Chapter 28
"My wife has cancer and doesn't have much time left," he said with a wry smile.
The curve of the corners of his mouth seemed to be forcibly pulled and pulled up, the wrinkles of old age on his face were distorted, and the loose skin was filled with sourness and helplessness.
Laughing is more heartbreaking than crying.
He sighed, and the faint airflow from his throat seemed like a sob that was suppressed to the extreme, and the uncontrollable powerlessness that flowed from his body.
He raised his eyes, glanced at Yang Ye standing across from him, and through her calm gaze, his gaze fell to the window. He took a long breath and slowly exhaled. He stared at the camphor tree in the yard, his eyes unblinking. "Over the years, I've been through all kinds of ups and downs. I thought that at my age, there wouldn't be any more difficult things in my life, but here comes this..."
The low, hoarse voice was tinged with sobs. "My wife had a heavy hemorrhage when she gave birth. It was like she was walking through the gates of hell. I told her then that when she recovered, I would take her out to travel to various places. When she was young, she was a poet. She said that her soul was a bird flying freely in the sky, and the poems she wrote were her eyes looking at the world. But later, she had to work in a textile factory to support her family. After she had a child, she devoted herself to the child. Over the past few decades, I promised her many things one after another, but when I retired, I still hadn't done even one of them."
He was stunned, and suddenly thought of Ye Miaoshu's fiftieth birthday. She was preparing food in the kitchen, and when she opened the refrigerator, she asked inexplicably, "Zhiyang, we said we were going to Ningbo last time. When are we leaving?"
Fang Zhiyang was worried about the job title evaluation at the school at that time, and he said casually: "Wait until I'm done with this work before going."
But the spells come one after another.
"Although I can only go to town now, I believe that one day, I will see the whole world." Ye Miaoshu's young voice echoed in his ears, and the voice was so clear that it seemed like it was just yesterday.
"Sorry." There were ripples in Yang Ye's calm eyes. She felt a little ashamed that she shouldn't have brought up his sad memories.
Liu Guoxing asked, "Isn't this a blue and white porcelain vase from the Xianfeng period? You asked me to keep an eye out for it before, but you're not going to accept it?"
Yang Ye explained seriously: "I have my own rules for accepting or not. The origin of your item is too special, so I can't accept it."
Liu Guoxing frowned and asked again: "What rules, what origins, why don't I understand what you are talking about?"
"Boss Yang, I know what you mean. You're a formidable man." He nodded, his gaze returning to the bottle. "This bottle was passed down from my great-grandfather's generation. It was a gift from the emperor. Before he passed away, he repeatedly warned us that unless the family was truly in trouble, our descendants must never sell these things for money."
Fang Zhiyang's hands subconsciously rubbed the edge of his clothes, and the sourness and unexpressible pain in his throat were always stuck in his throat.
I thought of that old woman, about my own age, whose hair was also a mixture of black and white. He'd been to that textile factory, under a single lamp in Hunan, hunched over the machines that ran non-stop from morning till night, a dozen balls of yarn in her hands, a job she'd spent most of her life doing. She was filled with countless fatigue, and her eyes weren't as clear as they once were. That day, she lay in bed, looking at the yellowed ceiling above her, and casually said, "Perhaps I was born to be toilers."
"My son also said that she is in her sixties and almost seventy years old. Even if she has the surgery this time and is lucky enough to live for another three to five years, what about the future? People have to live their lives in the future." Fang Zhiyang's eyes gradually became red, and tears were already rolling under his eyes. It became increasingly difficult to smile on his face, and even the corners of his mouth twitched. "This problem has caused the family to owe more than 300,000 yuan. I want to sell this bottle, get some money to pay off the debt, and then accompany her for a walk as long as it takes."
His rough fingers rubbed the bottle mouth back and forth, his eyes filled with only the last struggle and hope. The glaze on the bottle mouth reflected his already vicissitudes of life.
In that surging era, the rising warm sunshine dispelled the heavy haze of the past, and the revived green leaves evoked the new era that was about to be filled with hope.
The streets and alleys are filled with vigor and vitality. In this small southern city, the newly renovated library is filled with the fragrance of fresh pages and ink. In this new city library, in this new era, the gears of fate quietly turn.
Ye Miaoshu, just 20 years old, was in her prime, her eyes as bright as a star in the night sky. The afternoon sun filtered through the dappled leaves and streamed through the library windows. She stood in front of the bookshelves, her floral dress rustling in the breeze as she opened a corner window.
The library was silent, the only sounds being the rustling of pages and the scraping of pens across paper. Fang Zhiyang sat at a table near the window, absorbed in his history book. He flipped to the last page, still unsatisfied, and perhaps too engrossed, as he stood up to exchange a book from the shelf, he bumped into Ye Miaoshu, who was carrying several books.
The book in his arms was knocked to the ground, and the sound of the book falling to the ground broke the original silence in the library.
"Sorry." Fang Zhiyang reacted quickly. He squatted down and quickly picked up the books that fell on the ground.
Ye Miaoshu didn't react for a while. When she saw him squatting down, she followed him to pick it up and said softly, "It's okay, I didn't notice it either."
Their hands accidentally touched each other, and in the moment they were briefly together, it seemed as if an electric current passed through their hearts. When they raised their eyes to look at each other, their gazes met briefly. They looked at each other, and time seemed to have passed for a long time.
Ye Miaoshu retracted her hand in panic, stood up, lowered her head and hugged the book tightly in her arms.
"Here you go." Fang Zhiyang returned the books he had picked up to her.
"Thank you," she said embarrassedly.
When she was sorting the books, Fang Zhiyang saw the one she put on top and asked, "Do you like Gone with the Wind?"
"Yes, you like it too?" Ye Miaoshu asked in surprise.
"This is my favorite book," Fang Zhiyang replied.
They started with a discussion of philosophy, then touched on classics, extending their discussion to Pushkin and Leo Tolstoy. Afterwards, through book discussions and poetry recitations under the sycamore tree, affection blossomed, love quietly taking root between the lines, in the whispers and smiles.
They both loved poetry and words, would argue over a single sentence in a notebook and fantasize about the artistic conception of a poem. But the years would not revisit words. The tide of time surged, and the era, pushed forward, was like the Qiantang River they had seen on their first date, with rolling waves and surging tides.
As times changed, the pressures of life became increasingly apparent. That spring, Ye Miaoshu's family suffered a sudden change, and they urgently needed a stable income. As the eldest child, she gave up her long-cherished love of poetry and books and went to work at a local textile factory.
Meanwhile, after graduating from a university in the city, Fang Zhiyang, with the help of his family, secured a teaching position at a town middle school. In the classroom, teaching and answering questions, the two fell in love for four years and then married.
In the summer of the second year after their marriage, their child was born.
But Ye Miaoshu suffered heavy bleeding after giving birth. Fang Zhiyang was anxious outside the emergency room, but he could only pace back and forth. Cold sweat was pouring down his forehead. He knelt at the door of the emergency room, clasped his hands together and prayed facing the white wall. Listening to the machines inside and the occasional cries for help from the nurses, his heart seemed to be torn apart.
He didn't know how long he had waited before the doctor came out and told him that the rescue was timely and Ye Miaoshu was out of danger. Fang Zhiyang breathed a sigh of relief and dragged his weak legs into the ward. Seeing her pale and haggard face, tears welled up in his eyes. He knelt beside Ye Miaoshu's bed, held her hand tightly and said, "I'm sorry."
"Sorry for what?"
"Thank you for your hard work." Fang Zhiyang looked at her closely. "When you get better, we will go to Tibet, to Lhasa, to see your favorite prairie."
Ye Miaoshu smiled weakly, touched his face, and forced herself to joke, "Just the two of us, no son?"
"Without him, just the two of us"
"good"
As the children grow up and the days go by, the poetry and distant places, dreams and hopes that I once imagined have all turned into the daily necessities of life in the kitchen, and water, electricity, and gas.
Perhaps ideals have long been trapped by the huge web of reality, and the youthful vigor and vitality, the bright and dazzling starlight on their bodies will eventually dim.
Their past decades were marked by laughter, tears, arguments, and compromises. To give their child a home in the city, they spent most of their savings on a 100-square-meter apartment. The child got a girlfriend, got engaged, and chose a wedding date.
On my wedding day, seeing my two children standing across from me, I vaguely felt as if time had been reshaped once again. As I took the cup of tea they offered me and saw the happy smiles on their faces, they looked at each other and felt that everything was worth it.
"Originally, we wanted to use the remaining savings to travel, but we didn't expect..."
After listening to him, Yang Ye was silent for a long time.
"How old were you when you married my father?" She lay in her mother's arms, listening to her talk about her aunt entering the palace. Her mother said that her aunt entered the prince's palace at the age of ten, and later when the prince became emperor, her aunt was first named Shupin and later became a concubine.
Mother thought about it and patted her arm twice, "About twelve or thirteen years old."
"I'm six years old this year. In a few years, won't I also have to get married like my mother?" She was surprised and grabbed her mother's clothes tightly, "Mother, I don't want to get married. I want to stay by your side forever."
Mother laughed and teased her, "Silly girl, how can you stay by my side all the time?"
"I'm staying here, not going anywhere," she pursed her lips in dissatisfaction, touching the jade bracelet that her father had given her on her mother's wrist. The other two concubines also had jade bracelets, but none of them were as beautiful as her mother's.
"But if the Emperor grants us a marriage," my mother whispered. If the Emperor grants us a marriage, no matter whose family it is, even if it's in the capital, we'll have fewer days to see each other.
She looked up and saw her mother's dejected expression. "Mother, what is life like?"
Mother thought for a moment and touched her forehead. "Studying, learning skills, getting engaged, getting married, managing the house, serving the husband and parents-in-law, giving birth to children, waiting for the children to grow up, and planning for the children's affairs, Zhao Zhao, this is basically what a woman's life is like."
She suddenly stood up and said, "Mother, if it weren't for Ama, me and my brothers, would you still be riding a horse on the prairie now?"
My mother's expression changed drastically, and her voice became higher. "Who told you this?"
"It was the nanny who told me. She said that mother used to be able to ride a horse and shoot arrows, unlike me who can't even read the Four Books and Five Classics. Mother, is Zhaozhao wrong?" She looked at her mother, feeling aggrieved.
"Zhao Zhao did nothing wrong, it was Mother who was wrong. Mother shouldn't have spoken so loudly to Zhao Zhao." Mother held her in her arms and coaxed her, "Zhao Zhao, those are all things of the past. Mother has Zhao Zhao and your brothers now, and that's enough for Mother in this life."
Liu Guoxing also understood, and he went over and patted the old man on the shoulder.
"If I had known the origins were like this..." He paused for a moment, as if he couldn't think of what to say, and could only sigh, "In the end, there's no way to make a decision on this matter."
Fang Zhiyang smiled and said, "Having come to this point, the things left by our ancestors are useless if they can't be exchanged for money. I've been teaching for most of my life, and now I've figured out one thing: if they can't save her life or make her live, then no matter how good the things are, they're just a burden. If it can make her feel more comfortable in the days ahead, I'll feel at ease selling them."
"I'll be leaving first." He zipped up his backpack and put it in front of him, carefully protecting it.
He had just reached the door when Yang Ye chased him out, shouting at his departing figure, "At the 2008 Beijing Council Autumn Auction, a Banana Jade Pot from the Xianfeng period sold for 1.67 million. Although yours isn't as fine, a conservative estimate would be no less than 800,000."
Fang Zhiyang stopped, turned around and saw Yang Ye standing at the door.
She said: "You can go to a specialized institution to issue an appraisal certificate, so that the value of the finished product can be even higher."
"Thank you." Fang Zhiyang hugged the schoolbag in front of him and bowed to thank her.
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