Zhong Hua's Distant Place
The corrugated iron roof of the observation station at an altitude of 5,000 meters groaned in the blizzard, like a giant beast trapped in a glacier. Zhong Hua stuffed the last frozen compressed biscuit into her mouth, her temples throbbing as she bit down—this was the third week of altitude sickness, and the seventh day she had been alone here.
The diesel generator at the observatory broke down completely last night. Wrapped in three layers of down jackets, she huddled in her sleeping bag, flipping through her notebook by the dim light of the emergency lamp. The latest page was dated three days ago: "The glacier crevasse widened by 2.3 centimeters today, an increase of 0.7 centimeters compared to last week." The handwriting was crooked from the cold, and there was a small ink blot at the end, which she had accidentally smeared on herself while warming her hands with her breath.
The wind outside the window suddenly changed its tone. Zhong Hua got up and peered out through the frost-covered window. There was a string of fresh footprints in the snow, stretching from the entrance of the observation station all the way to the distant glacier tongue. She pulled out her Swiss Army knife from under her pillow and gripped it tightly, her fingertips tracing the engravings on the handle—it was a crooked "Hua" character that Ah Yu had carved in Tibet last year, with an even smaller "Yu" character secretly carved next to it.
The door creaked in the wind, and snowflakes seeped in through the cracks, landing on her eyelashes. Zhong Hua suddenly remembered three years ago in the ICU, when Ah Yu leaned over the bed reading her unpublished interview transcript. When she read the part about "the person I want to thank the most," the saline solution on her eyelashes had felt just as cold. Back then, she couldn't speak, and could only let her tears stream down her temples and into the pillow, pressing the recording pen for the "Gu Yanting arson case" even tighter.
"It's me." A hoarse voice called from outside the door, carrying the sound of wind and snow.
Zhong Hua almost dropped the knife. She knew that voice all too well—backstage at the truth-revealing press conference, he had called her name through the curtain, holding the recording pen she had left behind, the pen still bearing the red marks she had squeezed.
She flung open the door, and the wind and snow instantly rushed into her throat. Her Tibetan guide, Tenzin, stood outside, wrapped in a sheepskin coat, holding a frozen, purple insulated box with the logo of a Paris hospital printed on it.
"Miss Lin had someone bring this from France." Tenzin tucked the insulated box into her arms, rubbing his frozen hands and breathing on them to warm them. "She said you didn't have any fresh vegetables here, so she specially had a farm in Paris send you fresh lavender."
The warmth of the insulated box seeped through the thick coat, like a warm piece of jade against his chest. Zhong Hua recalled their New Year's Eve dinner, when Lin Wanqing held up champagne in a video on the African savanna: "For your wedding, I'll give you the starry sky as a gift." At that time, she was leaning on Ah Yu's shoulder, watching the fire in the fireplace, and the rim of the mulled wine glass between his fingers bore the imprint of their intertwined lips.
The emergency light flickered the moment the door closed. Zhong Hua placed the insulated box on the table and carefully untied the straps—there was no lavender inside, only a box wrapped in red velvet and a folded piece of paper.
The letter was on the familiar Eiffel Tower stationery, and Lin Wanqing's handwriting was somewhat blurred by the low temperature.
"Your colleagues at the observation station said you're always working late into the night organizing glacier data. Don't ruin your health like you did back when you were chasing after Gu's dirt. The box contains the silver ring Ah Yu bought in Tibet. He originally planned to propose to you after you returned from the observation station, but he encountered a landslide while escorting medicine to Kathmandu."
Zhong Hua's fingers suddenly went awry, and the letter fluttered to the ground. She stared at the red velvet box, remembering last year in Montmartre, when Ah Yu stood in the sunset, camera in hand. He had said then, "The clouds in your lens are more beautiful than the ones I waited three days for at the Eiffel Tower." But she hadn't told him that her camera's memory card contained a 27GB file of his silhouette tying a red string to a prayer wheel in Tibet.
The box was ice-cold, and her knuckles turned white from the force of unfastening the clasp. The ring lay in black velvet, its silver surface engraved with tiny prayer wheel patterns, while the bottom of the box bore Lin Wanqing's words: "Be happy." She had seen those three words in the proposal box in the snow mountain; back then, A Yu's hand trembled as she pulled out the ring, her left hand clutching the dried lavender Lin Wanqing had sent, and her right hand cradling the ancestral jade pendant her mother had given her.
"Brother Yu asked me to pass on a message," Tenzin suddenly spoke, his voice so low it was as if he were afraid of disturbing something. "He said he's already turned the red string on the prayer wheel for you to its ten thousandth rotation."
Zhong Hua's tears suddenly fell onto the ring, leaving a small watermark on the silver surface. She remembered when she tied a red string to the oldest prayer wheel behind Sera Monastery, and Ah Yu secretly tied the same one next to it. The silhouette of him squatting on the ground tying the red string then overlapped with the image of her father hanging a brass key at the entrance of the old house—her father always said that a red string could tie the person you care about to your side, just as a key could tie your home to your heart.
The emergency lights went out completely. In the darkness, Zhong Hua fumbled to slip the ring onto her ring finger; it fit perfectly. She remembered Ah Yu repairing the fireplace, the first snow of Provence falling on his hair, and when he turned his head, snowflakes from his eyelashes falling into her mulled wine glass, sizzling into a small whirlpool.
"Tenzin," she suddenly grabbed the guide's sleeve, her voice trembling, "is the road to Kathmandu still passable?"
Tenzin paused for a moment, then added a piece of dried cow dung to the stove: "It's avalanche season now, and the rescue team can only enter the mountains after the snow stops. Miss Lin has already flown in from Africa and should be at the hospital in Lhasa waiting for news."
Zhong Hua found the letter that had fallen to the ground and continued reading by the faint light of the snow outside the window:
"Don't stubbornly insist on reporting the Gu family's shady dealings back then. You always think you're an omnipotent reporter, but you forget that someone cares about your calloused fingertips. Ah Yu's phone album contains all the glacier photos you took at the observatory. He said these crevasses hold the heartbeat of the earth, just like the unspoken longing in your eyes."
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