The straight-line distance between Wang Zixu’s unit and his home is no more than 800 meters, and it takes less than 10 minutes to walk home. I originally bought this house because I wanted it to be convenient and I could go home at any time. But now I get off work at 5:30 and often don’t get home until after 6:00.
It’s not because the unit works a lot of overtime.
There is a yard downstairs in his house. He doesn’t like to take care of the property. In the green belt, the shrubs have grown to almost a person’s height. There are red and blue fitness equipment, and rust is crawling on the peeling paint.
This used to be a piece of sand, but now it has been withered for a long time. There is no sand on the ground, only mud. In summer, yellow is shit and green is grass; in winter, yellow is grass and green is shit. Apart from dogs, he is the only one here.
After get off work, he sat on the squat machine, lit a few cigarettes, and then slowly got up and went upstairs when his wife urged him. The cigarettes he lit were 3 yuan a pack from Big Harvest, a local brand. They were very dry and would easily hurt your head if you smoked them too much, so no matter how much you smoked, you didn't feel bad. He held the cigarette in his hand and let it burn quietly. In the smoke, he thought about some absurd things, so that he could sit with three cigarettes for a long time.
After finishing smoking, he poked the butt of the cigarette against the rusty iron pillar next to it and sucked it up. Over time, the pillar became like a stegosaurus, with dense cigarette butts growing on its back.
In the end, my wife always calls: Why haven’t you come back yet? Working overtime again? Work overtime every day? How about I report this to your boss and ask him not to arrange things while he is off work? That's enough, I don't want to hear your explanation. Come back, come back, come back, the food is cold...
He slowly got up and walked towards home. Sometimes his wife didn't call, but he didn't want to go back because he wanted some peace and quiet.
They have been married for 3 years and have no children. He doesn't want kids, but she does. Sometimes she would look at other people's children with joy for a long time. They disagreed on more than one thing, including whether to eat coriander, how to put the toilet seat after going to the toilet, and how often to tidy up the wardrobe. When these things add up, life starts to get boring.
After eating, he would sit on the bed and read a book. Faulkner, Marquez, Camus, and all the writers who have won the Nobel Prize or are eligible to win the Nobel Prize. The wife folded the clothes aside, put them at his feet, and then said:
"I am really tired. I fire, cook, wash clothes, and go to the store every day. I am really tired."
His fingers were frozen on the pages of the book, like a child who had done something wrong.
“You can quit your job in the store, it’s not much money and it’s tiring.”
It took him a long time to say this. In fact, he has said this countless times, and his wife has also said the same sentence to him countless times. He knows exactly how she will answer, that is:
"I'm not going to work. How much money do you have? ”
With a monthly salary of more than 4,000, and his wife’s unstable income, they can barely survive in this city, but according to his wife’s plan, they will have a child next year. After having this child, they will have a lot of unexpected expenses.
For example, "I can no longer go to the store during the few months after giving birth, which will save me thousands of dollars." Then, "It hurts to give birth. I want to have a caesarean section, which is expensive, and postpartum care is also a lot of money." Then, "I don't want your mother to take care of me during confinement. She will suffer from postpartum depression. Going to a confinement center will cost tens of thousands..." "There is also the money for the baby's milk powder, clothes, shoes, diapers..." "If I go to work, I have to help the elderly to take care of me, and I have to give him some help, right? I can't let them take care of me for nothing..." "When I get older, I have to go to kindergarten, and maybe I will get sick..." "I have to give the teacher a red envelope during the New Year? Is he going to a tutoring class? I want him to learn piano..."
In short, this non-existent child has already brought him endless troubles before he came to the world.
My wife has been thinking about this child for a long time. It has been so long that the child’s appearance and facial features have been determined.
For countless days and nights, his wife described to him what kind of creature this child is: his/her eyebrows are like him, his nose is like him, his mouth is like her, and his skin is like her...
If someone asks what your child looks like? Both husband and wife were able to draw the child to him.
This child has such a sense of reality that he feels that not letting him/her be born would be akin to murder.
“You always go home and lie down, and you don’t help me share the burden. How can your salary be enough to live on?”
My wife is still chattering, and her words do not match her words. The more she behaved like this, the more tired he became and the more he wanted to lie down.
He wanted to say: "I am writing novels, and I can earn a lot of royalties." But he did not say it, because this sentence has been repeated many times for countless days and nights. He even knew that after he said this, his wife would spread her hands and ask: "What about the royalties?"
This royalties, like the child, do not exist and are fictitious products. Naturally, he can't get anything out of it. As a writer, he was less imaginative than his wife.
He could not tell his wife what kind of royalties this was: it would be carefully packed in a white envelope, which felt comfortable and thick in his hand. A postman on a bicycle delivered it. After cutting the envelope with a paper cutter, a blue receipt fell out, with "Fee Receipt" written on it in blue bold letters;
Or after receiving a phone call, he rode his bicycle through the path covered with camphor leaves and came to the bank. He inserted his bank card into the machine and entered the password with trembling hands. He entered the wrong password twice, but succeeded the third time. He saw that the numbers in the bank card had inexplicably increased, and the extra numbers were the royalties;
Or maybe one early morning, his phone rang with a "ding" sound, and the message box read "You have a payment in your account" in a unique font. After opening the software, he excitedly saw an official-looking name of the payer, followed by a large series of numbers with unknown meanings, and an eye-catching number at the top.
These three methods are possible. There may also be a fourth way. But he couldn't say. Because he had never received any royalties, when he described the incident to his wife, he was not decisive enough, which only made her more suspicious.
In the early days, writing was a pleasant thing for him. Unconsciously, the most important thing became to quickly receive a royalties to prove himself to his wife.
He specifically searched for the Nobel Prize for Literature prize, which was more than 6 million yuan. There is no higher royalties in the world than this. In addition, and more importantly, the Nobel Prize for Literature is awarded every year.
Once a year, then, if he lives to be 80 years old, he will have more than 50 opportunities to get it. What a thrilling 50 opportunities! Whether it's written down or made into a movie, it will be an epic.
He began to study all-round works of Nobel Prize-level literature. Then something interesting happened——
When he read Faulkner, his writing style was like Faulkner's. The scenes kept switching, the characters' viewpoints wandered, and everyone was babbled as if they were mentally ill. When he read Camus, the writing was like Camus, and everyone became a lonely, cold castle;
He felt that he had touched these shining great souls with his soul, and the Nobel Prize in Literature was no longer a mirror image.
But before he gets the 6 million, he needs a faster way to prove himself. That is submitting articles to magazines. After trying five or six times, the novel he sent was like a yellow crane, without any news. In the process, his excitement turned into panic, and finally he lost his confidence and began to doubt whether he was qualified to write.