Chapter 12 Part Two Finding the Street Named Happiness The Street of Happiness

Part II Finding the Street Named Happiness The Street of Happiness (1) look for the street named happiness This evening at the end of summer, I finally decided to set off to find the street called happiness.It may just be a fabricated place name, filled with wishful thinking and utopian fantasies about happiness.Like most girls when they are young, I am simple-minded, impulsive, do not plan anything, and never think about the consequences.That day I wore a white round-neck T-shirt and a dark blue suspender dress, put a little lipstick on my bloodless lips, and pinned a silver butterfly in my hair.I will pass through this city that is just beginning to be brightly lit, and pass through the crowded people after get off work, and my purpose is so clear, that is to find the street named happiness.

The sun is still poisonous, there are many cars on the road, and the cars are full of people.I had to reverse the train three times, and I sweated a lot, but I rarely sweat normally.Sweat ruined the light makeup on my face, and finally I gave up, knowing that I couldn't hope to be more beautiful than usual. The sky is getting darker and darker, but the road is getting wider and the streets are bustling.Through the car window, I saw that the lights of the whole city seemed to be on in an instant, and the light poured down from a high place, spreading a layer of flowing silver light on the clean and spacious road.I saw magnificent restaurants, jewels and dresses in the windows, and indifferent crowds hurrying by.They are so strange and yet so gratifying.Since it is the street named happiness that I am looking for, it should be so, full of material prosperity, noise and coldness.

The bus starts to turn.The roads gradually narrowed, the people became less and less, the houses became more and more dilapidated, and the street lights dimmed.But I am still full of hope, who knows if there is a more real and warm destination hidden behind those ordinary streets and things without light? "Happiness Avenue is here." The conductor said coldly. I jump out of the car. The so-called Xingfu Street is just an ordinary, narrow street lined with short trees, shops, and bungalows, and the old man with a rickety began to move slowly under the trees—when, the exposure of decay has become more and more serious. No scruples. Is "happiness", a poetic word full of moisture, just sadly becoming the name of a narrow street here?Is there any strangely painful connection between a narrow street and happiness?It was just a whim of naming.

But how many streets named happiness will there be in the world? If one day I can return to Xingfu Avenue, I will never meet Hongxi again. After graduating from that second-rate university, I gradually left the campus in the evening leaves, puddles and the shadow of the fence, leaving Freud, SmashingPumpkins, Sex Pistols, Foucault, regular sex with regular girlfriends, and all kinds of things. Painful memories made out of nothing.I packed all my belongings into the container, and I, like an uprooted tree, gently landed in Beijing—the paradise and heart that all foreigners dream of.My first foothold was a dilapidated and narrow residential building in an alley on Xingfu Street.It took me a long time to clear up my academic smell, and I finally became an economics reporter for a weekly newspaper.I am very busy, step by step, conscientious and conscientious, like a duck in water.This city is infinitely tolerant, like an old man who has gone through many vicissitudes, it warmly allows us to start again at any time.

Memories of Hongxi began on that afternoon seven years ago—the end of summer full of metaphors of the end of the century.Like all the outsiders who are drifting and relying on their own efforts, I feel somewhat of the panic and sadness of the end of the century.Many unexpected but reasonable things happened in this year, such as: the fall of a comet, the early blooming of peach blossoms, the total eclipse of the sun and the moon, the flames of war on a certain piece of land, the earthquake on a certain island, and the laid-off female workers in a certain place thanked Dade on TV.But these have no special meaning to this street called happiness, nor do they have any real pain for us.Maybe we should just care about happiness.

Hongxi was coming that day, but she didn't say why. At that time, we already had many ways to meet people we had never met before.Imagination and curiosity can drive us to talk long distances, even all night long.Hongxi stood out among countless strangers and became a virtual close friend with me.She is indifferent, strange and unscrupulous.She's sophisticated, I think.She didn't know whether she fell into this trap unintentionally or on purpose, which aroused my fighting spirit and patience.I'm in no rush to meet her, I go to work, catch up on manuscripts, meet girls, and have sex with my girlfriend.I picture her.She was always waiting, quiet and patient.She is willing to believe anything, even though she is no longer naive.She is not innocent, the years have endowed her with an evil, artificial nature, buried under her accumulated old innocence.She didn't know how much it was.But what does it matter?she will come.She keeps talking and she will come.

She is coming.This is very important, this is just the beginning, but it is already beautiful and vivid enough.Many years later, I tried to recall that night seven years ago, when Hongxi jumped off the last No. 8 train, her movements were agile, graceful, light like a butterfly, and fluttering her tiny wings.The sequence of shots is legible, like a kitschy throwback to the past. She was as young and vulnerable as I imagined.She was shy, restless, and her excesses of passion and desire were silenced.It turns out that the illusory aura I bestowed on her years ago was merely an attempt to prove her unreality, to nullify her tangible existence.In fact, she is not as beautiful as I describe.Her face is like water, and her style is unresolved.

That night, I used my battered bicycle to take Hongxi back to my rented house.She sat in the back meekly, gently holding my waist.We groped and climbed up the narrow stairs in the dark. I took out the key and opened the door. When the bright little room suddenly appeared in front of her, I saw the brilliance flashing across her face. What's next?Hongxi cooks dinner for me.She is familiar with driving, like a diligent housewife.We drank.I was drunk, and Hongxi couldn't drink too much, we fell on the only bed in the room at the same time. What's next?Nothing more than wild hugs, kisses, fondling and the occasional sigh.I shall possess young and beautiful girls like wild beasts, and it is all right and proper.Lonely cities, young men and women, sultry nights, scarlet curtains hanging low.

However, I quickly fell asleep next to Hongxi. Part II Finding the Street Named Happiness The Street of Happiness (2) When I opened my eyes in the morning, I saw Hongxi.She lay beside me, looking at me intently. Such a morning and such a girl.I couldn't help reaching out and stroking her hair.She pulled down the skirt on her body to cover her calves, and smiled at me a little embarrassedly. She said it was dawn. I said yes. Then we don't say anything.Just looking at each other, smiling, as if picking up a baby. Her eyes are so big, she just keeps looking at me like this, never seems to turn her head suddenly.

That's great, I murmured.I took her in my arms and kissed her.I am so grateful for the beauty of her little body. I'm going to take a shower, she said. The door was open when she took a shower.My hongxi, she has no scruples. The water was rushing, steaming, and smoky. I imagined her without clothes.Her body is as natural, soft and fragrant as a child's, and her body is almost pale, with sensitive blood flowing under her thin skin. Give me a towel, she calls me. I turned my face away and handed her the towel. Don't look, she said. I justified that I didn't watch it.

She laughed, her voice was crunchy, and splashed all over the floor with the sound of water. A long time ago, after Hou Yi shot down nine suns and became a great hero, he had nothing to do but wandered around outside all day, but he left Chang'e in the cold.So Chang'e took the elixir and flew to the moon. There is another person in the Moon Palace, named Wu Gang.Just like his name, Wu Gang is completely a man.When he was the only man in the Moon Palace, his daily work was to chop the laurel tree.Every time the laurel tree was cut, a wound appeared, but when the ax was pulled out, the wound healed.Wu Gang cut down trees like this. He should have been cutting down trees until now, but everything changed from the moment Chang'e landed on the moon. Needless to say, Chang'e, like her name, is a beautiful woman.And so the story goes a step further, and it makes sense: under the laurel tree, they start making love, without a break, and they do nothing but that.Even in the moon palace far away from the hustle and bustle, such stories fall into the same cliché. Hongxi's face flushed slightly, and she was inexplicably excited, like a child picking up something that shouldn't be picked up behind his back: a medicine bottle cap, a dead bird, a piece of silk thread, or a rotting tree. Seed. However, when they were making love, the laurel tree suddenly fell and crushed them both to death. Originally, Laurel’s life is so long, she has no joy in living in this world at all, her only joy is that man named Wu Gang, he kept killing her with an ax, cut the wound, and then she healed, repeatedly complex. But the arrival of Chang'e deprived Laurel of the only fun. So, the laurel tree killed them all. The story is not over yet.When Chang'e and Wu Gang were killed, on the distant earth, there was a young man and woman who were loving sweetly under the moon.The girl asked the boy: "What color do you think the moon is?" The boy looked up at the moon and said, "It's red." This story is over, does it sound good? The room was very quiet, and the moonlight painted the reflection of the window lattice on the ground.For some unknown reason, Hong Xi burst into sobbing suddenly.I held her, her cold face pressed against mine, tears fell into my open eyes.It was 1999, a night of late summer wet with cold dew. At that time, Hongxi was still so young, so pure, so eager to be loved by a young man.She is still far from knowing what desire is, but it has grown wildly in the virgin's body, making an indispensable hint and foreshadowing for the coming bitter youth.Many years later, I thought of Hongxi again. She should be walking slowly in the alleys after the rain in the south. The most beautiful girl in this town bowed her head because of shyness, and the perverse fate was covered with a cloak to protect her from the rain. followed sensually. At night, Hongxi slipped into my arms as usual, her long eyelashes tickled my face gently, and she sang in a childlike voice: I would like to be a brown candy and stick to you tightly.She makes me laugh. You have a shortcoming that must be corrected.I say it seriously. Must change must change.She was eager to please me. You have to learn to undress to sleep. I will not get used to it. Must get used to. She fell silent. I help her undress.Her limbs were as soft as a baby's.In the end she wore nothing. That's good, she only has me, and she clings to mine with her small body.I held her naked for the first time. It's really as smooth as I imagined. I can't live without you, she said. me too. She's so good, we'll fall in love.I will love her, I will have her. For some reason, she always reminds me of my brother. The younger brother drowned in the river when he was five years old.I went to the river every day and called his name, but he never appeared again, even in my dreams. I even forgot about him.And Hongxi reminds me of him. Part Two Finding the Street Named Happiness The Street of Happiness (3) When I told her, she said, I am your woman, not your brother. I said to myself, this woman is yours. She sang the song: Sleep, sleep, my dear baby.It was Schubert's lullaby. I fell asleep holding her. "We draw a marriage certificate ourselves." "It's plastered on the walls, it's everywhere." I just smile and sit in front of the computer typing. "You ghost!" She hugged me from behind, "See if I smell good?" "I have a nickname for you," she slipped into my arms at night, sticking to my body like nougat. "Just a cheeky little furry bear with only hair on his head, okay?" "Why is it called this?" "That's what it's called." Well, I have to agree. She drags her slippers and wears an apron, washes rice, washes vegetables, and cooks.The spatula was rattling, oily smoke was chirping upwards, and the exhaust fan was pumping hard.She floated around the small room like a butterfly. "5 1 5 1 5 6 5 4 3 1..." she sings: "Husband, husband, our husband..." I quickly jumped over to cover her mouth, it's not "ours", it's yours alone. She looked at me with a smile, "I don't care if you are someone else's husband!" "husband!" "Uh?" "Help me lift the nozzle." "Oh." "husband!" "Uh?" "It's okay, just call." She misused the title like a foreign word, fresh and interesting; like a child who just got a new toy and played with it tirelessly, and she didn't know when she would lose it.She didn't believe that happiness was so easy and within reach. "How long will you be my husband?" I pretended to think about it and said, "When you are ninety-nine." "So long!" she exclaimed.She threw herself into my arms, "I will never leave you." "I will, too," I said, "You're destiny." Hongxi stayed at my house for three days.We kept talking for fear of missing a minute.When we broke up at the subway station, we felt sad at the same time, we were already so happy.And that's just the beginning. I have always thought that as long as I have enough kindness and patience, I can have the happiness I deserve; I thought that God has been watching the common people with compassion, and would never bear to satisfy the humble wish of a southern woman; I thought that what women want is nothing more than Two things: happiness, or death.I think that if you really fall in love with someone, there are two ways: one is that you remove all the clothes that wrap you, and embrace him naked, and you will fall asleep in the city that is lit all night.All the rest of the night, amidst the din of the world, you'll put his hand on your left breast and you'll say, my baby, we'll sleep like hibernating bears until next spring Wake up; learn to heed his advice, to sleep without any clothes on, to feel skin-to-skin with someone who is not yourself, to feel the only way to feel happiness with body heat, to trust "the other" person without reservation, to learn to Naive, ignorant, blind, pathetic to believe in shallow promises that won't go away while you're asleep.The other option is: you will have sex with your lover wildly, non-stop, hopelessly; all night, you will scream in ecstasy and sorrow, or cry silently, and you will feel him surround you, close to you Connected and you lose him at any time; you sometimes stop, just to take a sip of cold water.When the day comes, the body gets tired and breaks down, you destroy the body and you destroy the soul as well, and you can leave him, I mean—never, never love him again, never have sex with him again. In this way, if you are young enough, you can have enough madness and determination; if you have enough compassion, you will have enough wisdom to understand the ultimate destiny of happiness. But things are changing, and we don't know why, exactly what went wrong.I know that she doesn't like making quilts or tidying up the house. She likes to cook and go to the supermarket to buy bread and apple water.I put my hands on her in the dark, it's a good girl.She turned over and hugged me, murmured a few words and fell asleep.I know she trusts me.In the dark, I saw the general shape of her short hair. She said she used to have long hair, but her health was bad, so she had to cut it off.I have seen her photos, she is really long, draped down, thin and melancholy. We are naked and as close as one. But things are changing, Hong Xi doesn't know, we don't know anything. In the third week of meeting Hongxi, my colleagues from the newspaper office and I went to a seaside city for vacation.I got drunk again at the beach.My colleague and I, a plump Beijing girl escaped all eyes.I don't know what's going on.I never paid special attention to her in the unit.I hugged her plump body, ecstatic like a farmer harvesting after autumn.It was vulgar love, but it was healthy and alive.It is what I want. Hongxi called my cell phone and said hastily, quickly say you miss me. I said I was drunk. The days are getting cooler and autumn is coming.Hongxi, everything is changing and things are not under our control. When she came back, the smell of the house had changed.She has an amazing sense of smell, touch and the ability to see things. "Has anyone been here?" She became sad. Part Two Finding the Street Named Happiness The Street of Happiness (4) "No," I couldn't help but poke her nose, laughing at her narrow-mindedness. She looked into my eyes. "You can be nice to other women, please try not to fall in love with them, and try not to let me know; if I'm too smart, please lie to me. I don't need love, I just need to be coaxed." I buried my face in her. "Are you okay with someone else?" "yes." "Is she your colleague?" "yes." "She's sexy?" "yes." "You like her more than me?" I hesitated and said, "It's a different feeling." "Will you drive me away?" "No." "We are still the same as before, can I still come to you?" "No, you can't come." She is crazy.She does everything.This awkward, well-behaved, passionate and sad woman.I saw her hunched little body, her short hair flowing over my belly.I stroked her smooth back.A hot current gushed out from the bottom up, making me feel tired and melancholy.I heard her sigh, so far away. Ah, this is heaven, she murmured.I told her there is no heaven.But she didn't seem to hear, and fell asleep in my arms. I took off my high-heeled shoes and stockings, earrings and hairpins, and the pink dress. I folded them neatly and placed them on the bedside. Then I lifted the quilt, got into his arms, and hugged him tightly. Body.It turns out that the body is so warm, no wonder one person is so attached to another person. I looked into his eyes carefully in the dark, as if I wanted to embed him in my memory forever.I waited for him like a newlywed.I waited so many years to be able to be with someone. But the next day I have to get up early to freshen up: draw eyebrows, lip liner, eye shadow.I will leave him. I don't give him any chance to leave. Because I'm going to leave first. Do you remember a girl named Hongxi? He said he would remember. Don't know if he remembers Yeats' Poems: "How many people loved you when you were young and happy / Loved your beauty, fake or true / Only one loved your pilgrim soul / Loved your old face Wrinkles of pain." Poetry is a lie, I know he has brought women home, his nature is so: wholesome, selfish, cruel, impatient. In the early morning, like all the outsiders who live in this city without a fixed place, I walked through the street called Happiness.Now that I've found it, I think it's time for me to leave too.The street lamps went out one by one behind me, and I thought of a kind of people, they were incarnations of some kind of fish in the deep sea, because they were too fragile and timid, so they only walked silently under the cold moonlight, every step seemed to be walking Same on knives.Their feet were already bleeding, so there was always a long sticky silver trail trailing behind them.Their faces were pale, longing and frightened.In order to find a kind of water called happiness, they came here full of hope, but they will return to the deep sea with eternal sorrow. I heard a shrill cry across the silent sky.I heard the rush of footsteps quickly receding and disappearing.I ran across the corner of the street and saw a woman lying on the ground.I saw a silver knife stabbed deep into her chest.I saw blood gurgling freely and flowing down her body.I thought it must be a nightmare that such violence and despair should happen on a street called happiness.I picked the woman up and heard her whisper, and put me back in the deep sea.I said, please don't die.But she died.Her blood stained my hands, my clothes and my eyes.I saw a silver butterfly on her hair, I saw her face, so pale. I saw her face was exactly like mine. ——Excerpt from Hongxi’s Diary (October 8, 1999, sunny) Like all reformed prodigal sons, I gave up a bit of my slutty bachelorhood to marry my busty co-worker and have a regular and legal sexual partner ever since.I'm still on track and working hard.Life has indeed rewarded me handsomely.I have a computer, a mobile phone, a house, and a credit card, and Hongxi is destined to be just an affair, a sad and glamorous footnote at the end of youth. Later, Hongxi was tossed among several men, and she was always adrift.Her mental state was not good and she was sent to a nursing home. She died quickly. It is said that she struggled for a long time.It was too late when people found out. She left some letters, said to be full of searing and bitter love letters to a man.I don't know this man. She really has nothing to do with me. Only death makes memory eternal.Hongxi was completely defeated in every battle, but she won the ultimate victory through death. I still remember that soft, smooth little body, its sensitivity, fragility and infinite beauty.I love it. My wife and I have long since moved away from Xingfu Avenue. ——Excerpt from a man's diary (March 6th, birthday, peach blossoms in full bloom) In the middle of the night, there was a sudden heavy rain for no reason. In the darkness, the wife quietly asked: Do you still remember a girl named Hongxi? I said I don't remember. She said she loves you very much, she has only loved one person in her life, and that is you.She said you won't forget her. Heard she died. No, she is not dead.The wife's voice suddenly became dark: she is still alive, loving the man with her flesh.She loves them, pities them, and despises them at the same time. A flash of lightning flashed across the window, and suddenly I saw a strange face lying in my arms, innocent and soft like a child. I asked aloud, who are you? She laughed sadly, I am your wife who has been sleeping with you for eight years, don't you recognize me? In an instant, that jade-like warm face began to rot, exposing snow-white bones, and two eyes turned into black holes, and maggots crawled out of the holes. In the middle of the empty room, I finally couldn't help sobbing.