We have become accustomed to city life on sidewalks or zebra crossings, and many of the world's beautiful, pristine and mysterious places, such as mountains, deserts, glaciers, grasslands and forests, are now just tourist destinations, and there are people who travel long distances by plane, train and car in the summer to get there, and finally bring back many color photos of people in close proximity with nature, and there are also people who want to go to those places but end up not making it for various reasons, and there is nothing to go to, and their city life is still the same. The story of Hulk, the poet, philosopher, and painter of Maula Uda, is extraordinary, but his desert death does not make today's boys and girls prick up their ears, and another friend of Hulk once said to me impatiently, "Don't talk about him anymore, what are you mentioning it for?" Even the lace news column of the evening newspaper could not be squeezed in.
It wasn't until the spring of 1987 that I received a letter from Hulk, three years after his disappearance, his thin, melancholy face glowing with wisdom in a group photo of his friends. I should say that I had forgotten about him at the time, and I noticed that there was something strange about the handwriting on the envelope and the inside pages, they were randomly arranged like branches or circles, clumsy and rough, and had nothing to do with the Hulk's handwriting as I remembered. I doubted the authenticity of the letter, but I thought that words change just like people, maybe this is what Hulk said. I have never read such a peculiar letter. Much of the letter is devoted to a natural landscape called the Cloud Array. Cloud. Cloud. Cloud. How the clouds are cruising and changing in the skies of Mullahuda. Clouds can be seen anywhere in the world, but the cloud arrays of Mullahuda are not seen anywhere else. At the end of the letter, the writer changed his mind and invited me to attend his funeral in Maula Uda in May. It's this funeral that's terrifying. Later, my trip to Mullah Uda was to attend this inexplicable funeral.
The north-western frontier is still a slush desert in May, the train throws the traveler at the little station at the end of the railway, the coach throws the traveler into a few mud houses and the wind and sand, and the place you are going to is still far away, separated by mountains, across swamps, across endless open land. I can't forget how I felt when I waited for the Hulk's carriage, the long river setting sun showed the classical grandeur of Maula Uda, I saw the western twilight scene that I had seen in the pictorial magazines and movies in the window of the inn, I saw the clouds, I saw a cloud rising lightly from the poplar forest, much like a sheep in a circle gasping for breath, standing, and then continuing to float upward, its color from snow white to golden yellow, and finally to orange-red. Soon another cloud chased after him, intertwined on the edge of the first cloud, and in an instant it trembled, and the two clouds became one, floating and deforming. The third cloud. The fourth cloud. The fifth cloud. So many Yunxin Buddhas heard the assembled whistle coming in one direction, their shapes and queues like a group of children chasing and playing; Or like soldiers fighting to the death in a battle.
It was Maula Uda's cloud array, and it was only after visiting Wonderland that I was convinced that it wasn't Hulk's artistic fiction. But the cloud array is just a cloud array after all, and it disappears when it gets dark. I started thinking about the Hulk and the funeral. Sitting under the dim soybean oil lamps of the inn, listening to the wind sweeping through the Gobi Desert and the sand hitting the poplar trees in the distance and near, I felt that I was approaching the mysterious and poetic life of the Hulk. The innkeeper didn't know the details of Hulk, and she called Hulk a weatherman from Beijing. "The weatherman from Beijing had already returned to Beijing, and I saw him driving a truck over the mountain pass." The proprietress saw the stunned expression on my face and exclaimed, "Why are you staring at me like that?" I don't lie to you, I left in winter, I saw him pass through the mountain pass, his car wheels slipped, I also helped him to put a stick, he personally told me that he was going back to Beijing. "The rest of the night suddenly became a solitary night of guessing and reasoning, the wind and sand still blowing against the small town with few houses, the sky outside the window was pitch black, the wolf howl came from far and near, and the city life I knew seemed to have disappeared into another century. I began to feel a certain kind of fear, fear from the Hulk's mysterious whereabouts, and from the confusing end of the journey.
The next morning I was woken up by the innkeeper who said, "There's a woman, a woman has come to pick you up." "I went to the window and looked out, and saw a carriage parked under the poplar tree, and a strange woman in a green turban was pulling the reins and peeking at the inn, it was not the Hulk, it was a strange woman I had never seen before. I got into Namin's carriage, which creaked across the gravel road and drove out for a long time, when I suddenly noticed a sack moving next to me, revealing a little boy's yellow hair and dirty face. Almost immediately, I caught the Hulk's inherited features on the boy's face, an arrogant nose jokingly called Socrates by his friends, and a pair of trance-like melancholy eyes. The boy, who was about three years old, put his greasy, black hand in front of me and shook it from side to side, "Biscuits, biscuits." "I finally heard the boy asking me for cookies.
As I opened my duffel bag and rummaged through the biscuits, I heard a crisp whip in the air, it was Namin's whip, and the tip of the whip landed right on my duffel bag. Namin didn't speak, but I felt like her eyes and expression were giving me a stern warning. Namin is a swarthy, thin western woman whose looks are sure to be recognized as ugly by her friends in the city. But all the aesthetic standards for women in Mullahuda seem flashy, and I watch Namin's green turban flutter in the Gobi morning breeze, and I don't make a fuss about Hulk's wife and son, or what Hulk is going to show me. I think from the first time I saw Namin, I saw my friend Hulk's wife, and I realized that Hulk had nothing to do with me, that I had come to a weird funeral, and that there was nothing more to make me fuss about. "When did Hulk die?" I asked.
"Spring." Namin said. "When is spring?" I asked.
"When the snow covers the mountains." Namin said.
"What day is it?" I asked again.
"When the snow covers the mountains." Namin said.
I didn't ask any further questions, I looked at the quiet back of Namin whipping her horse, and thought to myself that the language of Mullahuda might have nothing to do with us.
The morning sun was clinging to the plateau, and the sun seemed to be a stone's throw away from me, but the air was still cold. There was a camel caravan passing through the mountain pass in the distance, and the crisp sound of camel bells was faintly heard. I remember that the coach I was on passed there, but the day later, the pass seemed so strange and hazy to me. When I looked up, I saw a few huge clouds curling out of the pass, and then floating and floating in the clear blue sky, the morning clouds were white and light, but I noticed that they also formed a strange cloud array.
"Are you looking at the clouds?" Namin said suddenly.
"Yes, the clouds here are indeed magical." I say.
"So did you see the Hulk?" Namin said.
"No, where is the Hulk?" I say.
Namin didn't answer, she flicked her whip in the air, and the carriage sped through a stream covered with ice and snow, and after a while I heard Namin reveal the latest news from the Hulk in a hoarse, calm voice.
Namin said, "Hulk turned into a cloud. ”
In fact, when I got to the weather station, I realized that I was the last of the group of guests. Four of Hulk's friends had arrived before I had arrived, a balding collector of western folk songs, a painter with a thick beard, a handsome and unkempt young man who called himself a wanderer, and a poetess with a charming and plaintive expression, who had dressed early in a black funeral dress with a white wildflower slanted into her sideburns, said to be Hulk's former lover. Those people, like me, had received that strange invitation letter in a different place. They all seemed to be waiting for me to arrive, and everyone looked at me with inquiring eyes when they saw me. "How did Hulk die?" "Is Hulk dead?"
And the poetess said in an out-of-control voice, "I told you, but you don't believe it, Namin killed Hulk with witchcraft, and the woman was a witch." The poetess looked particularly sad and angry, and it was not difficult to see that she had a natural hostility and hatred towards Namin. I was so confused that I could only say to them that I had just come to this funeral and that I knew nothing else. Guests gather on the grass in front of the paint-peeling weather observation box, perhaps the hinterland of Mullahuda, perhaps the edge of the world, and the poetic aura of the Hulk we once knew is no longer captured, and we can only look up at the clouds in the sky that Hulk loves. The clouds whirring in the midday wind of the plateau are more vivid than Hulk's description, more magnificent than you can imagine. The cloud array was still in the sky of Mullahuda, but the person who found the cloud array was gone. After a moment of silence, the people in the meadow turned their eyes to the tents. There was a bonfire lit in front of the tent, and Namin was sitting by the fire making a pot of milk tea. A woman who is as silent and cold as a stone, a woman who is not good at words and does not smile, she pours milk tea into five wooden bowls, and lines up the five wooden bowls containing milk tea, and then turns back and walks into the tent, Namin cooks for the guests, but she never beckons you to eat. "This witch." The poetess looked at Namin's back indignantly, and she said, "She must be a witch, she said Hulk was dead, but she didn't have Hulk's body, she said Hulk was dead, but she couldn't even tell the date of Hulk's death." "The men don't care if Namin is a witch or not, they want to know more about the background of Hulk's death, but there are very few people in a hundred miles of Mullahuda, Namin doesn't say, who can know the background of Hulk's death?
The wanderer was the first to notice the bone that the little boy was clutching in his hand. The little boy was squatting alone under the red willow bushes, digging something in the sand with that bone, and we all thought it was a yak bone, but the wanderer, who had been wandering the highlands for many years, had studied the skeletons, and he suddenly exclaimed, and he said to us, "Look, the bone in the child's hand is a human bone!" ”
We all flocked to the human bone, at first out of curiosity and horror, but the sensitive and suspicious poetess was inspired by some inspiration, her face was pale and bloody, and she leaned on the painter's shoulder and sobbed, "I see, it is the bones of the Hulk, how terrible," said the poetess, "how terrible it is that the witch should let the child play with his father's bones!" ”
Everyone was taken aback by the poetess's conjecture, and turned their panicked eyes on the boy, and the folk singer picked up the boy, and he pretended to be calm and stroked the boy's cheek, "Naughty ghost, uncle has biscuits here, tell me whose bones are these?" The boy said, "Abba's bones." ”
The folk song gatherer looked at us, and then he said to the boy, "Naughty man, uncle gave you a lot of biscuits, tell me, where did you pick up the bones?" The boy pointed to the mountain pass in the distance, and his voice became high-pitched and exaggerated, "Wolf." Wolf. Wolf. "We followed the boy's finger and looked at the mountain pass, the mountains were still snow-capped, the highland road hung like a gray cloth belt from the waist of the two mountains, Mullahuda, from wasteland to wasteland, from snow-capped mountains to snow-capped mountains, out of the pass was still Mullahuda. We didn't see wolves, except for the lonely bug-like shadows of a few cars, and as far as the eye could see, clouds hovering on snowy mountain tops.
Was it the wolves that devoured Hulk's life? Everyone is skeptical of a little boy's answer, but at least they feel that they have found a breakthrough to solve the Hulk's mystery. I remember we flocking into the tent with some kind of restlessness, everyone seemed to be forcing the silent Namin to break the silence, and around Hulk's death, their questions were shooting at Namin like arrows.
Namin sat on a sheepskin mattress and remained silent in front of a statue of a god on the table, clearly deaf to the cacophony of the guests. As the last wisps of green smoke swirled from the Indian incense on the table, Namin turned around and said, "I saw the Hulk, he became a cloud." "We can't get the details of Hulk's death from Namin, and in Maurauda you can only endure everything you shouldn't. There was no date for the funeral, and Namin told the guests to wait a few more days. A few days passed, and Namin still said so, wait a few more days. The five guests finally lost their patience, and the painter and poetess, who had fallen in love during the journey, left the mullah ouda one day without saying goodbye, and as a sign of mourning for the deceased, they tied a black silk scarf to the wooden frame of the meteorological observation box. The solemn and affectionate gesture of the black silk scarf fluttering in the wind made the remaining three guests forgive its master for his betrayal. And the news that Hulk was devoured by wolves was finally confirmed. An old man herding sheep along a ravine told us that Hulk was attacked by wolves while driving over Ice Hill, and he said he saw Namin and her children along the road looking for Hulk's bones. The old man said that he didn't know why Hulk was driving far away on a snowy night, he just speculated based on the empty fuel tank of the car that the wolves took the opportunity to attack Hulk when he got out of the car to refuel, "No one has ever dared to drive a car in Mullahuda with an empty gas tank, I don't know what's wrong with him, probably he wants to go home and go crazy." The old man stroked his beard and sighed, "When you get to Mullahuda, you shouldn't be homesick, he shouldn't leave Namin and the child alone, do you know that Mullahuda can't keep people, but Mullahuda's wolves can keep people." "I saw a similar look of horror on the faces of my two companions, followed by gloom. As the imaginary wild horses galloped, I seemed to clearly see Hulk besieged by wolves, and a man who loved poetry, painting, and philosophy wrestling with a pack of bloodthirsty wolves in the desert. It occurred to me that on that terrible night, the wonderful elves of legends, adventures and dreams were like cars without gas, they were scrap metal, and they must have been indifferent when the Hulk was killed. Even with all the doubts, we can only accept the cruel and unreasonable fact that our friend Hulk, who has been missing for three years, the weird Hulk who is admired in many cities, has now been eaten by the wolves of Maula Uda. Now let me remember the funeral of the deceased. In the pale blue morning light we boarded Namin's carriage, and we noticed that the only difference between Namin that day and the previous day was her smile, and on the day of the funeral she was radiant and had a miraculous beauty at the corners of her eyes and eyebrows. Namin's boy is also washed and the dirt has faded, and we find that the boy actually has the same smooth complexion and jet-black hair as Hulk. Namin said, let's go to the Red Willow Valley, Hulk is already there, you guys will meet him. With no objections, I reached into the bag in the corner of the car, expecting to touch Hulk's bones, but instead I found a steaming nest. I haven't found anything needed for the funeral, I've guessed it will be a peculiar funeral, but I still don't know how Namin is going to make us see the dead.
The red willows of the Red Willow Valley made a tidal noise in the slush, this was a picturesque place that we had overlooked, and when we followed Namin to the depths of the valley, the sun was blowing out from the snow-capped mountains in the east, and the red willows in the valley lit up with the people, and I remember that it was like that, the red willows lit up with the people, and a certain mystery in my mind suddenly lit up, and at the moment when the plateau sun illuminated this funeral, I finally believed that my friend Hulk was here. A black clay pot stands among the red willows in the snow. Namin then knelt in front of the clay pot. I stood with the wanderers and folk song gatherers in front of the clay pot for a long time. "Hulk is here, do you see that cloud?" Namin said. I saw three inches of snow water in the clay pot, and I saw Namin's face reflected in the snow, peaceful, solemn and beautiful.
"Hulk, he's turned into a cloud, do you see that cloud?" Namin said. I really saw a cloud in the clay pot, there really was a cloud, it looked a lot like a back of the Hulk, a silhouette, I leaned over and looked again, and I found that it was not just a back of the Hulk, a silhouette, it was the friend Hulk that we had been looking for for three years. I will never forget the sight of Namin holding the black clay pot facing the sun, and I remember that the slush pebbles eventually buried the water in the black clay pot, the cloud in the water, and our friend Hulk. The red willows sang in the sudden wind, and a compassionate voice shocked me, Hulk, your friend, I will give him back to you, take him with you. I'm sure it wasn't Namin's voice.
After leaving Mullah Uda, I never went to the far, mysterious West. I rarely hike, I'm used to watching the clouds in the sky when I go out, and I've been looking for the best distance people can get from home for years, and I guess it's hard to define, if I say it's too far away from home you'll become a cloud, believe it or not?
Originally published in Shanhua, No. 10, 1994