Dream Room Archive - Works of Chen Mengjia

Author: Chen Mengjia / Country: Mainland China
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-07-01
Features: The twelfth letter. My sister and I said we would each write you an eight-page letter, but I haven’t slept all night and am extremely tired, so you must allow me to sneakily write a bit less for her. She didn’t go back to her room all night, lying in my bed, and we talked all night about "Chen Mengjia and ××." This girl is strange—she’s never even met you, yet she’s heard so much about you two and is completely captivated. In the middle of the night, her good mother from the next room interfered several times, but we lowered our voices and continued talking. Downstairs, our old father coughed and sighed, scaring us into making faces at each other. After blowing out the light, we whispered quietly, but as we grew excited, we naturally spoke louder. In short, we talked quite a lot, and you must allow me to be so excited as I thought and told her all this. All our moonlit lakes, the night at the café, our walks at the foot of the mountain—everything came flooding out, leaving only a small part hidden. I wanted to cry and laugh; I couldn’t breathe. A ghost returning to their former home—what must that be like? Half to tell her, half to sing to myself. It felt as if I had returned to the "little chimney’s home." It felt as if the coffee was steaming. I developed a fondness for your red paper umbrella and blue cloth robe here. Your big eyes and sunburnt face, your timidness and silence—you can win with your "brilliance and clumsiness," and I’ve brought you all the rest you have. ××, I say, is a foolish girl who loves to dress up and tell tall tales, with a "hospital obsession"—she also finds this very pleasing. (This isn’t bad.) If I were speaking alone, I wouldn’t have lasted the whole night. She really chimed in with so many opinions and questions, and she helped me along the way, as if you were old friends. Besides, I said you were very clever and dreamy, a bit like Pan Peter’s haze. I said the three of us spent many wonderful, envy-inducing moments together. (She certainly got teary-eyed.) I painted that lake and that little tea shop as if they were in the heavens. She was eager to leave. Gradually, I became more boring and annoying. I could have avoided thinking so much, but I always notice it, and it frightens me. You’ll see me again, and you won’t recognize me. I’ll no longer be the kind of friend you’d want to meet or talk to. Are you sad? No, you won’t be. You all have your own style—you won’t get sad over things before they happen, and even when they do, you won’t really care much. I hope that word isn’t a knife. You’ll insist on carving it into a knife, but then you can also believe that the knife is hidden in the shadows, not harming anyone. If you happen to pick it up, it’ll be close to you but won’t cling to you tightly. Do you still think of the story of the swallow skimming the water’s surface? You should think about it and understand its beauty. You have no reason to cling to small things. Let it pass, not even touching a shadow. I want to stay here longer, linger a bit, and delay leaving. Thinking about that place is half enchanting and half exhausting. It’s almost never calm there, and my spirit is often tossed by storms, which isn’t good for me. This isn’t really a letter—it’s just a small "eight pages." I’m too tired to struggle any longer; if I collapse, it’ll be as if I’m dying. Because of your illness, this "eight pages" crawled through my drowsiness, becoming a poor "heap of Chinese nonsense," which is too hard on your stomach. I once thought I could write it to be a bit better, but what can I do? Look, I’ve already closed one eye. Some day in August. P015-P016