重逢，情难抑
The Unbearable Happiness of Reuniting

但是，“咝”这个音有个很大的缺陷：传得还是不够远。But ‘s’ had a major drawback: It wouldn't travel very far. 假设隔着一里地，我要召唤他过来，怎么办？So, if we were hundreds of yards apart and I wanted to beckon him over, what would I do? 答：我就得吹口哨！The answer: I would whistle!

那时候我家住在水产养殖场（我父亲是水产工程师），我在兴化红卫中学（后恢复其原名“昭阳中学”）上初中，每天放学回家要走四十五分钟，途经一条宽宽的公路。At that time, our home was on a fish farm（my father being an aquaculture specialist and fish breeder）and I was attending the county's Hongwei School at the junior secondary level.（Hongwei means Red Guard. Years later, it reverted to its former name Zhaoyang, ‘Bright Sun’, after Xinghua's ancient name.）My 45-minute walk home every day included a long trek on an open highway. 夏天，无风、无云、烈日炎炎，那条公路空旷极了，两边没有树，所以没有树荫，阳光把空气炙烤到三十八、三十九度，我的视线开始模糊：一匹白马从天而降，在被烤软的柏油路面上，马蹄得得，马鬃飘飘，像一道闪电，把我从苦难中救出，送到目的地。By ‘open’, I mean the highway had no shade whatsoever, either from trees or manmade structures. On cloudless, windless summer days, when the searing sun toasted air temperatures to high 30s, that highway provided the setting for one of my enduring fantasies: that a white steed would turn up from nowhere and carry me home or to school with lightning speed and great panache, its luxuriant mane streaming in the wind, its hooves clattering on the blistering tarmac…到家前的最后一段，是连片鱼塘的堤坝构成的一条泥路，只要不下雨，还是挺好走的。路也不算窄，一头水牛和一个行人可以并排走过；也不短，有一里多。我家屋子跟这条路隔着一个鱼塘，大约30米。Lying between the highway and our house was the ‘last mile’- a dirt road, a stretch of berm bordering several fish ponds bookended by more fish ponds. Our house was set back from this road by about 30 yards. It wasn't a bad road when it was not raining. Hundreds of yards long, it was broad enough to accommodate a pedestrian and a buffalo passing each other. 路的一侧是河岸，河水流向哪里，是个未解之谜；另一侧就是一溜方形的鱼塘，这些鱼塘我倒是颇知一二，黑狮和小黄的很多故事，都是在这一带演绎的。On one side of the road was a river. I did not, and do not, know where the river led to. On the other side were the fish ponds, lined up like an ice cube tray. I was very familiar with those ponds. It was there that most of my reminiscences featuring Leonoir and Gingerlet played out. 至于那条河，我曾在小伙伴的教唆下，在河里学游泳，但我终究也没学会，至今依然是一只“旱鸭子”。The river was where I took a shot at learning to swim, egged on by my buddies, human buddies. But I didn't become a swimmer in that river after all. I'm like that famous navy cadet who, upon graduation, was advised by his dejected swimming instructor: ‘In the event of a shipwreck, Tom, just sink to the bottom and walk to the shore!’

兴化，六十年代。有故事的鱼塘。（摄影：单家容）Xinghua, 1960s. Fish ponds, with many a tale to tell.（Photo by Jiarong Shan）

我上学时，走完鱼塘路，经过公路旁的一家早点铺子，我每天的早饭就在那儿买。When I went to school in the morning, I would buy my breakfast from a takeaway at the junction between the embankment road and the highway. 我的早饭是两根“麻团”，每根8分钱，2两粮票，所以我每天早上要吞食4两碳水化合物，而且滴水不进。My breakfast consisted of just two pieces of matuan - sesame seed-coated deep-fried glutinous rice balls with a sweet filling（quite a mouthful, compared to the bisyllabic Chinese name - matuan）. For each, I would pay eight cents, plus 3.5 ounces' worth of ration stamps（food being rationed in China in those days）. That means I would devour seven ounces of pure carbs every morning, and no fluid whatsoever.“麻团”，顾名思义是球状的，但我却用“根”作量词，奇怪吧？原因是，那家店不知为何，喜欢把麻团做成擀面杖形状，所以我们家把它称作“麻棍”。The reason I've interrupted the contextual flow and brought up the topic of matuan is because they were quite unusual. They were not spherical as the word tuan suggests. For some reason, they were shaped more like a rolling pin, an idiosyncrasy of that particular bakery. We jokingly called them magun（pronounced maa gooen, meaning ‘sesame rods’）. 有一天，我照例一手一根麻棍，边走边嚼，两个路过的外地人看到了，觉得非常滑稽，其中一人说：“快看那个小鬼，那么瘦，吃那么多！”One day I was going about my breakfast routine, that is, holding one magun in each hand, walking and noshing at the same time, when two passers-by noticed me. One of them marvelled at my feat and remarked in a dialect I could not identify, ‘Look at that little fella, he certainly eats a lot for his skinny body!’有一年，芝麻歉收，这爿店断了货源，该有芝麻的，芝麻都不见了，麻棍也不“麻”了，只剩下“光棍”！One year, after a bad harvest of sesame, the bakery ran out of this essential ingredient. It disappeared from products like magun. What do you call a sesame rod minus the sesame? That would be a guanggun. Yes, you guessed it: a naked rod!

学校下午四点一刻放学，我到家大约五点。School finished at a quarter past four and I would get home around five. 据母亲说，每天快到五点时，黑狮总会在屋前出现，而之前他或许在屋子里打盹，或许在池塘边跟哥们儿玩耍，但一旦到了我快到家的点儿，他就立马现身，比瑞士手表还准。According to my mother, shortly before five o'clock each day, Leonoir would appear in front of the house. He might have been sleeping at home or playing with his chums round the fish ponds prior to that, but when I was about to get home, he would suddenly turn up, with uncanny punctuality. 他两眼紧盯着远方的河堤小道，原本就直溜溜的耳朵竖得更直。他还不忘瞟母亲一两眼，嗓子眼里发出“咝咝”的声音，大概是说：“嗯，嗯，少爷快回家了！我要淡定，要淡定！”He would fix his gaze on the path leading up to the berm and cock his already upstanding ears. He would cast a side-glance or two at my mother while throating a hissing sound, meaning, ‘Yes, I know, young master is on his way home! I mustn't get too excited, no, I mustn't.’

那时，依然在一里多开外的我，已经踏上那条泥路。我轻轻吹一声口哨，就一声，轻轻的。By then, I had set foot on that dirt road, hundreds of yards away. I would whistle. Softly. Just once.

我母亲听力超常，估计特异功能也不过如此。但即便耳朵这么尖，也只能勉强听到从远处飘来的若有若无的那声口哨，有时甚至怀疑是自己的幻觉。黑狮却肯定听见了。母亲说，每当此时，黑狮就突然开始“发神经”，先是在原地团团转，像陀螺，又像憋足了劲的发条玩具。几秒钟后，箭在弦上，不得不发，这陀螺就会沿着圆弧的切线，朝着鱼塘路的方向飙射出去。My mother has extraordinary hearing, bordering on the supernatural, but even sharp ears like hers had to strain and struggle to pick up the hushed decibels of my whistle at that distance. She wasn't even sure that she had actually heard it. But Leonoir was. She would see him suddenly turning into, in her words, an ‘unhinged lunatic’ or a ‘spinning top’, like a wind-up toy releasing momentum or a discus thrower building momentum. Seconds later, this top would go off at a tangent（literally）and hurl itself（not the discus）in the direction of the road.

与此同时，我继续前行，眼睛却盯着路的尽头。I would continue walking, all the while keeping my eyes on the far end of the road. 几秒钟后，地平线上腾起一团灰尘，一个“黑绒线球”，由小渐大，冲着我飞速滚来。Seconds later, a cloud of dust would appear on the horizon. A black furry blob would come into view and start growing in size while careering towards me. 倘若是在电影里，大概会呈现如下声光色交融的一幕：镜头缓缓拉近，给奔跑的黑狮一个大特写，他的舌头耷拉着、他的肚皮贴着地面，四条短腿飞速蹬地，四下尘土飞扬，激昂的音乐声（类似二胡曲《赛马》）渐起，一节节推向高潮。If we transposed this scene onto the silver screen, this would be what we see and hear: Leonoir gallops forward in slow motion, his tongue lolled out, his tummy skimming the ground, his image obscured by the dust he is kicking up with his short, fast-moving legs. Some rousing music（like the theme of Chariots of Fire）fades in and builds up to a crescendo. 这就是我当时的感觉，只是没有音乐，而我的口哨声早已消逝在空气中。That's exactly what it was like on that road in that moment, minus the music or any other sound, as my whistle had travelled far out of earshot by then. 随即，黑狮冲到我面前，在三米开外就急不可耐地纵身一跃，在空中划出一条漂亮的弧线，扑进我的怀中。Before long, Leonoir would reach the finishing line, i.e. about three yards in front of me. Sprinting any further would have taken too much of his time, in his estimation. So, with a mighty push of his hind legs, Leonoir would be airborne... and lunge into my arms.

猜猜我当时的反应？像广告或者电影里那样，抱住热情洋溢的黑狮，让他用淌着“哈喇子”的舌头劈头盖脸猛舔一气？没门儿！在黑狮纵身跃起尚未与我亲密接触的瞬间，说时迟那时快，我先接住他的前腿，再像魔术师两手交叉抖搂手帕反面那样，干净利落地给他来个向后转，让他面朝前方。这个动作的关键是时机的把握，不容闪失！Guess what I would do now? Would I reciprocate Leonoir's exuberant ‘outpourings’ with a bear hug or even by accepting a slobbering smooch from him, like what you see in films and TV commercials? No way! As he pounced on me, I would catch his front legs while he was still in the air and flip him round in one clean move（in the fashion of a magician crossing his hands to show the reverse side of his handkerchief）, so he would face the other way. I would accomplish that in a fraction of a second. Timing was the name of the game and I couldn't afford to miss. 我之所以如此煞风景，是因为兴奋过度的黑狮已经小便失禁了，在期盼已久的重逢即将兑现的瞬间，情不自禁地突然“一泻如注”，而我那个动作，就是为了让他把尿飙向空中，而不是把我淋成一只“落汤鸡”！Why was I being such a party pooper? Because Leonoir would be so excited by now that bladder control had given way to incontinence. Involuntarily, he would relax a certain part of his body all of a sudden upon the reunion that he had so looked forward to. Turning him away would spare myself a shower of liquid ‘outpouring’!

总而言之，每天放学后我和黑狮的重聚，就是一束闪电、两条弧线：始于一束黑色闪电掠过尘土飞扬的道路，黑狮纵身一跃划出的是第一条弧线，他小便失禁射向空中的是第二条弧线。To recap, my daily homecoming encounter with Leonoir boils down to a flash of black lightning tearing along a dusty road, ending in two arcs: the arc drawn by his body as he catapulted himself into the air towards my arms and the other arc a wee-wee-leak from this sprinter in hyper mode, shot into the air.