Chapter 26
the Ending
Arrived at home (now I call it HOME), I put MeiMei on the bed. But she insisted to sit up, and said to me “I just had a dream, the same dream I had for many times, that is you want to marry me.”
I sat down beside her, gently told her hand and said “this time is not a dream, it is real. I really want you to be my wife.” I pinched the back of her hand making her feel pain to prove that was not a dream but real.
MeiMei slapped on my shoulder (the first time so hard, as it symbolizes a kind of right), and then she started to cry silently, gradually burst into tears; that made my beautiful stage costume into her tears towel. When she finally calmed down, very seriously and sincerely she said to me “In fact, what you just said to me I have heard many times in my dream, but every time I answered like this: It’s better we keep this way. To live together with me I would drag you legs, for I don’t belong to your life and your world. If one day you start to dissatisfy me and kick me out from your house, I’d rather stay outside of your door watching you, to feel to be with you, which would be enough for me. I can wait until you are old and return to your root, just like your father lying in bed, no energy to kick, I might then come into your house looking after you…”
“You have no idea if people treat you good or bad, and you give me no face.” I interrupted her and yelled, to cover my deeply moved heart. Indeed, MeiMei’s answer was unexpected. In fact, In addition to her “surprised, pleasantly surprised” I did not imagine there would be other answers.
I opened the refrigerator and drank some ice water to cool myself down. Despite of her touching words, rejected by MeiMei was indeed a huge losing of face, particularly when I propose to her in front of mass in the public! But to think about it rationally, what MeiMei said had her good reasons.
Again I sat down bedside MeiMei, took a good look at her, and I never looked at her this way. Ah, MeiMei was a little far from pretty, in fact, may be she had never been pretty, though by no means ugly. However, pretty or not, that was only the first impression. When people get to know each other and get used how one looks, pretty of not would be not important anymore.
Looking at me dumbfounded MeiMei suggested “we should go to the hospital to see your father now.”
“Well, then, let’s go.” I responded only in words, but not in action.
Father has passed away. A dead person, without soul and feeling, is only a pile of substance. However, until today, I still could not find an accurate explanation of why I did not go to the hospital to see my father’s remain for the last sight?
The date of father’s memorial service could not be decided easily due to various problems, such as the specification of the memorial service level issues; the eulogy at father’s political evaluation; who should be invited to the memorial service; who should be the memorial service host and who was going to read the memorial letter… As the saying goes, when people die everything finishes, but our Chinese people, especially the Chinese Communist Party member who are on behalf of the Chinese people, even being dead, could not get away from those complicated issues.
As a Norwegian citizen, I borrowed a very ridiculous international excuse as “That is an internal affair of your country, and I as a foreigner should not interfere” got me out of all the trouble.
The whole family was busy with father’s memorial service. Again only MeiMei saw me off at the airport, the same as I went abroad for the first time many years ago.
This time I came back to my homeland, I lost my father, and did not get my wife, the feeling of loss of heart was not easy to tell. Through the large glass of the waiting room I said some very sad words “Father is gone; no one needs me anymore, do I have a reason to come back again?”
MeiMei smiled lightly, said something casually but confidently “I guarantee you will come back, because I have something that would become the best reason for you to come back, often.”
I asked “What thing that could be?”
MeiMei “It is not exactly a thing.”
I asked again “What is that? If not a thing?”
MeiMei “a bit like a hostages.”
I was totally puzzled “a hostages?” What do you mean?|
MeiMei “I really can’t tell you about it anymore, by the meantime.”
I got very inpatient “Please do not beat around the bush, tell me what is that thing, if it is not a thing, just show me.”
MeiMei straightened her stomach and pushed my back a little, said “It is not visible yet, but after a few months the thing will show up. So when you come back next time I guarantee you will see the little thing.”
Waiting room is very noisy, audio speakers and various forms of information repeated played. Therefore I did not pay very close attention to what MeiMei said to me, especially the hidden profound implication of her words.
I bid farewell to MeiMei, bid farewell to home, once again boarded the flight to Norway. Just moment into the cabin I suddenly asked myself a question “what is the reason I go to Norway again?”
However, if not Norway where else should I go? When I gave up my citizenship as a Chinese national, wherever I go on this earth is not a foreign country?
My flight was on the air. I closed my eyes. My mind conjured up with such a song, a song I never heard before. That song went like this:
I must to hold the tears that I could not hold;
I must stop thinking the love that I could not stop thinking;
To tell you my love, my love to you;
Even though I know you’re in different sphere that you can not hear, can not hear,
But I will not end my telling, forever, forever.
Because it is true love, a lifetime only once that kind of love…
I suddenly opened my eyes and looked out from the window to see if my father was there? After a while I closed my eyes again, and felt a complete peace in my heart. Because, one day, I will carry my violin, without aircraft I would be in the sky. By that time, I will be somewhere meeting my father again. By then I would told him the story my life decades after that! But what a story that could be I did not know yet. But one thing I know for sure, that is I must follow God, or fate, to complete the rest of my mission, the essential and the most difficult part of that mission is:
To live as a good man.
24, Epilogue
After I left China a week later father’s memorial service was finally held. My brother Danjin spoke on behalf of our family. In his speech he repeatedly thanked the socialist country. I have been wondering the contents that worth thank.
MeiMei attended the memorial service as a family member of ours. She used the 200 RMB that my parents gave to me when I went abroad the first time, that 200 RMB my father saved from his cigarette for many years, to have bought a bunch of flowers dedicated to my father on my name. MeiMei also put the remains of my white violin in the wreckage by the side of my father and being cremated together.
My violin became smoke, with father’s soul, floated into the infinite time and space.
After I was back to Norway for about half a year I received a letter from MeiMei asking me to return to my hometown Changsha as soon as I could. In the letter she also asked me to help her by marry her, at least for a year. She wrote “In fact, not help me, but to help another person to get folk register. (by that time children from unmarried couple could not get national folk register. Those children were call ‘black people’ in China. People without folk register would have great difficult to go to school, find job, get married etc) followed I received an international call from my brother Danjin congratulating the birth of my daughter (4000gran).
I have visited my first wife DongYa’s mother twice in Shanghai. According to her mother some years after divorce with me DongYa remarried, but no children. It reminded me of that year when I accompanied her to do abortion out of the hospital what she extremely painful swore to me “I will never have child again.”
My Norwegian ex-wife Marianne sold our apartment in Oslo, using her part of the money bought a small house in a remote place outside of Oslo. She must have concentrated all her heart, soul and mind doing theology studies. Never heard she got remarried or has children.
Jiang Langsha after out of China became an influential net writer. Apart from many works in Chinese, he also writes in English. Just recently I received a mail from him telling me he had just completed a biography titled “my father” in English version, and ready to be published.
Uncle Feng self-built small shed as an illegal construction was forced to demolition. He hid in an abandoned room at a construction site, moved constantly from place to place; no one knows how many times they had moved. For elderly age and sickness Uncle Feng finally passed away. People could only assume XiaoLin, the vegetable girl, without Uncle Feng’s care she starved to death a few days later after Uncle Feng’s death.
After many twists and turns I finally found the XiaoLin Uncle’s leather envelope that led to all the tragedies. I returned the envelope to XiaoLin’s Aunt who was at the edge of her life. XiaoLin Aunt looked at the envelope, first burst into tears, and then she laughed. She opened the envelope in front of me. Guess what was hidden in the envelope that they wouldn’t let anyone see? It was just a wedding photo of XiaoLin’s Aunt with her husband. This was all! (But during the Cultural Revolution if the phone be seen, they could be in big trouble. Or they just wanted to keep the photo for themselves, not to let others to see or to destroy.)
Ma XiaoMao immigrated to Japan. She married a Japanese man 30 years older than her. To find such a man as old as her father to marry, the purpose was obvious. (To marry of convenience) But unexpectedly after lived together with her husband she fell in love with the father aged husband, and together they have a handsome son. Now XiaoMao is working full time in a company to earn money for the family during the day, and taking care of the old and young in the evening, to have very busy but happy life.
Our school mate Flute Chen came back to Changsha from Xinjiang with his child (the child looked like his Xinjiang mother but not him). He is selling smoked mutton in the street. He was trying hard to get the benefit from the government that they think they should get as members of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (it was said a kind of part the Chinese army. The truth is uncertain) he was one of the petitioners went to Beijing, but was recaptured each time. Though I offered my help to him several times, but was refused each time. Finally, in order to put his child to school Flute Chen accepted my private loan, together with other money sources he opened a very tiny Lanzhou noodle house.
Wang ShiYi was one of those got rich first during the reform and open-door policy was carried out. He not only bought a car, but also bought a driver's license, but very unfortunately he was killed in a car crash.
Recently my youngest brother Danfeng’s wife wanted to buy an apartment. She asked Danfeng to borrow money from me. Danfeng scolded his wife for not to have dignity, his wife scolded him back for his lack of ability of making money. After a big quarrel my brother Danfeng simply gave up his acrobatic carrier, with some help of a friend he went to London working as a cook, exactly he dreamed when he was a little boy starving to death.
My elder brother Danjin and his wife Panjie are staying at home town taking care of our mother day and night for years until recently our mother went to see my father in heaven. They now they live their lives just like the majority of compatriots in my motherland, a Chinese characterized life.
After 9 years lived in Norway I met a Japanese girl. We got married and later with her I moved to Japan. In Japan I became “especially” appreciate family value, so “special” that I established a “big” family in Nagoya. What about the “big” family? As it is composed of four small families, my 6 children with four Japanese women. Am I a play boy (man), no, not at all, we all know to play around no need to make children. You will find out in my third autobiography called “My Children and Their Mothers”.
About my life in Australia and Norway, there is another autobiography called “the Sage, Scholar and Prostitute”
Daniel Chenglish (JiuGe)
Nagoya, Japan
Disclaimer: This is regarded as literature work. The time and place of events and characters’ names in the book are fictional. If there is similarity with the facts, should be purely coincidental.
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