Wild Fire Bids Farewell To Summer Chapter 19

After the white dew

The barbed wire fence on the northern slope of Greencen Mountain appears gray-white in the midday light.The rusted metal wires intersect into a diamond-shaped grid, and the barbed wire on the top rusts to reddish brown, the same color as blood after oxidation.

Wei Zhiheng stood in front of the net, holding a painting box in his left hand. The belt buckle dug into the hollow of his shoulder, leaving a red mark under his collarbone.He looked up and saw that the net was about two meters high. The edges were sharp and pointed upward.

Huang Jinye squatted under the gap.The black gym shorts have frayed edges, exposing white fibers.The notches were cut by previous students and lifted up to form a triangular channel with sharp broken edges.

He grasped the wire at the upper edge of the gap with his right hand, his palm pressed against the rusted metal, and the rust powder was embedded in the palm prints.He pressed down hard, the wire bent, the metal fiber broke, and there was a dry tremor.

“Yes.” Huang Jinye said.The voice was squeezed out of the chest, hoarse as the vocal cords were congested after exercise.

Wei Zhiheng bent down.The painting box was stuffed through the gap first, the leather rubbed against the iron wire, and the ivory white powder was embedded in the belt buckle scratches.He lay down, his body close to the ground, and crawled out of the gap.The broken end of the wire was very close to the back of the neck. The metal was cold against the skin, and the cold broken end pointed upward.

The ground was wet soil, mixed with rotten leaves, with a fishy-sweet smell and the smell of bleeding gums.Wei Zhiheng put his right hand on the ground, and a sharp stone or limestone fragment was pressed into the palm of his hand, which stung.He tried to hold himself up, his arms were shaking, his muscles were weak, his platelets were low, and his capillaries were fragile.

Huang Jinye grabbed his left wrist and pulled him to his feet.When his palms came into contact, Wei Zhiheng felt hot, like a soldering iron, while his own wrist felt cold, like a corpse.The calluses on Huang Jinye’s palms rubbed against his skin, like sandpaper.

Blood seeped out from the tiger’s mouth of Huang Jinye’s right hand, dark red, flowing along the palm print to the wrist, and dripping on Wei Zhiheng’s canvas shoes – there was a pool of old stains there, traces of dried turpentine, yellowish brown, with cracks on the edges.The blood drops fell into the center of the oil stain and became darker in color, overlapping with the turpentine oil stain to form a sequence of red, yellow and brown colors.

“Hand.” Wei Zhiheng said.The voice is dry and the vocal cords make a rough sound when they rub against each other.

Huang Jinye raised his right hand.The iron wire cut three parallel scratches in the palm, from left to right, across the palm print, with a depth of about two millimeters. The edges were everted, and blood beads gushed out in series, forming red-gray mud in the palm, mixed with rust powder.

He didn’t wipe it, but just made a fist, and his nails left four crescent-shaped indentations on his palm, pressing on the largest scratch.The pain was sharp, but he didn’t frown. He just retracted his jaw and tightened the side muscles of his neck.

The two walked south along the dirt road at the foot of the mountain, passing through the eucalyptus forest.The friction of eucalyptus leaves makes a rustling sound, which is high-frequency and rubs against the eardrums.The fallen leaves on the ground are about five centimeters thick. They collapse when stepped on, making a muffled sound, fibers break, and gas is squeezed out from between the leaf layers.

Wei Zhiheng’s right hand hovered by his side, his fingers spread out and his joints stiff.The painting box hit the hip bone, making a thumping sound, the rhythm was synchronized with the heartbeat, but slower than the heartbeat.

Fourteen minutes later, we arrived at the Chengjiang embankment.The concrete embankment is full of cracks, weeds grow out of the cracks, and the grass leaves turn yellow.The beach below the embankment is gray-white, with coarse sand, the product of limestone weathering.

The river forms a backwater bay here. The water flow is slow and the water surface is dark green. The underground river that swallows the skylight in the upper reaches gushes out. The water temperature is 16°C, forming a temperature difference with the air. White mist rises from the water surface, and the constant temperature gas exchange is 16°C.

Huang Jinye walked towards the gap in the embankment.The barbed wire fence is interrupted here, revealing a steep slope downwards, with gravel mixed with soil, and the slope is about 60 degrees.He stepped down first, stepping firmly on a protruding limestone with his right foot, then slid down with his left foot, his knees bent, and water sloshed in the joint cavity.

He stood firm, turned around, stretched out his left hand, and hovered in the air, his fingers spread out and the joints stiff.

Wei Zhiheng handed over the painting box.Huang Jinye took it, and it was heavy and stuck into the hollow of his shoulder.He put the painting box at his feet and reached out to pick up Wei Zhiheng.Wei Zhiheng slid down on his stomach. The fabric of his school uniform pants rubbed against the soil, and the fibers broke, making a dry sound.

Huang Jinye grabbed his left wrist and pulled him to stand still.The two men’s wrists touched, and Huang Jinye’s tiger’s mouth wound opened again. Blood stained Wei Zhiheng’s sleeves, and dark red spots spread on the white cloth.

The skylight is at the end of the embankment.The shaft is thirty meters in diameter and bottomless. The edges are covered with ferns, the leaves are dark green, and there are sporangia and brown dots on the back.

The well wall is exposed limestone, gray-white, with clear longitudinal bedding and traces of sedimentation.The underground river flows through the bottom, and the sound of the water is roaring, low, and stable in frequency, about sixty times per minute, synchronized with the heartbeat, but slower than the heartbeat.

Wei Zhiheng stood at the edge of the shaft.The cold wind blows upward from the bottom, and the constant temperature gas of 16°C, with the fishy sweetness of the underground river, blows his hair, and the hair strands rub against the skin of his cheeks, feeling bumpy and braille-like.

He stared at the dark green water, and there was a fixed black shadow in the upper left corner of his vision, a retinal hemorrhage spot as big as a pinhead that appeared three days ago.The black shadow spread on the surface of the shaft, swallowing half of his finger, making it impossible for him to determine the exact boundary of the water.

He opened the painting box.The box contained quarto boards, Marley paint boxes, and a bottle of turpentine packed in mineral water bottles.The bottle is transparent, with one-third of the liquid level remaining, which is light yellow. There is brown pigment residue at the bottom of the bottle, which sinks to the bottom when it is still.

He took out the palette, a white porcelain plate with brown stains on the edges, color deposits that could not be washed away before, forming a ring shape and feeling rough to the touch.

He started mixing colors.Squeeze out a tube of titanium white, and the paste will pile up on the palette, with a tapered top and a shiny surface.Another tube of ultramarine was squeezed out, and there was a slight hissing sound as the paste poured out of the tube.He added water and stirred with a wolf brush.The tip of the pen rotates on the porcelain plate, and the paint forms a swirl in the rotation.

But the color is wrong – when ultramarine blue is mixed with titanium white, it should appear a clear gray-blue, but now it appears a turbid cement gray, the same color as the mixture in the stairwell in Chapter 1.

He misperceived: he saw the paint as the spread of bleeding spots on his retina, thinking that the color itself was diseased.He blinked, the color still muddy, the texture of grout.He continued to add water, diluting it, but the gray became darker, sickly, artificial and chemical.

Huang Jinye stood two meters behind him.In his right hand, he held an old SLR camera with a black body and a silver lens. The weight rested on the palm of his hand.He did not take a picture of the shaft, but adjusted the focus to focus on Wei Zhiheng’s back.

In the viewfinder, Wei Zhiheng’s shoulder blades protrude, forming two vertical shadows, which are the same structure as the limestone layer. The white shirt is blown by the wind and sticks to his back. The cloth is transparent, revealing the purple blood vessels under the skin, branching, bulging, and mesh-like.

Wei Zhiheng started painting.Hold the pen in your left hand, with your wrist hanging in the air, and your elbow resting on the edge of the painting box as a fulcrum.The tip of the pen touches the paper, which is quarto sketch paper and has a grainy surface.He drew the outline of the shaft, the lines trembling—hands unsteady, blood low, muscles weak, control lost.The lines on the paper are skewed and irregularly wavy, inconsistent with the straight rock walls of the shaft.

He painted water colors.The cement gray paint spreads on the paper, forming muddy blocks of color with blurred boundaries.He tried to capture the dark green texture, but the pen tip refused to obey, and the color accumulated on the paper, forming patchy stains and purpura bleeding under the skin.He pressed harder, the pen tip pressing into the paper, leaving depressions in the fibers, and the paint seeped into the depressions, forming dark grooves.

“The painting is wrong.” Wei Zhiheng said.The voice is dry and squeezed out of the throat.

He drew a shaft, but the image presented on paper was more like a huge wound, with cement-gray edges, an inky black center, and bruises after bone marrow puncture.He stopped applying and looked at the muddy area without continuing to modify it.Mistakes are also part of the record, physical evidence of the state of the hand.

Huang Jinye approached.The steps are heavy and light, heavy on the right and light on the left. When the knees are bent, they make a dry friction sound.He stood beside Wei Zhiheng, side by side, facing the shaft, with fifty centimeters between them.

He raised the camera, not to take pictures of the scenery, but to point it at Wei Zhiheng’s face.The camera focused, and Wei Zhiheng’s side face was clearly visible in the viewfinder, while the shaft behind him faded into a blur of dark green, with its edges blending into the folds of Wei’s shirt.

Wei Zhiheng turned his head.His eyes were focused on the lens, and his pupils shrank slowly in the light, appearing light red, the same color as the blood stains on the limestone specimen in Chapter 1.He looked at the camera and misperceived it: he saw the black lens as the opening of the shaft, and as his own bleeding retina.

“There is a river in my body that is changing its course.” Wei Zhiheng said.The voice was calm, not a confession, but a description of the condition, a geological metaphor.He was referring to the fact that the blood in the bone marrow cavity originally flowed in an orderly manner in the veins, but is now occupied by malignant cells. It changes its course like an underground river, breaks through the rock formations, and accumulates in places where it should not be, forming purpura and bleeding points.

Huang Jinye did not respond.His index finger hovered over the shutter button, stopping three millimeters away from the button.

Stop action.

The fingers are hanging, the joints are stiff, and there is white stone powder on the edge of the nail plate.He adjusted the focus and moved from Wei Zhiheng’s eyes to his lips. They were dry and cracked. There was a crack in the center of the lower lip and white skin flakes on the edge.Moving to his right hand, it hangs down by his side. The fingernails are tinged with light purple, and there are purple ink embedded under the nail bed, and the edges are white.

He pressed the shutter.Mechanical shutter closes, metal hits, time slices.What the camera recorded was not the scenery of the shaft, but Wei Zhiheng’s face – pale, with blue-black shadows under his eyes, and light red pupils, a piece of weathering limestone.

Wei Zhiheng turned his head and continued to look at the shaft.The cold wind continued to blow upward, blowing upward, blowing his hair and rubbing his cheeks.He smelled the smell of the underground river, fishy sweetness, rust, rotten apples, and the smell of ketoacidosis emanating from himself, deposited on his collar, blown away by the wind, and mixed with the 16°C constant temperature of the underground river.

He took out the limestone specimen from the side pocket of his painting box.The piece in Chapter 1, ivory white with gray flint bands, flat base and sharp edges.He tightened his grip, and the edge cut into his palm, stinging, and blood seeped out from his palm, mixing with the old blood on the stone to form new red-gray mud.The stone became heavy, blood seeped into the pores, and the color changed from ivory to pink.

He raised the stone to his eyes and compared it with the shaft.The chert bands of the limestone are parallel to the longitudinal bedding of the shaft walls. They are all deposition, all compression, and both sequences of time.His blood formed a new layer of sediment on the surface of the stone, covering the brown-red bloodstain left in Chapter 1, and the layers were superimposed.

“Does it look like it?” Wei Zhiheng said.Not a question.

Huang Jinye put down the camera.The weight of the camera disappears from the palm of the hand, leaving an indentation, white, deep in the palm print.He stretched out his right hand, and the three scratches at the tiger’s mouth had coagulated blood, forming dark red scabs that intersected with the palm prints and formed a cross.He pinched the piece of limestone between his thumb and forefinger and pulled it away from Wei Zhiheng’s hand.When the fingertips touch the blood on the surface of the stone, it feels warm and sticky.

He did not throw it away, but held the stone in his palm and made contact with Wei Zhiheng’s blood.The blood of the two people mixed on the surface of the stone, yellow was bright red, and Wei was dark red. The platelets were low, and the blood was dark in color, forming a color difference.He tightened his grip, leaving indentations with his nails on his palms, pressing against the wound, causing a sharp sting.

“It’s not like that,” Huang Jinye said.The voice is hoarse and rough.He means that the stone is not like a shaft, or that a shaft is not like a body, or that a body is not like a river.He had no explanation.

Wei Zhiheng bent down and picked up a piece of gravel from the ground.Limestone fragments, sharp-edged and off-white, stung his ankles.He handed it to Huang Jinye, holding it with his fingers and hanging it in mid-air.

Huang Jinye reached out to pick it up, his fingertips touched the edge of the fragment, and Wei Zhiheng let go of his fingers.The fragments fell vertically, but Huang Jinye failed to catch them. The fragments hit the instep, causing the fabric of the canvas shoes to dent and cause pain.

Huang Jinye bent down and picked it up again.This time he held it tightly, and the edge of the fragment cut the scabbed tiger’s mouth, and new blood gushes out and mixes with the old blood.He held it tight for three seconds, then let go, letting the stone roll back to the ground, hitting the limestone with a dull sound that contrasted with the roar of the underground river.

Wei Zhiheng watched the bloody stone roll down, rolled to the edge of the shaft, stopped, and was about to fall, but stopped again.He misperceived: he saw the stone as the river changing its course in his body, as the retina that was about to detach, and as the blood dripping on the steps in Chapter 1, which was oxidizing and turning from bright red to dark brown.

He turned around and picked up the painting box.The knees rubbed together, making a dry sound.He walked towards the way he had come, walking slowly and landing with his right heel first, making a dull impact.He didn’t look back, his right hand hung by his side, blood dripping from his fingertips, leaving dark red spots on his trouser legs.

Huang Jinye stayed where he was.He raised his camera and took one last picture – not the shaft, not Wei Zhiheng’s back, but the limestone fragments that rolled down the edge of the shaft, bloody and gray, deposited on the edge.He adjusted the focus, aimed at the stone, blurred the background, and pressed the shutter.

Stop action.

My finger hovered over the shutter button, stopping three millimeters away from the button without moving.Until the sound of Wei Zhiheng’s footsteps faded away, out-of-time with the roar of the underground river, forming an irregular rhythm, until the sound disappeared into the rustling of the eucalyptus forest.