bird

Author: Bei Cun
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-01-01
Features: Following his previous masterpiece The Train of Zhou Yu, Bei Cun presents another long narrative work: "Love certainly does not seek reward, but love does have a response. If there is no response, it is either that the love we give is not true love, or that we do not love deeply enough. Just as Jesus loved Lazarus so deeply, Lazarus would be resurrected. Therefore, love is resurrection." It tells a story about love. The story of a good man, Kang Sheng, has been germinating in my heart for two years. I feel that if I don’t write it out now, I will rot along with it, because time is so relentless. It will make a woman whose cheeks are marred by wrinkles cry out miserably, and it will bury all the joys and sorrows that have accompanied us, yet time remains indifferent. Now Kang Sheng has gone. I think you know where he has gone. A month ago, I was surprised to see the last poem Kang Sheng wrote before his death, Eternal, in a Poetry Newspaper. I was taken aback, thinking he had been resurrected. Unfortunately, his unusual name had been enclosed in a black. The mood in which I read that poem was very strange, as if I could see a dead man still speaking and trying to speak to eternity. But in the poem, he said that time is a drop of water in the heart, drying up. Yes, Kang Sheng has dried up.
The good man Kang Sheng was originally named Kang Sheng Wang. He came from a village called Lilingkou in western Fujian. At that time, we were classmates at a university in southern Fujian. The name Kang Sheng Wang was very rustic, so no one paid much attention to him at first. Later, when he changed his name from Kang Sheng Wang to Kang Sheng, he immediately became distinctive. Even more surprising was that he published one poem after another in major national newspapers and magazines, and the number of poems he published even exceeded some professional poets. Everyone in the class started to look at him differently.
I remember that there was once a trend of changing names, with at least a dozen people changing theirs, such as changing Su Shulin to Su Lin, Wu Genqian to Wu Qiong, and Zhang Minhua to Zhang Min, thinking that changing their names would make them scholars, or at least sound more elegant. But now Kang Sheng is dead. He was one of the earliest in our class to leave. His sudden death made those who followed his example restless, as if some ghost who had followed Kang Sheng would one day follow them too. At least five people changed their names back.
Alas, how cruel and merciless time is. It erodes us as it passes by, leaving us unrecognizable, without even saying goodbye. When I visited Zhang Min, I barely recognized her. She was our "school beauty" and Kang Sheng’s wife. After Kang Sheng’s death, she almost stayed in her room all day. In the two years since, I haven’t seen her do anything except occasionally arrange Kang Sheng’s unfinished works. I asked her, "Why don’t you go out for a walk sometimes? You can’t always stay trapped in memories of one person. The world outside is wonderful." Zhang Min was startled and said, "Really? Really? What’s happened outside?" As her trembling fingers parted the blinds, tiny rays of sunlight fell on her pale face, and I felt an sudden unease. Those rays of sunlight were like scales of time falling, destroying Zhang Min’s face.
I spent the rest of the time observing the room they had once used. The furniture and everything else remained the same, even the position of a small plush rabbit hadn’t changed. The only change was that everything was inevitably aging, and so were the people, aging at a speed that could not be stopped, heartbreaking.
At that time, I also spent time with Su Lin and Xiao Fang. Su Lin had cancer and was currently suffering in a corner of a tumor hospital. When I visited him, he was already near death, feverish and delirious. Occasionally, I could hear him curse Xiao Fang for not visiting him. He didn’t know that Xiao Fang had a sexually transmitted disease.
Oh, these were my old classmates. Some were dead, some were sick, and as I talked with them, my strong nerves gradually became fragile. I don’t understand why there is so much suffering in this world, and why it sometimes concentrates on a few people. For two months, they kept talking about Kang Sheng in my ear, their stories mixed with grievances and fear, especially when they described the details of Kang Sheng’s death, my nerves were almost broken. So I don’t want to mix my own words into the story below. Let them speak for themselves. I seem to see the good man Kang Sheng gradually waking up in the story. At first, Kang Sheng’s story wasn’t remarkable, but because of some evil in the world, people called him a good man, and the good man Kang Sheng became the legend of today.
Kang Sheng, may you rest in peace.