洪水

The Flood / Under Water


隔壁女人的丈夫可能找不到了，我听到断断续续的呜咽声不分昼夜地从隔壁传过来，断的时候她在打某个网上看来的电话寻找她的丈夫，挂下电话她的呜咽又续上了，丝丝缕缕地穿过这堵劣质的墙壁，抵达我的耳朵。我一直以为人的恐慌和悲伤是更凶猛的东西，在等待更响亮的哭嚎从她的的胸膛里爆出来，但是我没有等到，因为图图就来了，我需要去见她。


大学毕业那会我问图图要不要一起去一个海边城市玩儿，我来安排行程。我从高中开始就喜欢她，她说想去的时候我开心极了。但后来她在我为了浪漫定的船屋吐了三天，吐了就睡，醒了继续吐，我照顾了她三天。我记得那三天两个人都混混沌沌的。中间我们第一次做了爱，浮沉中我闻到一股充斥鼻腔的咸味儿，但我分不清它是人的汗液，还是船外和我们一样浮沉的海水。我就记得做完之后没一会她又吐了，而我赤身裸体地去拥抱她。后来她告诉我她是因为恐惧海洋才吐的，我没有很相信，我说，怎么会有人因为恐惧海洋就呕吐呢，我的图图。海边之旅一团糟，但我们还是恋爱了。


电视上总是有人玄而又玄地说，我们所站着的土地，几百万年前是一片汪洋，这当然是约定俗成的东西。我小时候第一次听到这个的时候，做梦都是我家那座小城发大水，而我在浪花中划着破破烂烂的木筏去接我当时喜欢的女孩儿，这是我记忆里最早的浪漫的英雄主义幻想。


毕业之后我和图图分居在两座内陆城市，内陆到谁都不会想到这里也会发洪水的程度。原来雨水在这么一座中部内陆城市也能来得这么凶猛并且持久，没有人想到过，真的。大雨每年都会有的，我以为这没什么。


那天我请假了，一觉醒来已经是下午了，灾难已经发生了。打开电视，电视里的漂亮女主持正在说：“这座城市已经是一片汪洋。”说这句话的时候她没有看着镜头，目光低了下来。


我爬起来往我家楼下看，还在逐渐升高的灰黄色的泥水几乎占据了我的全部视线。楼下的超市，面馆和保安亭都泡在水里，地平线被硬生生拔高了一米，所有的门面都被水堵住了嘴巴。


这时候我的手机响起来，看了一眼来电城市的时候我就知道是谁了，于是接通之后我没有说话。实话实说是那几秒钟两边不约而同地沉默让我非常难熬，我只好在电话这头表情扭曲，但是无声地骂了一句脏话。


“我没事儿。”我简短地说。


“好，那我等水退了就来找你。”图图说完就挂了，没给我再说什么的机会。


那天晚上停电了，所以我只好干躺在床上。在红蓝变换的警灯从我的天花板上驶过之后，我听见隔壁女人的呜咽，我听见遥远的呼喊，听见了有人在水里挣扎着行走，听见了有人在死，很多人在死，我听得越久，这声音越清楚。我不爱这座城市，我也不爱这里的人，但他们的痛苦依然折磨着我，避无可避。我受不了了，我决定去问隔壁的女人借蜡烛，尽管我不需要，或者说点儿什么废话，什么都行，哪怕是她那个八成是已经死去的丈夫。


而当我真的走出家门站在她门口的时候，她的呜咽声又硬生生把我止住。手举起又放下，举起又放下，我想不到怎样敲门能够不给她虚妄的希望或者更大的悲伤。于是我后退两步，又后退两步，退回黑暗中。我躺回去了。


躺着的时候我就在想图图，想我们是如何分手的。我转发了个什么什么骂女权的帖子到朋友圈，她说你真是垃圾，本性难移，别联系了。好像就是这样，然后我真的没有再联系她了。我和我朋友说，我和我女朋友三个月没联系了，我们都在等着对方先说话呢。他说那他妈还叫你女朋友？我说我也不知道，也没有人提分手这回事儿啊，她还不少东西在我这儿呢。我朋友嘟囔了一句：怪了。


后来的两天里其实都没有下雨，城市在缓慢地恢复，但我没有，我没吃任何东西，隔壁女人的哭声成为了我长久的背景音乐。这堵墙壁会告诉我她所有的秘密，她大概每天五点半就会醒来，哭着哭着会睡着，睡着了可能到九十点钟再醒来，继续哭。第二天的中午她终于下厨做了三天以来的第一顿饭，我听到砧板，油烟机和锅铲的声音。但她吃着吃着就又哭了，冲进浴室去呕吐。


图图来的时候是第三天的傍晚，她用密码锁打开房门的时候，我几乎是一句干尸，她看着我的样子，命令我说：“先下楼吃饭吧。”我连说些什么的力气都没有了，只是跟着她下了楼。


她跟西北老板要了两碗羊肉泡馍和两头糖蒜，刚说完就又停电了。老板说等一会吧，应该等一会电就来了，我先把蜡烛给你们点上，你们别急。我们说好。


“怎么会发洪水呢，这也太突然了。”图图慢慢地说。


“我也不知道，隔壁那女的的丈夫好像是被水冲走了还是怎么回事儿，我感觉她离死也不远了。”


“我看到新闻就在想你会不会有事儿。”图图盯着蜡烛，“有时候觉得你死了也挺好的，有时候觉得你活着也不错。”


我没接茬。她看了我一会，丢给我一个纸团，示意我打开：“你知道吗，来这边真的好难。我急匆匆赶到车站才发现自己没带身份证，办了临时的才能过来，很多趟车取消了，我为了办这个差点儿没有赶上车。我也不知道我为什么要来，我也不知道我来了有什么用，但是我觉得我得来。”


“不来也行的，图图。身份证没带就没带呗，非得来吗。”我知道我在做什么吗？我觉得我知道，但我没办法控制我自己。我在摧毁一些东西，我的，她的，我们的。我想挤出一个后悔的表情来着，但我努力做出来的的那个可能看起来有点嘲讽意味。


“以后不会来了。我明天就走。”她冲我眨巴眨巴眼睛，在烛光里面特别好看。


快点吧，快点吧，我对自己说，快点说出来，我就要完蛋了，这座城市就要完蛋了。


“你为什么不现在就走呢？”


“好。那你先在这等着，我上楼去把我的东西打包了。”图图盯着我的眼睛看了一会，给了我一个很利落的微笑，“他妈的，我这就走。”


我在楼下的餐馆里等了半个小时，电终于来了。墙壁上一米的位置还有洪水留下的水印，我用手摸了摸，其实已经不那么潮湿了，但就是擦不掉。


泡馍端上来的时候让我联想到一场微型洪水。老板问我，那女孩儿还来吗。我想了想说，我不知道，可能不来了吧。我又等了一会，然后我一个人吃完了一碗半的泡馍，两头糖蒜。太久没进食了，我的血糖蹭蹭得往上升。


走出店面的时候我扶着门框一阵晕眩，我知道到另一场洪水已经发生。


就在这个时候一声女人的叹息从我头顶很远很远地传来，而另一个女人在我面前“咚的一声摔死了。









My neighbour might have lost her mind together with her husband. Her weeping and whining travelled to my room day and night. She went on and on. Sometimes she would pause to make phone calls with the numbers she found on dubious websites, hoping to locate him. But once she hung up, laments would refill my ears. They are like meticulously played sharp cords, gently cutting through the thin walls. I have always believed that fear and grief had by human beings are something more ruthless, so I have been waiting for her to burst into fiercer tears. But I failed to witness them, because TuTu was coming to visit, and I needed to see her.


Around the time I graduated from university, I asked TuTu whether she would like to go on a trip to a seaside city with me. I promised to arrange everything. I had been having a crush on her since high school. When she said yes, I was over the moon. But she threw up for three days straight in the houseboat hotel room I booked. I thought it would be romantic to stay on a boat. She did nothing but sleep and spew her guts out, and I tried to look after her. Our souls wandered off our bodies in those three days.


We also made love for the first time. As I sailed on the waves, my nose was occupied by the gist of saltiness. I could not tell whether it was our sweat or the waves of the sea. She started throwing up almost immediately after we finished. Yet I took her into my arms, pressing my naked body onto hers. Later, she told me she threw up because she was scared of the sea. I did not really buy into that. My TuTu, how can someone throw up because of fearing the ocean? Anyways, our seaside trip was a complete mess. But we ended up falling in love.


On TV, there had always been people giving enigmatic speeches about how the vast land we inhabit was submerged by water millions of years ago. Of course, it had become common sense now. I was little when I first learned about this. Then I had dreams about our small town being hit by a flood. In those dreams, I was swerving through the waves to pick up the girl I liked with my ragged wooden raft. It was one of my earliest romantic fantasies about being a hero.


After university, TuTu and I separated ways into two inland cities. My city was so far inland that I never thought flood could be a threat. Really, no one had ever thought that the rain could pour down with such long-lasting cruelty in a city at the centre of the continent. Heavy rains did occasionally take place in the past years. I thought this time was not a big deal.


I asked for leave that day. It was already afternoon when I woke up, and the tragedy had descended upon us. I switched on the TV.

‘Our city has become part of the sea,’ said the pretty TV presenter.

She lowered her eyes when she announced this, avoiding the camera.


I crawled out of bed and looked to the street. All I could see was murky water slowing rising. Downstairs, the noodle bar and the police post were completely soaked. The water surface became the new ground. Everything was lifted an extra meter high. All the shops facing the street were choked by the flood. Death lingers.


Then my phone started ringing. I immediately realised what was going on with just one glance at the caller ID. I did not speak when I picked up. We were both silent for the first couple of seconds, a gruelling moment. If silence could speak, mine would be uttering the most dreadful swearing instead of being sweet and kind.


‘I’m all good.’ I made my words as brief as possible.


‘I’ll come to see you when the flood is gone.’ TuTu hung up right after she finished her sentence, not giving me a chance to reply.


There was no electricity that night. I had nothing to do but lie face-up in bed. Blue and red lights from police cars twinkled across the ceiling. I sensed muffled crying from next door. I sensed people howling from places far away. I sensed someone trudging through water. I sensed people dying. Many of us are dying. The more I listened, the clearer these sounds became. Although I had no feelings for the city or the people here, their sufferings still tortured me. There was no escape. Eventually, I could not stand my thoughts anymore, so I decided to borrow some candles from my neighbour. Candles I would never actually use. But when her door was in front of me, I started to feel the force of her sobbing. I lifted my right hand into the air. I hesitated. I put my hand down, and then repeated the process. I did not know how to correctly knock on this door. The least I wanted was to give her false hope or bring her greater grief. Finally, I stepped back, retreated and let the darkness dissolve me. My bed was the destination.


I thought about TuTu when lying in bed, trying to remember how we broke up. I reposted a shitty blog online, I think, and she saw it, and said I was rubbish and asked me to never talk to her. Something like that. Then I did stop talking to her. Later I told my friend that I had not been in touch with my girlfriend for three months and we had been waiting for each other to surrender first.


‘You still call her your girlfriend?’ He questioned me.


‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘no one said anything about breaking up and I still have a lot of her stuff at my place.’


‘That’s strange,’ my friend mumbled.


It did not rain in the following two days. The city was slowly recovering, but I was not. I barely ate anything. My neighbour’s sobbing had become the soundtrack of my life. The wall had been sneaking me all her secrets. Every day around half five in the morning, she would wake up crying, and then cry herself to sleep until she woke up around nine or ten, and then continue crying. Around noon on day two, she finally cooked her first meal in three days. The noise made by chopping, the extractor fan and the spatula scraping the pan was unstoppable. So was her sadness. She gulped down food with her tears. Then she rushed into the toilet, vomiting and gagging. I was not so far away from becoming a mummy when TuTu arrived.


Her gaze swept across me and she said, ‘let’s go grab some food.’


I just followed her downstairs. There was not enough energy in my body to even gather up something to say.


She ordered two bowls of pita bread in lamb soup and some brown sugar pickled garlic. The electricity went off again just when she finished her order.


The guy running the restaurant spoke with a thick northwestern accent. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll have electricity in just a moment. Don’t you worry about it,’ he tried to reassure us, ‘Lemme light up some candles for you alright? It’s gonna be fine.’


TuTu sat down across the table. She scrutinised me for a while before she flicked me a piece of paper. I could not read under the dimly lit candles. Her voice also travelled miles before it reached my ears.


‘Do you even know how difficult it was to get here? It was such a hustle to get to the train station. But I forgot to bring my ID so I had to get a temporary one from the police station. So many trains were cancelled. I almost missed mine because I forgot my ID.’


‘You don’t have to come here if you don’t want to, TuTu. If you truly wanted to come, there is no way you would forget your ID.’


I immediately regretted what came out of my mouth. I was destroying something that belonged to me, to her, and us. I tried to make an apologetic look, but my facial muscles did not listen. Perhaps I only managed to look bitter and scornful.



‘Okay. I won’t come here anymore. I’ll leave tomorrow.’ She blinked at me and her eyes sparkled. She looks stunning under the candlelight.



‘Go on then. Say it now,’ I thought to myself, ‘Say it and I will be officially screwed, and so will this city.’


‘Why don’t you go now?’ I challenged her.


‘Sure. Just wait for me here. I’ll go up and pack my stuff.’ TuTu stared into my eyes for some time and smiled. A big smile trembled from her neck to the corners of her eyes. ‘Fuck it. I’m leaving now.’


I waited for an hour in the restaurant. Then the electricity finally went back on. Stains left by the flood were still on the wall. I felt them with my palms. They were not so damp anymore, but I could not scrub them away. The guy who took our order came to our table.


‘Is she coming back?’ he asked.


I gave it a thought and said, ‘I don’t know. Maybe not.’


I waited for a while longer. Meantime, I finished two bowls of pita bread in lamb soup and all the brown sugar pickled garlic.


I knew another flood was on its way. I crashed against the door frame while staggering out of the restaurant. Dizziness took over my head.


Then I heard a woman let out a sigh. It came from somewhere far far above. But right in front of me, another woman landed her death, smashing into the earth.