At the End of the World (4)
People say that this lifetime is really just an interview process for finding the people who will be able to attend your funeral.
Although Tan Guhong lost both her father and mother when she was young, this was the first time since she had grown old enough to understand that she had personally experienced the separation and death of a close family member.
And so there was a sense of unreality to it. The sadness and pain both felt hollow and weightless.
Actually, thinking about it carefully, Liao Rongguang had lived to nearly ninety. When he left, he had not been bedridden with illness or suffered too much. It should have been considered a happy death, a xi sang. It was almost as though he had simply gone north to meet an old friend, only to peacefully remain in a foreign land and never wake again.
But in this world, reason was always one thing, and emotion another.
On the day of the funeral, in the crowded ceremonial farewell hall, she passed by the funeral wreaths piled outside the entrance and saw a couplet written on one of them:
A hundred years are thirty thousand days;
One parting lasts for several thousand autumns.
It was an ordinary elegiac verse, yet as she stood there, tears suddenly poured down her face.
She thought, Grandpa would never come back again.
He had lost his father in his youth, his wife in middle age, his son in old age, and his daughter in his later years. His whole life had been far too bitter, far too bitter. Yet fate had never broken his straight spine, and he had never bowed his head or surrendered to it.
He was the most important elder on Tan Guhong's path of growing up, her most important teacher, her most important role model. From childhood, her ideal had never been to marry a man like him, but to become a person like him!
Unfortunately, after all these years of going around in circles, she had only learned the outward form without grasping the spirit. She had hidden her joys, anger, sorrows, and happiness deep within, remained unmoved on the surface by the seven emotions and six desires, and thought that this was what it meant to be strong.
But Liao Rongguang was not like that. He was like a mountain, like the sea, like... a huyang tree, standing so tall and straight upon the Gobi. In life, it could survive for a thousand years without dying; in death, it could stand for another thousand years without falling; and after it fell, it could remain unrotted for another thousand years.
There were many guests who came to attend the farewell ceremony for his remains, including Huo Sixuan, who had hurried all the way from Singapore to mourn his passing.
Dressed in a black dress and black hat, she bowed before the coffin without saying a word. Wearing sunglasses to conceal every trace of emotion, she came in haste and left in haste. Unusually, she said very little to Tan Guhong, only handing her a yaoji Mahjong tile.
“The only game I ever won against him back then, I actually cheated. I never got the chance to tell him. I never thought I’d lose the chance forever.”
Tan Guhong felt that what she really wanted to talk about was not Mahjong, but something else, something she had no way of telling her. But in truth, Tan Guhong had already guessed all those things Huo Sixuan had left unsaid.
Old Master Liang had been right. Their two families really were destined to be entangled with each other, generation after generation.
...
It was already the beginning of May by the time everything concerning Liao Rongguang's affairs after his death had finally been dealt with.
On the day of the seventh and final memorial observance, after visiting his grave and making offerings, Tan Guhong returned home. Without saying a word, she went into her room, then threw herself onto the bed, her entire body limp and utterly drained.
The traces of a person's existence in this world had just vanished completely.
His body had turned to ashes, his belongings had been sealed away in a cabinet, his deeds would gradually be forgotten, and his name would finally cease to be spoken.
From that point on, the universe would have nothing more to do with him.
Tan Guhong lay on the bed in a hazy state, half asleep and half awake. It was not until dusk, when Xiao Tian knocked on her door and called her to dinner, that she suddenly came to her senses.
She wiped the tears from her cheeks, sat up with her head heavy and foggy, and replied,
“I’ll be out in a minute.”
Only when she spoke did she realize that her voice had already become hoarse beyond recognition.
“Oh, right, Honghong-jie, there’s a letter for you today.”
“A letter?”
Tan Guhong cleared her throat, got out of bed, opened the door, and asked in confusion,
“What kind of letter?”
How many years had it been since she last received a letter? Besides, if someone really were writing to her, they probably would not have sent it here.
Xiao Tian looked just as puzzled.
“I don’t really understand it either, Honghong-jie. You’d better see for yourself.”
Tan Guhong took the letter and looked at it. It was a very large envelope. The recipient was her, while the sender was a courier company in Xiamen called “Time Capsule.”
She closed the door and sat down at the table. After opening the large envelope, she found another small blue envelope inside. On it was a very familiar black-ink handwriting:
To my lady bird
Tan Guhong's heart gave a violent jolt. She quickly opened the small envelope, scanned the letter inside from beginning to end, and read through it hurriedly, her pupils contracting.
Sure enough, it was Luo Jingming's handwriting.
But the paper had gone old and yellowed, and the date at the end was ten years ago.
After staring blankly for several seconds, she quickly snatched up her phone and called the courier company using the telephone number left on the envelope.
Before long, someone answered.
“Hello, this is Time Capsule Courier Service. How may we assist you?”
Tan Guhong gave them her tracking number, then asked them to look up the specific information for the delivery.
“We’re very sorry. We strictly keep the specific information concerning letters and deliveries confidential for the sender. We’re afraid we cannot disclose it to you.”
“Can’t disclose it? What gives you the right not to disclose it?” Tan Guhong said coldly. “Since your company serves as an intermediary for sending letters, you have a responsibility to make the origin and destination of a letter clear. What if this were a threatening letter? A letter inciting someone to commit a crime? By keeping the sender’s information confidential, you would be assisting a criminal act and would be legally liable!”
Tan Guhong's stream of off-the-cuff nonsense frightened the operator. From her voice, she was just a young girl. In a tearful voice, she said, “Please hold on. I’ll go ask our manager.”
From this, Tan Guhong concluded that this so-called Time Capsule Courier Service was nothing more than a fly-by-night operation. Whether it was even a properly registered company remained unknown.
After a while, a man claiming to be the manager answered the phone. His voice also sounded young. He explained that although they called themselves a courier company, what they actually operated was a “slow delivery” service, sending letters on behalf of clients to be received at a future date. Depending on the length of time, customers could choose periods ranging from one to ten years.
“Miss Tan, I remember your order. It was around April last year, I think. Someone placed an order online for a one-year slow-delivery service. We really don’t know much about the person’s specific information. We only know that the sender was overseas. According to our procedures, before we sent out the letter this year, we were supposed to make a final confirmation with the sender. But when we tried to contact them, we simply couldn’t get through. After weighing things over, we decided to send the letter anyway. They had already paid a large sum in full for the service, so they probably wouldn’t cancel at the last minute.”
The manager paused, then said quietly, “If it weren’t for that startup capital, we’d probably still just be a little shop selling postcards on the streets of Gulangyu.”
Tan Guhong caught the implication in his words. “A large sum? Did he send a lot of letters? Exactly how many?”
“That’s something we really aren’t at liberty to disclose. But these letters will be sent to you one after another from now on, Miss Tan, so there’s no need to worry. The original purpose behind our slow-delivery service was to let people accustomed to the fast pace of urban life return to a slower way of living...”
“All right, all right, I understand. Thank you. Goodbye!”
Before the manager could launch into a long-winded speech, Tan Guhong promptly hung up.
Turning back, she once again fixed her eyes on the letter and read it through very carefully.
There was no doubt that this was a letter written ten years ago. There was no doubt that the writer was Luo Jingming. Even the handwriting was in traditional Chinese characters. And as for the contents of the letter, it could be said to have neither a beginning nor an end, neither context nor consequence, and made no sense at all. Rather than a letter, it was more like a diary entry Luo Jingming had written on some day ten years ago.
“My lady bird,
I dreamed of you last night.
It’s rather presumptuous to begin a letter with a sentence like that, but it is indeed a fact.
People say that what one thinks about during the day enters one’s dreams at night. Recently, I sometimes find myself wondering: What would happen if we met at a different time, in a different place, with different identities? Thinking about it, I eventually dreamed up that possibility. In the dream, I had returned to the old Chinatown. None of it had happened yet. At Wu Ji Restaurant, you and I listened to the song my father and mother had fallen in love to, playing on a vinyl record on the gramophone, while I told you the story of their past.
But dreams are always strange and illogical. Your identity in the dream was a mystery, and I couldn’t make sense of it either. One moment, you were a heavily made-up liuying standing on the street smoking, and the next, you were an undercover agent sent by the major crimes unit.
After waking up, I found it amusing myself. If you had been the traitor who betrayed me back then, then being brought down by you wouldn’t have been entirely unjust.
My last exam ended last week, and my first semester in Toronto has passed by in a rush. I don’t know whether I should breathe a sigh of relief or hold my breath. To be honest, being a student is harder than running a gang... All right, I’m joking.
Winter break has arrived, and Christmas is approaching. Many people at school have begun returning home one after another to reunite with their families, and my roommate left yesterday as well. I don’t intend to go home, because I have long since lost the word ‘home,’ and I no longer have such a thing as family.
Besides, compared with reuniting for the holidays, perhaps Grandfather would be more pleased to see me stay at school and study hard. Naturally, I will do as he wishes.
But actually, these past few days, I’ve sometimes searched for flights to China. The destination isn’t Hong Kong, but Beijing. Yet every time, I give up halfway through the search.
On a map, the distance from Toronto to Beijing is ten thousand kilometers. In modern society, that isn’t something beyond reach. It’s only a flight of a dozen or so hours. But then what? You and I both know perfectly well that this story has no ‘then.’ It has only a beginning.
Love at first sight.
Across all time and space, the vastness of the universe, the nine planets, the seven continents and four oceans, the two hundred and thirty-three countries, the eight thousand sunrises and moonsets, you are the only one who makes my heart stir.
But there’s no need to trouble yourself over it, because this is a letter that will never be sent.
You will never know, and neither will the world.
It’s a secret.”
This was a secret.
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