五年前，楚駕著寶馬，穿著最時尚的衣服，成為浦發行國際部大家眼眸的亮點。那時的她華美璀璨。
初夏的午後，窗外疏離的雲層卷起柔和的陽光悠悠搖搖。無言的房間，我的身影不停地移晃，忙忙碌碌，把記憶和故土一件件打進漂泊的行李, 一心一意。沉默的風跟在旁邊，無聲地走來走去。臨別的情緒，酸酸楚楚。
而對新世界莫名的興致盎然的疾飛，打翻了縷縷微涼，不解的心情等待著漂泊的五月花。那時，我還很年輕。
楚明朗的笑容就在1999年那一個午後走出來，為趕路的我送行，遍溢的一幕動感而且恍惚，隨著她披灑的長發滑下來漫延著。第二日的清晨，飛機發出轟鳴，我象鳥兒一樣飛上天空，家鄉在我的後麵，香港將在前方出現。
隔了一年我得到楚赴港開會的電郵。下午茶的時間，在酒店咖啡吧一個臨窗的台子，楚一襲白衣, 和著簾後躡足飄來的陽光，沛然而下，籠罩了我的視野。
坐下寒暄了幾句，才發現她的氣韻不如以往充滿活力，透著層蒼白的弱倦。她說近來有些忙，隻是感冒並無大礙。我問她帶藥了嗎？臨行前，我剛跟婆婆學會了自行臀部肌肉注射。她那溫煦平和的話音懸浮著，白晰的手指撫著手中的茶杯，一片片綠茶撩著霧氣幽雅曼舞。嘴角的弧線淡淡的微揚在如絮般的音樂裏舒展。我的心猛地柔軟了一下，半疼半驚的撥動著心弦。那一刻我靜心的啜飲。
我佩服她的勇氣。這種感受力擴展著，連續不斷。
晚飯後，我們順道晃了太古廣場。楚的個子很高，五尺六吋。在一行行褐瘦的香港人裏，楚高挑嫋娜，神秘的白裙如天鵝的羽翼舞到黑夜纏綿的末梢，她的黑發散落如綢，揮之而過。腳踝盈盈纖纖,若藕。然楚的身段又豐潤美妙的錯落有致。人影，燈流，她總是使人眼前一霎就亮了。繁華落盡的夜色下她的步履輕健而決定。
後來，楚打電話來，告訴我她要去英國讀MBA。
與一般美麗的女子不同的是，楚對求知永遠熱情洋溢，如同她對活著意義的渴求。那份熱忱自然地在她身上充溢著。她殷實富有的先生讚助了她此次的追求。
又一年轉角處，北京上空的白雲和楚熟悉地打著照呼。她正在想，這次是不是要久住？她往前走著，和許多過去擦肩而過。。。。
再後來，據說，她受聘於一家德資公司，那家公司給她的待遇很好。然而，她是不能忍受機械性工作的奴役。拉著透明的旅行箱，她又一次開始了遠怔。
盡管她的先生沒有明言，對於她不停的飄呀飄，他飲下手中的苦咖啡，無力的無奈。
我在等著她的傳說。。。。。。
楚的父親，就職於一所大學的校長，這樣家庭氛圍的浸潤，適宜楚沉思默想, 產生出人意料的舉動。所以她命運的履印，預示著非凡。這一切讓人感受到不惑之後有所暇想，再有所了悟
。。。。。。
倫敦的唐人街，一池紛亂紛呈的環境落戶於人群的攘攘熙熙。來自五湖四海的中國旅人曾在此歇足。麵對繁華景色的對立麵。餐館工灰暗而奔跑的影子呈現的卻是又累又髒的另一群。它多為非法偷渡而來的人提供尋覓的機會。吵吵嚷嚷在嫋嫋的煙氣裏盤旋而上。在世界上的任何地方，唐人街莫不如此。這就是一種生活。
由於諸多原因，中國的知識精英在英國獲得體麵的Working Permit很難。
考取Chartered Accountant 證書是楚再度進入英倫的決策。這一次，她走得幹幹淨淨。
在後來的兩年，在黃昏的燈紅酒綠裏，在黎明紛亂的塵世裏，有人在唐人街看見楚越走越快，越來越瘦的背影。孤獨的循環往複。兩份唐人街的工作支付著楚考Chartered Accountant 的費用，支付著她在倫敦的一切。
楚曾經擁有很多。她本可以將閑適雅致的生活留存和延續。
對於這樣的勇氣，我想我會猶豫。尊崇的力量，將我從後麵緊緊包裹，漂泊的人兒啊，不禁讓我顫抖的淚濕眼睫。
後言：
最近，據說她已通過了Chartered Accountant 很多門考試，並且剛剛找到了一份會計事務所臨時的工作。我為她祝福！永遠。
Choice leaned against the back of chair, tranquil, motionless and meaningless. Here she stared immovably at the centre of her palm that now wrapped in the new callousness, a soft spot rooted on fire. The melancholy poured down and engulfed her against the different atmosphere —the noisy massive carriages in the London underground. The hurried wheels of the tube rushed towards the night as before which never ceases, with its rumbling wheeze which pulsed through its veins. Suddenly a rapid halt, those old fading recollections aroused, from the far buried depths stretching across the train-ful crowd, a few steps away, wafting and shifting, in the fluttering plume, onwards and upwards. The forgotten memories came alive, veiled as fog, lulling her thought into the vague vision, in a realm between a dream, and a reality.
5 years ago, at the time Choice drove her BMW, wore her stylish clothes, and kept the eye-charge and head-turn of her elegant gesture out there at Shanghai Pudong Development Bank – International Trade Department. She glowed glamorous radiance just then.
The warm afternoon of that early summer, the windows fronted upon the clouds cradling the soft weakening rays of sun, leisurely scurried before me. Inside, the still room, I packed the past , and then the native land of its youthful memories into the drifting baggage, a swift shadow keen to absorb the atmosphere. The unspoken wind on my side watched over me, hush, to and fro. The woe of the farewell prodded, with small soft fits of sullenness, sadness and slow sorrow swirls of coldness, flush after flush, throughout my body.
But all stopping, in an inexplicable boisterousness flapped in, which came over my face facing upon the unknown world before, a sudden wild mood - somehow bewildering- with great rapidity, to drag me out of the extending cooling stir and force a halt. The confused feelings now awaited the adventure of Mayflower. At that time I was still young.
Choice’s smile came out at that afternoon, fluid and obscure, sheeting down along her long black hair, waving for my departure.
The following morning I soared into the sky as a bird; in a moment the homeland was many thousands of miles away, ahead of me was Hong Kong marching on. My fate was written in the skies.
In the summer of 2000 an email from Choice slipped in. She would pop into Hong Kong for an international conference. Soon, at the teatime, Choice, who wore in white dress, was just sitting in a table next to the window. It was a coffee bar at the hotel, there sneaked in the dappling sunshine, her shadow all but covering the curtains behind, enveloping all my eyes and moods, like a smile.
I walked towards Choice, too soon, our glances met, and smiled at each other.
I sat down opposite her and we were soon slipping into our warm-up conversation.
The scene went on, passing on from word to word, smile to smile. But she looked not as her old self full of radiance of intrinsic vitality with a lick of pale fragility across her face, lacking her usual sheen and colour, slightly.
“ A little cough, nothing serious, just a sort of busy, recently.” Choice said, smiling calmly.
“Do you take medicine, Choice?” I asked, genuinely.
“ I have gained how to give myself an injection from my mother-in-law before departure,’ Choice kept her smile and peace, relieving my worries.
The tone she whispered calmly, her porcelain fingers caressing the cup, petals of green tea whirling its way in the clouds of tea – vapour, lapping the air. The arched lines around her lip corners sending up flickered through the bright leaping and swaying music. It was snug and softened in my heart on the spur of the moment, a blending of feeling with partial surprise, partial sympathy, plucked the stings of my heart. At the moment I smelt the aroma and savoured it in.
I, too, admired her bravery, her daring. The power of this sense seeped through, incessantly, on and on。。。。
We went down to Pacific Place, Admiralty, after dinner. Choice was very tall, in her five foot six height, her limb of soft and slender contrasted with the brown slim Hongkongers. The mysterious white long dress, like plumage of swan, reeling down, past the twisting shadows of the crowded, over the winding streams of lights, whirling the tips of lingering nights, there was Choice’s black long hair, lustrous as a fleeting silk, descending down.
Her ankle was slim and delicate, just as lotus roots, while Choice was charming, in her buxom figure, well-proportioned line and graceful movements.
Choice always lightened up public eyes in amazement at the split, her beaming opened, under a veil of evening in after a bustling emptiness, where she moved energetically and determinedly.
“I would head for England on the MBA course,” Choice told me in her call the next year.
As with other beauties, Choice could be distinguished by her constantly passionate yearning for the acquisition of knowledge as her yearning for understanding the meaning of existence. This time her wealthy husband had supported her pursuit.
At the turning of the following year, the realm of the clouds floating in the Beijing skies, upon Choice, with her and greeted her back. Now finally she was home, having made her journey back.
Choice stared forward, she did not know how long she would stay this moment. It could be lifetime settle, or it could be short. As she marched on, watching the array of the old scenes go by, shoulder by shoulder.
After a while it was said that she was employed in a Germanic company, working at a glamorous position with well-paid salaries.
These, ultimately she abandoned, abandoned herself into the punctuated routine work and took the transparent suitcase into re-entry where now awaited her.
Choice departure for the new advance moving on brought her husband unspeakable torment. At last he did not put it into speech. He drank down the cup of bitter coffee, a rush of disturbing frustration of her restless obsession of drifts sprang up, a film of woe on his throat on his strained tolerance. It was kept bitter and chilly in the wind’s sad sighing.
I was waiting for her legendary voyage within a dynamic path before.
Choice was born of a family of what her father occupation as the chancellor of a university, immersed in the values of the spiritual life - meditative and pondered exercises, as befitted Choice’s thought, where she breathed, struggled, reflected, grew and marched on the tracks in her brain– in which the footprint of her life depended upon, which intended audience could not fail to understand how she had become, and finally the vision would crack up
。。。。。。
The China town, London is a poor filling up a bustling and thriving air where visitors of Chinese from the world has halted and relaxed in. In the circumstances opposite, the faces and shadows of wait staff, kitchen-hand, drifted, rushed, and buffeted, with prosperity of the town outside their minds and their visions, who gave this place another character: soiled and exhausted. It was supposed to offer jobs for illegal immigrants on the hard-earned wages. The voices and faces of people lifted in wreaths of palish smoke.
That was what it was like, the China town, as all the world was.
It was the whole expression of certain sort of life.
The Chinese elite, for various reasons, are not able to obtain the similar decent occupations by working permit constrains, which they used to have in China. The pattern of occupational choices does reflect the world of reality.
Arriving at London to conquer the certificate of the Chartered Accountant was Choice’s determination and decision for re-entry. She headed on and
and the minute she did not ask any compassion. She left with nothing, the sole journey of excruciating but brilliant exercise, of body and mind.
In a scant two year, in the streaming emerald wine and sparkling blaze of lights in the dusk, in the flood of the crowd heading on work elbowing each other at dawn, Choice was among.
The shadow, a shadow of solitary hovered around, restless.
She has changed, not only the pace faster and faster, but the body, much thinner now. The wages of two part-time manual jobs in China Town contained her fees of the Chartered Accountant, her fees of everything.
Once Choice possessed a lot, in any case, the fineness and cosiness of her life would retain, and would endure in prolonged time. But now she withdrew, and put it behind her, in a big way.
In such a decision which Choice made, I would vacillating and therefore the force of admiration and respect rose up to thrust upon me and hold me tightly. Drifting people
drifting way in so foreign a place, a time. For a while, those thoughts drown me trembling, the tears was filling up, on the eyes, on the throat and on the heart.
Note:
Recently, it was said that Choice has conquered the successive Chartered Accountant exams and was beginning to practice in an accounting film, working at a part-time day job.
With love and God bless her lots
≠Paleink
2005-07-18
知道你有雅度。。。亮也不會哭鼻。。哈哈。。。
我理解的精神貴族是由繁入簡的。。。與你的恰恰相反。。。：）