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06 Aralık 2019

Dust (1)



“Look, the autumn is entangling my feet.” said Wen Tao, with a chirping voice. 

He was pointing the large leaves on the pavement and without much hope, trying to gain Yi Ling’s attention. However, Yi Ling did not seem pleased with the scene of stinky rotten leaves as her mind was occupied with the homework that she was supposed to complete before next Monday.  She stared at Wen Tao through the edge of her left eye and watched him like a scientist watching sick monkeys in the lab. Being oblivious to the prying eyes monitoring him, Wen Tao was enjoying the moment, the only moment of the day he feels free, blissful and enchanted; the time he leaves the school, walks under the dim street lights and takes bus to his house which is located in the northern outskirts of Changzhou. This was the only time he was left to himself, do things as they purely please him and not feel guilty of any pleasure that is created by the friction between his lonely soul and the empty streets. When the entire world goes in non-responsive mood, he always knew how to find little games to entertain himself. There exists only himself and the others in this world, but most of the times it was just himself, the rest did not matter. His shoes were carving into the pile of the yellow-black leaves, disappearing sometimes and appearing again only to reveal that their round tips got wet and now had a dirt-looking color somewhere between indigo and purple. While staring at the tall xyz trees’ skeleton-like bodies and the light elaborating the ramification of the branches toward the black sky,  he was walking with deep and reverent awe, like the southern tourists who witness the winter first time ever in their lives. Yi Ling in contrast to him, looked suspicious whenever she sees his delusioned face. She thought that the excessive joy that he shows was all fake, a direct result of being deprived of happiness elsewhere, like eating hotpot with family or scoring three-points in the game. She imagined that, in Wen Tao’s  young and restless heart, there was some kind of euphoria which, only he himself believed that, cannot be expressed by the words. If he didn’t know that the ground was hard and wet, she was sure that he would roll on the leaves like a fat cat or he would simply swim in the yellow pool of swishing sounds.

“Stop talking nonsense and tell me what I will do with the writing homework. That crazy woman asked us to write a short story. What does she think? Does she think we are Lu Xun or something?”

They have just passed through the first junction and now walking along the residuals of the metro construction. On their right, there was the so-called Cultural Palace which was actually a ghost house as there was no one inside, day and night it was completely empty. Workers were still putting new tiles on the sidewalks, making new holes at the middle of the road and moving a crane backward while at the same time trying not to hurt anyone. The only good thing about this construction was it made his way back home longer, therefore he had more time with himself or sometimes with Yi Ling. Neither home nor the school was his friends. He felt like his chest is being crushed by large pressing machines anywhere other than the streets where no one asks him about his math or science grades. The trees, the wind, the invisible moon, the abandoned dogs , the hungry cats and the homeless people were his best friends for the last few years. It was hard to explain but he thought that if he observes things closely and patiently, the inner stories of those things will reveal themselves to him. Everything speaks, he often thought, even the rocks and the clouds, even the falling leaves, we just need to adjust our ears to receive the frequencies that they emit. People around him were full of themselves so all they spill were again their own selves. Yi Ling is one of them but –yes, hard to admit- she is a girl and a very pretty one. The way she moves her fingers to put her hair behind her right ear, the way her eyes become like incision marks when she laughs, the way her cheeks shine when the tired winter light reflects on her face… It was all magical for him, all heavenly and therefore sacred.  This is why he could never tell her no, no matter how much he knew that the unfairness is slowly becoming a routine in their friendship, the word Yi Ling started using more often recently. She only wants to get good grades in writing class and she likes to use him. He knew it since the beginning, so what? If this is what makes her happy and keeps her close to him, let it be!

“We can do like we did last time. I can do your writing homework. No one will notice it.”

She felt a big relief as the offer she was expecting finally came so now she can apart from him and go to her own way. Yes, it is not very nice to use him but she needed a high GPA to please her parents and her counselors. Wen Tao enjoys writing anyway, it cannot be so bad to make someone happy, right? He said himself, he feels happy when he sits quietly in his room and writes random sentences to depict ordinary objects. Didn’t he write a paragraph describing a salt shake a few days ago and asked her to read? So he is happy and she is the one who makes him happy. Then she herself is happy too!

“Ok then, deal! I gotta go this way now. I will take the bus number 11”

She ran towards the edge of the construction wall where a broken pipe has turned the road into a small lake. He watched her from behind untill she disappeared by the traffic lights, like watching a skipping stone till it sinks into the phosphorescence after four five leaps.  Once she becomes completely out of sight, he turns right and walks by the construction wall, along the Yan Ling Road. Putting his hands in his pockets, covering his head with the hoot, he suddenly felt like he became invisible. This is probably why the little white dog with very short legs –he first thought it might be cotton candy drifted away by the wind- almost crashed his legs and rolled on the ground like an e-bike in an accident. When he reached the underpass for the Gong Yuan BRT Stop, he hesitated a bit, should he keep walking till the Tong Jien Lu and take the bus B1 directly or take B12 here and then switch to B1 later? When he does not have a lot of things to do at home, he usually kept walking and enjoyed talking to himself. He stood at the entrance of the underpass, like a pre-historic man standing in front of his cave, thinking of his next hunt. After a short period of time, he decided to hurry up as he might be able to start doing Yi Ling’s homework tonight right after the dinner.  He already had his weekly argument with his mother and he got slapped by his father two days ago for not getting a good score in Math quiz so this evening should go smooth, as far as the frequency of his parents’ outburst do not change due to an unusual excuse.

He descended the stairs, the smell of mold and stale water hit his nostrils as soon as he arrived at the bottom of the stairs. The underpass –sometimes he likened it to a secret passage to the world of imaginary things- was not sufficiently lightened. The bearded homeless man who keeps playing the same melody with his flute was not there tonight. He wondered where he might be as this was the first time he did not see him in the underpass. Did he get sick? Or did he move to a warmer city because the winter started showing its bitter face in Changzhou? There were only colored photos on the walls, advertising Changzhou to the people of Changzhou by mentioning the achievements of the local government. People on the photos were all happy, the sky was all blue and the air was clean. “Yes”, he told himself, “the world of imaginary things” and smiled while taking the first step of the stairs up to the BRT stop.

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To be continued...