Chapter 12 blue smoke

Sitting idly in the quiet summer night air, I don't know how many sad thoughts are surging here.Looking at the electric lights coming out of the blue veil like green water, and listening to the tiresome sound of cars coming from Jing'an Temple Road outside the window, I feel that my home has returned to the age of youthful depression. , My tears, which are worth less than women, are reflected on my cheeks again. When I look up, I can see the aging calendar, the time has passed day by day, but my career, my situation, and my future, ah, I have gone through all kinds of hardships, and I think I have some I have grasped everything, but I let go of my tightly clenched fists to see, and there is only a cloud of smoke in my hand!

What the world calls "success" is like floating clouds to me.The few conceptual novels that I occasionally wrote down when I was bored, although I was attacked by others, I didn’t feel any sadness in my heart. The material difficulties only taught me to grit my teeth and be patient, and it didn’t matter. But since I was born, until now, in the middle of more than 20 years, among the seeds and flowers I planted at home, where is there a branch that is bright?Where did a branch ever bear fruit?Ah, if it is said that human life can be blotted out and rewritten, my second life will never be the same as my life in the past twenty years!If I had learned to be a carpenter when I was young, I would have built at least one or two houses today.When I am bored, I run to the side of this hand-built house to have a look, and my loneliness will definitely be relieved.I have learned how to be a tailor since I was young, so it goes without saying that I can cut light brocade satin and sew it into a good shirt now.When I'm bored, I open up the delicate dresses that I cut and sew by myself, and take a look. My depression will definitely be eliminated.But I, who have no skill in any art, used to deceive myself by taking out the masterpieces made by ancient and modern literati to comfort myself. Now after waking up from my dream, I feel ashamed to read the works of these famous masters, so now I can’t even drink poison. Quench my thirst, what else can I do to fill the emptiness in my chest?

A few journalists under the wing of the rich said: "Your melancholy is all affectation, it's all moaning without illness, it's ugly!" I just want to be able to be true to what they say and make my depression fake, then I will be scolded a little bit more by them, or they will take all my old books and a few pieces of every coin I don't know where. It is also willing to give them the money to buy bread every day. A few servants of journalists like the one above said: "You're whining, you're whining because no one is using you!" I just hope that what I am complaining about is that I can even give them the Felucca that I am planning to smoke now, because people who complain are always a little conceited, but now they feel that their spirit and body are exhausted I who have the same shadow as the wind, what else can I be proud of?

A few friends who know my personality better said: "What you feel is Toska, and it is what everyone in China feels now." But if I had such a Myriad mind, I would have been Shakespeare. my brother said: "Oh, poor you, you were born at this time, at a time when China is in trouble, no wonder you are just depressed every day; you can't handle it when you run to the north, and you can't handle it when you run to the south. Your depression is It should be, whether you were born ten years earlier or ten years later..." Whenever I hear this sentence—if I am holding a fat white naked woman in my arms, when I am drinking—I will cry bitterly, but if you ask again, "Your melancholy Is the root cause here?" I must have opened my teary eyes, shook my head at you a few times and said, "No, no." What does the country die?Didn't the subjugated poet Sienkiewicz become a man of his life?Aren't all my compatriots living in the foreign concession very comfortable?What if the country dies?Wouldn't it be better for foreigners to manage us?Didn't the two lines of Lu Jiannan's good poem "Wang Shi Bei set the Central Plains Day, and family sacrifices never forget to tell Nai Weng" come out because of the collapse of the country?Now that my youthful blood has withered away, I don't have the same patriotic enthusiasm as before. I am no longer a Chauvinist.

The sound of cars outside the window gradually faded away, and I only heard the sound of my pen tip writing on the paper in the middle of the boundless world.Looking out of the window, I only saw a dark summer sky with a few residual stars.I put down my pen, and walked a few steps in my room that was like a matchbox, feeling a sense of desolation and loneliness permeating my whole body, and I don't know where this melancholy came from. Although it was just after the Dragon Boat Festival, I couldn't sleep in such a hot night.I'd better turn off the lights and watch the scenery outside the window.

The space outside the window is only a jumble of roof ridges and spires, which are illuminated by the high beams of several gas lamps, resembling the buildings in a movie, and their outlines are drawn in the faint night air.There was silence everywhere, but I heard the sound of the wind blowing the shutters, as if nature was sighing quietly there. In the distance there is another car horn sounding. This is probably the triumphant song of men and women of Western capitalists returning home from a lewd nude dance hall.Ah, you need to be young, beautiful, and rich. I returned to my seat from the window, turned on the light and looked in the mirror for a few minutes, feeling that this thin face was not a carnivorous face after all.At such a time of helplessness, I still smoked to unify my thoughts. I lit a match and lit a Felucca.Taking a deep breath, I still completely exhaled the cigarette into the green gauze cover of the lamp.Around the green veil, a layer of lavender clouds formed, like after a rain in the deep mountains in summer.Staring blankly at this cloud and mist, my body seems to have shrunk to ride in the middle of this lavender cloud and mist.This layer of light clouds and mist drifted away one after another, and my body became two. A shrunken body was floating in this layer of mist, and the original body was still sitting far away under the green light of the electric lamp. Watching me in the green smoke.

A Phantom, It was already dusk. Surrounding the sky, bearing the afterglow of the setting sun, there was a circle of silver-red ribbons around it, which gradually turned into a bright blue color to Tianxin, and the eighth-full moon hung lightly in the eastern half of the sky.A few quarters of an hour passed, and the originally pale moon began to shine.Under the moonlight, there is a winding river, with lush forests and empty sandy islands on both sides of the river.Sandwiched among the woods and sandy shores, each separated by one or two miles, there are several densely packed villages.The village is surrounded by a group of cascading green hills.Where the river bends, the hills are also bent into a bow shape. Between the bowstring of Baishui River and the bow of Qingshan, hundreds of families live together, which is the seat of the county seat of F county.The moonlight, similar to transparent clear water, spread evenly over the county town, rivers, green hills, woods, and villages one or two miles away from the county town.The shadow of dusk can be seen everywhere.The normally quiet county town of F is full of vibrancy tonight. The lights of every house are brighter than usual, and the pedestrians on the street are also noisier than usual. Tonight's moon, It is almost shy compared to the small man-made.This day is the tenth day of the fifth lunar month in the old calendar.It is the day of the Marshals' Meeting of the Acting Club every year in County F.

A thin man about forty years old dragged a pair of tired feet slowly into the east gate of County F at dusk, stepping on the shadow of his own house, step by step between pedestrians on the long street Walking westward in the middle, his blue and yellow face showed a look of panic, and there were already a few wrinkles on his forehead and under his eyes.The messy short beard growing around his mouth and the dirty, half-worn bamboo cloth shirt he was wearing proved that he was a down and out person.His back was bent forward, and his eyes, like those of a dead fish, were all peeking forward, left and right.It seems that he is afraid that people will know him, and he seems to be looking for someone who knows him.He set off from the provincial capital of H this morning and walked ninety miles until he reached his hometown of F, which he hadn't seen for 20 years.

He walked slowly to the center of Nancheng Street, stopped, looked left and right, and walked in through a moonlit alley.Although the street is lively, this narrow alley is still deserted.Turning a corner to the south, he walked to the front of a large wall gate, he hesitated for a while, then walked over.After two or three steps, he turned around again.Peeking through the door, he saw a foreign lamp on the table in the middle of the main hall.Bright foreign lights shone on the upper wall, illuminating a picture of Zhong Kui and several pairs of words on wax paper.In addition, the hall was empty and silent, and there was no one.He walked up and down the door several times, and two crystal black lights came out from his eyes, as if he was about to cry.Finally, when he turned around and passed the wall door, a woman about his age walked out of it.Because she was walking between him and the foreign lamp, he only saw her fluffy hair reflected in the light of the foreign lamp.He hastily walked three or five steps, and then stopped.The woman walked out of the wall door and went in the opposite direction from him.He still turned around and chased after the woman.The woman turned her head suddenly when she heard his footsteps.He stared at her in the gray moonlight, as if he had been shocked by electricity.The woman turned to him and gave him a slight glance, then walked forward again.He took a step forward and asked the woman softly:

"Is sister-in-law's family surnamed Yu?" The woman stopped when she heard this question, and answered him: "Hey! It used to be Yu, but now it's sold to the Lu family." Although he couldn't tell what clothes she was wearing under the moonlight, the expression on her face was very haggard, and her voice was very sad, and his question became softer and trembling. "Then where did the Yu family move?" "The uncle is in Beijing, and the second master is in Tianjin." "Where's their old lady?" "My mother-in-law passed away last year."

"Are you Yu's sister-in-law?" "Hey! I'm from the third room." "Then you live here alone in the Yu family?" "My man has been away for more than 20 years. I don't know where he is, so I can't go to Beijing or Tianjin. Now I'm helping the Lu family cook here." "Ooh!" "What do you ask the Yu family?" "Ooh! Thank you..." His last sentence was very quiet, and he ran away before he finished speaking.The woman stared blankly at his back in the moonlight for a while, saw his shadow shrinking step by step, and at the same time heard his dark cry from a distance, and two lines of tears rolled down her face come out. The moon is going down. Apart from a few lazy dogs barking, there was no movement of living things on the riverside. On the other side of the river, there were a few houses and a few woods, lying quietly in the frosty moonlight.There is a green hill outside the forest, floating there like a dream.At this time, on the bank of the Nanmen River in City F, people had already slept through.The houses along the riverside are all covered with the waning moon, reflected in the flowing river waves.Although it is the night of the first summer, but at this late night, the river is also a little chilly. After a pause, a group of people returning from the theater broke the silence and walked across the river at the south gate.A man turned towards the river and said: "It's so cold, my hair is standing on end, don't let a drowned ghost beg for a substitute here!" The second person said: "Drowning ghosts don't come looking for me, I still have a wife and son to raise at home!" The third and fourth people all laughed.After this group of people passed by, the riverside returned to the state of silence it had been a moment ago. The moon had already set, and the night air on the riverside suddenly turned gray.The stars in the sky shone with light one by one, reflecting in Jiang's heart.At this time, a tall and thin figure appeared on the river bank of the south gate, slowly wandering on the water's edge not more than one or two feet away from the water.Because this figure moved very slowly, its appearance could not destroy the quiet air by the river.But a few minutes later, the figure suddenly plunged into the heart of the river, Jiang Bo became agitated, and the silence on the riverside was broken.The starlight on the river shook, as if falling from the sky.The river waves widened from one circle to another, and the starlight reflected in the river waves also moved a few times.When the sound of a person entering the water and the echoes of the quiet night on the river and the circle of river waves disappear, the gray river is still dominated by dead silence again, and it will be far away before dawn! Epilogue I stared blankly at the green light of the electric light, smoking one by one the pack of cigarettes I just bought tonight.The sound of cock crowing in the distance and the sound of sirens from nowhere came to my eardrums intermittently, and my mind was associated with dawn. Isn't it?look!Isn't the roof tiles outside the window clearly visible line by line? Ah, the bright blue sky! It's dawn! Ah, but I heard a lot of washing toilets under the window again.It's a symbol, it's a symbol.The so-called Dawn in China is the beginning of a dirty gesture show! 4:00 a.m. on May 10, Lunar Calendar, 1923 Originally published in No. 8 of "Creation Weekly" on June 30, 1923 ----------------------------------------------- Note: Felucca: Barque brand cigarettes. Shakespeare: Shakespeare. Sienkiewicz: Xiankeweizhi, a Polish writer.