Chapter 5 Chapter 5 When the Flowers Wither

Nostalgia is beautiful.Pilots' nostalgia for the sky sent them overcoming storms, turbulence, and mountains to the deep firmament.The nostalgia of love gave Su Minghui the will to continue living, and it was this nostalgia that adorned a handful of stars for her in the depths of darkness. Saint-Exupery, the famous French poet and aviator, disappeared over the Mediterranean Sea during a mission.The pilot is dead, but the little prince's nostalgia for the rose will almost certainly become an immortal story. After losing her sight, Su Minghui thought of another book written by Saint-Exupery: "Night Flight".On an ordinary night, three mail planes encountered a storm on their way to Buenos Aires and lost their way in the dark.

When the darkness opened its arms to embrace her, she felt herself on a night flight too.Though she will never see the mountains and the wings again, the stars will see her. Like a brave and romantic pilot, she is determined to conquer the sky and fly with the night scenery.She gripped the steering wheel of the screw machine, and her steering column was a blind man's walking stick. When Xu Hongzhi gave her this folding cane, a bow was tied on it with a wide ribbon, like a precious gift.He told her that the cane was unique because he painted it a rainbow of colors. "Like the candy canes we ate when we were kids?" she said.

"That's right." Then, he read out the colors one by one in a clear and gentle voice. Available in red, blue, yellow, green, purple, orange and cyan. She stroked the dried paint on the cane, smiled and asked: "Can you also draw?" "Everyone can draw. Some people like you can draw very well." This seven-color control stick accompanies her to fly at night.However, her destination is not in Buenos Aires.As long as she wanted, she could land in Xu Hongzhi's arms at any time.If she wanted to keep flying, each pilot carried a windproof match with him.When the match is lit, it can light up a plain and a coast.

The beautiful nostalgia of love is a wind-resistant match that guides her in the endless night. After that, another autumn passed. As she flies through the depths of the night, she imagines she is heading for an asteroid.On that asteroid, the stars will wash everyone's eyes, and the blind will see again. The asteroid drifts at the end of the night, sometimes covered by clouds, so people miss it.It might be too late when we return. In order to land on the only asteroid, she must become an excellent pilot and fight with her life. By winter, she had learned to use a computer for the blind.

With that cane of seven colors, she could go downstairs alone to drink coffee and buy bread and records.Xu Hongzhi took her to practice nearby many times and helped her count her steps.Come out of the apartment and walk thirty steps to the left, which is the entrance of the coffee shop.But he always told her not to go out alone as much as possible. One day, she went out by herself and wanted to buy some herbal tea.When she came outside the herbal tea shop, she couldn't smell the scent of herbal tea. Instead, she smelled another smell: the smell of oil paint.For a moment, she thought it was the smell in her memory.

The familiar taste in the past sometimes calls us at a certain moment in our life, allowing us to return to the embrace of that time. However, a girl who knew her well from the bookstore next door said that this was indeed a shop selling painting supplies, and the herbal tea shop had moved. She left without looking back, and returned home with her melancholy. When Xu Hongzhi came back that night, he told her: "There is a painting supplies store nearby, just next to the bookstore." She knows it. Is this a harbinger or a hint?Her asteroid is there, and only a paintbrush can make her see the colors of this world again.

However, she prefers to dream.In the dream, she can see.She saw this colorful world again.Once, she dreamed that she was back in Kenya.Her former chameleon, Affat, kept performing color changes in order to welcome her back.She laughed out loud, only to realize it was a dream when she woke up. Recently, she has dreamed of going back to Africa more than once.In the middle of the night, she woke up in a dream.Xu Hongzhi was lying beside her, still in a deep sleep. "I had a dream," she said. "What did you dream about?" "I forgot." She quietly put her head on his belly and said, "It seems to be about Africa. Recently I often dream about Africa."

Resting his hand on her temples, he said: "Maybe it's been too cold these days and you miss the African sun." She smiled and fell asleep sweetly on his belly. But then one day, she dreamed that thousands of egrets were echoing in the African wilderness at dusk, as white as snow. Yes, first the chameleon, then the egret. She did not know whether what she saw was a dream or an allegory. After losing her eyesight, she could no longer work in the library. Xu Hongzhi encouraged Su Minghui to go back to university to study for a master's degree.He knew that she had always liked reading, and she didn't continue to study in order to pay for him to go to college.

One night, he picked her up from school.He was late and saw her wearing the purple wool cap, sitting on the steps outside the Faculty of Arts building, staring blankly ahead. He walked towards her, reproaching himself for being so busy all the time and making her wait alone. She heard footsteps, stood up, and reached out to touch his face. "You're late." She smiled at him. "The surgery took longer than planned," he explained. "Was the operation successful?" "The operation was successful," he replied. "Where's the patient?"

"The patient is not dead." He said with a smile. While driving back, the car passed the medical school building.They used to sit and read under the fig tree outside the building.Time flies, and on the day they met, she fell on his shoulder like a bird in the forest.At this moment, she rested her head on his shoulder.With his hands on the steering wheel and her weight on his shoulders, he felt that he could never love a woman so much again. "Can you read to me?" "Haven't you already read it?" "It was a long time ago, I read it myself. You never read it for me."

"Okay." He agreed. He remembered the story of the Garden of Eden.Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit on the tree, and felt ashamed from then on, so they picked the leaves from the fig tree and wove them into clothes to cover their naked bodies.He didn't know if there would be a Garden of Eden at the end of the world, where what we lost would be found, and what we embraced in this life would be more abundant there.He and she will turn into two stars on the fig tree, clinging to each other in the long silent night. Paul.Kerho wrote a beautiful fable, but at the same time wrote the cruelest text: the shepherd boy talks to his heart.Heart said to him, "People are always afraid to pursue their most important dreams because they feel unworthy or incapable of fulfilling them." When she discovered this disease, she felt that she was not worthy of having the dream of painting anymore, nor was she able to realize it.Although Xu Hongzhi encouraged her again and again, she flatly refused. What is her persistence for?She thought that persistence was some kind of self-glory.She suddenly understood that she was just afraid of failing again, afraid of seeing the misty colors on the canvas again. Now she couldn't even see color, and her only fear was gone.Once a person is blind, he can see more clearly. Her dear husband had done so much for her, couldn't she repay his affection with a paintbrush?He would be glad if she would pick up the paintbrush again.If she was willing to paint, he would stop blaming himself for not giving her more time. The door of the painting shop has been opened, it is the call of the dream to her.She doesn't have to be a painter, she just wants to paint.She missed the smell of oil paint, the pure sound of a paintbrush on the canvas, like a chess player misses his chessboard. She sat on the window sill, anxiously waiting for Xu Hongzhi to get off work.When he came back, she would shyly announce to him that she was going to paint again, and ask him to accompany her to buy paints and brushes. She touched the dot clock beside her. He was about to leave work, but she couldn't wait.She took the purple cap hanging on the skull bone and put it on, put on a dark red tunic woolen coat that was below the knee, put the wallet in the pocket, put on the shoes, took the cane and hurried out. When he returns, she wants to surprise him. She walked out of the apartment, walked three hundred and forty steps to the left, came to the painting shop, and stepped in excitedly. She bought a brush and said what paint she wanted.They all have names, and she has long recited them fluently, and never forgot them. A shopgirl with a youthful voice puts her order in a paper bag and asks: "So many things, can you take them by yourself?" "No problem." She slung the things over her shoulders. They were probably surprised that a blind girl with a cane could draw. Carrying the dream she had given up, she walked thirty steps, and suddenly remembered that she owed a tube of rose paint.She went back and bought the oil paint again. Those thirty steps were the farewell distance. She hurried home, spread her things on the table, and greeted her lover.However, just around the corner, a man bumped into her.She felt a hand take something quickly from her.This nasty thief didn't know how sensitive the blind man was, so he dared to bully a blind man.She seized the hand and shouted at him: "Give me back my wallet!" The hand wanted to break free, but she held on desperately. In an instant, she realized how wrong she was.The bony hand tried to shake her off, and she lost her cane, and she staggered back a few steps, feeling herself falling between the sidewalk and the traffic, about to fall out.She grabbed that hand with all her strength.Her hand slid from the other's wrist to the back of his hand, touching a bumpy scar.She was startled to think of someone she hadn't met. "I'm Dr. Xu Hongzhi's wife!" She cried out in panic and weakness, trying to get a short-term salvation. The hand hesitated for a moment, trying to pull her back. It's too late. She heard the sound of a car approaching at high speed and the screech of a horn.She fell, and the brushes in her arms were scattered around her.A streak of oil paint was run over by the car and shot out, darker than blood. A bloody leg shook.She floats in her own blood, and this is the last picture she draws. She realized how much she was.Why should she dream of painting the best work?Xu Hongzhi is her best painting.He is her eternal picture, staying in her short life forever. He glorified nostalgia with love. Xu Hongzhi rushed to the hospital.He approached the hospital bed and saw his wife's blood-stained temple hair, covered only with a white shroud.The doctor said to him: "She was dead when it arrived." She told him that lately she had been dreaming about Africa a lot.He understood that it was her miss of Africa.He bought two plane tickets to Kenya to surprise her.They will spend the winter there.After get off work, instead of going home directly, he went to a travel agency.He went back late.On the way, he received a call from the hospital. She cannot return to Africa now or in the future. A pair of black shoes peeked out from under the white shroud were covered in paint.She had just gone to buy brushes and paints.He was the one who told her about a painting shop nearby.It was he who kept forcing her to paint, but in the end he summoned her to die step by step. He cannot forgive himself.Why does he think dreams are more important than life?Doesn't he understand that a man's life is always shorter than his dreams? This race against time is already doomed to failure. He looks at her.Her eyes closed peacefully.She is going to bed.She struggled with her eyes with all her youthful strength, and she was tired. He had thought the darkest days were over.On the day she couldn't see, they embraced on the ground and waited all night until the morning light flooded in. "It's dawn," he told her. "It's another day." She smiled at him. This common old saying is so far away now. He lifted the shroud, and the blood-stained purple cap lay quietly in her arms, like a withered morning glory, accompanying her on the final journey. She came when the morning glory was in full bloom, and left when the flowers faded.Unable to support himself, he bent down and threw himself on top of her. A policeman came to inform him that they had caught the thief who pushed his wife out of the road.The teenage thief suffered an asthma attack as he fled and collapsed by the side of the road.He's next door now, and the doctor is trying to save him. Xu Hongzhi walked out weakly.He thought of the teenage thief, and of asthma. With trembling hands, he opened the curtain of the room, and he saw the pale face lying on the hospital bed.Dazed, he pulled the curtain back with the last of his strength. When he woke up, he found himself in the hospital, beside her empty bed. The nurse gave him what Su Minghui had left behind: a cane and a pair of shoes. It was daylight, and he went outside and started walking towards the meadow. In the blinding sunlight, he saw his father hurrying up. His father looked at him with wrinkled, guilt-ridden eyes and said: "I am very depressed." The voice seemed to drift away.He was exhausted, his lips quivered, and he couldn't speak. He went on by himself.Last night's fog wet the green grass beneath his feet.A small bird with white feathers flutters and perches on a winter branch. Who sent her here?Is it heaven, or as she said, love and dreams are laws beyond creation, and people have to find them by themselves? She came from the vastest horizon in the distance. On that day, she slid across the sky and spread her wings and landed on his shoulders, not by chance, but by agreement.With the changing world, people meet at the right time, but a farewell is inevitable. (Finish)