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一个刚丢掉工作的失意记者,酒醉后被人殴打,幸得多年前的邻居李楚唐搭救。随后,他受雇去完成这位前诗人的心愿:从山城出发,到一座海滨小城寻找与他失联近九年的情人杨柳。到达后他发现,杨柳八年前就已因车祸去世。消息确凿,但疑窦重重。在职业本能的驱使下,他展开了一番寻访和调查。可是,每当一个谜团打开,显现的并非真相而是另一层迷雾。在抽丝剥茧之后,似乎每一个相关者都有那个动机。不到最后一刻,并无真相可言。而在寻找过程中,围绕记者本身的谜团也渐次解开……
《完美的七天》楔子里写到的那个院落,我相信我曾光顾过很多次。那是在重庆游客热度最高的磁器口背街,就像一枚硬币的另一面,和寻常假日里游人如织、几乎总被他人的前行所裹挟的正面相反,那里可以称之为冷清的背面。幸存的几只路灯,冷冷地照在灰黑的石板路上,远望像是一条肤浅的水流,踏着那曲里拐弯的甬道,几经周折,才得以进得院内。院子里是那种木结构的老屋,有堂屋、厢房什么的,维持着自明清以来的结构。院里显眼的是几蓬青翠的竹子,很纤细地斜立着,一口石缸足有半人那么高,承接着从天而降的雨露,坐在那屋门边就可以观望细碎的雨滴,打在竹叶上、院坝里,发出老鼠行军那样的窸窣之声。
在那个旧时的院落里,我和宋尾不下一次地把酒言欢。我没有想到宋尾会将那个老院借来,当做小说里李楚唐接待远道而来的情人之地。但慢慢地回味后却又觉得无比适宜,那种阴气萌生的老旧去处,也真是这个故事再好不过的发生地了。
完美的七天,这是李楚唐对那场几近凭空发生的艳遇的定义。一对在过去十年间互通款曲的笔友,突发奇想,要逃出各自的婚姻,在那个独立世外的屋檐下做七天的虚拟夫妻,在李楚唐事后的追记中,那对情侣拥有最超凡脱俗的爱恋,他平素被真实人生所压抑、消磨殆尽的野心和渴望,在七天得到了完美的释放,他的征服欲在那个春天完成了又一次无可挑剔的战役。
这其实只是这部长篇的一个药引。镜头拉开,我们很快发现,那“完美的七天”绝非一座孤岛,反而像神话里的息壤,生生不息,绵延出了一个又一个纠缠不休的人生,最终,导向了那个不可知的结局。
As for the courtyard mentioned in the prologue of Perfect Seven Days, I believed I have been there many times. That is in the side street of Ciqikou, the hottest place for tourists of Chongqing, which is just like the other side of a coin, contrary to the obverse side that it is packed with visitors in ordinary holidays, and visitors are always carried along by the advance of others, which can be called a deserted reverse side. The few street lamps glow coldly on the grey slate road, which are like a shallow flow looking into the distance. Treading in the winding path, after setbacks, you may go into the yard. There are old wooden houses in the yard,like central rooms, wing rooms, maintaining the structure since Ming and Qing Dynasties. Clumps of vibrant bamboos are conspicuous, leaning slenderly. A stone jar is half as tall as a man,holding rain and dew from the sky. Sitting by the door, you can watch the rain drops, beating on the bamboo leaves, flat front of the houses, with the rustle of a marching mouse.
In that old yard, I drank wine with Song Wei more than once. I never expected Song Wei would borrow that old courtyard, using as the place to receive lover from far away by Li Chutang in the novel. Nevertheless, after a slow aftertaste, I feel it is incomparably suitable, since that old place where the dark air sprouted is exactly the perfect setting for this story.
The perfect seven days is Li Chutang's definition of the affair almost occurred from nowhere. Two pen pals who expressed their love in the past ten years whimmed to escape their marriages and be a virtual couples of seven days under the isolated roof. In the post retrospective of Li Chutang, that lovers possess the most un-worldly love. His ambition and desire depressed and exhausted by true life in normal times was released perfectly in the seven days.His lust of conquest completed another impeccable campaign that spring.
This is actually a medicinal usher of this long novel. When the camera pans out, we quickly find that the "perfect seven days" are absolutely not an isolated island, but a growing soil that never grows out in fairy tales, everlasting, stretching out one entangled life after another, finally,leads to the unknown ending.
首先是作为故事叙述者的“我”和小朋。在他们眼中,李楚唐和杨柳,是一对略显神秘的夫妻,他们从天而降又不辞而别,但他们浓情蜜意的卿卿我我,仍将阴影投射到了这对年轻人贫乏的感情生活中来,并且最终还波及到多年以后,由“我”执行的那场寻找杨柳的任务之上。
关键的是,这种旁观的映照,让那七天的完美和封闭瞬间松动,生出意味深长的疑窦和不确定性,这种叙事的拼贴,几乎立刻让故事的这个发端笼罩上了一层迷雾。
宋尾接着设置了第二份记录。关于那七天,另一位女性当事人杨柳同样拥有属于她自己的诠释:那个十年时间里迢迢指引着她的人生导师,却并没有想象中那样完美,这让她在日记里不禁喟叹:“有些梦幻不能去触摸,梦幻就是泡沫,进入一点点现实的空气就会因失衡而炸裂。”更要命的是,这让杨柳背负起沉重的罪孽,她为填补这道德的亏空接连三次挪用公款,接济债台高筑的李楚唐,让她愈发泥足深陷,“那个秘密成了一个茧,越来越大”,也成为她抑郁症的起因,无可挽回地让她踏上了末路。
可见在李楚唐那里高光闪耀的七日放纵,在杨柳那里却是暗无天日的深渊。
另外一边,杨柳死后,她的丈夫王学进整理遗物时,发现了妻子的日记和为李楚唐汇款的单据。他按图索骥,实施了一场秘而不宣的特殊旅行,发出了“我真的了解我妻子吗?”的终极诘问,并暗中操控,完成了对那个生意场上丧家之犬的无声报复……
就这样,宋尾将那貌似自给自足的七天最大限度地打散,不厌其烦地反复关照,如同毕加索《格尔尼卡》中立体主义的绘画那样,从特定的时空起飞,超越了写实主义的具象,带我们来到当下都市婚姻的满目疮痍,一片废墟,充溢了追问的语气,铺展开悲凉的底色。
Firstly, it's "I", the story narrator and Xiao Peng. In their eyes, Li Chutang and Yang Liu, a slightly mysterious couple, fell from the sky and left without saying goodbye. But their great tenderness and intimate relations still cast a shadow over the poor love life of the young people, and finally affected "my" implementation of the task of finding Yang Liu many years later.
The essential is the onlooking reflection loosen the perfection and closure of seven days instantly, creating meaningful doubt and uncertainty. The collage of narrative almost immediately casts a misty over the start of the story.
Song Wei then set the second record. About the seven days, another female person concerned, Yang Liu, also owned her own definition: the life mentor that guides her for ten years was not perfect as imagined, which made her sign in the dairy: "Some dreams cannot be touched. Dreams are bubbles, which will burst out of balance for the air of reality entering a little bit." Even worse, this makes Yang Liu bear a heavy sin. To fill the moral deficit, she embezzled public funds for three times to help Li Chutang who was burdened with debts, which made her get into real troubles. "That secret becomes a cocoon, growing bigger and bigger", and also be a root of her depression, irrevocably put her to the end.
It can be seen that the seven-day indulgence glittering for Li Chutang is the abyss of darkness for Yang Liu.
On the other side, after the death of Yang Liu, her husband Wang Xuejin arranged her remains and found her dairy and the remittance receipt for Li Chutang. He followed up the clue and went on a secret special trip. He made the ultimate query "Do I really understand my wife? ",and secretly manipulated to complete the silent revenge for the bereaved dog in the business...
In this way, Song Wei broke up the seemingly self-sufficient seven days to the maximum.He repeated tirelessly, as the cubist painting of Picasso's Guernica, flying from a certain space and time, transcending over the representational realism, took us to the scenes of devastation and heaps of rubbles of the modern urban marriage,full of questioning tone, spreading out the sad background color.
侦探小说在告别古典时代后,那个前往犯罪现场的独行硬汉,通常不再会像柯南·道尔的福尔摩斯那样智力超群,也不会像阿加莎·克里斯蒂的波洛那样戏精上身,以雷蒙德·钱德勒的马洛为代表,往往寡言沉默,酗酒,出没于暗夜,还有挥之不去的心酸事。他们绝非炫耀头脑和风度的有闲绅士,往往不得不为了生计,讨要那点可怜的调查费,他们的艰辛生存、泯然众人,或许,更容易引导读者透视深沉的人性,还散发出忧伤的诗意。
不知这部小说里调查者的形象,在多大程度上受了雷蒙德·钱德勒的启发,但他那独行侠、冥想者的设定,倒确凿透露出与马洛一脉相承的精神气质,抑或也是局外人的一个当代变体?
在阅读过程中,这个调查者也是叙述人的形象,让我反复玩味:一个都市报的记者,这个在多方面都如此接近马洛惨淡人生的业余侦探,惟一缺失的,似乎只有马洛的铁拳,这也让他在小说中段的某个深夜,连接两次的袭击面前,几无还手之力地陷入了昏迷。
After the detective novel bid farewell to the classical era, usually the lone tough guy who goes to the crime scene is no longer as superiorly intellectual as Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, nor being good at acting as Agatha Christie's Poirot, represented by Raymond Chandler's Marlowe, is often silent, hard-drinking,haunt nights with lingering distress. They are by no means idle gentlemen flaunting their brains and manners, but have to beg for a little money for their investigation just to make a living.Their hard life, being normal, perhaps, is easier to guide readers to look into the deep human nature, disseminating the poetry of sadness.
I wonder to what extent the image of the investigator in this novel was inspired by Raymond Chandler, but the setting of lone ranger,meditator, definitely reveals the spiritual temperament that is in line with Marlowe, or is it a contemporary variant of outsiders?
During reading, this investigator is also an image of narrator, and makes me chew it over: for the reporter for a city newspaper, the amateur detective who in many ways came so close to Marlowe's bleak life, the only thing he missed, it seems, is Marlowe's iron fist, this also left him in a coma late one night in the middle of the novel, in the face of two successive attacks.
我是如此沉迷于这个漫游者那些颇有几分迷离的旁白。每当故事陷于困局,或是那个更加幕后的作者预谋吊起我们的胃口,那大段大段的独白就会如夜雾来袭,让两对绞杀的夫妇暂且退后,由着性子舔舐那无边无际的孤独:
“对近视者而言,白天和晚上就像两种截然不同的世界:一种是有限的清晰;一种是清晰的模糊。”
“夜晚的黑色里有一种奇异的我们不能得知的物质,能有力地削弱镜片的穿透力。一片薄薄的镜片背后,总有变形和你所不了解的部分。在熟悉的环境里我们或许适应了这种差异,但在陌生的地方,夜色很大程度上夸大了这种不适感……”
“我徜徉在熙熙攘攘的人群里,很容易看见那种形只影单的孤独……像一个吸血鬼一样,长着人的形状,但无法真正地跟那些欢笑的、嬉戏的、甚至是木然的陌生人融为一体。”
一个乔装的知识分子,一个隐藏的诗人,或许宋尾的本意并非是要将这个故事原原本本抛给我们,而是更愿意沉迷其中,引入那几对夫妻生于斯的土壤、呼吸于斯的空气。那些让人无力抗拒的伤心,无解,欲言又止,或许才是宋尾的这部仿推理小说真正想要告诉我们的存在之殇。
传统推理小说的真相大白,其实早已无足轻重,多种可能的并置,直至这部小说的终结,都并没有被任何一项的铁证拨云见日,正如小说里说的那样:
“每个窗子背后都是一种人生,我们不知道的人生。秘密太多了,人人心里都有那么一些,人人都是这样,以为睡在室内,其实是站在悬崖边上……”
I am so addicted to the wanderer's somewhat blurred asides.Every time the story is in a dilemma, or the more behind-thescenes author plans to lift our appetite, that long monologue would strike like a fog at night, and let the two pairs of strangled couples temporarily retreat to lick the boundless loneliness by nature:
"For the myope, the day and night are two distinctly different world: one is a limited clarity; one is clear blur. ”
"The black in the night has an strange unknown matter that is able to reduce lens penetration. Behind a thin lens, there is always deformity and the part you don't understand. In familiar environment, we might be adapt to the difference, but in a strange place, the darkness greatly exaggerates the discomfort..."
"I wander among the hustle and bustle of the people, easy to see that kind of loneliness...like an vampire, in human form,but can't truly integrate into one with that laughing, playful, even vacant strangers. ”
An intellectual in disguise, a hidden poet,perhaps Song Wei didn't mean to throw us the whole story exactly as it is, but preferred to indulge into it, and introduced the soil where the couple were born, and the air they breathed.That irresistible sadness, sans response,words getting in the way might be the sadness of existence that Song Wei's detective-like novel wishes to tell us.
The truth coming out of traditional detective novel does not matter anymore.Multiple possible settings, until the end of this novel, are not made clear by any hard evidence. As the novel mentioned:
"There is one kind of life behind each window, that we don't know. There are too many secrets. Every one has some. Every one is like this, they think they are sleeping indoors, but they are standing on the edge of a cliff..."