“A Book as a Medium (Part II)” Mrs. Liusha River “Maohua Anthology” Series 4
Mr. and Mrs. Wu Maohua of Liusha River
A book as a medium (Part II)
Author: Wu Maohua
(continued)
Winter days in Chengdu are short, and it is dark at 5 o’clock in the afternoon. I rode home from work, just past the gate of No. 87 Hongxing Road, and found not far along the street, where Liusha River stood looking at the flow of people. I braked and stopped in front of him, and his look of surprise convinced me that he was waiting for me. He said, “Let’s go and take you home, okay?” ”
In those days, the cold wave hit, and the weather was cold, so let him stand in the cold wind like this, on the one hand, I couldn’t help but be happy. I walked to the edge of the street, pushed my bike on the sidewalk, and walked slowly side by side with him. From Hongxing Road to Yusha Street, then right through Shima Lane, Xiaoguan Temple, Zhengtongshun, Beidong Street to my home Sauce Garden Public Office Street, forty or fifty minutes away, each minute becomes both short and long, and he and I are immersed in the joy of mutual pleasure.
The next day, the third day…, more than half a month in a row, or a day or two apart, in the twilight of five o’clock in the afternoon, I would see him in a thick tweed coat and a cotton hat, standing under the plane trees on the side of the street waiting for me.
Winter flickered by. In the blink of an eye, it is the mid-spring season of March and April, the flowers are red and willows are green, and the people are warm in spring. Liusha River and I invited to visit Zhaojue Temple, Du Fu Thatched Cottage, Xindu Guihu Lake, Shuangliu Tanghu Park and other places in the northern suburbs.
After a few months of acquaintance, I became closer to him. On the banks of the Caotang Huanhua Stream, walking among the flowers and willows, we held hands for the first time. I said: If you fish through the wide sleeves, you can hardly touch your arms, how can you pull the big saw back then with such a thin limb? He replied: “Pull and pull, people get to that point, to survive, they adapt … Hey, you just said that the feeling of pulling my arm is a bit like eating meat buns, biting the dough for a long time, and finally found that there was only a little meat dregs in the filling! ”
“Haha!” I laughed with him.
Resting and drinking tea in the tea hall next to the plum garden, a fortune teller popped up out of nowhere to solicit business and said to the two of us: “This gentleman has a noble look!” We ignored it and waved him away. Liusha He said with a smile: “I have been a pariah for twenty years, and he can’t see it but says that he is a nobleman, how can it be reasonable.” ”
This led to a paragraph about his early life: “In the early sixties, during the three years of hunger, I was in a labor camp on the farm of the Federation of Literary and Cultural Unions as a sinner. At the end of the year, everyone on the farm went home for the New Year, leaving me and the two pigs in the pen to stay together. I was single and homeless, and my hometown in Chengxiang Town was only a regulated landlord mother and a minor brother, and life was not good. The red brick house on the farm is so big, the wind leaks on all sides, and the wind blows whistles in winter, which can blow the entire row of tiles on the house to stand up and fall in unison. If a heavy snow overwhelms the roof, the cold in the house is intense, and the cold invades the bone marrow when sleeping at night. I had no choice but to put on a cotton coat and all the single clothes, and the cotton pants did not dare to take off, only faded to the calf, and then covered with a quilt, and added a few broken sacks for rice to keep warm, which was slightly better. With a lamp, a bed, and a book of Zhuangzi supporting my heart, my life can go on. Zhuangzi’s detached and enlightened ideas saved me, and I benefited from it for life, and later relied on it to survive the difficult years of the Cultural Revolution. ”
He narrated the personal version of this “Lin Chong Wind Snow Mountain Temple” in a charming and calm manner. As I listened, I thought in my heart that in those difficult times, you were not the only one who suffered.
At noon, I went with him to the small noodle restaurant to eat shoshou and noodles, which were salty. He has a stomach problem and eats a small amount of food, and after eating a small bowl of noodles, he sits quietly and waits for me to finish eating, and he is not like ordinary men rushing to pay for their girlfriends. It was as natural as an old couple.
On the way back, he took my hand and said emotionally with his eyebrows: “We talk easily and happily together, and trust each other without defense.” I hope that people will be conservative and take family life seriously. “I could hear his true feelings and hopes for me, and I also sensed a hint of uneasiness for fear of being disappointed again, after all, he and I are not young and have had failed marriages…. So, I solemnly replied to him: “Me too!” ”
Before parting, he took out several copies of the manuscript to me, one was Yu Guangzhong’s “Three Birthstones” recently published in the “Lianhe Pao”, and the other two were his poetry reviews.
When the ferry uncables/Bagpipes urge passengers/Just waiting for you to come and see each other/In the middle of nowhere/Watch me gradually go offshore/The water is wide and the sky is long/Waving at me. I will be on the other side / Waiting / Pick up your next boat / On the desolate ferry / Watch you gradually approach the shore / The water runs out, the sky is different / Beckons to you.
This poem in Yuguang is a love gift dedicated to his wife Fan I Cun’s 60th birthday and 35th wedding anniversary. Different from his “few” love poems, the old husband and wife love deeply, on the contrary, it is simple. In the past life, in this life and the next life, the two loves do not abandon each other, what a classical feeling, it turns out to be eternal, romantic to the extreme. It will make those modern men and women who pursue “one-night stands” fall back three steps in amazement.
Liusha River said that this poem is sad and classical: “May I be a husband and wife for all generations, and only the ancients made such a wish.” Yu Guangzhong performed a touching new chapter from traditional ideas, and his contribution was not only poetic, but also moral. ”
After returning home to do housework, sitting in bed at night and reading these chapters, I feel warm and peaceful. I know what he meant by writing like this. That night, I slept very peacefully.
On Sunday, I rested and stewed a duck in a soup pot and sent it to his house to replenish Nat’s thin body.
When we met a little over a week later, he brought me a women’s cardigan wrapped in a plastic paper bag with a purple checkered pattern, and a packet of beef jerky for my daughter. I am happy in my heart, oh! The love of two people also needs to be expressed through material things.
Summer arrives, and August in Chengdu has a hot and humid climate. One day, he specially took out a folding fan and gave it to me, saying that it was for me to blow the heat. On the fan is written Jiang Jie’s song “A Cut of Mei. Boat Crossing the Wu River”: A piece of spring sorrow waiting for wine to be poured / The boat on the river shakes / Upstairs curtain move/ Fengniang Du and Tai Niang Bridge / The wind is Xiaoxiao / The rain is fluttering / He Ri returns home to wash guest robes / Silver character Sheng tune / Heart character incense burnt / Streamers are easy to throw people / Red cherries / Green plantains.
This poem is a famous poem, Jin Shi Jiang Jie wandered the world after the death of the Southern Song Dynasty, returned home after a tired trip, and stood at the head of the boat in a stormy spring sorrow, cherishing life and aging, imagining the warm scene surrounded by his wife and children after returning home. The ancients’ words are written melancholy and gracefully, with the small characters of the snowy jade thin line of the Liusha River, which makes this small fan overflowing with light, gentle and lovely. Between the pages, I chanted his “homecoming robe”…
October 19, 1992 was my 44th birthday, and we chose this day to get married. I hung a handmade curtain of lotus leaf green flowers on the window of my room, went to a photo studio to take a few souvenir photos, returned home and stewed a pot of beef soup and fried a few vegetables to celebrate myself. I pinched my fingers and counted, and it took ten months and two days from the first time we met to the time we were married.
Is this long enough or short enough? I do not know! After all, he and I are not young and have a past of failed marriages. I had discussed with him a number of issues about the impending marriage. He said: “Family finances are also very important, I have a deposit of more than 8,000 yuan! One set of housing on Hongxing Road is a public house. I said, “My savings are half of yours, but I won’t be embarrassed in the future, I’ve been used to living frugally for decades.” But what matters more is whether you and I can have a long-term spiritual connection and be considerate at home. Showing people with their true colors is my principle of being a person, but I also have the shortcomings of ordinary women, and I often have a strong spirit of rationality and introspection. ”
He said that he was well aware of the flaws and fickles of human nature, and could not determine the length of time he would spend with beauty in the future, and even told me that he had a dream that he had a car and fell into a cliff… I answered him, “So do I.” But good flowers can be picked and broken, what is the result of doubts here and now? Or ride a donkey to read the record book and walk and see. ”
On this day, after dinner, they sat and hugged each other under the lamp, and their eyes were opposite each other. We saw faith and truth in each other’s eyes.
After I got married, I wrote to his literary friend, Mr. Tan Kai, saying: “… We know each other at first sight, hate each other at third sight, and can’t help but see four. Of course, this two, three, four, I am talking about psychological time, that is a long accumulation, continuous process. ”
(End)
(Editor/Jinggong)
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Mr. and Mrs. Wu Maohua of Liusha River
