“You know Guangji Bridge is the main role and Binjiang Gallery the supporting role. You are the Gallery with the red kapok and I am the Bridge with human glory. You are a rose and I am a leaf. How do you like a rose without a leaf?”
“I don’t know.”
His words, to her, were obscure. They were beyond her comprehension. But clearly enough, the truth seemed pathetic, and still it seemed so.
The bus had just left the city. It was crossing a stone bridge with many arches and going to turn right onto a bumping road towards the countryside. Under the bridge was the Han River, which had despondently reminded her of how love was once folded and kissed by the absolute warmth of the sunshine and the plum blossoms in her dreams. Although she was momentarily distracted by the bumps, her eyes lingered long on a torn newspaper. It was fi rst swimming freestyle upstream when the water rose high in a bend of the river, but next overturned without awareness and swept away by a strong current, then popping out somewhere mysterious and at last fl oating freely downstream as though its fate was settled.