“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.
* * *
To be continued...
Hiç yorum yok:
Yorum Gönder