Zhang Jie photographed at the 6th Mao Dun Literature Award Ceremony, Wuzhen, 2005.
According to media reports, the famous writer Zhang Jie died of illness on January 21, 2022. Zhang Jie is an important representative writer of Chinese literature in the new era, and joined the Chinese Writers Association in 1979. His works such as "Heavy Wings", "Wordless", "Love, Cannot Be Forgotten", "Emerald", "Child from the Forest" and so on have a wide influence. He has won the second and sixth Mao Dun Literature Awards, and has won the National Outstanding Novella Award and the National Outstanding Short Story Award for many times. Some of his works have been translated into many languages and have won the Order of the Italian Knights and the German, Austrian, Dutch and other multi-national literary awards. Today, I will share a fragment of his classic work "The Man Who Hurt Me the Most In the World" to mourn!
The man who hurt me the most in the world went
Zhang Jie
Mom closed her mouth tightly. No matter what my little aunt and I called her, she shouldn't have been.
I felt that it was not that she could not exhale or inhale, but that she held her breath in her mouth, not exhaling or inhaling. The closed mouth must have contained a deep grievance that had not been spit out.
What's that? It took almost half a year to figure it out, and she was holding her biggest grievance, the grievance of life and death, tightly in her mouth.
Mom closed her mouth forever. How many times has she wanted to complain to us, and I never had the patience to listen carefully, so I had to leave with self-esteem and regrets that did not want to bother us anymore. I just think that I don't need my mother's care, care, listening all the time... I never thought that my mother would need my care, attention, and listening.
I kissed my mother's cheek with the freshness of fresh plants on her cheeks. The warmth and elasticity of those cheeks were still the same thing I had known and kissed since I was a child, and I could accurately identify them at any time or in any situation. From now on there is nothing to discern.
Why do I rarely kiss her again when I grow up?
I remember one day a few years ago, maybe the year before or the year before, forgot why, the mood was rarely good, I kissed my mother the face, and I can still recall my mother's happy, half-closed eyes. Why do people grow up and lose a lot of pasts that made their mother happy? Is this growth, maturity?
Now, no matter how much I kiss my mother, it is only my unilateral attachment, and my mother will never know again, and will no longer feel the happiness brought to her by my kissing.
The wrinkles that had been intense and tense all her life, compact, deep, hard, shiny, and firm all her life, were now loose, weak, dim, and the wind and waves had stopped.
For as long as I can remember, her eyebrows, which were difficult to fully undo even when she was happy, were now stretched forever.
Her eyes were closed.
What really made me feel that her life was over, that she had left me and would never come again, was neither that she had no breath, nor that her heart was no longer beating, but that her loving eyes, which were always following me at all times and places, had been closed forever behind her eyelids and would never look at me again. As soon as I remembered that her eyes, whose pupils had spread and would never turn again, I felt my hairs furrowed and my heart ached.
I also don't believe that my mother can no longer look at me, and in the spring, my mother cut the apple for me. I believe that I can recognize her cut apples at a glance from countless cut apples, and every place where the knife is changed, there is a curvature that she can cut, and the length that she can cut out, clumsy and thick; just a few months ago, my mother still boiled Chinese medicine for me... I rolled her eyelids and wanted her to look at me again. But the little aunt said that then the mother would never be able to close her eyes.
Mom, can you really go away with peace of mind? In fact, you should not be blind.
After returning from the crematorium, I picked up the underwear that my mother had changed when she took a shower last night, and the smell of my mother's body still remained on the clothes. I buried my face deep in.
I just held her clothes and stood in the bathroom. But mom's body odor and breath gradually dissipated.
I caressed the things she had used one by one; sat on the couch she had sat on; I put on a watch she had worn; I put on the clothes she had worn... I thought to myself, I lost her forever, I would never see her again. In fact, it is much more painful for a person to be orphaned at the age of 54 than to be orphaned at the age of 4.
I put away my mother's used toothbrush and toothpaste. The toothbrush still has toothpaste on the toothbrush that mom has not rinsed. Just yesterday, Mom used them to brush her teeth.
I packed up my mother's belongings and seemed to pack up her whole life. Thinking about it, a person's life ends like this, ending in a barrel of toothpaste and a toothbrush with toothpaste left. No matter what kind of hardships she has suffered, what kind of twists and turns she has had in her life.
I deliberately left a paper pattern of her shoes that she used to make, cut in newspaper, or cut with pictorial newspaper. It had the dense pins she had nailed. For many years, we could not afford to buy shoes, and we relied on our mother to sew them one by one;
I also deliberately left those patched and patched clothes and socks, and each patch reminded me of our old days. At first, my mother kept tinkering, but gradually I changed into me... I was shocked to think that we might have made up for it from generation to generation...
Today, I have nothing. When my mother left, the world had nothing to do with me. My daughter is independent and she no longer needs my protection. In terms of dealing with people, I sometimes have to rely on her orders, not to mention very prominent. Only the elderly, self-reliant mother needs me the most. It takes me to work hard for it, to fight for it, to work for it... Now the man who needs me the most is gone.
It's really all gray, and the love affair is over.
Now I know that death is so close...
Until now, I am not used to turning around and can no longer find the figure of my mother, once I go home, I can no longer call "Mom" first, and once I enter the house, there is no mother trembling and holding the door frame waiting for my life.
Seeing the obituary of whoever it was in the newspaper, I still couldn't help but look at the old man's old age first, more than the death of my mother; once I saw a young mother buying bedding for her daughter in the Hepingli mall, and I secretly stayed by the girl's side, hoping to relive the scene when my mother took me to the street when I was as young as her. For many years, my mother could not take me to the street to buy me something, even if she could not live. I also don't take my daughter out on the street to buy her anything. Not only have I grown up and entered the old age, but my daughter has also grown up. Everyone will gradually leave the wings of the mother;
Seeing an old man who is about the same age as his mother and has a very tough body, he always wants to go forward and ask people, "Your old man's high life?" "I don't know who to ask in my heart: Why is it that people are still alive and their mothers are gone?
When I hear someone called "Mom", I will still stop and stand, reminiscing about the time when I can also be called "Mom", and swallow the sadness that I can no longer call "Mom" like this; when I see clothes suitable for my mother in the store, I can't help but look at it for a long time, and the urge to buy a piece for my mother will arise; when I see the mini "bus" rented out on the street, I will complain and think, why this kind of car flooded after my mother's death, if it had been so prosperous, my mother would have enjoyed a lot of convenience Whenever I see my daughter out of breath or out of an extraordinary appearance, I will think for a moment: I want to tell my mother, my mother must be very happy. But in this instant, I knew that no one could share this satisfaction with me; I often felt that she was walking around me, as if I could see her lying on the window next to my computer desk, saying to the neon lights of the front door street: "It's so beautiful." But as soon as I reached out, I couldn't touch a real her; I also felt that at any moment I would hear her whisper to me: "Xiao Jie!" But I immediately knew that the title of Xiao Jie disappeared from the world forever along with her mother. Who can call my nickname in a low voice? Even if someone calls me "Xiao Jie" again, it is not a mother's call; who can come and talk with me about the past with all five tastes...
I finally understood that lovers can be replaced, but mothers are the only ones.
A person's life is actually a process of constantly losing the person he loves, and it is a loss forever. This is the greatest pain that everyone must experience.
After such a change, I am no longer me. What the new me will be is hard to predict. Mom, you must not know that you have created another life for me.
Do I have any extravagance? I can't wait for the fate of my mother in the afterlife, and it can't relieve me of the pain of missing my mother. I only begged my mother to give me more dreams, so that I could say to her again in the dream, Mom, please forgive me!
Even if I write all the words, can I write all the love that my mother has received for me that I cannot repay and cannot repay?
Can I write all my apologies for her?
Can I write about my thoughts about her?
Mom, since you will eventually abandon me, why would you send me to this world for a while, so that I will feel the pain of parting with you?
Mom, you used to say, "I can't die, what do you do when I die?"
Mom, now, really, what am I going to do?
The picture is Zhang Jie's oil painting
——Excerpt from the prose collection of the same name, "The Man Who Hurt Me the Most In the World Went"
Zhang Jie, female. Liaoning Fushun people. He is an honorary academician of the American Academy of Literature and Art, a member of the China Branch of the International PEN Association, a member of the 4th, 5th and 6th Plenary Committee of the Chinese Writers Association, and an honorary member of the 7th. Enjoy special government allowances. In 1979, he joined the Chinese Writers Association. Literary creation level one. He is the author of more than 10 novels such as "Heavy Wings", "Only One Sun", "No Words", novels, essays, essay collections "Love, Cannot Be Forgotten", "Ark", "Emerald", "Zhang Jie's Collected Works" (4 volumes), "Selected Collections of Contemporary Chinese Writers", "International Literary Award Winners' Self-Selected Library", "The Person Who Hurt Me in the World Went", etc., travelogue literary collections "Travels Abroad", "A Chinese Woman in Europe" and so on.