map

Yu Guangzhong

In the third drawer on the right hand side of the desk, dozens of maps are neatly stacked, some are still very new, some are damaged, or the handwriting is blurred, or the mouth has been ground at the fold. Of course, he likes new ones, but what he regrets most is the old ones, which are worn and marked with atomic strokes. Only they can understand which cities he has passed, which towns he has passed, and how many counties he has swallowed on the great plains of foreign countries. Only in their folds can his long-distance running mood be preserved. Eight thousand miles of clouds and the moon, they are with him, under the clouds. No, he said to himself, it's more than 8 thousand miles. In addition to the 28,000 miles marked on the Dodge odometer, he also rented the Galaxie of Ford and the Chevrolet of Impala. Altogether, is there 50,000 kilometers per kilometer? Hundreds of miles of clouds and moons, north winds and vast white fog and snow, every inch has been shared with the old map.

One day, when he was single again, those maps were just like his wife. Wherever he travels, he must consult with them in advance. For example, from Chicago to Gettysburg, should we take the Tantan tax road or save some money and take the second-class and third-class road? Should I spend the night in Cleveland or Pittsburgh? With those maps, strange names and spelled numbers, he traveled all over Philadelphia, Washington, Baltimore, and cut corners through Monterio, San Francisco, Los Angeles and new york.

After returning to Taiwan Province Province, this fascinating tour of rivers and lakes, this proud wandering fever, and this so-called tourist addiction in Germany suddenly cooled down. For more than a year, he guarded the small basin on the island. This small basin was small enough to go around. Going north is a big branch, and going south is a new store. Often for half a month, there is no beautiful Heping East Road in his activity space, breathing the eighth air breathed by1200,000 people and the dust raised by 2.4 million soles. Sometimes, from Xiamen Street to Normal University, in his fantasy, it seems to be farther and farther than Chicago to Kalamaru. The sky is near Chang' an, and the land is far away from Chang' an. He often satirizes himself like this. Occasionally, he would "go south", escape from this dull gray city and give a speech at a university in south-central China. His speeches are often free, but so is the golden sunny climate outside the gray city. On the return train, he believed that he was much younger, at least his lungs were cleaner than before. But as soon as he entered Xiamen Street, his confidence immediately dropped. He said to the long and narrow alleys and Japanese-style old houses in his heart, "Reality, reality, I'm back."

It must be explained here that the so-called "Wen Jing going south" was originally a word used by a writer in the south. There are many old-school literati in China. It seems that when they go out, they tend to be covered up. Every time they think about it, he feels funny, just like Liang Shiqiu. Every time he hears people talk about this altar of poetry and literature, he always smiles. After Wen Jing returned to the North, he immediately regained the prisoner's state of mind in the gray city, locked himself in six cold tatami study rooms, and created his three-dimensional building on the plane of 600-word manuscript paper. The world of six seats is very narrow, but the world of 600-word manuscript paper can be infinite. Facing the latter, he ignored the former. Facing the latter, he doesn't feel like the God of Genesis. A blank sheet of paper is always a challenge. For a creative desire, when the universe is not cut, it is muddy. A voice said that there should be light, so there was light. Being a luminous body and light source is a reward and supreme joy in itself. Every day, his eyes will become the focus of many eyes. From the clarity and reflection of those young eyes, he realized the significance and importance of light source. Nevertheless, he still remembers how lonely and lost he was when he was young, and how much he liked light. Now he finds himself a light source, which makes him happy and makes him tremble. And how to change from a person who loves light to a light source, this process, he has a hazy memory.

The times he lived in were as chaotic and contradictory as many other times. This is the end of an old era and the beginning of a new era, full of disappointment and hope; Full of cruelty, but also a lot of tenderness, so close, so unclear. Once, history itself seemed to be interrupted. He seems to be standing in the center of a whirlpool, everything revolves around him, and nothing can be caught. All pens seem to be arguing, brush and pen, pen and chalk. The writing brush says that the pen is imported; The pen says that the writing brush is native and out of date. He also said that chalk is too academic and anemia; But chalk does not recognize the blood of the pen, because the blood is blue. As a result, the pen battles continued, and street battles in the cultural circle broke out one after another. He was also one of the targets of gunpowder, but in his time, who could escape the dense stray bullets? He has a brush, chalk and pen in his hand. He believes that as long as it is a straight pen, it will leave a little handwriting in history. Maybe it's a sentence, maybe a whole section or even a whole chapter. As for those who don't have a pen but want to make people angry or even burn their pens, they probably can't even keep punctuation marks.

In the rainy season when stray bullets are like hail, he will occasionally sit there and enjoy another space on the map of foreign communication. It is a completely different world, completely different, not only because of the barrier of space, but also because of the disconnection of time. The significance from this world to that world is not only eight thousand miles, but also half a century. There, the rhythm of everything is faster than here, and all reactions are more sensitive than here. The pulse of the sixties was beating in the air there, and the nerve endings, hearing and vision, touch and smell of the free world seemed to be concentrated there. The cities there are deeper underground, more towering, and their tentacles are getting longer and longer in all directions. One fifth of the population there is often on the high-speed super national highway, driving and driving, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, without a red light! New world, new world, new century! Whitman's dream, Lincoln's prophecy, eyes always look forward and up. When they look at the moon, they see the 2 1 century, the extension of Alaska and Hawaii, the latest frontier of mankind, and the farthest and farthest outpost. His people are used to looking back: looking up at the bright moon, they see a toad, a rabbit and Hou Yi's runaway wife in Li Bai's tragedy, eyes and poems. So, this is a completely different world. He belongs to the east, and he knows how beautiful the moon should be immersed in love stories. He has also been to the west, and you can imagine how the death star glimpsed from the satellite through the 200-inch Balloma telescope will tempt future Columbus and Zheng He.

He divided his life into three periods: the old world, the new world and an island. He feels that he belongs to these three kinds of space, no, three kinds of time. Just as ideologically, he sympathized with pens, brushes and chalk. The old world is his mother, the island is his wife, and the new world is his lover. Dating a lover is touching and intoxicating, but it is doomed not to last long. During his carefree travel in the new world, he felt his responsibility to his wife and his deep nostalgia for his mother, which gradually became heavier and deeper. He didn't take a handful of soil with him when he went to the new world. After all, the soil belongs to that island, not that ancient continent. What he took with him was a map of the old continent. In middle school, during the Anti-Japanese War, he once saw a broken map of his own national geography, which accompanied him from Chongqing to Nanjing, from Nanjing to Shanghai, from Xiamen to Hong Kong, and finally to the island. A broken map and a broken country, he thought with a wry smile. On the snowy night in Michigan and the flower season in Gettysburg, he often looked at the broken map, just like staring at an old photo of his dead mother. Those long-remembered place names are Chang 'an, Luoyang, Chibi, Taierzhuang, Hankou and Hanyang, Chu and Xiang. Often, his eyes wander around Bashu and Jialing River, where he changed from a scout to a sophomore.

He has been fond of drawing maps since junior high school. A beautifully printed map is a kind of enjoyment for smart people and a thought-provoking and fascinating game for him. His satisfaction from a beautiful map is not only rational, but also emotional, not only cognitive, but also beautiful. Spider-web-like railway, wheat-ear-like mountains, freckled villages and towns, faint Great Wall, and clear-cut water system. A mysterious, desolate and empty desert. And when his eyes followed the river, wandering along the soft and winding coastline, jumping between the rich or winding islands, he felt the joy of seagulls flying. He likes the sea. What teenager doesn't love the sea? When he was in middle school, he was still surrounded by Sichuan in Qian Shan outside Qian Shan, and he could only smell the blue and salty life wasteland from the map. In the autumn afternoon, he often sits in the white cold stone, leans against a map with the sea, and makes an abstract free voyage. Such seagulls patrol the water world, such clouds swim with eagles overlooking the palm-sized land, and he has the illusion of king's landing, no, God is present in all things. This kind of land contraction, he thought, should be a kind of advanced entertainment that all sensitive hearts like.

He saw one map after another. He painted so many pictures, and finally he found that he knew and recited more in this respect than the geography teacher. Some clumsy female students often ask him to draw a complete picture of China as a lesson. He never refuses, just as a famous writer does not refuse to sign autographs for readers, but every time he draws a picture, he is bound to leave a mistake. For example, a lake in Qinghai moved his divine power northward by 100 km, or the coastline of Liaoning added a harbor near Dalian out of thin air. It is expected that ignorant female students will not find out. Mr. Guo, who knows well, has also been fooled. Why don't you let the Nine-level Devil be complacent after his tricks are sold?

He likes to draw maps of China, and he prefers to draw maps of foreign countries. He will never get tired of seeing that Europe has the most complicated borders and the most curved coastline. Finland with many lakes, Greece with many islands, Switzerland with many snow and peaks, Holland with many flowers and many cows and canals, all of which he likes, but what fascinates him most is Italy because of its elegant coastline and musical place names, because of Venice and Rome, Caesar and Juliet, Naples, Messina and Sardinia. As long as he has time, he studies those maps. His state of mind is longing, yearning and pursuing an indescribable new experience. That yearning is pure, yearning. Faced with the abstract beauty of drawing instruments, he couldn't understand why the king of Qin looked at Du Kang like that, why Alexander looked at India like that, and why the one-legged pirate looked at the parchment map of Treasure Island like that.

In Sichuan, where the mountain is like a prison, his eyes are like butterflies, dancing in the south of the Yangtze River. He thought it would be nice to go back one day. Later, the mushroom cloud rose from Hiroshima and the sun flag was lowered in Chinese mainland. He found himself in a boat, under the Three Gorges Baidicheng, and the Three Gorges was in the rhyme of Li Bai. He found himself back in Jiangnan. Instead of being happier, he began to miss Sichuan. Now, he can only recall the mountain country from the map of the old man riding an ox and his old friends who fought in Sichuan. The sun flag goes down and the five-star flag goes up. He found himself on this island. When he first came, he never imagined that he would resist typhoons and plum rains for more than ten seasons on this earthquake-prone island. When looking at the map now, his eyes are always wandering in the south of the Yangtze River. A few simple place names, such as Yanziji, Yuhuatai, Wujin, Caoqiao and Yixing, will awaken the whole complex world. He didn't expect that one day, he would miss this island, on another continent.

"You can't really understand the meaning of China until one day you are not in China," he wrote in his home letter from the New World. In China, you are just one of 70,000 China. You can blame China for natural and man-made disasters. You can scold China people, warlords, traitors, politicians, corrupt officials, local tyrants and evil gentry one by one until you scold your teacher, father and mother. When you are not in China, you become all China. Since the Opium War, all national humiliation has been stuck on your face. So you can't prevaricate any more, you have to stand up. Stand up and say, "China, China, your whole body pain is my pain, and your shame is my shame!" " "When he first went to the New World, he missed the island very much. At that time, he was still young. When he went there again, his nostalgia gradually shifted from the island to the mainland, the ancient mainland, all mothers' mothers, all fathers' fathers, all ancestors, the cradle of all ancestors, and the ancient mainland. All the good and evil, all the beauty and ugliness in China are in and under that land. Above it, there are rice and wheat from China, and below it, there are Huanghuagang, Yue Wumu, Qin Gui and even black bones. Whether you like it or not, you should join these in the future.

Walking into the map is no longer a map, but mountains, rivers, Yuan Ye and cities. Out of the rivers and mountains, there is only one map left. When you are not on that land, when you stop walking on that land and pitch between that land, you can only face a symbolic map, just like you can't face a dear face, you can only face a frame of photos. Is it really cuter if you can't get it? But is the soul the master of the body or the distant guest of the body? However, is this a kind of transcendence, or a disguised escape, a kind of soul hiding? Maybe that's really an unforgivable weakness. Now that you are married to this island, you should try to prolong your honeymoon. So he put the maps of the new world and the old world back in the drawer of his right hand. As soon as the sun goes down, it will still be very cold in winter and dusk on the island. He rubbed his hands and put everything about himself, his body and soul, all his memories and hopes into the manuscript that he had just put aside. So 600 words of manuscript paper spread out, engulfing everything, engulfing the mainland and islands, as long as history and as wide as vast space.

Yu Guangzhong

Taiwan Province province1967 65438+February 2 1.