雨季
洪磊
然后尽情睡稳
《梨俱吠陀》第十集

他29岁，他的第一个孩子降生后，决定抛开人生，竭尽体能去寻找自己。对于自己的种种假设，是在他的妻子孕育他的孩子的日子里产生的。首先是他把自己的心绪，凝结在与妻子交媾的瞬间，或者是飘荡的身躯被夜风抚摸。之后妻子弃掉饰物，无知地松懈了衣结，睁开迷茫不动的眼睛，死似地酣睡。他把视线停留在窗外的牙皂树梢的那枝小花朵上，这是他的第二个假设；他觉得这个无味艳丽的生命，亦如体内排泄的乳色液体，如今在妻子腹内飘曳，他想或许自己已在身旁这个昏睡的女人的腹中，凝视牙皂花朵。后来，他很难认清自己，他不知自己从何来，许是父亲的梦中的某个假设？于是，他产生了繁杂无边的众多的假设，夜鸟的悲啼，是他的哭声，无尽的流水是他的生命，最终竟然他不知假设的自己是否真实。
谁也没有看见他是怎样迈出家门，谁也没有看见他是如何绕出他父亲为他设置的迷离宫殿，就连他自己也无法理解。但是几天之后，没有人不知道一个沉默寡言的人，在恒河下游的泥沼里徜徉。苍茫恒河幻变的云雨击起的涛声，时常搅扰他焦燥的心。整个晚上，整个白天，失眠得难以忍受的清醒压倒了他。他想到莽林去，使自己安静下来。这样，一年以后他来到了雅母那丛林。他是沿着雅母那河的浊流来到这个野林的，等到他在野林的第一天，漫长的雨季开始了。他被一只饮雨鸟引到了一棵无花果树下，他在浓密的无花果树下盘坐，他闭上双眼，恒河清澈的水与雅母那的浊流交融的情景，使他的心苍凉无比。有一只孔雀在抖动翅膀时，将树叶夹杂着清凉的雨水洒了下来，把他从冥想中唤醒。他再一次目睹了空间，四周茂盛滴翠的绿色环抱的狭小空间，青灰的天色织着晶莹的雨珠，泛出淡淡的忧伤气息，他痛苦地闭上双眼，尽力让自己往上飘。他的眼里是一片茫茫的黑色，渐渐地他来到了另一番天地。一个无垠地，似乎没有上下左右阻碍，他的心亦是毫无阻碍，觉得温暖而柔美。他记得时间飞速流逝，这让他恐惧地颤抖，直到有一朵浓浓的云贴紧了他的脸时，才使他清醒过来，却发现是一张肥厚的夹竹桃叶盖在脸上。他再也不敢睁开眼。但他仍记得，他是坐在一棵无花果树下，左侧是一片夹竹桃，右前方有密密的山葡萄组成的墙，被星星点点紫色碎花点缀着。他的身后，一丛滋生着的无花果树苗，还有一棵银杏非常粗壮地参天蔽日。地面是一层枯枝败叶，软软地泛着清香。不过，他突然中止了这种近似饥渴地回忆，重新回到他那苍茫无垠的黑色天地里去了。有几次雨水的稠密，浸泡了他的身躯，他觉得自己已消失在无边无际的时间河流里。他已想不起自己的血肉之躯，似乎是一颗沙粒，被时间推搡着。一次，他被二头母鹿的厮杀吵醒，他欣喜地认识到被母鹿纷散的树叶和沙粒般的自己一起在流淌。他，睁开眼睛，只有时间在流淌。他清晰地知道这用了整整半年时光，他忘却了空间。然后，他被空间占着，他被微生物吞食着。他周身滋生着青泥苔，蚂蚁在那里筑巢，毒蛇在他肩头嬉戏。在雨季的岁月里，他被时间挤压着，咬蛀着，起初他能非常细致地计算他的儿子的生长过程和漫长雨季的每日每夜，但现在他把雨季理解为无数雨季中的一滴。他想，雨季过后太阳酷热地照耀，之后又是雨季的再次到来，这种天体翻转的不断重复，恰是时间的无情和荒谬。他记起了父亲和儿子，他落下了悲痛的泪，泪水淌挂下去，淹没了几只蚂蚁。很快他便平静了，平静得让他再也追忆不着任何事物。他的宁静和他的寂灭，不断受到雨季时急时缓的雨水侵袭，傍晚的暮色里，黎明的曙光里，他盘坐着。也许是他假设的非真实的他，或者原本就是不存在的盘坐的他，在莽野林，在雅母那河下游。晚上，天边响起了沉闷的雷声，由西滚向东，做着拱状声环笼罩着他，闪出金光。他感觉到了宇宙的声音和形状，尽是灰白的茫茫一片。他的眼前，是过去，是现在和将来混沌的一体，他再也难以认清自己了。这和初衷竟做着别无选择地另一个答案；他再次审视自己时，自己却是灰白得茫茫一片。
这是雨季最后一天，雷雨过后世界一片平静，微风习习，树影婆娑。
没过多久，人们看见在恒河的泥沼里，走出来一个身形枯瘦、蓬头垢面的梦游者。他的忧伤结束了，他想不起来身陷某个世纪地飘泊着。但人们记得，首先是漫长的雨季过后，远处飘来一朵玫瑰色云，活泼得像只鸟，紧紧盘旋在他头顶；然后，在他所经过的所有村落和城镇的天空染上了金色的光芒；最后，所有的禽兽惊喜地汇过来，跟随着他。这与六百年后的另一个梦游者，从自己的家乡迈进耶路撒冷时的情景一样斑斓、迷离。有一次，他又突然悲伤起来，茫然起来，他漫无边际飘荡，为的是传递孤寂茫茫灰白的甜美气息，但是人们抚爱地围拢着他，却是来感知他不能驱赶的玫瑰色云朵，或者把那甜美气息误作檀香味。有些讲故事的人，喜欢以年计算他的修行，夸张云朵的体量，他惶恐地觉得自己只是人们虚弱时的一个虚弱的假设。这样，没过多久，他不无悲痛地让自己轻轻浮向天际，尔后消失，与宇宙融合。
The Rainy Season

Then having a sound sleep
The Tenth volume of Rgveda

By Hong Lei

At the age of 29, after the birth of his first child, he decided to turn his back on his life and exhaust his physical strength to search for himself. The various presumptions of himself came to his mind during those days when his wife was pregnant with his child. First of all, he let his mood fixed on the moment of his sexual intercourse with his wife or let his drifting body stroked by the night wind. Then his wife took off her jewelry, loosened the buttons of her clothes ignorantly, opened her hazy and still eyes, and slept soundly as if she was dead. He stared at the small flower on the tip of the karnikāra outside the windows. This was his second assumption: He felt that this tasteless and gorgeous life, like the milky liquid excreted by the body was now flowing in his wife's stomach. He imagined that perhaps he was already inside the stomach of this stuporous woman sleeping next to himself, staring at the karnikāra flowers. Afterwards, he wasn' t able to make out himself. He didn' t know where he had come from. Maybe he was only a certain hypothesis in his father' s dream? Then he envisioned many outlandish assumptions. The distressing crow of the evening bird was his crying. The infinite flowing water was his life. Eventually he even had no idea whether the assumed self was real or not.
No one saw how he had left home. No one saw how he had gone around the maze-like palace his father had devised for him, which he couldn' t understand himself either. But a few days later, everyone knew that a silent man was wandering in the slough in the lower reaches of the Ganges River. The billowy sound struck up by changing wind and rain on the vast Ganges River often disturbed his anxious mind. All night, all day, the unbearable soberness of sleeplessness overtook him. He wanted to return to the forest of rank grass, trying to calm himself down. A year later, he came to the Yamuna jungle. He had come to this wild forest along the muddy current of the Yamuna River. On the first day of his arrival in the wild forest, the lengthy monsoon started. He was led to a fig tree by a bird. He sat down under the dense fig tree, closed his eyes. The sight of the clear water of the Ganges River mingling with the muddy current of Yamuna made him desolate. There was a peacock tingling its wings, shaking off the cool raindrops on the tree leaves, waking him up from his muse. He looked around himself again, a narrow space surrounded by exuberant and emerald green. The caesious sky was dripping with glittering and translucent raindrops, letting out some light and melancholy air. He closed his eyes in pain, trying to make himself float upward. There was boundless blackness in his eyes and gradually he had come to another world. A boundless stretch of land seemed to be unobstructed in all directions. His heart was also free of boundaries, warm and gentle. He remembered the flying of time. It made him tremble with fear, until a thick cloud stuck to his face. Only then did he wake up and find a thick Oleander leaf lying on his face. He didn' t dare to open his eyes any more. But he still remembered that he was sitting underneath a fig tree, a piece of Oleander leave to his left side, a wall made of dense wild grapes, dotted by scattered purple flowers. Behind his back, there were a grove of growing fig saplings, as well as a karnikāra, very sturdy, and tall, blocking out the sun. There was a layer of deadwood and fallen leaves, softly fragrant. However, he suddenly called a stop to this thirsty way of memorizing and went back to his vast black world. There were a few times when heavy rain soaked up his body. He felt that he was lost in the never-ending flow of time. He couldn' t recall his physical body any more. He seemed to have become a sand grain, being pushed around by time. Once, he was woken up by the fighting between two female deer. To his delight, he realized that the leaves scattered by the female deer were flowing together with himself who was like sand grains. He opened his eyes; only time was flowing. He clearly knew that this had taken an entire half of year but he' d forgotten about the space. Subsequently, he was overtaken by the space, eaten up by microorganism. There was lichen growing all around him, ants were setting up their nests and vipers playing on his shoulders. During the monsoon, he was crushed, eaten and rotten by time. Initially he could precisely calculate the growth of his son and the days and nights of the lengthy monsoon, but now he' d resigned to thinking of the monsoon as a drop of countless monsoons. In his mind, the monsoon is followed by broiling sunshine, and then another monsoon. The incessant repetition of the rotation of the celestial bodies is just the mercilessness and absurdity of time. He recalled his father and son. He shed sorrowful tears. His tears trickled down and drowned a few ants. Soon he became peaceful, so peaceful that he couldn' t recall anything. His tranquility and silence were constantly disturbed by the rain that was changing speed. In the twilight of the dusk, the first light of morning, he was sitting, entrenched. It could be the unreal him that he assumed, or the sitting of him that had not happened at all, in the wild forest, in the lower reaches of the Yamuna River. At night, there was ponderous thunderstorm in the sky, rolling from the West to the East, enveloping him with arched sound rings, sparkling with gold light. He could sense the sound and shape of the universe, all ashen and vast. There in front of his eyes was the past, a mixture of the present and the future. He could no longer recognize himself. When he re-examined himself again, he became the ashen vastness.
This was the last day of the monsoon. There was a sense of tranquility in the world following a thundershower, breezy, with shadows of trees dancing.
Before long, a skinny, unkempt sleepwalker was spotted coming out of the mire of Ganges River. His melancholy was over. He couldn' t recall that he had been drifting in a certain century. But people did remember that right after the lengthy rainy season, there drifted a rosy cloud from the distance, which was as lively as a bird and closely hovering on his head. Then, in all the villages and towns that he passed by, the sky shone golden rays of light. Lastly, all the beasts and animals surprisingly gathered and followed him. This was as gorgeous and dazzling as the scene when six hundred years ago, another sleepwalker entered into Jerusalem. Once, he became suddenly saddened and lost. He drifted aimlessly, in order to spread the vast and pale sweet smell of solitude. But people surrounded him with fondness while they came to feel the rose-color cloud that he couldn' t drive away, or the sweet smell mistaken as sandal. Some storytellers liked to calculate his cultivation by year, exaggerate the quantity of clouds. He was terrified and felt that he was only an imbecile assumption by people when they were weak. Thus, in no time, he sadly allowed himself to float towards the horizon, disappeared quickly, and became blended with the universe.

Translated by Carol Lu