rice porridge
The light in the studio gradually faded, from the uniform grayish-white of the afternoon to a more substantial dim yellow.
I didn't turn on the lights, letting the dusk slowly flow across the canvas like a tide, swallowing up those sharp blocks of color, blurring the edges, and blending them into a texture closer to memory.
Qiu Aiming had already left, leaving behind the silence in the room and the plastic-covered diary in my pocket. It was like a warm burn, pressed against the skin of my chest.
The hunger pangs resurfaced, but no longer the burning emptiness of the morning, but a more concrete, physiological reminder.
I stood up, my steps no longer heavy as before. I walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. The half-empty carton of milk and a few eggs were still lying there, cold and empty.
But this time, I looked past them.
I opened the bottom-floor storage cabinet. Zhou Yu liked to stock up on dry goods here, which he loved to cook: black fungus, shiitake mushrooms, vermicelli noodles, and various beans. The bags were carefully sealed with small clips and neatly stacked. In the innermost compartment, I saw a small bag of mung beans.
He tiptoed to reach it three days ago because he wanted to cook this.
I took out the mung beans and found the old clay pot he'd used for years, the inside of which had been polished smooth by the rice grains. I washed the rice, added water, and soaked the mung beans.
His movements were unfamiliar, even a little clumsy. I remembered how he cooked porridge: he would always boil it over high heat, then reduce it to the lowest flame, cover it with a lid, and patiently simmer it for a long time, lifting the lid and stirring it slowly with a long spoon several times to prevent it from sticking to the bottom.
He said that the porridge cooked in this way is glutinous and fragrant.
I followed his example and lit the fire. Blue flames licked the bottom of the pot, making a steady whirring sound. The water quickly boiled, and white steam lifted the lid, making a puffing sound.
I turned down the heat and the kitchen instantly became quiet, with only the subtle bubbling sound of porridge in the pot and the occasional sound of cars passing by outside the window.
A strange sense of calmness, along with the sound of stewing, slowly filled this overly deserted house.
I leaned against the counter, looking at the casserole with wisps of steam rising from it, as if looking at a metaphor of life.
From boiling to calm, from raw rice to cooked porridge, what is needed is time and patience. However, my understanding of Zhou Yu lacked the most crucial timing.
Am I always too immersed in my own world that I only see the finished product he serves on the table and never care about the slow cooking process in the kitchen?
The aroma of the porridge began to spread, with the unique sweetness of mung beans mixed with the mellowness of rice grains.
The smell is so familiar that it instantly opens up the memory channel of countless mornings and evenings.
I suddenly remembered that he always got up early, busy in the kitchen, preparing breakfast for me, and I always kissed him good morning on the forehead.
Was I just enjoying it as usual, then staring at him blankly, and then suddenly hugging him from behind? Now I think I seemed to have disturbed his creation.
The porridge is ready.
I turned off the heat and lifted the lid. A cloud of warm, white steam billowed in my face, carrying with it the rich aroma of rice and beans. The porridge was cooked to perfection, the mung beans blooming and the rice grains soft and sticky.
I scooped out a bowl and placed it on the table. It was a white porcelain bowl, filled with green porridge, steaming hot.
I didn't eat it right away. I just sat at the table, looking at it, looking at him as if he were Xiao Yu.
Then I took out my new blue journal and a pen. The plastic cover had a cheap sheen in the light, and the tip of the pen trembled slightly as it hovered above the blank page.
Where do I start?
Did it start with the shock and upheaval I felt when I discovered his diary? Did it start with the biting cold rain in the cemetery? Or did it start even earlier, from the countless moments I overlooked when he hesitated to speak?
The pen finally fell.
"Dear you," I wrote the first line, the ink spreading a tiny spot on the paper. "It rained today. I made mung bean porridge, but it didn't taste as good as yours..."
The handwriting was clumsy, like a child just learning to write, and the words were trivial and disorganized.
I wrote about the rain outside the window, the buns Qiu Aiming brought me, the riverside water, and the old man feeding the cat. I wrote about the unfinished painting, the chaotic gray and black, and the timid yellow light. I rambled on and on, describing my confusion, my guilt, and my belated attempt to understand.
I'm not writing this for him. He'll never read it anyway.
I'm writing this for myself.
Using this most primitive method, stroke by stroke, he tried to re-outline his outline, trying to invite the vague shadow behind the canvas to the front.
The heat of the porridge gradually dissipated and became a palatable temperature. I put down my pen, picked up the spoon, scooped up a spoonful, and put it into my mouth.
The taste is very ordinary, even a little burnt due to poor control of the heat.
But I ate it slowly, bite by bite.
Outside the window, night has completely fallen, and the city lights light up one after another, casting blurry spots of light on the wet glass windows.
In the studio, the painting stood quietly in the darkness, waiting for new light tomorrow.
On the table, next to the empty bowl, the open blue diary was filled with scribbled yet sincere words, like the beginning of a stroke, a clumsy attempt to connect the past and the future.
At the end of the day, there was no wailing, no heart-wrenching declarations. There was only a bowl of finished porridge, a newly begun diary, and a young man who had finally learned to sit down and savor solitude and memories.
Silence is no longer a heavy oppression. It becomes a space, a place where an old casserole, a wet painting, and a cheap diary can be placed.
The night is still long.
But the kitchen light was on and the pen on the table was not closed.
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