Ecuador (3)
As for Wang Xiaoyue’s suggestion, Tan Guhong had still thought it was unreliable the night before. But after waking up the next morning, she suddenly felt that it made perfect sense.
They were only traveling together. Who she went with hardly mattered.
After breakfast, she borrowed the camp’s car and went to the Seville Hotel. It was a very small, dilapidated hotel. Weeds had overgrown the garden in front, and the paint on the walls was peeling and mottled. It was hard to imagine that any tourist would come here for a vacation.
When she entered the hotel, the first floor was completely empty. Only a local middle-aged man was eating breakfast leisurely in the small dining room. The man was probably the owner. When he saw her come in, he stood up and said in broken English that the hotel had been rented out and was no longer taking guests.
Tan Guhong answered in Spanish, “I’m here to see this person.”
Following the owner’s directions, she climbed the creaking wooden stairs to the guest room on the second floor. The little hotel was simply too shabby, and the room was just as meager, though the sheets and curtains at least looked clean. Otherwise, Tan Guhong really wondered how much money Mr. Luo could possibly make from a job that had required so much effort.
Inside the room, Luo Jingming was standing by the window, gazing outside with an indifferent expression, while the fierce-looking man from that day was packing his luggage. Almost the instant Tan Guhong stepped through the door, his eyes swept toward her and fixed on her coldly.
Tan Guhong was helpless. She raised her hands in surrender. “How about I let you search me?”
“A-Kun...” Luo Jingming spoke. “You go outside first.”
The man called A-Kun said nothing. He put down what he was holding and left the room, his footsteps and breathing so light that he made not the slightest sound from beginning to end.
Tan Guhong watched his retreating back from the corner of her eye, thoughtful.
“Sorry. A-Kun is my bodyguard. He’s been by my side for many years. He’s encountered a few incidents before, so he’s very wary of strangers.”
Luo Jingming smiled and sat down beside the coffee table. He poured her a cup of steaming hot coffee. The brown liquid slowly swirled inside the ice-blue cup with a single handle, tiny flecks of white foam clinging to the sides. The colors were beautiful.
“Have a taste. It was just ground.”
“Thank you.”
Tan Guhong sat down across from him as well. She picked up the cup perfunctorily but did not drink. She glanced at the suitcase on his floor.
“You’re leaving? Have you taken care of everything?”
“More or less...” He nodded. “I met the person. We didn’t discuss the partnership, but there was no need to rush it anyway.”
Tan Guhong nodded. “When are you leaving?”
“Tomorrow or the day after. Take good care of yourself while you’re here alone. After all, you’re in a foreign country.”
Tan Guhong smiled. “Actually, I’m leaving too. My flight is next Monday.”
“Back to China?”
“Yeah. What about you?”
“Back to America.”
“Too bad we’re not going the same way.”
One was going east, the other west.
“Yes.”
And so, silence fell again.
Almost unconsciously, Tan Guhong lowered her head and took a sip of the coffee in her cup. It was Ecuador’s distinctive sidra coffee, carrying the fragrance of tropical fruit and alpine wildflowers.
In fact, even at this moment, she was still hesitating. But when the slightly bitter, tart, almost scorched taste, with its lingering sweetness, stimulated her palate, the words slipped out:
“Do you want to go to Quito with me for a little while?”
At last, a trace of surprise appeared on Luo Jingming’s otherwise unruffled face.
“What?”
Now that the words were out, everything became much easier. Tan Guhong said frankly, “The capital, Quito. I don’t know if you’ve been there before. I was planning to go around that area before I leave. But I don’t have anyone to go with. Do you want to come with me? Of course, if you don’t have the time, forget it.”
Hearing this, Luo Jingming did not answer immediately. He simply looked at her quietly.
His features were stern, his eyes sharply defined in black and white, like a landscape painted in ink. Unfortunately, the gold-rimmed glasses on the bridge of his nose, though they added a scholarly, refined air, inevitably created a hazy sense of distance. His emotions were completely concealed, keeping others a thousand miles away.
Only then did she suddenly remember that years ago, when she had first met him, he had not worn glasses. The years had stretched on and on, and the melancholy, lonely eyes of that young man, dark and gleaming like lacquer, had been deeply hidden away. Perhaps she would never see them again.
It seemed to last for only an instant, and yet also for ten thousand years, before she saw him smile and nod.
“I have time.”
And just like that, it was settled. The process had been much simpler than Tan Guhong had expected.
Over the next few days, she made a simple handover of her work. There was hardly anything to pack. She usually had only a few changes of clothes and a deflated-looking travel bag. She could set off for the ends of the earth at a moment’s notice.
They set out early Saturday morning. As they were saying goodbye, Wang Xiaoyue buried her head against Tan Guhong’s chest and held onto her reluctantly.
“Guhong-jie, you really aren’t coming back next year?”
“Yeah. I want to see what it’s like somewhere else.”
“Where are you going?”
“I haven’t decided yet...” Tan Guhong patted the young girl on the head and said with a smile, “Don’t be sad. You’ll have a new roommate.”
As she raised her eyes, she saw Cheng Haoran standing not far away. He seemed to want to say goodbye to her too, but kept lingering without coming forward. After that day, they had not spoken again.
Actually, he was a very good person. Whether they were suited to each other was not important. She simply did not want to be tied down. There was no need to waste each other’s time.
She smiled at him openly, waved, and called out, “Take care, Class Monitor!”
Then she picked up her travel bag, turned around, and got into the car. The last thing she said to Wang Xiaoyue was:
“Don’t forget to feed that new litter of kittens from the stray cats in the cafeteria. I’m off.”
……
The project department’s car took Tan Guhong and Luo Jingming all the way to the airport. They would fly directly from Cuenca to Quito.
As Wang Xiaoyue had said, Cuenca Airport was small and run-down. From the entrance to security to the waiting area, everything was in a single hall. There were no more than fifty passengers in the entire place. Outside the glass windows of the hall was the airport runway, with only a narrow stretch of space. Apparently, it could accommodate only small aircraft operating domestic routes within Ecuador.
When it was time to check in, Tan Guhong watched helplessly as two staff members pushed over a makeshift boarding staircase by hand. She finally could not help rubbing her forehead and sighing.
“This is definitely the most primitive airport I’ve ever been to.”
“Fortunately...” Luo Jingming smiled. “I’ve had the privilege of going somewhere even worse than this.”
“There’s somewhere worse than here?”
“There was no airport terminal at all, only a runway. The markings on the ground were pieced together with bricks. The entire airport had only three ground staff in total, and one of them was preschool-aged.”
“...This century? Where?”
“Forrest Airport in Australia. More than ten years ago, I had a layover there. So ever since then, no matter how bad the conditions are at any airport in the world, I’ll never complain again.”
He spoke with such utter seriousness that she could not help laughing.
“You’ve really had it hard.”
After the first two rather unpleasant experiences they had had talking to each other, she had actually prepared herself for the two of them to spend the entire journey sitting awkwardly across from each other. Now that she thought about it, perhaps it would not be as bad as she had imagined.
The flight from Cuenca to Quito took two hours, and they did not say a word along the way.
They arrived smoothly at Quito International Airport. On the drive from the airport into the city, all they could see along the way were mountains upon mountains and houses upon houses, a riot of colors, layered one upon another and stretching endlessly into the distance.
Quito, the capital of Ecuador, is the only capital in the world straddling the equator. But because it lies on a high plateau and is built along the mountains, it is not hot at all. Instead, the climate is pleasant, like spring throughout the year. Hundreds and thousands of years ago, this was the center of the Quitu-Inca people. In the Inca language, “Quito” means “a place where people live.”
With the arrival of the Age of Exploration, it became a Spanish colony. Its culture, language, and architecture could never quite escape the shadows of old-world Europe. The vivid colors of the indigenous people and the solemn grandeur of religion were strangely yet wonderfully fused together, creating one of the most beautiful ancient cities in South America.
The first stop on any trip to Quito was bound to be the Equator Monument to the north of the city.
As Tan Guhong looked at the map she had just bought, she suggested, “Let’s not try to be unconventional either. We’ll just go with the flow and be ordinary tourists.”
Luo Jingming had no objection. He left the entire itinerary up to her.
The Equator Monument was more than twenty kilometers north of the city, about half an hour away by car. One tour bus after another was parked nearby. A glance around confirmed that there were indeed plenty of tourists.
To enter the Equator Monument park, they first had to cross a wide avenue. On either side of the road stood busts of more than a dozen scientists from France, Spain, Ecuador, and other countries, all of whom had made outstanding contributions to determining the location of the equator.
At the end of the road stood the towering Equator Monument. The monument itself was a thirty-meter-high square pillar, topped with a huge globe. The equator was marked especially clearly across the globe, extending all the way down to the stone steps at the base of the monument and linking up with the actual equator on Earth.
The areas on either side of the equator line represented the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Many tourists took photos here. Some placed one foot on either side of the equator, while some couples stood on opposite sides of the line, embracing and kissing. Nearby were vendors who specialized in taking photos for tourists, one dollar per picture.
Luo Jingming asked, “Do you want a photo?”
“No...” She pointed to her head and smiled. “Keeping it here is enough. There’s no need to show it to anyone else.”
She had never had the habit of taking photos as mementos wherever she went, whether of scenery or of people.
The length of life could not be controlled, but the breadth of life could be extended without limit. She wanted to travel everywhere so she could be free and unrestrained. The more tangible vessels she kept for those fleeting emotions and moments, the more they would eventually become a kind of restraint.
They happened to come across a Chinese tour group of more than a dozen people. The tour guide was explaining interesting stories and little facts about the Equator Monument in Chinese, so Tan Guhong pulled Luo Jingming over to listen in.
During the period of the Kingdom of Quito, the ancient Incas had already used primitive astronomical methods to measure the approximate position of the equator and named it the “Road of the Sun.” Beginning in the eighteenth century, large numbers of European scientists repeatedly surveyed and mapped the area, eventually determining that this was where the equator lay. But it was not until after the invention of GPS that they discovered the measured point had deviated from the actual location, and they had no choice but to erect a new marker to correct it.
In recent years, Ecuador’s tourism industry had grown increasingly prosperous, and quite a few attractions had been developed nearby. The two of them followed behind the tour group the entire way, visiting the nearby Sun Museum and Inca cultural ruins, and even touring the inside of the monument.
Most amusingly, they also followed the other tourists and, under the tour guide’s instruction, tried a little experiment involving balancing an egg upright on a nail.
This seemingly impossible task was made possible by the equator’s unique geographical characteristics. Although it was not particularly difficult, success was not guaranteed, and it required a certain amount of skill. Many people nearby kept failing again and again.
Luo Jingming did not even try. Tan Guhong, however, was full of enthusiasm. She patiently tried over and over again, and finally managed to balance the egg upright.
The museum staff nearby kindly applauded her, and one of them came over and presented her with a specially made certificate, officially commending her for her “great achievement.”
“Congratulations.” Luo Jingming’s smile carried a hint of teasing.
“Thank you, thank you. Thank you to the Ecuadorian government, thank you to the Equator Monument Museum, thank you to my family...” Tan Guhong held the certificate in both hands with a solemn expression. “I’m going to hang it on the wall at home, right alongside my Third-Class Merit certificate and my kindergarten ‘Little Expert at Getting Dressed’ award.”
No comments:
Post a Comment