Mr. and Mrs. Lin Jianfa
In the early days, when the woodland of Chinese literature was growing wildly, Lin Jianfa was quite tall in that woodland, one meter and eighty-five, higher than many writers, and everyone felt that he and a few other editors were leading the growth and prosperity of the woodland. At that time, people were joking in private that where a few of them were, the "China Writers Association" was also where they were. The joke is indeed a little big, but the people who listen to it also nodded their heads knowingly, feeling that it was not unreasonable, just like the sky would not be without the sun.
At that time, wherever Jianfa went, he often took his wife with him. When people saw her, they all shouted at her sister-in-law, and seemed to be closer to her than to Jianfa. Her name was "Fu Ren". Whenever Lin Jianfa called her, he was heard as calling him "Lady", and he felt that his respect for her had reached this point. Later, when he learned that his name was "Fu Ren", he realized that if there was sacrifice and respect, she should give him more than he gave her. Later, the time of life seems to stop and not go, making people feel that literature and those who give their lives to literature will always be young and mature. But time is finally going to go, when hearing the news of Lin Jianfa's retirement, people suddenly understand that if there is a sense of stagnation in the front of time, it will drive back the stagnation in front of you overnight and in an instant, making people think that you are going to retire at a certain moment and a certain night when you are old.
Contemporary literature also seems to be too old to be able to do so.
I think when everyone heard Lin Jianfa retire from the Contemporary Writers Review, they would "Oh" in their hearts and wonder how this could be. And how could it not be so. At that time, Jianfa had just retired, and I saw their family in Beijing again, and when I met them, I had to hug my sister-in-law first, and then when I talked to my sister-in-law about Jianfa resting in the middle of the way, my sister-in-law's face lit up with a bright morning light, and loudly announced the same thing:
"It's good to retire -- where he used to go was where I followed him, and now he's retired, where I should go, where he follows me."
Lin Jianfa
--Mrs. Fu Ren in Xi'an on October 1, 2012
The image of my sister-in-law now rose tall in front of me, just as one second she was still a tree under a tree, and the next second she became a tower on top of the tree. "He used to be literary, and he will be mine!" Speaking of the sister-in-law's hearty smile, there is a kind of "finally got" of relief and pride, reminiscent of a couple in the early years, the husband is the first to love literature, followed by the wife, son and relatives and friends, after a stage, literature is no longer like the person embracing literature to embrace the person, his wife finally had him alone, began to love him nothing but to love him.
Next, he began to get sick, from walking slightly unstable to having to support people or walls, that is, two or three years. Of course, his illness was brought about by years of physiological accumulation, but people thought that if he could still be with literature, he should not have such a disease. For he is a man who is only alive for literature. Because of this strange illness, literature is indeed far away from him, but many writers and critics are getting closer and closer to him at this time, inquiring about his condition as if they are concerned about their own lives, making people feel that the literary world is still the warmest place in the increasingly cold world. In this warmth, everyone kept going to see him. Go see your sister-in-law and their son's family. They have all witnessed his sister-in-law,who has served him every day and hour since he fell ill, like a tree supporting each other in a storm against another, holding him up, helping him to sit down; feeding him, and laughing with him. What is particularly important is that his sister-in-law always laughs in front of him, never sad and unhappy, even until he collapses on the bed and pulls and pees, he needs to be taken care of by his sister-in-law, and his sister-in-law always laughs and questions him:
"Lin Jianfa, what did I owe you in my last life, and in this life you let me pay you back so much!"
After asking he smiled happily like a child. She also smiled happily as a child, making a 100-square-meter room filled with books, medicines and medical equipment filled with the joy and warmth of a couple and a family.
He struggled from standing and shaking to bedridden in this laughter, until he began to lie endlessly on the bed in a vegetative state. In this laughter, she turned her cleanness into a thin and thin one. The couple competed with each other's strength and thinness, like a hundred-meter sprint, except that he fell on the hospital bed forever, and she was better than always falling on the edge of the bed. I remember once going in with Wang Yao and Ji to see him, and at noon, because there were so many people, everyone talked about eating outside, and my sister-in-law quietly said to me: "I can eat at home, and old Lin Tou will be very happy." So a bunch of people and horses ate at home. Eat buns. Everyone supported Lin Jianfa on the edge of the table, not so much that everyone was accompanying him to eat, but rather that they let him accompany everyone to eat. After I ate two full, the phone came up with a text message, I picked up the phone to see: "You will be very happy to eat more Lin Jianfa." "The text message came from my sister-in-law, so I sat down again and continued to eat. My stomach was about to explode that day, and when I left, my writer friend in Shenyang said that she had gone to the street to buy meat and shrimp for this bun two days ago.
Lin Jianfa took a group photo with Bing Xin and Yang Liuchang
As I descended the stairs, I covered my stomach and shed tears.
I remember that many years ago, when I arrived in Shenyang, my sister-in-law and Jianfa specially stewed old chicken soup for me.
I remembered a pot of pippi shrimp that my sister-in-law made for me and me not many years ago.
Later, I went to see them again with Lin Bai, Wang Yao, and Qinghua. That time I went to see them, I always remembered that two years ago, I and Leung Hung and Yang Huiyi of Baptist University rushed from Hong Kong to Shenzhen to see their family, and on the way back, Professor Yang Huiyi whispered to me: "Now Lin Jianfa finally belongs to my sister-in-law alone, and it has nothing to do with literature in the end." Smiling, she had two big tears in her eyes, which made me wonder every time I saw Lin Jianfa, whether our literature was worth it or not. It is after returning this time, I feel that for many years my sister-in-law and Lin Yuantian took Jianfa to see a doctor, Beijing, Nanjing, Suzhou, Guizhou, Yunnan, Shenzhen, Zhengzhou and other places, it seems that where there is a grass that can cure colds, they have to personally prove that it is not a Ganoderma lucidum. Every literary friend who went there did his best not to say, but the money that was spent was also a frightening number, so later I discussed with Wang Yao and Ji Jin whether to organize a small range of friends, everyone was no more or less, and they all raised a little money to take care of Lin Jianfa's illness and their lives and days. When this matter was planned for implementation, my sister-in-law sent me a WeChat message saying that she would stop this matter, because she had just sold a house, and half of the money from this sale was planned for Lin Jianfa to see a doctor, and the other half was reserved for "just in case" to live in the future.
After this WeChat, my sister-in-law also sent me a few "hahaha" and cheerful emojis, just like a string of torches she sent to the world in winter.
At the beginning of this year, everyone planned to go to Shenyang several times to see the "old forest head", but the itinerary was constantly shelved due to the epidemic. In June, I finally went to Shenyang with Zhang Xuexin, and at this time I could no longer go to their house to shake hands with Lin Jianfa and ask him what he wrote the answer on paper with a pen or pointed his finger out the glyph on the computer. He had been lying in the hospital for half a year without leaving that bed. That bed was his whole family, literature, and the world. The hospital was in the suburb of Shenyang, more than a dozen miles away from their home, and when he arrived at the hospital, he was lying on a bed under the window, his face was dry and thin but rosy, because he also had a very even breathing sound when he fell asleep. Xuexin and I stood by the bed, surrounded by the silence of the room. Lin Yuan told us that last night he told his father that we would come to see him today, and he would not sleep all night, and he would look at the door of the sick house all night with his eyes open, but at eight o'clock in the morning, he still fell asleep before he could wait for us.
Lin Jianfa took a group photo with Lin Bai and Li Jing
We got there at 9:30 a.m.
I went to the quilt and gently held Jianfa's hand, like a dead branch with wax. However, this time, although he was asleep, he slowly shed tears from the corners of his eyes. We started calling him. His tears kept flowing, but he finally failed to open his eyes after several attempts. The light in the ward penetrated the silence of the visible people like willow flowers. His tears hung in the corners of his eyes, like a bead between literature and friends. Seeing that he finally had a reaction, everyone was happy, and then the sister-in-law laughed at the head of the bed and said loudly:
"Lin Jianfa, you're awesome—you don't react to them!"
At this point, the corners of his mouth actually had a smile.
We all laughed.
Time passes like a wooden cow and a horse. So in the gloom everyone said for a long time. Say Lin Jianfa's illness, say people's days and live. He also cruelly chose a corner to whisper some things that should not be discussed but had to be faced, and then it was noon, we were leaving, and my sister-in-law smiled and said, "I'm sorry, I can't cook for you." "I asked my sister-in-law not to stay in the ward every night and day, but to work shifts with her son and nanny. The sister-in-law said at this time:
"How about that, in case I'm gone he's gone, and I'm going to have to let him go suddenly when I'm next to him."
When she said this, although her sister-in-law was in tears, she still smiled like the sun that never went out. She took us all the way to the elevator entrance, and then to the parking lot downstairs, and when we broke up, she waved and laughed and called out—
"I heard Lin Jianfa saying let you write novels well, and he was waiting for you to publish a new book."
Everyone laughed in the car and looked at the sister-in-law outside the car window like a lonely and unbroken dry bamboo in the wilderness. Looking at the laughing car and leaving, everyone was in the car, and they were crushed by the depression and silence so that even the noise of Shenyang City was gone.
August 29, 2021 at HKUST
Yan Lianke
Yangtze River Literary Review, No. 1, 2022
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