Chapter 429
She landed on him like a white butterfly, wings spread wide and trembling slightly, the vibrations of her butterfly bones. Her arms wrapped around his neck, like butterflies greedily sucking nectar. After a while, until they were both breathless, they separated, took a few breaths, and immediately kissed again. The kiss deepened, and soon, they burst into passion again...
She obeyed him now, willing to do anything he wanted. The only thing was that it was getting worse and worse. He knew she wasn't just unsatisfied, she just wanted to completely drain them both dry. She had her own way, easily making him fall for her again.
"Even if I can't keep his heart, at least I can keep his body." She always said this in her heart.
Every time she thought, it would be better to die like this, as the sacrifice was supposed to die on the altar.
He also thought that death was fine, it was only a matter of time. He didn't want to die, but living was too torturous. Only now was he not afraid of death.
They were like two entwined white snakes, entwined tighter and tighter, until they were suffocating and on the verge of death, yet they refused to let go. Finally, they twisted into a white demon-binding rope, locking them both in. She died, and he remained chained until his death.
Wang Jiazhi wrote a very short novel, the last paragraph of which is:
"He said that after she gave birth, he would take her to a beautiful place. There were many flowers and furry animals she had never seen before. But after she gave birth, she found out that she was going to die. After he and the baby fell asleep, she whispered in his ear, 'Don't forget me.' Then she left alone forever."
She had many ways, but this was her favorite: holding his face and kissing him endlessly, allowing him to open his eyes and look at his face in between. His face was shaped like a white orchid bud, with thick eyebrows and bright peach blossom eyes. His eyelashes were thick and long, and when he closed his eyes and his upper eyelids, they looked like newly opened albizzia trees. His lips were like two slender petals. The only thing that wasn't stunning was his nose, which was not high enough and a bit wide. But if he really replaced his face with the high nose bridge that met the public's aesthetic standards, it would become vulgar. Complete refinement would lose its characteristics and become a tacky and perfect boredom.
She has no guilty conscience. Wang Jiazhi firmly believes that she has never been a person who is blinded by lust. She only has a few requirements for appearance and she is a person who values inner qualities the most.
Until she was about to suffocate to death, she was still reluctant to leave the intoxication and happiness of dying. Finally, her body's natural reflex told her to stop and breathe.
The cat that accompanied him in the end liked to put its furry head against him and rub and meow even when he was not asleep and sometimes lay in bed thinking about things.
At this moment, he opened his eyes, and the scene that had just appeared in front of him overlapped with the current one.
When did it happen? They had been together so many times, too many times to count, but it was not so that they had no memory of it. I couldn't remember exactly when it was, it felt so familiar yet so distant.
She opened her eyes dazedly and saw that he also had his eyes open, looking lost in thought. She was very dissatisfied, thinking that he was distracted, so she kissed him harder, and soon they were out of breath and had to move away to breathe.
She was exhausted and limply curled up in his arms. When she gradually regained some strength, she began to rub her fur pants with her paws.
He didn't remember anything about the past. Wang Jiazhi felt very sad, as she was the only one left in the past.
When he woke up in the morning, she was like a kitten, almost completely hidden under the covers, with only a tiny bit of her head peeking out. She poked her head out suddenly, sleepy-eyed and with a head of frizzy hair. She whimpered, perhaps feeling cold, and slid back under the covers, this time completely burying her head. She slid deeper into the covers, wrapped her arms around his waist, and fell asleep.
He didn't want to get up, but he had to go to work. The colder the weather, the less he wanted to get up. In the past, without this clingy cat, he would have gotten up at a moment's notice no matter how cold the weather was. He couldn't be so lazy.
In a previous life, when Wang Jiazhi still lived there, she had to go out with Mrs. Yi for a social event. It was a high-ranking colleague's birthday, so she definitely had to go. Then she thought about her job. No one would say anything if she said she had something to do and didn't go. It was rare to have the time. On one hand, she was engaging in hypocritical conversation with a group of people, listening to their boring chatter. On the other hand, the wives were all out socializing, and Wang Jiazhi must have been huddled in her little nest like a kitten... only she would be left at home... If she chose to go socializing, she would be a fool.
He wanted her to sleep in his arms at home, and he wanted her to feel that she belonged to him and was someone special to him.
A few of his mother's complaints also reached his ears.
"They really treat her as a second wife and let her family do whatever they want."
He was actually very happy to hear it.
In his definition, home should bring him comfort and peace, a sense of belonging. Without his parents, his home in the countryside of Hangzhou no longer existed. His home was almost non-existent. He even spent most of his time in the government office, and that hell on earth house was more familiar than his home. Sometimes he would vaguely realize that he was "homeless". But as soon as the thought came to his mind, he would immediately dispel it. When he was young, he had parents and a home, so he could leave them behind. He thought self-deprecatingly that it was because he had lost his ideals and beliefs, and now he suddenly cared about the warmth of his children.
He liked having Wang Jiazhi at home because it gave him hope for the house.
At first, I wanted to live with her because I just wanted to spend more time together, to make sure she didn't have to worry about other people's opinions, and to give her a place of her own to live out her days. Unexpectedly, I developed a different kind of affection during the wait, wondering if this would give me a home to return to.
Wang Jiazhi is most afraid of the word "go home". From high school to college, all her classmates went home during holidays, but she had to live in school.
"We can't keep the dormitory open just for you." The dormitory manager and the teacher said with disgust and hatred.
She didn't blame them; she was indeed causing them a lot of trouble. But she had nowhere to go, no home to return to. She felt guilty and embarrassed. She wanted to crawl into the ground, but she was also worried that they really wouldn't care. Two months of hotel accommodation would be a huge expense.
She was initially happy that summer because she had rented a house and finally didn't have to shamelessly beg the school to let her live in the dorms. She never expected it to end like that. It was truly a complete loss, and she never went back to live there again.
During the war, those with relatives in the area fled there. Those without relatives who lived with her in the shelter always talked about how to go home. Where could she go back to? That feeling of being homeless.
Being like a floating duckweed and homeless are such desperate words.
She had read a novel about a woman who became a lover for a man, for no other reason than to love him. They were both very good friends, and she thought that perhaps one day he would give up his family and be with her legitimately.
Once, she went to his house. He was normal, except that he took off his watch as soon as he entered. He never took it off at her house. She left him because she knew she could never give him the peace and relaxation of home, and he would never give up his family for her.
Wang Jiazhi recalled that when they were together, he was very sensitive to time, but he still had to look at the watch if the time was too long.
Being a mistress is just like that. No matter how passionate the sex is, no matter how much love you pledge, once you put your clothes on, you're still like a stranger, afraid to say a word. Ultimately, you still have to be a proper husband and wife. You take her with you wherever you go, and even into the grave when you die.
At that time, I took it seriously, but he was just fooling me. I was foolishly ruined. He took Mrs. Yi away, and it was Mrs. Yi who called.
Wherever he goes, Mrs. Yi can just sit next to him.
She wanted to go to Shanghai from Hong Kong, so she applied for a permit for a long time, worked many jobs, saved money for a long time, sat in the lowest-class cabins and carriages, and her body was covered with mosquito bites... In the end, she died after being his shameful mistress for two months.
Three years later, he went back to live with Mrs. Yi as usual, and he abandoned her again.
So what if I'm unwilling? This is already God's mercy to me.
It's no wonder that Mrs. Yi ridiculed and mocked everyone equally, regardless of whether they were favored or not. This was the confidence of a legal wife. The sky is full of stars, but there is only one moon.
He had several boxes of old books, and when he moved back to Shanghai, he'd planned to pack them in his study, but he'd never gotten around to it. In those last days, Mrs. Yi had already moved out, leaving him and two or three close associates alone. He'd just unpacked a few books when he realized how foolish he'd been. His house was going to be raided soon, and even after sorting it out, it would still be a mess. There were so many things in this life he couldn't bear to part with, even the boxes of worthless old books, drawings, and notes he'd accumulated in his youth.
He pondered for a long time what to do with these things. It would be better to burn them than to wait for someone to come and waste these things, which bore his own handwriting, drawings, and annotations, like waste paper. But he couldn't bear to do it. If he gave them to a used bookstore, those who would buy them would surely be people who cherished them. But such old books didn't cost a lot of money, and those who bought them wouldn't necessarily cherish them.
He was so entangled that he couldn't make a decision. Thinking about it, he found it even more ridiculous. His younger self had long since died, but he couldn't let go of the books from his youth. Just like now, he was about to die, but he couldn't let go of these worthless books.
Burn it and be done with it. That's fine, this way I can rest assured, without having to worry about them being ruined.
My woman and my children are gone first, and my books and paintings are gone too.
Having witnessed so many deaths and rebirths, I've long known that people come into this world empty-handed and leave empty-handed, taking nothing with them. But when the moment finally arrives, knowing it and feeling it firsthand create completely different emotions.
He burned the traces of his best years one by one, memories of the past gradually becoming clearer. This manuscript for the newspaper, which he had painstakingly written through several nights; the sadness he felt while reading this book, leaving such an annotation; where did he get the inspiration for this cartoon... Burning book by book, leaf by leaf, he felt as if his heart was turning to ash inch by inch.
"One day, I want to have a house that can accommodate a huge bookshelf, so that I can buy books I like even if I come across them. Now I have to move around with school all the time, so I can't carry too much luggage, and the dormitory is also limited in space, so I can't put too many books."
She wrote this in a notebook spread across her lap, sitting on her bed surrounded by packed luggage, the night before her school moved from Guangzhou to Hong Kong.
At that time, she still had hope for the future and fantasized that one day she would have her own study.
He thought he was much luckier than she was. He had a library that could accommodate large bookshelves and so many books that he could never burn them all. She had very few books, all of which she had found in second-hand bookstores. She had no money and no home.
Many ideas are so simple, but they may never be realized in your lifetime.
There was an old man in the village who, as a child, told himself that one day, after he had raised his children and lifted the burden from his shoulders, he wanted to go to the provincial capital to see a train. Later, when he grew up and returned to the countryside, half his hair was white, but he still smiled and said he wanted to go to the provincial capital to see a train one day. His children grew up, the burden was lifted from his shoulders, and he starved to death, but he never got to see a train.
Wang Jiazhi wanted friends, but she found a group of accomplices; she wanted family, but her own father abandoned her in troubled times; she wanted a future, but she became a despised "slut"; she wanted a home and a stable life, but what awaited her was hunger and cold; she wanted love, but she got... oh! Even her small wish for a study where she could buy her favorite books remained unfulfilled until her death. She lived in a tiny room, barely big enough for even a small bookshelf.
People work hard all their lives, but when they die, how many of the things they want do they get?
People said she passed away peacefully, like a bodhisattva. How could she not have regrets? How could she be content? But in the end, it had to be this way. He could probably understand how she felt now.
A one-inch photo of him fell out of a book. He was so young back then, only twenty-three or twenty-four. That was the best time of his life. He thought of her student ID card, taken out of the drawer, the hopeless and withered look on her face.
In her childhood photo, she was only about four or five years old, with long hair, smiling in her mother's arms, like a beautiful kitten. Who would have thought that her life would be like this?
He placed his picture next to hers, same age, him at his best, her at her worst.
He threw both photos into the fire and watched them become curled and blurred before turning into ashes.
"I give you my best luck, so you can live a good life in the next life." He said to himself.
When he was dying, he seemed to see a red color before his eyes, and a voice said to him, "Brother, can you help me pick a flower? I want that one."
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