Chapter 144 Lin Zhi's Letter
Dear Mr. Yan Sang,
Please allow me to take the liberty of writing to you for the last time beginning with this address.
Maybe you won't believe it, but I want to tell you that my love for you is much more than you can imagine, and it lasts for many years; even longer than the years you and I have known each other, longer than the time I was born... The first day I met you, I was also eleven years old.
I was still naive, not knowing what love was. I happened to open a memoir that chronicled your love affair with a woman. The first sentence on the title page read: "...You returned to Peking when you were about fifteen. Six months later, in February, Uncle Si received a letter from his good friend Lin Yu, inviting him to take you to the old house in Shaoxing to meet the Lin family's two daughters. You understood Uncle Si's meaning. You were still young, well-educated abroad, and although you knew from the beginning that you would have such a bride in your homeland, you had never, and were not in a hurry to fall in love. You and a group of people waited in the Lin family's study, still somewhat nonchalant, trying to be polite and courteous. Then the door opened, and a slightly childish girl in a purple jacket and long trousers walked in. She had a small braid and clear eyes..."
From then on, you and she began a love-hate story that entangled half a lifetime. Four years separated by thousands of miles, sending letters to each other, four years spent traveling hand in hand, spanning over ten countries and thirty cities across Eurasia... She had countless suitors, yet she never even glanced at any of them. You were so dazzling, some were even willing to die for you, yet you never flinched. You loved her, even her occasional vanity and willfulness. She knew your deep and pure love, and would never abandon you just because you didn't fit in with the literary world of China. Even if it meant sharing your hardships abroad, she had no regrets. It was precisely because you were such a perfect match that those hundreds of love letters captivated countless hearts, right?
I imagine those twelve years must have been your happiest, until 1933, when you were expelled from your teaching position at the Sino-French University for participating in an anti-fascist demonstration, ultimately depriving yourself of your sole source of income. She and your only four-year-old son died from chronic malnutrition and displacement while fleeing France to seek asylum... If poverty can't even protect life and family, what's the point of pursuing poetry and dreams? From that day on, she no longer understood you. Your shared ideals gradually became yours alone. She exaggerates your plight, accusing you of being a hypocritical "fake gentleman." Even the aesthetics you've dedicated your life to were dismissed as rubbish.
You could be misunderstood by the whole world, except her, because you had long since considered her everything. But your wife no longer loved you, no longer understood you; she compared you to the glittering glories of her former suitors in front of you, even finding several intellectuals who had ridiculed you as witnesses, and forcing you to sign the divorce papers. By then, you were thirty-one years old. In front of her and everyone else, you pulled a gold locket from your bosom, smiled gently and shyly, and said, "Do you know? This locket was given to Mrs. Lin by my mother when we were engaged." Then, you burst into tears like a child again...
Your marriage with her was dead in name only. She didn't divorce you, but she left you in the end—taking your only little daughter with her and running into the arms of another man.
At this point, your only lifeline becomes the fatal blow that crushes you.
There are still people who love you, but you can no longer tolerate others in your eyes; you have been depressed several times and have been admitted to a mental hospital several times.
Some people are actually not worth your lifelong attachment; but you will eventually meet a woman who will stay with you when you are most heartbroken after your wife leaves you.
She has spent her whole life following your footsteps. She loves you more than her life, and you are her whole world.
She learned Chinese for you, sang your favorite Brown Sugar for you, read your words every day by your bedside, traced your handwriting, and even wrote short stories and poems for you.
She understands your words best, and she understands you, everything about you, and your country best. She has forgotten that she was born in Austria and that her parents are both Jewish; she has also forgotten her own name and only knows to follow in your footsteps.
She gave up her most comfortable life for you. After you left the hospital, this girl, despite being Jewish, followed you all the way from The Hague to Moscow, being thrown into a concentration camp several times by the Gestapo. In her memoirs, she wrote of that time: "I told myself I must survive, absolutely not! I must not be discovered... I couldn't die. Otherwise, who would take care of him?"
You see, even she is trying so hard to live in this world, but you repay her ten-year-long love with suicide.
She had lost all support, yet she lived on for you into the 21st century. She spent twenty years walking the land you once trod, a lifetime devoid of any reputation, a lifetime plagued by criticism. She spent half her life collecting and editing your manuscripts, and the rest of her time describing you in your words, allowing your words and actions to be preserved beyond a few dozen black-and-white photographs...
At the lowest point in your life, when you finally won the Nobel Prize for your work on behalf of Jews persecuted by the Nazis, she was already very old. She never married, and when you stood before the world, she smiled and excused your abandonment of the world and her: "If he continued to live, it would be more painful than death. But I must live. I know that one day the world will understand him. I never doubted that day would come, and I live to this day for it."
She is the person who understands you best in the world, no matter whether you are young and handsome, elegant or down and out. Only she can make you successful, and she will have no regrets with you.
I told you that name, Mr. Yan Sang. If one day you hear that name, please, please, please turn around and look at her... then this story will definitely not be like this.
And me?
In the future, countless young girls will be fascinated by your love letters and wish to have the most earth-shaking love affair with you in these troubled times.
Maybe I was one of them.
Which woman in this world is so lucky that she can be crushed to ashes by your love?
So when I woke up and found myself to be another little girl with braids in the yard, when I walked into the study and saw you, still high-spirited and fifteen years old, I thought, if you were going to marry me instead of her, could I finally save both you and me?
When I saw you smiling at me with your eyes narrowed, I thought, maybe I did it.
Therefore, he got the opportunity to leave his old home in Shaoxing and go to Hong Kong to study.
It took me a lot of effort to finally get through to you via correspondence. Gradually, I learned some ways to make money, and I also thought about being a lazy, mediocre rich woman, living a peaceful life with you. If anyone blames you, I'll use my money to kill them, so they won't dare say "no" to you again. I'll give you what I have, the best and only thing in the world, enough to accompany you through your downfall.
But one day, I finally realized that I am not the right match for you.
Perhaps I am not much different from your ex-wife: you cannot get a heartfelt response from me, and I cannot travel thousands of miles for you, and it is not worth it for you to be burned to ashes for me.
I am just one of the thousands of young women who admire your writing and talent. Perhaps, like them, I can still love your now-deadly body after so many ups and downs, but I can't tolerate the increasingly difficult lives of your children and me. I don't have the energy to comfort your soul, which desperately needs understanding and respect. Even after we're gone, I don't know how to organize your writings.
To others, this seems like a simple thing, but I can't do it. I will have my own career and can no longer regard you as the only god in the world like before.
Even more so, because of my career and status, I have to imprison and bury all your talents and ideals.
I don't know if this story is better or worse than the last one.
Perhaps, not only will I fail to make you successful, but I may even increase your pain.
Dear Mr. Yan Sang, please promise me that no matter what situation you encounter in the future, you must never end up like this.
Dear Mr. Yan Sang, please love yourself more. Living in this world doesn't necessarily require others to understand you. Being able to do what you love is a comfort, even in solitude.
Dear Mr. Yan Sang, one day in the future, I will mail all the letters I have back to you. But please allow me to selfishly…keep some small things related to you, and the envelope with your signature, simply because I love you so much, far more than you can imagine, and for many more years; even longer than we have known each other, longer than I have been born.
I am just an insignificant passer-by in your life, but the moment I walked into that study and saw your smile, that moment was already precious to me.
I often wonder, does it have anything to do with love?
But I think of the ice cream on the Spree River and the tram to Sanssouci Palace on weekends, the rum and drunks on the Marseille docks, the Letan, Dutch water, trams and "Metropolis", the men and women in the red lights of Litchi Tree, the rain-soaked island and the copper telephone at midnight, the wet teddy bear doll you know, and the little golden lock you don't know... This is the only immortal story that others don't know about, the only immortal story that Lin Chuwang can share with you, Mr. Yan Sang, about that summer of 1927.
salute
well
May 3rd, Year of the Monkey
Chu Wang
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
