Family life is like a chess game, where each spouse holds a piece and has to fight a battle across the river. The mortgage, the gift, the unemployment, the silent smoke blowing the chessboard paper to a crumpled state, the role of children is to smooth out the chessboard paper, forcing both sides to play a good game.
Distressed middle-aged people love to have children, to call them hope, to look blearily at the baby in the sheets and say that he can be an artist, an astronaut, a barrister, any number of possibilities in the world. The older the baby gets, the fewer the possibilities, until the baby is in his twenties, grows into me, and begins to replicate their lives.
1
He and his father were both superiors and subordinates, and also college classmates, so our two families were very close. The old man did not smoke, well-built, is a regular visitor to the gym. The first time I heard from my father, he was a popular person in the university, the vice president of the student council, activist, the best debater, and many other titles. The father is silent, a long list of mathematical formulas has made his head, let alone take time to participate in activities. Although the time he devoted to his studies was short, his performance was not worse than his father’s, mainly due to his cheating methods, not superb, but mainly bold. The father was the opposite, the small strip passed to him already white, naturally do not have to talk about the next steps.
In 1996, my father graduated to the laminate factory to do sales, a job is 4 years. During the period by the old family relatives and mother married, the millennium laminate factory closed down, the family rely on the mother’s monthly salary to live. At this time I just learned to walk, although I can not remember the specific picture, “can not do anything to do sales” this phrase is always ringing in my ears. My father’s hesitant plan to find a job lasted a year, and on the 5th anniversary of his graduation class reunion, Lao He put an end to the plan – his sales company needed a sales manager.
He said it was a sales company, but in fact it was selling goods such as bone-building powder to coax the elderly in the community, yet my father did not hesitate for a moment about the job. Although no one ever told me this history, I was able to piece it together through the gossip of my parents’ quarrels.
When I was four or five years old, He and his wife brought their son, He Guangyao, to the house as a guest. From that time on, my mother made the decision for me that we should be friends for life.
The only thing I remember clearly is that He Guangyao’s mother was a funny woman with exaggerated expressions when she talked. When He Guangyao tripped over a stone or hit an obstacle, his mother would pretend to hit the obstacle so that He would stop crying. If we were fighting over a toy, his mother would coax me to hand it over and pretend to hit me so that He would be satisfied.
He loved to share his educational experience with his father, and I wonder if he would add this to the list when he shared his educational experience with his staff. My father was nodding his head and praising Lao He for being right – the show did pay off, as my elementary and junior high school were paid for by Lao He, the best school in the city. He Guangyao and I a class, inseparable, he is the shape, I am the shadow, a shadow always stepped on by him.
When I was seven years old, He Guangyao and I got into an argument in the neighborhood, and he broke the corner of my mouth, and the blood was all over my mouth. I ran home, my father was furious, took me to him, he was held down by my father, my father scolded me to fight back, I froze in place and could not reach out. My father had to let go and gamble to take me back home, perhaps from that time on, I lost a complete in the eyes of my father. More likely, my father saw himself in my eyes.
Soon after, the old man brought his children to the door to apologize, bringing two pockets of nutritional products, packaged in a fancy way, so that He Guangyao could hand them to me and apologize to me. He Guangyao mumbled a word, old He hemmed and hawed, the father also hemmed and hawed, I took the nutrition, I had no other option but to accept.
When I was 10 years old, the snow accumulated thickly in the elementary school campus, and the school organized students to sweep the snow. We used blue shovels about our own height to push the snow against the wall and pile it into bulges – turning the soft, loose snow into dirty, filthy, hard blocks, as I understood our task.
Perhaps the teacher didn’t like me because the gift was not properly given, and I shoveled almost all the snow in the subdistrict while He Guangyao and a few boys watched from the sidelines. When the lunch bell rang, the teacher turned around and walked back to the office, they threw me into the snow pile, and He Guangyao shoveled the snow and buried me. Perhaps out of instinct, I untutoredly feigned a silly smile – it made the whole thing seem like a joke so he wouldn’t act hysterically.
The snow seeped into my neck, and when he saw that my shoulders weren’t buried solid, he started dumping snow from the top of my head until my eyelashes froze together and they called it a day to return to work, and I barely pulled myself out of the snow.
I patted the snow stains off my body and tried to look like I had just accidentally slipped in the snow. I didn’t tell my parents, not wanting to lose to He Guangyao in a knot in my father’s eyes. I wanted to go back to that afternoon and break the corners of He Guangyao’s mouth in front of my father’s eyes, but life doesn’t allow for turning back the clock, and likewise, it doesn’t allow for tampering with the script.
From this time on, I always had a dream of a cold neck – after a little tingling at the neck, numbness spread out, the sound track of laughter and winter wind overlapped and rumbled in my ears, the snow layer didn’t reach my shoulders, no matter how hard my nose was, the air I inhaled was always too little, and the feeling of suffocation occupied the whole brain. Each time I have this dream, it is always more real than the last.
2
My father was always sitting in the living room smoking, and my mother’s scolding was never absent, “All you do is smoke all day long”. With this came my father’s three-word motto, “Pass the smoke.
This dialogue is very much like the set of moves in chess: when the head gun is fired, the knight jumps. The mother’s accusation opened a cannon at the head, and the father’s passing smoke immediately jumped up to keep the peace at home. When I think about it, my father’s over-the-top smoking was strong from the year I was 13 years old, when I was in my second year of junior high school.
The winter in the north is snowy and everyone is wrapped up like a dumpling. The girl at the table pulled my down jacket and let out a giggle, I was infected by her laughter and followed along. She giggled while showing my down jacket to others, and when we both got tired of laughing, I remembered to ask her what was so funny.
She pointed to the word on the lining of the down jacket, “li yuan” (a pseudonym). She read it a few times and then laughed again, in fact, I do not know where the two words are laughing, to react for a while, I realized for the first time that there is not only the difference between the clothes, the earthy brand is enough to attract people to laugh.
He Guangyao grabbed the down jacket from my deskmate and pressed his face against the lining as if he wanted to stuff the label into his eyes. The first 15 minutes of the morning study, the class teacher has not yet arrived at the post, he read aloud the slogan written on the label, the morning reading students have the interest, circulating in the class, I want to split hands to take away, but afraid to make a bigger laugh, so I had to echo the laughter, the girl at the table took the trouble to explain to everyone that this is the first funny thing she found.
When the teacher came in, the class was in chaos, clothes still flying in the sky, the last row of students saw the teacher, did not dare to reach out to pick it up, “round” just fell in the middle of the aisle. The class teacher walked towards it, the sound of her heels knocking everyone’s heart out, and she sternly asked whose dress it was, holding back laughter so that He Guangyao’s face looked contorted, and his tablemates buried their heads so low that they seemed to be having an immersion experience with their morning reading books.
I was invited to the teacher’s office and gave a full account of what had happened. He Guangyao, wearing Canada Goose, playfully reviewed in front of everyone, as if he had been given some kind of award and the review was vague, “I shouldn’t have made fun of my classmate’s clothes, even though his down jacket was called the ly round.” Speaking of which, the last row laughed louder, and the teacher waved his hand symbolically, and the matter came to an end. At the teacher’s request, we shook hands and made up in front of the podium, and I reluctantly got up from my seat, looking like he had forgiven me for my poverty.
He lit up a cigarette, from Confucianism to social reality, word by word, justified, “students are to study without distractions, do not talk about those platitudes ……” but did not say how to put those “giggles “Mute off.
In the evening I came out to go to the bathroom, the hall lights were not on, the light from the TV barely reflected the coffee table, the ashtray accumulated a layer of cigarette butts, very noticeable. The empty cigarette box next to the trash can was grinning, and when the TV flickered, the plastic skin on the box changed color. The flicker of sparks on the window glass, you can vaguely recognize my father’s face with a cigarette in his mouth. He looked at my shadow in the window and saw me staring at him before he turned around and returned his gaze to the television.
I washed my hands and went back to my room, and my neck felt a little cold.
Sometimes I wonder if I am a reference for He Guangyao, just like the relationship between He and my father at the wine table, where He is in charge of yelling and my father is in charge of laughing.
I also want to let my father yell once.
On the day the results of the midterm exam were announced, the two families got together for dinner. He Guangyao was 20 points lower than me and had no chance to choose the first batch of schools, while I had half a foot in the best high school in the city. I thought the 20-point difference would make He Guangyao look bad at the table, but my father praised his strengths and said that I was a dead learner, with high scores and low ability, and that I would be useless in society.
The person who taught me to study without distractions changed his words, and I froze in the sofa in the corner of the KTV while my father lit up a cigarette and listened to He Guangyao sing.
I muttered in a low voice and asked my father to put out the cigarette, the accompaniment overpowering my voice. My father turned his head and said, as he always did, “Passing a cigarette, it doesn’t hurt”.
Which hall? I couldn’t understand my father’s use of the term “over-the-top smoke” as an excuse. At that time, my father was already a powerful general under Lao He, and he had a new home and a new car, so my father sipped his cigarette and the smoke came out of his mouth, forming a barrier between the two of us.
He Guangyao finished one song and ordered a song for me, Eason Chan’s “Bicycle”, he knows I love Eason Chan, he also knows I do not know how to sing. I picked up the mike raw and watched the 3 green dots on the screen fade away, and it was my turn to make a sound.
“Don’t don’t assume I know ……” my Cantonese was very lame and I didn’t look back at my father, whose face must have looked very ugly. He Guangyao inaudible as if playing with the phone, the old He and father climbing to talk about the development of children’s hobbies, no one cared what I sang, which was a great relief for me. The two fathers seemed to reach a consensus on certain points, and as the conversation got louder and louder, my singing voice got smaller and smaller, and the sub-song broke my breath, leaving only the sound of the accompaniment.
After that, my relationship with my father took a sharp turn for the worse, and it was especially important for me to beat He Guangyao in front of him, and after not waiting for the praise that I deserved, I kept the competition to myself and never showed it again.
3
The difference of 20 points was not enough for me, the “shadow”, to leave the “form” of He Guangyao. On the day of my high school class, he stood behind me with his trademark smile. He seemed to carry a certain aura that made my self-esteem disintegrate into a dark shadow on the ground as soon as I got close. I smiled kindly and stole away from the queue to double check the list – the three big words He Guangyao pressed down on my head, completely crushing me into the ground.
No one wants to be a shadow all the time, a thought that fleetingly passed through my mind and turned into a smile from my father at the wine table.
My father didn’t comment on the news and kept his head down to pick up his food. I guess he was afraid I would ask why learning to change fate was an empty phrase, but I was used to the fact that it didn’t apply to He Guangyao.
During the day, I was He Guangyao’s best friend, but once I joined the group, I was the shadow he wanted to get rid of. My mouth is very stupid and I have no special skills, so I can only believe in what my father said. The set did not apply to He Guangyao, but for ordinary people like me, who could deduce the life of an ordinary person just by giving his age, it was particularly applicable.
Like a steel nail in my seat, I didn’t move during class except to go to the bathroom, my pencil tip repeatedly jumping across the conic curve. He Guangyao scoffed at this attitude toward learning, “Even your father says you are dead to learn this set, and you yourself still do not admit it.” My father and I were such nerds that we could not achieve anything in society, but He Guangyao insisted on this belief, and as his shadow, I inevitably swayed.
Our conversations began to diminish with the achievement gap, and he had a group of over-lunged brothers, combing their backs, sticking their hands in their trouser pockets, lighting a cigarette in the cold wind, and standing at the school gate looking on. I don’t know what they were looking at, maybe they just thought it was cool, or waiting for the school bus to come from afar. But I also wanted to look with them, even though my life could be seen at a glance.
I learned to smoke from He Guangyao so that I could stand in the middle of that line of people. The supermarket next to the school had an old facade, with a plaque hanging down and the lamp cord tangled in a dead knot on the back of the plaque. I repeatedly psych myself up by the door to make my cigarette buying look skillful and natural. The boss was staring at his phone screen and didn’t even look up at me, fingering a box of Soviet cigarettes off the shelf and slapping it onto the counter, I pulled out the change I had counted and left in a hurry. He Guangyao told me to puff into the mouth of the cigarette, I was inexperienced, but I could guess from his expression that it was not something good. I took a small mouthful of smoke, and the tingling sensation in my throat made me spit it out in one breath.
I also learned to pass the smoke – a smoking method that He Guangyao despised the most. I think it was an excuse; he simply despised us as father and son.
Unlike his father, He Guangyao would not maintain that delicate balance. While the elder He would always set up overtime tasks for his father in conversation as a friend, his son displayed the superiority that a boss should have over his employees – Xiaozhi, he called me this; Yao, I responded this.
I was born with the potential to be a shadow, which may be a genetic predisposition.
In 2014, Lao He opened his second store, and the bone strengthening powder was swept into the pile of old paper, replaced by health pillows and mattresses for osteoporosis. Since the relationship between my father and Lao He was different from simple subordination, the branches that others did not want to run fell to my father. I often eavesdropped on my parents’ finances, and when they found out, they would tacitly shut up and change the subject to the life of some unlucky relative. I thought wickedly that my family was better suited to be the spice of other people’s lives, and perhaps old He’s married life, which relied on my family’s rotten affairs to help them sleep every night.
In order for my parents to be able to discuss this better, I moved into the school dormitory. At night, the woods behind the dormitory building couples have dispersed, I walked straight between the fence and the bushes, the tobacco is choking, repeated attempts to make the action look skilled and sophisticated, I exhaled the smoke from my mouth, light blue smoke spread out in front of my eyes, a thought suddenly ran into the brain: my father must be sitting in front of the coffee table smoking now.
This thought was complicated, it made my dislike for my father less pure and less able to pretend to be mature, and thus the action of smoking no longer seemed skilled. The smoke climbed up into the treetops, turning into a thin cloud that hid the moon’s shadow. I stomp out my cigarette and wolfishly burst out of the woods, running right into He Guangyao and his over-lunged friend.
“Chi, have a fire.” They called out to me in the tone of a calling dog, and I flung down my lighter, and I don’t know who kicked me in the ass, and I stumbled and walked away without looking back. He Guangyao and they told stories about the old days and me, and they laughed as loudly as they could to keep the sound-activated lights bright.
I am categorically not to fight back, with my years of experience with him, this is he is showing his conquering power to his friends. If I were to fall out with him at this moment, I’m afraid I wouldn’t have the time to study for my entrance exams in peace.
At the end of the month, I came home carrying groceries, and a small shopping ticket in the shower frame exposed the fact that I smoked. That was the angriest I had ever seen my father, even angrier than that time I was afraid to reach out. But I was even more angry, because he I don’t know how much aggravation I suffered, and I replied in no good humor, “I’m a passing cigarette, it doesn’t hurt.”
Father’s image was not originally tall, nothing worth collapsing. His face was taut, his eyes red, his mother was out shopping for groceries, and there was only our long speechlessness and the wind that passed through the hall.
“Where’s the fucking smoke through the hall? I let you study so you can stop smoking if you don’t want to.”
Holding my breath and waiting for a rebuttal got me a little deflated, all sorts of words playing around my mouth, and finally chose to talk tough.
“I want to smoke.”
My father’s hand was in the air, I had been beaten by all sorts of people since I was a child, I had seen too many situations like this, I stood mute by the wall, waiting for him to do it.
Click, the door opened, my mother’s left hand carrying a green plastic bag, onion leaves from the hand, fingertips strangled white, the other hand is a transparent plastic bag, wrapped in a piece of meat. The father, with his back to the door, heard the door open, pretended nothing happened, took the green bag, and yarded the vegetables onto the kitchen windowsill. My mother said as she took off her shoes, “My son is back, make meat today.”
The conversation at the dinner table was extraordinarily refreshing, talking about some politics, some achievements, and the plate of fried meat with garlic moss never had anyone reaching for chopsticks. A warm stream rushed to my eyes, and I looked down to pick up my rice, sucking hard on my nose to try to force it back. When I looked up from my meal, my mother’s tears flowed down to her jaws.
4
When I got back to my dorm room, the cold dream at the nape of my neck came as promised.
I lifted the covers and stared at the dorm ceiling until some sequins wandered across my retinas and my breathing calmed down. He Guangyao was sleeping heavily in the opposite bed, and I forced myself to close my eyes. The quality of sleep was also a contest, and I couldn’t lose. When I was a kid, he could push me down, he won, he could lead his classmates to laugh at me, he won, he had girls writing love letters to him, he won. When he grew up, he lived a happier life than I did, also he won ……
My life became a showcase for He Guangyao, and all my actions were for the ridiculous win, but I didn’t think I’d really win for once.
The first time I’ve ever had to stay out of bed at night was when He Guangyao was a regular, but it was the first time he skipped class all day long. In the middle of the senior year, the teacher made a show in front, dropped the book and warned the students: skipping a section of class suspended for a week. Some students snickered at the bottom, thinking there was still this good thing. At night, He Guangyao pushed open his dorm room door, smelling of alcohol, his eyes swollen into a circle, like some kind of frostbite. He Guangyao has always been proud of his spring, and this kind of downbeat scene made me feel happy.
The chairs of the four people in the dormitory, only his replaced with a gaming chair, he pulled himself out from under the table board, close to the backrest, seems still not sober. The lights went out and the other two roommates closed their eyes early, only I peered at He Guangyao through the bed curtain, and he looked at the ceiling, motionless.
I later heard from my father that Lao He had cheated on me in marriage and his wife took a knife and cut all the way to the office, I put down the phone and life seemed to be seasoning my senior year.
In 2018, the college entrance exams finally ended, and Lao He prepared a banquet for both of us, and my father and colleagues were at the banquet. As usual, Lao He was going to talk about the education model again.
“What I advocate is a wolf culture. You see I take the company and I take the children are the same, my son in school what happened, I let him deal with himself, parents have to do, is to give the child the bottom. Gang up on that is his own ability ……”
After Lao He’s tall tale, the staff applauded, and the father took the lead to agree. I physiologically dry heaves, only I know what my neighboring seat He Guangyao is something, and the old He as a father does not know himself, but also complacent. Maybe he knows? I stopped thinking about it.
He then went on to talk about many theories, quoted a lot of educational psychologists at home and abroad, and finally returned to the construction of the company, everyone sat straight, the situation reminds me of elementary school in the posture of the hands behind the back. After Lao He finished speaking, we discussed how many of Zhang San’s children had taken the exam, how well Li Si’s children were employed, and how hopelessly middle-aged people talked about what little possibilities they had in life.
That night, my father was the main chaperone, drank a lot, came home and collapsed on the sofa, snoring loudly, my mother slept in the inner room, the college entrance exams as soon as the big hurdle, the two took a good breath. I told my father about the “dream” and the origin of the “dream” through the strength of alcohol. The father turned over, facing the sofa, smacked his lips, and slept even more.
The white wine is that high, the father should rest. After telling about the dream, I slept extra deeply, and my brain seemed to let me go and stop dreaming. Ten days later, the college entrance exam scores were announced, and He Guangyao went abroad for gold-plating, while I stayed in the country, the contest had been divided into winners and losers, and I lost completely, so I simply stopped embarrassing myself.
He and his wife congratulated me on my results, and when they parted, He’s car was parked at the corner of the hotel, and He Guangyao had already gotten into the back seat early, while her mother stood at the door with us, directing He to reverse.
Before getting into the car He Guangyao’s mother said, “The score is not low, you two this child cultivated excellent, are a little unlike you.”
Father’s cigarette smoking is still very aggressive, no longer over the hall smoke, white smoke from the nose to throw out two long tail, the longer it blows, scattered on the coffee table like a small boat, I watched a holiday, this boat also accompanied me into college.
5
I broke off contact with He Guangyao, living in each other’s circle of friends. Travel, nightclubs, bottles of wine, He Guangyao’s photos always spring to life, but my circle of friends is rarely updated, not that I do not love to send, is life is really nothing wonderful worth sharing. The two of us WeChat records are still stuck in Christmas 2018, his blessings mixed in English and Chinese, like a group message, I did not respond again.
Gradually, I blocked He Guangyao’s messages, and after my brain let me go, I no longer had that lurid dream.
What reminded me of him once again was the pedestrian street next to the university.
As night fell, the pedestrian street was crowded with people. The men and women were eating snacks on the crowded path, and it often happened that bamboo sticks were sticking to passersby. There are always begging disabled people in the middle of this crowded path, either congenitally without hands or feet, skilfully using their limbs to skate the cart, telling passersby of their plight, with the change falling into the iron basin in front of them in the noise, seeing someone give money, they slide to the next store, never staying.
The street directly opposite the road, every night at 9 pm, there are always sports cars driving by, sometimes one, sometimes in groups, what they like most is to make noise, red light for them is the happiest thing, they will make all the efforts to make the vehicle roar, attracting the sideways glances of men and women on the pedestrian street. But most of these glances are malicious, along the road to sell pet dogs shopkeepers hold puppies, while shaking while shouting, “do not fucking scare our dogs”. That’s when the men and women in the sports cars would roll down their windows, take off their sunglasses, and greet the contempt of passersby with honor.
A few simple stone piers, thus separating two worlds, one side of someone begging, the other side of someone racing. The moment the window rolled down, the man in the driver’s seat resembled He Guangyao so much that I was instinctively stunned there. In fact, I knew very well that he would not be in this city, but I wondered if there was also such a small food street in the United States.
In 2019, my father took the initiative to leave his job and opened a supermarket in front of the neighborhood, perhaps related to my father’s character, the store’s business is always peaceful. I learned the news over the phone, and my mother gleefully described the opening with 5,000 firecrackers, a scene that sounded like it had blown up a new era in my family.
Back home, my mother told me other details – Lao He did not retain my father’s resignation, he criticized him for being ungrateful and choosing to leave the company at the most difficult time, my father did not have any defense, directly deleted the text message, since then they have no contact.
It was also that holiday, we had our first family outing, the place is not far, to Qingdao.
The waves on Little Mak Island were so big that two large rocks stood in the center of the sea, periodically stirring up waves several meters high on the rocks. The family sat on the grassy slope, predicting with interest whether the next wave would be higher. My mother’s face was no longer sad, and she smiled and said that my father’s prediction was not one in ten. There are many pictures of my mother when she was young in the house, but she did not take any pictures on this trip, probably because she was afraid to leave evidence of her happiness. The tour group had a budget of two hours here, and we didn’t move a step on the grassy slope until the guide raised a small flag and we left before we were done.
The guide, a balding middle-aged man, awkwardly instigated the shopping atmosphere in the bus, to which the older brother sitting in the front row was very unhappy and yelled for the guide to lead the group in singing. The atmosphere in the bus was inexplicably ignited as the seven families took turns performing while the guide scratched his hairless head and dropped the shopping flyer in his hand.
My parents were not very good at this, and the task naturally fell to me.
“Don’t don’t assume I know, everything is done for me, why so great, so not feel ……” After entering college, I went to KTV a lot, but I only practiced this song “Bicycle”. This lyric may have two tones, in junior high school it was blame, everything is just so, there is nothing great, and not worthy of praise. This time it was relief that a father’s love is like a mountain, and the mountain just stands there, rarely expressed. It is great to be able to love like a mountain so patiently and so unmarked.
The father’s hand clapped loudly, the carriage does not allow smoking, he had to feel out the cigarette stuffed back into the cigarette case. I returned to my seat, he ran his hand down my neck, I felt itchy and could not help but tighten my neck.
“My son has learned to sing.” My father smiled and said to my mother.
“He sings better than He Guangyao.” Mother gave a thumbs up.
“What’s the point of mentioning that family of bastards.” Father pushed open the window and tilted his head to look out the window.
My mother shrugged at me and made a face at the back of my father’s head, and I laughed out loud, not at all afraid of being heard by life.
Recent Comments