", and it can express my feelings exactly in this open environment.

The hotel I live in is far away from the commercial street. It is in the tropical rainforest, absolutely close to nature. The tour guide who received me was called KC. He was young, but he had bags under his eyes. It was fine when he was not smiling. It's downright depressing. The hotel occupies a large area, but there are only a few rooms, all of which are simple small villas. Each person lives in one building, and each building is far away. The building I live in is near the swimming pool, and there is a tropical rainforest in front. The palm trees cover the sky hand in hand, and when the wind blows, the sound of the leaves is spectacular. Only through this small rainforest can you see the front desk at the entrance of the hotel.

After putting away my luggage, I leaned on the deck chair on the lawn and saw KC walking towards me with a cup of coffee from a distance. The wind blew the palm trees above my head, and I watched the fire cloud gradually grow stronger and fade in the shadow of the trees. ——It finally feels like a vacation. This feeling of being on vacation lasted for less than three hours. The day was getting dark and the fog was getting thicker. I sat on the lawn and had dinner alone, looking at the small villas not far away, only my one. When the lights were on, I felt guilty and asked KC, the tour guide and waiter, "I'm the only one staying in this hotel tonight, right?" KC nodded lightly. I looked around. On the lawn the size of a football field, the street lights were on, but the visibility was not high under the fog, which made the unoccupied small villas even more gloomy. "I'll be fine, right? I'm the only one staying in such a big hotel." "No, I'm at the front desk, come to me if you need anything." KC patted my shoulder and said softly. After dinner, I hid in my room. There was really no place to go for a walk nearby, except for the woods and wild land, all of which were shrouded in mist. The night fog in the mountains was spectacular, piled on the ground layer by layer, like snow. I drew the curtains tightly, blocked the darkness outside the room, then turned on the computer, took a shower, carefully cut my nails, and trimmed the split ends of my hair. There is no TV, no air conditioner in the room, only a ceiling fan Turning leisurely above the head, the wind pounced weakly on the face. At half past eleven, I was woken up by a call from the editor-in-chief. "Xiao Cheng." The editor-in-chief's voice was as steady as ever. "Why did you remember to call me?" "You haven't contacted me all this time, what's the matter?" "Oh, I'm in a remote mountainous area in Nepal. The internet here is unstable, and it's only enough to send you the manuscript." "Then let me hurry up and say, Xiao Cheng, the manuscript you gave me recently is not well written." "What?" I took the phone and was taken aback. "Except for the first one, it's okay. The latter two are too ordinary and don't look like your style. This column is not for you to write about your true feelings, nor is it a documentary press release. You have to put it Beautification, let everyone read it, and immediately have the urge to go to Nepal, that’s the way to go, what you’re writing now is too simple, it’s not good.” "But the Nepal I saw is like this. You can't let me make it up? The food and drink in Nepal are so simple and rough. This is Nepal." "Then I sent you to a farmyard in the suburbs of Beijing to investigate? Why did we spend so much money to send you to Nepal?" After deliberating for a while, I said humbly, "I don't think it's too fake to write about Nepal like the restaurants opened by upstarts in Beijing..." There was a moment of silence on the phone, and then, the editor-in-chief's voice raised an octave, blasting the deadly room. "Xiao Cheng! Why are you alive again! Do you remember the first day you transferred to me to write a food column, what did I tell you? I told you at the time: You may earn two thousand a month now, but you You must write about your life of earning 20,000 yuan a month. You must make readers envy you, envy you, envy you for eating well and living well, and envy your life, so that they have the motivation to struggle. This is the purpose of a magazine like ours. Meaning, as for your monthly income of 2,000, how to write a life with a monthly income of 20,000? Don't talk about hypocrisy and fakes with me, I'm paying you to be yourself, no one wants to hear your feelings, no one cares about your feelings! Don't take your little ego too seriously Son, do you understand?" I held the phone and didn't speak. If it was before, I would have said: "You are so right." But this time, when the words came to my lips, I couldn't say them. "Hurry up and revise the manuscript again. This time, my request to you is: you are in Nepal, but you must write the feeling of Tuscany, be fashionable, noble, and have a sense of socialite. Do you understand?" "……understood." "Use more fabulous adjectives, OK?" "...OK." After hanging up the phone, I stood in the middle of the room, unable to recover for a long time. No one cares about your feelings. When the editor-in-chief said this, he used an enemy-like tone. When I was young, my grandfather who was still alive often said that people are divided into three classes, six classes, and three layers of flesh. Before bragging, you should take a pee to take care of yourself. For me, it’s okay to brag if you have no confidence, but you can’t even tell the truth. I was feeling sad when suddenly, the fan above my head hummed and stopped awkwardly, and the wind disappeared without a trace. It was pitch black all around, and the power went out. I immediately panicked and looked at my phone, it was ten past ten in the morning. Except for the bright light of the mobile phone, the surrounding darkness is a sticky mass, too thick to melt, and the curtains are drawn tightly. I dare not even think about what is going on outside the window. I am alone, and the front desk is far away. Lawn front. I scan around the room with my mobile phone, and always feel that there is something hidden in the place where the light cannot shine, or a pair of eyes are staring at me motionlessly, just shaking my phone on the bed for a while, I really can’t stand it He turned over and got out of bed, found a small flashlight in his bag, opened the door tremblingly, and prepared to cross the lawn to find KC at the front desk. Open the door, the fog is heavier than before going to bed, the street lights are all black, the palm trees around the lawn are towering, the branches and leaves are layered to block the sky, the sky is not penetrated, the soil and the plants are mixed, and there is a damp smell. The taste, with an exclusive fishy smell. The flashlight cast a pale beam of light, and my feet were so weak that I moved forward step by step, trying not to listen or look at the road under my feet. Walk through the lawn and rainforest to the restaurant: the restaurant and the front desk are all dark, with no light at all. While shaking, I whispered: "KC? KC? Are you there (are you there)?" No one paid any attention to me. I walked to the door of the restaurant, and just as I was about to knock on the door, I saw a big black lock hanging on the door. There was no one here. I turned to look at the front desk, which was also locked. I yelled louder and kept calling "KC", no one answered, even if there were two barking dogs in the distance, but there was nothing. At this moment, I was really the only one in the dark hotel. I was just about to run out to find someone, when I suddenly realized that there would be no one outside, and there were also barren mountains and mountains outside. I stood on the spot, stunned for two seconds, and started to run back desperately, my heartbeat began to soar, and the flashlight I was clutching hard, because of the sweat in my palm, I was about to slip to the ground several times, running too fast, the flashlight was shining. The light is also messed up. Because I was still praying for a living person to appear, I ran and shouted at the top of my voice: "Anybody here? Anybody help me? (Is anyone there? Who can help me?)" I really didn't watch horror movies in vain these years. While rushing back to the room, I used my remaining rationality to remind myself to look at the road under my feet. As a result, the flashlight flickered, and I saw a group of toads lying on the spot one meter in front of my feet, motionless, and I didn't know whether they were dead or not. Live, I yelled, turned around and jumped into the bushes next to me, although I knew in my heart that I had deviated from the way back to the room, but my legs still couldn't stop, and I was still yelling, and I started to get nervous and feel like vomiting. Even if someone coughed, it would be fine, I ran and thought in despair, my steps became more and more staggered, and I couldn't lift my hands anymore, the light of the flashlight hung on the ground, and the light was long and short. "I have to go back quickly, and if I keep howling outside like this, the ghost will soon be recruited." Thinking so in my heart, I turned and ran in the right direction, but just after two steps, my waist was suddenly soft, but it was very painful. Something strong caught it. The thing rolled me for two seconds, then let go. what's that thing! The picture that quickly flashed in my mind was definitely more amazing than any horror movie I had ever seen. I poked in place, and the nerves that had been tense were finally completely broken, and it was broken so crisply that there was no room left. I squatted down in place, I couldn't run anymore, I gave up, it didn't matter what "it" was, or what it wanted to do to me, I took a few seconds to review myself as a person, and thought Looking at my future life, I don't have any motivation and enthusiasm to continue running. What the editor-in-chief said is not right, there are people in this world who care about my feelings: parents, friends, those boyfriends who once thought they would join hands for a lifetime, they have walked with me for a while, but at a certain intersection, they can only break up and watch I continued to move forward. I had teammates and traveling companions, but this road can only be groped by myself. I squatted in this head-to-head darkness, and this road seemed to come to an end. At this moment, I began to have no sense of direction at all. I began to cry. The cry was small at first, then soared all the way, and finally It turned into crying—after coming to Nepal, the grievances along the way, and the grievances I have been suffering before coming to Nepal—I suddenly found that there are so many grievances that are worth crying in such a desperate way. How long has it been since I was so scared?I thought while weeping. I have been in Beijing for so many years, I am not afraid of anything. I'm not afraid of being poor. Being poor is the most controllable risk in my life. I don't care if someone treats me sincerely. Friends can be exchanged for benefits. It's just unreasonable. I thought that after so many years, I have suffered and suffered, and I have seen enough faces. I am no longer afraid of the dark. When the world I live in turns off all the lights for me, I can find another one. Brightly lit venue, be another bluff me. When was the last time you cried so desperately? I thought that after so many years, I would have no bottom line of fear, and I would no longer have the heart to cry bitterly, but I didn't expect that at this moment, the me trapped in this extreme darkness is still the same person I was many years ago Me—the me who left home to go to school and would cry out of breath on the train, the me who was wronged at work, would drag toilet paper to vent in the bathroom while covering my mouth and cry loudly, the me who The money that my parents had just remitted was transferred to the landlord exactly, and I was crying while transferring the money—because I received a text message from my father: Has the money arrived?Treat yourself to a good meal for your parents. The me of those years, at this moment, came back collectively. The flashlight fell to the ground, and the surroundings were completely dark. At this time, the thing hit me lightly again. I decided to see what it was, even if it would kill me if I saw it, it would be worth it. Picking up the flashlight from the ground, I shone it in the direction it hit me, only to see a black thing. I took two steps back, drew a circle in mid-air with my flashlight, and saw the thing in its entirety. is an elephant. To be precise, it is a small elephant, the white birthmark on its forehead has not faded, and it is not big. It is half kneeling on the ground, with its nose swinging from side to side. It turned out that it was the one who caught me with its nose when I ran past crying and howling. me. The elephant's eyes looked at me calmly, without any aggression. I met the elephant's eyes for a while, and I stopped crying. I still have companions, although we met by chance, although they are not the same creature as me. After returning to the room, I curled up on the bed, wrapped tightly in the blanket, tied the flashlight to my head with a towel, and pointed it straight ahead. I looked around vigilantly like an owl, but I was not as scared as before. , even in my heart, began to be a little thankful for the blackout. I haven’t been in this kind of absolute darkness for a long time, I have long forgotten myself, whether there is still room to shine, but so many people are living by the light, I always feel that I am not bad, maybe only this Only when the power is off once can I remind myself that people still have to be afraid of something. , as if that wasn't enough. This is what I said to myself after I returned to the room and waited for sleepiness to come. It was only because there was no light that I was embarrassed to say these words to myself.