Chapter 33: Piano Music
As soon as Hang Liumei and Qi Xiuchun were released from the hospital, they immediately discussed finishing the painting "Water Moon Guanyin." Unfortunately, the paper was too brittle back then, and it was unlikely they would be able to continue painting on it now. So, they decided to start over. This time, they decided to copy the mural using a clay tablet.
First, they had to choose the boards. After several days of shopping, they brought back a solid wood board about half the size of a door. They also explained to Xiaomai and Pu Zhihe that composite boards were prone to warping and would not work, so they had to buy solid wood.
Even the Mogao Grottoes couldn't be painted right after excavation—the stone walls were too rough and uneven to be painted on. Ancient artisans mixed mud with sand, cotton, glue, alum, and water, applying it to the stone walls to create a base layer, upon which they would paint. Qi Xiuchun was particularly familiar with this process; both she and Lao Jiang had been tasked with treating damage to the base layer in Dunhuang.
Qi Xiuchun and Hang Liumei got the most delicious local clay from Dunhuang from somewhere, and like bricklayers, they broke up the lumps, added water to stir, let it settle, and then took the fine mud in the middle layer to mix with various materials for preparation.
The two elderly women covered the woodblock with linen to enhance the clay's adhesion. As Pu Zhihe and Xiaomai watched in admiration, they donned goggles and, each armed with a nail gun, nailed the linen securely before applying the prepared clay. A neighbor, thinking they were renovating, was about to complain to the property management when the noise suddenly died down. They were finally about to begin copying.
Compared to the following seven steps—drafting, revising, reviewing, finalizing, coloring, outlining, and adjusting—the labor involved in those first steps is negligible. Drafting alone is a tremendous undertaking.
Judging from the current photos of "Water Moon Guanyin" on the west wall of Yulin Grottoes, it has been damaged a lot compared to when the two people first copied it decades ago. The two presbyopic people had to rely on the spirit of man conquering nature to laboriously pick out the lines from the blurred original and draw them on paper.
"On the clear, lustrous water, in the void of white light, a glimpse of its form makes all attachments vanish." Hang Liumei is most impressed by Bai Juyi's "Painting of the Water-Moon Bodhisattva," which captures the sublime spirit and charm she couldn't capture back then. Time truly makes us age. In my youth, I copied even the complex and complex "Manjusri Transformation" and "Samantabhadra Transformation," and I wonder how I managed to pull them off.
Hang Liumei chatted lazily with Qi Xiuchun: "Sister Xiuchun, have you heard from Huang Hanwen since then?"
"I heard he remarried and went south. Who knows?"
"Yingying doesn't want to look for her father either?"
"She's more open-minded than I am! When she got married, I asked if I should ask her father, but she told me that she told my son-in-law that her father had died a long time ago. So that's it!"
Pu Zhihe came back from picking up a package for Hang Liumei and saw the two still chatting, so she urged them to speed up their work. Hang Liumei and Qi Xiuchun looked at each other, turned their backs and muttered something, then turned around and changed the subject.
Hang Liumei asked: "Zhihe, how is your painting going now?"
"There were a lot of things going on a while ago, which had some impact, but it's been okay recently."
"That's fine. I've discussed this with your grandmother Xiuchun, and we're going to collaborate on this painting."
Pu Zhihe strongly objected: "Me? If I were to sneak in here and fill in the numbers, I'd be picked out right away."
Qi Xiuchun advised her: "How could that be? Xiaomei has been praising you all the time, and we all have high hopes for you! By the way, you don't want that bracelet anymore, do you?"
Pu Zhihe said, "I want more."
Qi Xiuchun looked at her like a weirdo: "You kid, the matter has been resolved, why are you still wasting money?"
Pu Zhihe leaned on the table, supporting herself with her hands as she thought and answered, "Although this is a story between you two, this is my first time participating in a true piece of Dunhuang history. I want to keep this as a souvenir for myself. Please allow me to be sentimental for a bit."
Just as he finished speaking, a phone call came in and Pu Zhihe walked aside to answer it.
Qi Xiuchun gave Hang Liumei a hint: "It was her boyfriend who called. Do you believe it?"
"You can tell from the eyebrows just now." Hang Liumei said as she pulled down the corners of her eyes to illustrate.
"If you ask me, she'd better break up! Xiao Zhu is too lively. She only cares about putting on a good front, but her heart is not sincere underneath."
"It's not appropriate for us to be so talkative—just think about it, you knew how much I hated Huang Hanwen, but you still married him!"
"I was getting old and anxious back then. Meeting the right person was as rare as Tang Sanzang. And he threw himself at me, so I was bewitched and deceived. That's not right. Why do I feel like you've become timid over the years?"
"I'm just scared by what's going on between you and Xiaomai's parents. I'm afraid that if I get involved, both of us will end up getting hurt."
"If you hadn't mentioned it, I would have forgotten. Didn't your son and Mai Sui seem to be reconciling last time? No? Then I was happy for nothing. As a mother, you should at least play a role..."
Hang Liumei was annoyed by Qi Xiuchun's nagging arrangements and kept replying, "I'm doing it, I'm doing it..."
The phone call between Pu Zhihe and Zhu Fu was very calm. Zhu Fu was at the entrance of the community, and he asked her if she would like to come downstairs to meet him again.
They had actually already discussed this once before. Zhu Fu and Pu Zhihe had agreed that not only could the bracelet customized by Qi Xiuchun not be returned, but they would have to pay extra to exchange it for a larger one, and they would have to say it was Zhu Fu who bought it to look good in front of his boss.
He also asked Pu Zhihe to explain to Qi Xiuchun that they had just had a quarrel at the wedding expo, and that this would be their wedding gift. As for the bracelet, if that were the case, his family could buy it as a betrothal gift to Pu Zhihe.
It was another case of borrowing flowers to offer to Buddha, and Pu Zhihe rejected him without a second thought. This incident made Zhu Fu extremely angry, not only because of Pu Zhihe's rejection, but also because of her attitude.
The two of them must come to an end today.
When Pu Zhihe went out, Qi Xiuchun and Hang Liumei said that today was Grain Full, and the loquats should be turning yellow. In the past, Dunhuang had the "Qingmiao God Competition", and people had to offer tributes and burn paper money... She didn't hear the rest of it, and until she saw Zhu Fu, she was distracted and wondering what "Qingmiao God Competition" meant.
Zhu Fu's brows were furrowed, one foot on the curb, his mouth tilted as he searched for his cigarette butt. Seeing Pu Zhihe approaching, he walked over to the trash can on the side of the road and crushed out his cigarette.
Seeing that he looked constipated with a lot to say, Pu Zhihe let him speak first.
Zhu Fu, uncharacteristically, took a deep breath and spoke formally, "Today, we have only one thing to say. Let's not waste each other's time. Either we get married and live a down-to-earth life together, or we break up. Let's make a decision for each other."
Pu Zhihe was about to answer when Zhu Fu, fearing the answer, interrupted her immediately. "First, think about whether you're being fair to me. How many people can go from twenty to twenty-nine? You were gone for so long. I thought there would be no more problems between us after this test, but I don't know why it turned out like this. I'm exhausted. I wanted to talk to you on the phone about this, but I feel it's disrespectful to our relationship, so I'm standing here now. I'm serious this time, and you can think about it carefully before answering."
Pu Zhihegang actually wanted to apologize to him. Although she didn't know why she apologized, it seemed that she was always the one who hurt others. Before he finished speaking, she had already made her choice in her heart.
"Zhu Fu, this matter is not fair or unfair. I think we—"
"Okay, you don't have to say anymore. I get it," Zhu Fu interrupted calmly. He didn't look at her, his lips pursed in grief, as if he could burst into tears. Not wanting to wait even a second for Pu Zhihe, he turned and walked to the car parked on the side of the road, opened the door, got in, and quickly fled the scene.
Pu Zhihe saw a cake box on the back seat through the car window and remembered that today seemed to be their ninth anniversary.
Pu Zhihe did not return to Hang Liumei's house, nor did she chase Zhu Fu. Instead, she walked out of the west gate, passed the Drum Tower and the Bell Tower, and then stayed in the park outside the south gate until dinner time before going back.
Qi Xiuchun had already left, and Xiaomai had returned. The grandparents had left her some food, spinach noodles made by Xiaomai. Pu Zhihe ate silently and returned to her room. Xiaomai knocked on the door and came in, handing her a bag: "Sister Zhihe, this is what Brother Zhufu sent this afternoon."
Inside were two scarves of the same pattern.
When they first started dating, Zhu Fu asked Pu Zhihe why she never made him little handicrafts, like scarves, gloves, or chocolate cookies. Pu Zhihe didn't take it seriously. On their 100th day together, Zhu Fu insisted on celebrating their anniversary and brought her a gift in a coffee shop: this very scarf he'd knitted himself. He'd even boasted about it to her at first. He'd learned it all by himself, and at first, he couldn't get it right, so he had to re-knit it four times. Eventually, he got the whole dorm to knit a scarf for his girlfriend.
Later, this scarf got snagged while climbing a mountain, and Pu Zhihe never wore it again. Zhu Fu asked for it back and said he could mend it. Unexpectedly, he knitted a new one.
Pu Zhihe took out the new one. Although Zhu Fu tried hard to find the same cotton thread as the previous one, he himself had forgotten how the previous one was made. The holes on the scarf were still there, and the new one was different from the previous one.
Pu Zhihe always thought that their breakup was a joke, but she suddenly realized that everything was true. Zhu Fu did try, but they could not be together anymore.
Pu Zhihe lay down and drifted off to sleep. When she woke, it was dark. She checked the time: 11:30. She couldn't sleep even when it was time for bed, so she went out in the dark to wash her face. The garden lights streamed in from the balcony, and the faint sound of people could be heard. Pu Zhihe tiptoed to a small stool and sat on it, watching the people strolling downstairs.
Someone handed me a bottle of drink from behind, it was wheat.
He said, "This is ice cold. You can drink it if you want. If you don't want to drink it, you can also apply it." He pointed to his eyes.
She said, "Thank you," took it, unscrewed the lid, took a sip, and then put it to her eye socket.
"Do you all know that we broke up?" she asked.
"Well, that's what we all felt this afternoon." Xiaomai answered honestly.
"It's really strange. He knows there's nothing to be sad about, but he's still so useless. I even felt a little sorry for him, as if I owed him something. If he was in a relationship with a normal girl, he probably wouldn't have to go through all this torture."
Xiaomai shook his head and said in his usual slow and steady voice, "But pursuing you, being with you, and waiting for you in a foreign country were all his choices. Everyone bears the consequences of their own decisions. Isn't it the same for you?"
"Really? Right. We made a common mistake. We knew it wasn't appropriate, but we put it off until today."
"We talked about the physicist Richard Feynman in our course. He and his wife, Irene, had a wonderful relationship, but she died after only three years of marriage. Feynman wrote her a letter after her death, saying, 'It's been ages since I last wrote to you, but I realize now that I've wanted to write to you for a long time, but just haven't been able to put pen to paper.' You see, even for extremely rational scientists, emotions often precede actions. People are not machines, and you don't have to constantly reflect on yourself."
Pu Zhihe put down the drink, his eyes dull. "But we anticipated this outcome so long ago, why are we still sad today?"
"There's another well-known story about Feynman. After his wife died, he acted calmly until one day he passed by a store and saw a dress in the window. He thought Irene would look great in it, and he finally burst into tears."
Pu Zhihe stared at Xiaomai's profile as he finished his story and said, "Xiaomai, you really matured early."
Xiaomai smiled and said, "No, just some extracurricular stories."
"But our little story really doesn't deserve to be compared to other people's romantic love." Pu Zhihe said this self-deprecatingly, then fell silent. Xiaomai, like her, counted the heads of people strolling downstairs, and sat quietly with her. The balcony window was wide open, and she reached out to comb her hair when her vision was disturbed. Xiaomai stood up and wanted to help her close the window.
Pu Zhihe stopped him: "Just leave it open, you can still hear the sounds outside."
Xiaomai turned around and walked back into the house. After a while, he brought something out. He sat cross-legged on the floor, plucking the strings with one hand and pressing them with the other, playing the zither for Pu Zhihe.
Pu Zhihe rarely listened to guqin music, finding its sound harsh and astringent, an instrument best suited for those over seventy. Today, she finally understood that guqin music is meant to be heard while being observed. The Xiaomai playing the guqin was different from the usual Xiaomai. He subdued the familiar aura she knew, and the person sitting beside her became an ancient figure who had traveled through time and space for centuries.
Xiaomai's shoulders dropped, his elbows drooping, his long arms moving between the qins with surprising ease. His bony hands transformed into a slender bamboo in the cyan moonlight, a zither and a person, a natural union. When he played, the chirping of insects and human voices vanished. When the song ended, everything was as noisy as usual. It was as if nothing had happened, and only the two of them knew he had played a piece.
"What's the name of this song?" Pu Zhihe asked.
Xiaomai replied, "What do you think of "Three Variations on Plum Blossoms"? " As he spoke to her with his hands on the piano, the nineteen-year-old Xiaomai seemed to have come back.
Pu Zhihe nodded and said, "That sounds very nice. Xiaomai, thank you."
It doesn’t matter, Xiaomai said. As long as you like it, Xiaomai thought.
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