The Complete Works of Xu Zhimo's Classical Prose

Chapter 6 Catching Duckweed on the Edge of Autumn Dream (5)
Ah, Moscow!How many troubled cities!Rome is a dilapidated old dream, you go there if you love dreams; New York is the palace of Mammon, you go if you beg for money; Civilized you go.But Moscow?There are no glorious monuments here, but there are near-stained blood; there are no prosperous illusions, but mottled temples; there is no warm sunshine, but muddy streets; there is no joy of humanity, but great terror, darkness, and cruelty. , The implication of nothingness, you stand on the dark sparrow hill, and you flow on the half-frozen Moscow River.In the twenty centuries of roaming in the future, Moscow is the compass leading the way. In the course of future civilization changes, Moscow is the symbol of the times. Among the rocks; the archway in Moscow in the future is among the bones of civilization and the bright flesh and blood of human beings.Moscow, gather your great destructive geniuses, with fire in one hand and murderous knife in the other, and finish your work early, so that the descendants of servile human beings will come more and more, like They go to Rome now, to the edge of this dark sparrow hill, worship your archway, commemorate your laborers, and sing praises of your immortality!
This is a speck of mixed feelings in my heart when I walked around the kremlin on the first day in Moscow. The car arrived at [-]:[-] in the morning. The forest I passed the previous day was probably in the Vladimir area. Most of it was destroyed by the war over the past few years. Hundreds of years old pine trees are only burnt or scraped remains lying in the snow. How many mutilated human bodies are hidden underneath, and how much bright red blood is frozen? Thanks to Bai Xue every year, he has come to fill up the ravines on the ground and cover the traces of human violence, so as to save sentimental poets from scrutinizing. Before arriving in Moscow, it is indeed a relevant introduction. You traveled all the way through this white and untouched vastness of Siberia, and occasionally saw the life of Russians here and there, a life of hardship, silence, and patience; you also saw the terrain here. You have tasted the unique characteristics of the majestic mountains beside Lake Baikal, the vast and serious forests of the Urals, and you have tasted the unusually cold and sharp air here, which penetrates your trachea like a steel wire, forcing your sobriety and your thoughts to respond. You have to undergo a powerful scrubbing, your nerves are stabbed with a novelty, the spirituality you brought from your country is called lazy, careless, stubborn, dirty, and all kinds of depraved habits are bound, oppressed, and blocked, You should feel some motivation for liberation, and you should feel a little refreshed when your eyes are clouded by fame, profit, and sex karma. Tell them to open up and open up a little. The future is promising, and you should see it. There are many things, even if it is not the absolute nourishment of your soul, at least it is a stimulant, a strong sex injection to prevent drowsiness!
Therefore wake up!Your heart; open!Your eyes: You have arrived in Russia, you have arrived in Moscow, a burning blood-red city in a circle of snow-covered land thousands of miles north of the Niepah River, east of the Baltic Sea, west of the Bering Strait, south of the Arctic Ocean!

The first thing to burn in this fire is the original Russia, despotic, aristocratic, extravagant, obscene, ancien regimv are all gone, ladies with long skirts, gilded carriages, snuff bottles Chaogui, all the descendants of hunting suits are gone, all the societies in Tolstoy and Turgenieve’s novels are gone, they have not disappeared, in Paris, in Poland, in New York, in Rome, if you meet some countess What is the owner of Vsky or Viscountess, that is, the refugees who were burned away by the fire, and they are unwilling to mention Russia.They will tell you that Russia is not their country now, it is taken by the devil (so the angels had to flee)!Russian culture is exhausted, and now a group of people living abroad, such as poets and artists, try their best to represent the spirit of the Slavs.If they talk to you speculatively, they will tell you the tragic history of how they suffered, how they fled, what happened to their original marble village, and they have a young niece who called them when they were in trouble. What happened... But they hoped that the day was near and the robbers were out of luck.For God is just, though...

Of course you did not come to Moscow to see the old Russian culture, but there may not be a "new culture" here, which is your country's patent; what you come here to see, you listen to me.

You look up to the sky first.The blue sky is invisible, and the sky is just misty and half-frozen clouds. This day (as I saw it) is indeed a sad and mournful sky; the sun also shines occasionally, but it only shows up weakly in the gaps of the clouds. It disappeared again, as if a patient in Louju occasionally watched the street through the window screens.

Now look down.Cursed are the streets of Moscow in this March.It is also true that the ground is covered with snow and condensed into a layer of white ground in the severe cold weather; it is also a theory that when the spring is liberated, the snow melts and flows into the river, exposing the original ground; but the weather at this time is really difficult. He will not freeze you completely, nor will he completely melt you. As soon as the day warms up, the ice and snow on the surface turn into mud, and when the wind turns, it freezes again. At the same time, the rain and snow continue to fall. , they just didn't clean it up, and let him lie in this "mess", anyway, it will be clean one day! (So ​​if you go to Russia at this time, don't forget to bring rubber overshoes.)
Let’s look at the shops on the street again. The shops serve guests and customers; if Ruifuxiang’s customers are gone, Ruifuxiang will have no choice but to come to the door; the beautiful and luxurious shops here are invisible, and the most lively shops are for eating. This is probably owned by the government; but what is frightening is the market price here: I heard that women’s silk socks can also be bought, but they cost 20 and 40 yuan a pair. Seventy-five cents and one fifty cents; the four of us paid a total of 20 yuan including tax for a breakfast at the inn; and so on.

Then look at the people on the street, first look at their clothes, and then look at their faces.The culture of clothing here, since the aristocrats disappeared and bourgeois disappeared, of course, has been "lost"; a white shirt is hardly seen on a man's body, let alone a bright tie (one without a tie) If you want to find clothes that are barely tidy, there are few; I met a university professor, his shirt was probably his pajamas, and his coat, which looked like a mangy black dog, was probably his bed, The hair is a mass of thatch, and there is no trace of combing. Of course, the beard and hair all over the face are growing freely. We don't expect him to have a safety razor; and this gentleman is by no means an exception to the famous genre. The "qinduers" you'll get in Moscow are more or less decent; you won't be surprised if you know how they live.Mr. Wells described a group of science gentlemen in the Moscow Science Museum four or five years ago, saying that they looked like prisoners in a prison or hungry ghosts in hell.I think his comparison is not too much.I didn’t see country folks, but I didn’t think it would be too weird. Siberian country people, with yellow beards and big boots, are not much different from native Russian country people.There are many workers all over the street. There is nothing unusual about their clothes, but most of them wear Lenin badges on their lapels.Parades of elementary school students can often be seen. In the dirty streets, a group of beggar-like children in black hold red flags and beat their skin drums.There are a lot of small business stalls with baskets on the street, many of them are disabled men and old women, selling fruit, cigarettes, bread, chocolate (cannot be eaten), etc. Snacks are sold).

There are two types of girls you see on the street: one is the wives and young ladies from good people's families.There is also a kind of lesbians from the Communist Party. The difference between them is that the red scarves or red hats on their heads are not Parisian fashion (red hats), except for their demeanor and demeanor.
Everything is relative: that year when Chen Bosheng and I went from the UK to Flanders, it was a weekday, and all the people on the road were models from clothes shops and tailor shops. The tourists here are really like foreign beggars!This time in Moscow, I felt embarrassed again, not because I was dressed too badly, but because I was dressed too loosely; imagine that in such a city street, among such crowds, unluckyness is the true nature, and rags are the right thing to do. The foreigner in the big otter fur hat and the (fake) fur cloak with the sea dragon collar, didn’t act like he was singing a show, he was too far wrong, not to mention me, it was our Chinese students in Moscow (except of course the Eastern students) I also often ask my classmates to wink and say that they are "Bo Qiwa" because they are wearing Rong Changxiang or Xinji's blue serge!From this point of view, there is hope for reforming society; any habit can be broken, and any standard can be overturned.Any thought can be turned upside down, any bondage can be thrown off, and any clothes can be worn backwards... In the future, when we get tired of walking with our two feet, we might as well ask them to help us walk around in a new way. Whoever wants to stand up again is a joke, How fun!

Although strictness, haze, and stagnation are unavoidable weather in the frigid zone, the expressions of Muscovites are even more distinctly melancholy and gloomy. They don't smile when they meet, and they have little energy when they talk, as if they all have a weight on their hearts. of.

This natural smile is the most irresistible.Westerners often say that Chinese people love to laugh, and laugh much more than they do. In fact, I dare not say, but when Westerners see Chinese people’s smiles, I’m afraid that many of them are anxious, silly, meaningless smiles, which represent everything. The laughter of the answer; the Russian laughter is mostly Vodka's nervous laughter, febrile laughter, crazy laughter, Dostoyevsky's idiot laughter!That's not really a smiling, healthy and happy look.In fact, there is no need for Moscow. In the metropolises of the world, are there any places where people's expressions are natural? Dublin (the capital of Ireland), I heard it is happy, and Vienna is said to be lively, but the only place I have ever been to is Paris, which is indeed a paradise on earth, and the smiling faces there are blooming like flowers in March. , it is difficult to say otherwise.The crowds and atmosphere in New York, Chicago, Berlin, and London somewhat make you uncomfortable to watch, and often make you suspect that you have been wrongly entered into some mental hospital or "eccentric" hospital, which makes you afraid, and you wish to say goodbye as soon as possible to avoid infection.

Now there is a strange phenomenon in Moscow, I think you who have been there must have noticed that men are walking on the streets with nursing babies, which is never seen in Western Europe.This has been the case since the Soviet Union.The current law stipulates that a person cannot occupy more than one room. Needless to say, there are no servants, maids, maids, and nurses. Therefore, young couples, or men and women who live together, have to pay special attention to childbearing. Be careful, because in case the seeds are accidentally planted, the burden of this little baby will of course be entirely on the parents before the child can enter kindergarten.Let’s just think about it, you live in Beijing now, you always have at least a few houses to live in, at least there is always an old lady to take care of you, you still often think that this or that is not satisfactory!But if one day Moscow’s rules come to our Beijing, then you have to obediently give up your house and let the government assign you to live in the East Flower Hall or the West Flower Hall, and you and your wife will have to do something else People, you have to wipe the table by yourself, sweep the floor by yourself, cook the food by yourself, wash the clothes by yourself, and take care of the small things by yourself. Sometimes if you and your wife want to go for a walk together in the afternoon, you are always embarrassed to lock the little one. In the house, you have to take it away, and you have no money to buy a cart, and you are too embarrassed to burden your wife (the relationship between you and your wife will be better at that time, I dare to predict!) In the end, only the master held it by himself. But this man is actually not used to holding a child, and he often doesn't know how to hold a child. A "candle seal" is in his hand, and he doesn't know whether to hold it straight or sideways; but you are not used to it in Moscow. You have to get used to it, and when you face yourself on that day, master, you have to get used to him even if you are not used to it!I think that when that day comes, it will never be like the current fashion to have a child, and Mrs. Sanger and Dr. Marley Stuart will have to double the current fashion; but according to the situation in Moscow, the future Little angels don’t need to worry too much. Maybe the parents in Moscow don’t have any spare money to buy “French erasers”, maybe the Soviet government doesn’t allow parents to use erasers casually, I didn’t find out clearly.

When you have free time, go and see where your Russian friends live.I went and he was a professor.When I opened the door, he was lying on his "camp bed" reading a book or making up handouts. He jumped up when he saw a guest. With messy hair and a mottled mustache, his room is like a loofah, rectangular, with a small wooden table, a chair, a few hooks for hanging clothes on the wall, his own bed is above the window, Diagonally opposite to another bed, it belonged to his elder brother or younger brother. On the wall were some maps of the East, and a small five-character note hanging upside down (he had been to China and knew Chinese).A few books, papers, chess boards, pens and ink, etc. are scattered on the table. There is an alcohol pot in the corner, where the gas is vented. It is probably his meal. There is one or two chairs, but you turn around in the room and think about it. It is not easy to bump into things without bumping into people.

This is their current life when they have jobs. After all, the eldest lady of Tolstoy is treated better. I went to visit her. It was introduced by Mrs. Tu in the embassy. She actually has two rooms, the outer room is bigger, is it She teaches students to paint, and the room inside is probably her own room, but she not only has books and paintings, she also has a very interesting puppy, a very cute kitten, her situation, they told me, is In particular, since she is still in charge of the Tolstoy Memorial, I talked to her.Of course, we will talk about her father (she is sixty years old), and I will talk about it later, and now I will talk about the life of Muscovites.

I arrived in Moscow early on Saturday morning and only went there on Monday night. I wanted to use those three days to have a good look at the local scenery, especially the theater.I made good arrangements in the car. Look at this in the morning, go there in the afternoon, and go there again in the evening. Then you know that my luck is really bad. It just so happens that another important person died in their Central Executive Committee. His name seems to be The so-called "Mommy Tiger" died so badly that I didn't feel sorry for him, because when he went to the funeral, the whole Moscow had to be closed as a filial son, the funeral was greeted in the streets, the flags were hung at half-staff, there was no dancing in the dance hall, no performances in the theater, nothing. Well, Monday is their holiday again, so I stayed here for three days and didn’t see anything. I’m so angry, that “Mommy Tiger” might as well die a few days later or a few days earlier. My gratitude is No problem.

So if you are disappointed after reading this mishmash, don’t blame me entirely, Mr. Mali Mahu is at least half to blame.But I also remember a few things, which I might as well tell you about.

I'm so stupid, before I arrived, I thought Moscow was a completely new city. I thought that Alexander's burning of Napoleon turned into a big capital for the whole of Moscow, even Kremlin (the imperial city) was burnt. Understand.You all know the lively story that Napoleon wanted to go to Moscow to eat ice cream. The Russians knew he would fight, so they avoided hitting him. When Kremlin was lying down to rest, he set fire to him, one to the east, one to the west, just for fun, not only did he not invite Bing Qilin to eat, but even the Paris biscuits he brought, for people and horses, They were all burnt up, and the gods were against him. The north wind was blowing layer by layer, and snowflakes were flying. Naon knew that something was wrong, and it was too late to order his troops to retreat. He fled to Berezinz, called Cossacks. The Zhangba Snake Spear "looted and killed", and the hundreds of thousands of long-time victorious troops told them to cut vegetables, but only a few were left, and the French emperor, who was covered in mud, rushed out with a horse in his hands. Fleeing from the battlefield to go home and calling the door in the middle of the night, the poor ghosts on both sides of the Berezinz River are still there to this day, this mess is beyond calculation!
But I repeat these old sayings here, not because I am afraid that you will forget Napoleon, I just remind you that the Russians are hot-handed, and the geniuses who are cruel and destructive are their race, so when Napoleon heard the smoke from Kremlin, even this cruel "What?" He said, "They don't even care about their ancestral home!" Exactly: Slavic peoples never care for small victories, and if they come, they will wipe out their entire army.

(End of this chapter)