2016.12 写作课写的一篇形式重于内容的实验小说
One
I noticed the paper ball in a trash bin at first sight. Its shape was so unique that I almost felt I had a responsibility to take a look at what was written on it. It was a printed love letter. Not a complete one.
“It was not until I met you that I started to feel that my life had some meanings. Before I met you, all I did was sitting on the chair and counting people who came to this bookstore. I was a ship without compass. Time meant nothing to me. Everyday was the same. You entered my life and made everything different. Every day at 5pm is my festival. You enter from the side door and go directly to the shelves of philosophy books. I guess you’re a philosopher like Albert Camus because you’re just as charming as him. I know nothing about philosophy. I’m just a bored bookstore cashier who doesn’t even have a college degree. Isn’t this crazy? I don’t even know your name but I’m thinking of you all the time.
“…You didn’t come to the bookstore today. You didn’t come for the last five days. I feel you will never ever come again…”
It was really a crappy love letter, but somehow it intrigued me. It looked like an excerpt from a book, and I was sure it didn't sell well. I was not interested in the person who wrote the letter, but that charming man the author was depicting. I felt envious.
Even though I knew the chances were slim, I went to a local bookstore and asked the staff there if they happened to know what book it was. I asked those who wore glasses first because they seemed more intellectual. No one knew. Eventually I saw a woman who sat at the cashier desk. Her face looked like twenty years old but the look on her face made her twenty years older. I could never imagine doing a job that you repeated the same thing every day - for her it was probably every five minutes.
To my surprise, she was apparently very familiar with the book I was looking for.
“It was full of nonsense, a completely boring book.”
“What is it about?”
“The boring life of a boring bookstore cashier,” She sounded bitter, probably because it reminded of her own life, “the cashier should really be ashamed by this letter she wrote. Hopeless love. He will never notice her.”
“Can you please help me find that book?” The words “hopeless love” ignited me.
“Trust me. It is a waste of your time.”
“Please.” I was almost begging.
She was not willing, but raised her hand and pointed a direction. “All the way to the end. The third shelf on your left.”
Two
I started to read the book immediately after I came home. However, it was not the book I looked for. This one was about a girl who really loved reading and often visited a bookstore (strangely, the name of the bookstore “Silencio” was the same as the local bookstore I went to). She met this middle-aged man and they quickly fell in love. They shared the same interests in literature and philosophy. They liked existentialism and most importantly, they both thought Camus’ hairline was too high. Like many girls in relationships, the main character made a most common mistake: she wanted this relationship to last. The man finally had to confess to her he was already married.
The last page of the story was ripped off. I was anxious to find out the ending and went back to the Silencio bookstore the next day. The cashier was not there. I went straight to the shelf where I found the book yesterday. It was a terror to find that all the copies of this story lose the last one pages.
“Isn’t it strange?” A woman’s voice whispered in my ear. I turned around and saw a gorgeous young woman. Her black fedora hat caught my attention right away: it had a raven specimen on it. “I have a complete copy of it. In my home. Do you want to go with me?” Her smile was enchanting and I didn’t even remember how I ended up in her apartment.
While she was taking a shower, I found a manuscript in a drawer of her bedroom. I flipped through the pages and quickly realized it was the book about the girl and the man who she had an affair with. I couldn’t wait to see the last page:
“Blood is streaming down his head like a blossoming scarlet dahlia. Spring…My spring has finally come! A rose for Emily! Budda says the hope to hold on to anything forever is hopeless because everything keeps changing. Now, let him go fuck himself. I’ve conquered Budda. I can be with my loved one forever and ever until I’m sick of it. Oh, God. Taste the blood. Taste it! Sweet and sour cranberry jelly...Don’t punish me. Don’t please! I’m just a poor girl nobody loves me. Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!”
The current tense really creeped me out. The handwriting became more and more illegible until a point I could barely read it.
“Hello, my dear. I found the page you want.” I turned around and the woman was leaning against the door. “You like that book I wrote?”
“What book?” I was so terrified that my body almost froze. I wanted to run away but I couldn’t.
“Anyway, take this.” She handed me a printed page that seemed to be ripped off from a book. “This is the ending of the book you were looking for. It has been my treasure but I feel I no longer need it.”
I ran to the door like a deserter and strangely, she didn’t follow. Several seconds after I left the apartment, I heard a gunshot.
I could feel there was another person in her place.
Three
When I got home, I realized I still had that page the woman gave me in my hand, which now was soaked with sweat. After making sure I’d locked all the windows and doors, I sat down and started to read it:
“The love between men and women for him always seemed too trivial. He loved people, but every time his love for those women extinguished right after he entered relationships with them. There had been thirteen women, or fourteen. He didn’t quite remember. He thought each of them was good, and good in different ways. He definitely liked them, but he didn’t necessarily love them. His wife, the woman who had borne him three lovely children, was a very good woman as well. The dishes she washed were always like those that people just bought from the stores. He was proud of this strength of himself – finding the good in every woman he met, and deep in his heart, he always believed it would be a great waste if he stayed with the same person all his life.
“Today, just as always, he went to the Silencio bookstore after the philosophy class he taught in a university. When he entered the philosophy books area which had been a home to him, a young woman caught his attention. She was very beautiful, but he had met tons of beautiful women in his life. She was reading Sartre’s Being and Nothingness, but he had also encountered many smart and talented women before. The very little thing that had triggered his interest was the hat she was wearing - a black fedora hat. Right above it was a dead raven. Raven was always a sexy symbol for him, because it stood for death. For a philosopher, nothing was more charming and sexier than these two concepts: existence and death.”
It was apparently not the same book that strange woman had written.
The next day, I went to the bookstore and the cashier was there again. She asked me how was the book and I said it was no longer important to me. I gave her the page about the philosopher and asked her whether she knew what book this was.
“Why are you always looking for books that will harm your souls?” She was outrageously angry, “A man who thinks he can be irresponsible because he has fame and a beautiful face?”
“You’ve read it before?” This plain cashier surprised me for the second time.
“Fifteen chapters about fifteen women in his life,” she sighed, “let me recommend you something better, something that can purify your soul.” She took out a book from the counter.
Four & Five
The book was called First Love. I thought with a cliché title like this, the content should be dull as hell. However, no one would ever believe a book about a philosopher’s daughter’s first love with a young man would make me so depressed. I lied in bed for a week and almost ate nothing. On the seventh day, I called her – the author of the book. I had known her for a long time.
“I saw the book. Why did you leave the last page blank?”
She replied after a short period of silence, “so it can have a perfect ending.”
“No it is not the perfect ending!” I hanged up and started to cry.
I rose from the bed and took a small and unnoticeable book out of the shelf. The title was The Memoir of Mr. Miss and the author’s name was “me”. I ripped off the page which should had been the perfect ending.
“Our platonic love went on really well until she mentioned she hoped one day she could marry me and have children with me. I told her we were still young and there were plenty of possibilities awaiting us.
“Only I knew it was just an excuse.
“I contacted a friend of mine who was a doctor and he referred me to another doctor who was very experienced in sex reassignment surgeries.
“‘You know what? If I meet you on the street, I will never think you’re actually a woman.’ She was astounded when she met me at our first appointment.
“‘This should be done secretly and I couldn’t let her know.’ I looked at her.”
To my readers: If you are curious what the last page of First Love should be, check out Katy Perry’s music video Ur So Gay. You’re right: The philosopher’s daughter finally found out her first love didn’t have a johnson. Life is absurd and unintelligible. Worthy to be a classic.
网友评论