冬的断片

A Clipping about Winter

刘烨园

Liu Yeyuan

他们再也不会跟上来了。不会。他的身后是那曾经的深深的峡谷。峡谷已经不存在，它退化成了街道。街道留着很多他顾不上忘却的人。各人有各人的指向。他们自然不该跟着谁。他已经没有精力再回首。这就是他以往深刻疑惑过的距离。他想，如果有一天他也要沉没的话。他一定沉没到海底，那深深的蓝色的有着许多游弋生物、有着许多光亮闪烁的海底。他将在那儿栖息，和鱼们、海藻们在一起，和进化前的祖先的祖先群在一起，不热闹也不提任何愚蠢的问题。

They will never be able to follow him again – never! Behind him, there used to be a ravine, but now it is gone. It has gradually “degenerated” into what is currently a street, where many old acquaintances he now has no time to think about have chosen to stay. People have their own preferences. It is natural that they don’t have to follow anyone. He now has no energy to turn back, and that is exactly the gap that used to confuse and disturb him so much. If someday he has to sink, too, he muses, he will sink into the bottom of the sea – that deep, blue bottom, where many deep-sea creatures are swimming and large submarine benthos, glittering. He will rest there, together with the fish and the sea grass and his pre-evolutional ancestors, where there will be no mirth, but no stupid questions either.



他早先是跟着他们走的，那时他还小。后来又一块儿走了很久。有一天他们相视着，他说了一句什么，突然悟到已经没有什么可以说的了。那么重要的话在他们和他之间跌落。很深的深渊。沉缓而清晰地推向了隔世的多元。他低下头，一切都明白了。

In the beginning, he was the one who followed them. That was when he was very young. Then, they walked abreast for quite a while. But one day, while looking at each other, he said something to them, and then realized that he had nothing more to say. Those extremely important words fell into an abyss between him and them, a very deep abyss that slowly but surely split the two wide apart into different generations. He lowered his head, for nothing was obscured any more.



虽然以后彼此仍然不时相晤，但似乎只有气氛了。

Although he still sees them from time to time, there is only formality left between the two. That is all there is to it.

那个说过他走得太远的人，后来成了他的明友。最早和最久的明友。

The one who once told him that he had gone too far became his friend later, the earliest and most lasting friend of his.

他自己走了。走过一年又一年的冬天。

He left them to walk all by himself, through one winter after another.



但冬天是果断的。你知道二十年前一个百余人的造磅秤的小工厂有多么简陋么？在阴暗、漏顶的棚子厂房的中间。有一块杂乱地扔满石类、铁类什物的空地．那儿飘摇着很原始的露天的小高炉。在风雪中，他得踩着吱吱晃动的旧木板架子，站在鼓风机轰轰震响的包围里，汗流满面，一身黑灰，不停地往木柴和焦炭呼呼燃烧的炉瞠倾倒一筐筐沉重的生铁块儿。厂里的兄弟们管这叫“上料”。他在那家工厂里干了四年多——砸铁、喷漆、打磨、钻眼、翻砂、修理或安装台秤、磅秤、地中衡……叫干什么就得干什么。因为是打入“另册”的“贱民”。一个个五十斤重的砝码，一次次抬着上百斤通红的铁水包浇铸，一回回生怕又被“教训”的开会。至今历历在目；就是在那又累又压抑的当口，他才深刻地懂得了父亲的告诫——往远处看，多么朴实多么哲学的艺术!往远处看——高而深的远处，人与精神、天地、未来、历史、抽象与血肉的远处。这样一百十几斤的身骨和眼前的一切就会坚实起来。这真管用，比气功佛们道们管用。这很地道的信条后来成了他一生的情人，成了大河、海洋也无法相携的图腾。它就像如今总是萌生。“望不尽的冬”的那些感觉一样重新创造了他。于是每到冬天，人就来到心在的地方了。

But winters were rigid. Do you know how crude and rough a small scales-making factory with just over a hundred workers was twenty years ago? In the middle of a dark, damp shed of a factory house, covered with a leaking roof, bestrewn with ore, metal, and other items randomly thrown on the ground, stood a small, wobbling and primitive furnace which released its exhausts into open air. Standing, in wind and snow, on a decrepit, shaking wooden rack, in the deafening noise of a booster fan, sweating all over his dust-covered body, he had to continuously pour buckets upon buckets of heavy pig-iron lumps into the firewood- and coal-fueled blaze in the furnace. This was what the fellow workers called “material feeding.” He worked there for over four years – hammering iron, spraying paint, grinding metal, drilling holes, sand-casting, and repairing and installing platform-balances, platform-scales, and wagon-balances…Whatever he was asked to do, all because he was classified as an “untouchable” of the “denounced class.” He had to constantly carry those 25kg balance weights, constantly lift and pour the 50kg-plus ladle filled with flaming-hot molten iron, constantly worry about those repudiation meetings – all as vivid as if they had just happened. However, that physically exhausting and mentally repressive period was exactly when he came to deeply understand what his father once told him – “Look far!” What a plain, philosophical, and artistic advice! Look far – far into the distance where there are height and depth, humans and spirits, Heaven and Earth, future and history, and abstraction and physical existence. This belief toughened up his weak body and made meaningful what he was going through. It really worked, worked better than Qigong or a faith in Buddhism or Taoism. It later became his life-long companion and a totem that no large rivers or oceans could carry away. Like those feelings of “endless winters” that keep welling up nowadays, it has re-created him. Therefore, whenever a winter befalls him now, his body comes to where his heart dwells.



等到冬天，你就庄严了。他说。

You will be solemn, when winter comes, he said.

冬天，我们爱得很深。很苦。这是比初恋要圣洁要强健的深情。

Winter is what we deeply and painfully adore, which a deep feeling purer and sturdier than the first love.

他说，即使在沙漠里．你也不必去寻找水源。

Even in the desert, he said, you don’t have to look for water.

你就是水源。

For you, yourself, are the source of water;

精神源。知识源。财富源。

Of spirit, of knowledge, of wealth;

创造源。力量源。

Of creativity, of strength;

人源。神源。

Of humans, and of gods.

那时，它天长地久地注释着真情始终不如深情的真谛。

By then, for as long as it lasts, it will forever signify the truth that a real feeling is not as worthy as a deep feeling.



“冬天好。”

“Hello, winter!”

真的。没有比这样的问候更感人、更深远的了。

Indeed, no greeting is as touching and significant as this.