The Lesson Before I Quit Chapter 4

Die quickly...trouble! Yi won't let you die.

He complained like this on the twelfth floor. Who "won't let"? Destiny? "Destiny is very delicate." This is what he wrote. With his own gradual extinction, he taught me what death is: he actually doesn’t know. He didn’t know the machine room, how he held his face high and took a hard breath. He didn’t know that while I was breathing, I was writing his obituary in Beijing. He didn’t know that a dozen young people were waiting outside the door to see him every day. The next day, ten On February 16, I rushed to attend the awards ceremony held by Southern People Weekly in Beijing. They informed me in advance: Among the fifty "Charming People of the Year" this year, Michael Mu was listed - a pitiful award. That breath of devotion is the glory and charm of a person. After taking the stage, I asked everyone: "Who knows Michael Mu? Who has read him?" All the middle-aged people were silent, except for the reporter from "Southern People Weekly" Deputy Editor Yang Zi, but dozens of young people raised their hands. During the six years since my husband returned to China, I gave lectures at universities in various places. Every time, at least one young man stood up and asked:

"Can you tell me about Mr. Michael Mu? What book is he writing recently?"

I will thank the young man who asked the question, but I will not answer it. Except for that recommendation six years ago, I don’t mention Michael Mu in public. Looking at the young people hiding in the shadows of the venue, I will not say that I started writing Michael Mu’s obituary last night, nor will I say that I was in the machine room yesterday afternoon.

On December 17, 18, and 19, Dylan continuously reported the same situation: "Don't worry, Mr. Charles, he seems to be asleep, very calm." He and I witnessed Mr.'s breathing that day side by side. Lie to me, comfort me. It’s almost the end of the year, and every thought makes me imagine that my husband may sleep until the Spring Festival. Knowledge that comes from unknown sources: unconscious patients sometimes sleep quietly for months, half a year, or even longer. "Like falling asleep", that's good. I can't tell if this is hope or fantasy. My definite memory is of the machine room: I began to trust it and turned from it to imagination, imagining that Mr.'s life, sustained by the machine, might be extended.

But another thought came to him immediately: Did the husband really lose consciousness completely, "as if he was asleep"? ! If he wakes up in the middle of the night, becomes conscious for a moment, and finds himself imprisoned, who will he tell? Does he have the strength to say it?

With each stab, this thought quickly escapes. As the saying goes, if you don't think about it, you don't dare to think about it.

In the second half of the year, three activities arranged in Shanghai have been fully booked, and I can go to Tongxiang as soon as they are over. I became happy: I have never been to Wuzhen so intensively in the past six years, and now it feels like my hometown. What am I doing on the 20th? It took me a long time to remember that I had canceled a joint exhibition with two old friends and went to a bookstore to sign albums at dusk. We had dinner together at night, talking and laughing, having local chicken soup in earthen pots, with goose-yellow chicken fat floating on the surface of the soup---Wuzhen Master Shen's chicken soup was also oily and crystal clear, with winter bamboo shoots and ham---between the banquet and the small The caller said on the phone: "It's still as if I'm asleep, Mr. Charles, don't worry." It was already late at night when I got home. The next morning, on the 21st, I was woken up by Liu Ruilin, the owner of the publishing house, calling: "Mr. is dead."

The weather was wonderful. It’s rare for Beijing to have clear weather. I'm not shocked, and it doesn't matter if I believe it or not---In the descriptions I've read, people who hear bad news always "don't believe their ears"---Somewhere deep in their hearts , at that moment, there was a sound, like a muffled knock, not very heavy, not painful, just a blow... I got up and called Dylan, and he said, yes. I like that he always speaks calmly. He said they were woken up in the middle of the night and rushed over. According to the doctor's records, the time of death was three o'clock in the morning. Boss Liu’s information came from a Weibo post posted by a Wuzhen post office employee early in the morning, so she asked me for confirmation. In the next few hours, dozens of text messages came in one after another, comforting me and asking me to express my condolences. I didn’t know how to save an account, so I didn’t know who it was.

The busyness begins. The first step is to fill in the date in the obituary blank and send it out. It has been agreed in advance that the publisher and Wuzhen will announce it at the same time. After that, I confirmed with Xiang Hong: The living room on the second floor of Wanqing Xiaozhu will immediately start decorating the mourning hall. The funeral and memorial service are scheduled for the 24th... I booked a flight to Hangzhou on the 22nd and notified the event in Shanghai. All cancelled, I called the Michael Mu readers and commentators I know...

funeral. I've never done a funeral. There should be music at the funeral. At night, I hurriedly rummaged through the piles of discs in the studio and tried to listen to the movement I wanted to choose. I remembered that I hadn’t listened to music for a long time. How nice it sounds and how right it is! In the shimmering melody of the first piece of Bach's "Equal Temperament", I clearly saw my husband lying there---Why is it the first piece of "Equal Temperament"---Too alright! bach! And Samuel Barber’s Adagio! And the anxiety and despair of the eighth movement of Mozart's Requiem... Sir will agree. I don't care whether he agrees or not. There is also the third movement of Beethoven's "String Quartet No. 135". In the 1980s, my husband mentioned this passage again and again. I had never heard of it at that time. Later, I finally bought it and asked him to come. He listened silently for a quarter of an hour, obviously hiding his secrets that he did not want to say, and did not speak for a long time. The trouble is choosing Chopin. My husband likes Chopin. I have the complete works of Rubinstein, but it took me a long time to find them. At the same time, other pieces of music that were being played - it seemed to be Brahms - resounded through the studio, with the music's own logic and that Brutal energy, roaring forward. For a moment I forgot that my husband was dead. The memory of the intensive care unit of Tongxiang Hospital was easily overturned, covered, and surpassed by music, but then I thought - as if it was the first time I thought of it - Bach and Beethoven are also dead, long dead. .

Late at night, I spread out rice paper and used a brush to copy couplets written by my husband. This is something I have never done before. I spread it on the floor and read it, sorting out the paper and rewriting a particularly bad stroke. Select two pairs that are slightly more attractive and prepare them for use in Tongxiang funeral and Wuzhen mourning hall respectively. While doing this, I found that I felt no sadness at all, and even felt proud of myself, just like when I usually draw and write. Hu Lancheng described how he chose a coffin for his deceased wife. During the transportation, he boasted to the villagers about the quality of the coffin and made him froze at the mouth. I read this more than twenty years ago and was amazed at how tragic and frank this description was. It's late at night, am I also in this perverse complacency right now?

Now comes the hard part. I know, it's really impossible to describe. When I got closer to the glass cover and took a closer look at Michael Mu, it took me a long time to realize that what contained and sealed him was a long and narrow freezer.

On the 22nd, everyone became alive. Tongxiang Hospital is no longer a place of concern. After a long period of guarding, waiting, and confusion, time seems to be endless, and now everyone has something to do. When I arrived in Hangzhou in the evening, I spoke to Xiao Dai on the phone. Hearing his voice seemed to be heard in the rush of traffic: "Xiao Yang is here, Quentin Zhong and Hazel Huang are all here...Mr. Charles and I are on the way to Tongxiang..." .Meet you directly at the funeral home..."Funeral home. The word finally appeared. It gets dark. The car turned towards the outskirts of the city. When it turned along the main road, the car's lights illuminated a huge colorful archway, and then it drove into a funeral parlor that looked like the compound of a work unit. The courtyard was dark. As I walked quickly towards the lighted west side hall, I saw several young people jumping down the steps one after another from a distance. They came out and embraced me back into the small hall with dim night lights. I looked up and saw The three words "Yu Hua Pavilion" on the lintel of the small hall suddenly made me feel resentful. In the middle of the inner wall, there was a portrait of Mr. Wang surrounded by fake flowers, and tall paper wreaths lined the left and right walls. Xiang Hong, Wesley Wang, his wife and children, and Wesley Wang's young sister and husband were already there. The small hall was cold. After we shook hands and exchanged greetings, we started talking like ghosts. I didn't know what to do. After Xiang Hong reminded me, I remembered to go to the coffin and salute in a hurry. But I don’t want any of this, I just want to see my husband as soon as possible. Going to the mourning hall and bowing are all pretense. When I was in the hospital, I just had to go straight to the bed. Where was he now?

Funeral parlors are always a scary place, and just these three words can make people feel chilly and unhappy. Of course I have heard of the morgue, and I heard that the body ceased to be human when it arrived there. The moment the car entered the dark yard, I thought that my husband had fallen here, and the muffled sound came again. ---Standing upright, I was prepared to accept the unbearable moment and followed the staff to a morgue at the end of the corridor. Unexpectedly, when asked, everyone immediately lowered their voices and responded enthusiastically: "It's right here, right here." ---I still remember that sad and warm moment long after, as if a family member led you into the inner room to take a look. The person lying in bed --- At the right end of the floor-to-ceiling curtain that backs the memorial tablet, a corner has been lifted. It is obviously a position that everyone is familiar with since yesterday, and we filed in.

The light in the front hall penetrated through the curtains, and it turned out that there was a small partition here, which was dark and secluded. Everyone got out of the way, and I saw at a glance the low coffin in the middle of the ground. Inside the glass cover, it was him: shrunk so small, as small as a baby---you know for sure that that person is dead, and When you find him and see him die there with your own eyes, there are two feelings. Both feelings are indescribable. I only remember that there was a lamp shining directly on his face, but I can't remember it at the moment. Where is the small light placed?

The dull beating started again, this time not all at once, but evenly, one after another, gradually getting stronger and stronger. After taking a few steps to approach the coffin, I leaned close to the glass cover to look. I got as close as I could, so close that I could only press my forehead against the glass in order to see Michael Mu clearly. It wasn't fear and pain --- or more than that --- it was just that he was blocked in front of him: by the hard glass, by the motionlessness of this face, blocking him head-on.

His dentures had not been inserted in time, and his inturned mouth was now tightly closed, and his chin was covered with unshaven beard. A hat is not securely fastened to the top of the skull, and it is probably difficult to tuck it in from the back of the head, so that the brim of the hat tilts forward, covering the forehead and eyebrows. The collar of the black woolen coat was crossed with the gray-blue plaid scarf I was used to seeing in New York.

I stared blankly. I originally thought that the scene in the machine room was the most unbearable memory, but now I would rather my husband was still panting, flushed, and unconscious with vitality.

It's over. Irrefutable completion. Hateful glass cover. As I stared angrily, the iron grille on the inner wall of the freezer made the sound of intermittent activation of the air conditioner. Amidst the uniform sound, my husband remained motionless and motionless.

Hello! Michael Mu! How did our old friendship end up in this situation? How could it be possible for me to see clearly like it is through the glass of a supermarket shelf?

Two bright yellow and bright red silk embroidered quilts were placed inside the freezer to cover Mr. Xiang Hong explained that he couldn't find a suitable package for a while. This is the local custom... I realized afterward that the other deceased must be in the morgue. After Mr. moved in yesterday morning, the museum gave special treatment. Before the farewell ceremony, the body was kept separately on the coffin equipped with an electric freezer to show separation for viewing and to ease the grief of relatives and friends. This is really the best thing a native can do, but I suddenly got angry and shouted: "Sir, you will never follow the customs in your life."

It's about nine o'clock at night. Everyone just stood there and looked at me. The gentleman is lying flat on his back. "Always think of death." Yes, death is in the house now. I insisted on shouting that it couldn't be like this: dentures should be put on, the beard should be shaved, the hair should be combed, I don't want this hat, and take away the silk quilt---They said that the undertaker would not come until tomorrow---Then, just like making a scene at the police station when I was a teenager, I asked if this small room was the farewell hall? ! Everyone was excited: No, no, no, and then they poured out of the small hall and led me in the dark to the largest farewell hall in the museum. This hall must be about 200 square meters, because it is spacious and even colder. The workers on duty followed, pressed the switch, and rows of fluorescent lamps turned on one after another: curtains and fake flower arrays on the four walls appeared. As if the provocation failed, I calmed down.

It's ten o'clock. Where do the young people left behind sleep at night? The lights in the hall were turned off, and they disappeared into the darkness one by one, heading back to the small hall where the freezers were stored.

Half an hour later, Xiang Hong and I rushed back to Wuzhen. When the car entered the entrance of Dongzha Town, I was a little surprised: there were company cars parked outside Wanqing Xiaozhu, security guards were walking in and out, it looked like a murder scene, and a large wall with a white background and black text "Mourning Place for Mr. Michael Mu" "---It's all finished. Within two months, I stepped into unimagined scenes. The year before last, my husband was still healthy and could still walk out the door to wait for me. He was hunched over and had gray hair: I could tell by looking at his figure that he was aggrieved. He thought I was late and kept him waiting for a long time. "Oh---How was it on the road?" This was his reproach. He would be very scared if he saw the security guard walking around in front of his house tonight.

Two yellow dogs came out to greet them and jumped away immediately. The trees in the courtyard are covered with single branches of yellow chrysanthemums, and small potted plants are also lined up at regular intervals on the green brick floor on both sides of the corridor. This place is usually quiet and deserted, but now there are security guards patrolling. There is a small table for guests to sign in across the door of the dining room. A week ago, I was reading my husband's manuscript alone there. Now I look in and see that the table is surrounded by young employees who are attending the funeral; Signs indicating the direction of the mourning hall are erected at every corner, like the small signs of hotels in Wuzhen scenic spots, and are exquisitely shaped. Parked in the shadows at the corner of the stairs was the wheelchair I bought for my husband last year, folded up. Dylan said that after dinner, his husband would ask him to sit in and be pushed around in the corridor for a while, which he thought was fun, "like a child."