Yù Dafu's Prose Collection

Author: Yu Dafu / Country: Mainland China
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-01-01
Features: On a chilly winter evening, if you dine in a quiet, desolate hometown market town and, before the second strike of the evening bell, go up with your family to lie in a warm bed, gazing blankly through the curtain at the dim light on your small wooden desk, you will inevitably shed tears upon hearing the singing and footsteps of passersby in the cold, desolate street outside. You will surely recall scenes from your childhood as you gaze at the gray, shadowy figures of the pedestrians. The air of this quiet, chilly night, the mournful songs of solitary travelers, are the same as those you experienced in your childhood, but how has the person listening to these songs in a thin cotton quilt on the upper floor changed? Thinking of this, who can help but feel a sense of melancholy?—But these words are spoken for those like me, the near-middle-aged and incapable. When I strolled through the fields and mountains in the suburbs of Japan at sunset, I too suddenly felt a homesickness akin to this sorrow. As the number of my close friends who shared heartfelt conversations with me dwindled one by one, I too wanted to end my life of wandering. This island nation in the East Sea, where I have lived for ten years and where my youthful days, like rosewater, have been squandered in this foreign land, has wronged me greatly. Though I do not wish her to kiss my feet again, the depth of my aversion to her has reached a point where, as I prepare to leave, I find myself reluctant to bid her farewell. Ah, this tender sentiment is the seed of eternal sorrow, and perhaps the tragedy of life begins to sprout from this very place. Before leaving Japan, I wanted to revisit the setting of my high school days. Before permanently departing this violent little nation, I wanted to wipe away the traces of my repeated romantic failures. "You frivolous and licentious women, who have used all sorts of soft arts to try to destroy him, have now turned him into a immortal who wishes to return to his homeland of Sumeru. Go ahead and try your tricks here, for he is about to ride a white crane back to his mother’s arms. After returning, he will surely embrace the celestial dancer and dance all night. He will no longer beg for pity from you." I too wanted to smile and bid farewell to the women who had deceived me, to vent a part of my hidden sorrow. For these trivial reasons, my date of return kept being extended day by day. Money had arrived from home, friends in Tokyo had set a farewell banquet for me, places I wanted to visit were nearly all covered, and even books I loved to read were bought. Yet on the day of departure (the fifteenth of July), I suddenly rushed to the Japan Mail Steamship Company and changed my ticket to a later class. Though I knew there were a few—just a few—friends in the Yellow Sea who shared my sentiments and were waiting for me, but this inexplicable sense of parting, this grief akin to the dying, left me at a loss. I only boarded the train to Tokyo on the evening of the nineteenth, drunk, and took the train to Kobe to catch the ship departing the next day. On the morning of the twentieth, as I stepped off the train, the red sunlight had already heated half of Kobe’s buildings. Near Kobe lies Suma, a picturesque seaside village known as a paradise for escaping the heat of summer. The night of the previous year’s Sumadera Shrine festival was where I spent the night with an unknown woman. Given my current feelings, I felt I must return for one more night, to bid farewell, but the ship to my homeland would depart at ten o’clock in the morning. I could only bid her farewell from the sea. "Woman, woman, may you be well, may you prosper. I cannot see you today. Farewell—not goodbye forever." West of Suma is Akashi. The scenery there, like the prose of Murasaki Shikibu’s scrolls, the azure waves, the white sandy beaches, and the elegant, understated villas—each villa filled with beautiful women, whose dreams are as ethereal as yours. "Akashi, Akashi! I can only dream of your green pines in my celestial pillow, and again engage in passionate conversations with your children." At half past eight, I boarded the ship, took care of my luggage, and arranged my cabin, busy for two full hours. When the iron cables at the front and back of the ship began to rattle and the gong announced the ship’s departure, the hatred and sorrow I had accumulated over ten years toward Japan could no longer hold back, turning into cold tears that blurred the scenery of the bay, turning it into a dreamlike landscape. "Ah, Japan! First-rate Japan! A nation with people shorter than ours but more ambitious than ours! After I leave, your coastline will likely remain as beautiful as ever, and your children will likely continue to live recklessly. The vastness of the sky and the ocean will likely not change at all because of my departure. My fellow countrymen’s youth will likely still come here to continue my fate, to suffer your humiliation. But my youth, my youth spent on this merciless land, filled with poetic prose! Ah, withered youth, you will likely never return to me again."