Your Distance

The next day, Ting Shuang received a gift from Berlin sent by Su Ping.

Previously, he’d picked out a few cans of special coffee beans, plus the blueberries he’d planted with Bai Changyi, and sent them to Su Ping together with a photo of them. This time, Su Ping sent back two bottles of blackcurrant wine, a box of biscuits she’d baked, two jars of home-made jam, a photo album and some old books with notes.

The notes in the books were left by Bai Changyi in his teenage years.

The fabric photo album contained photos of Bai Changyi as he was growing up. Most were taken before the age of ten, and as he grew older, the number of photos decreased. Ting Shuang looked through it page by page, his attention falling on a photo of Bai Changyi playing tennis. For a long time, he didn’t turn the page.

The date was written below the photo: June 21, 2003.

Bai Changyi was almost twenty years old.

“Damn…” The photo also caught the attention of Zhu Wenjia as he passed by. Standing behind Ting Shuang, he exclaimed, “My sister-in-law was so handsome when he was young.”

“He’s also young now.” Ting Shuang turned the page, “He’s even more handsome now.”

“Fine, I’ll shut up. My sister-in-law is forever young.” Zhu Wenjia thought of something, “Oh Ge, my dad’s economic sanctions on me are over. I’ll go look at schools next month. I want to look at quite a lot of them, so I won’t be flying back here every time I finish viewing one. It’s troublesome, flying all around.”

“Okay, you can figure things out yourself.” Ting Shuang looked at the flip side of the page with the tennis photo. In some desert, 20-year-old Bai Changyi was sitting on the roof of a jeep with his friends. Behind them, the huge and round sun sank into endless yellow sand.

That very day, Zhu Wenjia booked a ticket and flew off, leaving ten thousand euros in cash in the bedroom.

When Ting Shuang called Zhu Wenjia to ask what was going on after realising he was gone, Zhu Wenjia said with a grin, “Ge, I didn’t treat your house as a hotel. That’s for you. You only earn 20 euros an hour. That’s so pitiful, I couldn’t even bear to eat and use anything of yours over the past ten to twenty days.”

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Ting Shuang laughed after hearing that, “Come on, you say that, but I didn’t see you eat any less.”

“That’s true, I even gained two jin(1) while I was living with you.” Zhu Wenjia laughed, “If there’s nothing else, I’ll hang up first. I’m boarding the plane already. Greet my sister-in-law for me.”

“Mm, take care.” Ting Shuang hung up, his gaze falling back onto the desktop, where the photo album he hadn’t finished looking through lay. The various other things sent by Su Ping were also strewn on the table.

Bai Changyi’s parents treated him so well, but on the other hand…

Ting Shuang lay on the grass in the yard, looked at the sky for a while, and sent a message to Zhu Ao: Dad, let’s find some time to talk, just the two of us alone.

Take it slowly, he thought to himself, if it can’t be settled at once, then they’d take it step by step.

After Ting Shuang waited for a while, Zhu Ao replied: Think about what I said yesterday, don’t rush to refute it. Think about it for another ten days, or half a month, then talk to me.

Holding up the phone, Ting Shuang stared at the screen. After a long time, he typed out a few words, then deleted them again.

When Bai Changyi came home, he happened to see this scene; all of a sudden, Ting Shuang’s hand shook. The phone hit the bridge of his nose, and it was so painful he sucked in a breath of cold air.

“You’re laughing?” When Ting Shuang saw Bai Changyi, he immediately jumped up and clung to him.

Bai Changyi just let Ting Shuang cling to him as he walked in, accidentally catching a glimpse of the words on the screen of Ting Shuang’s phone when he lowered his head to open the door, “Have you thought about what you want to say?”

“… No,” Ting Shuang said, “I just can’t tell my dad that, instead of dying of a lonely death due to age, who knows, I could actually die young, maybe even as soon as tomorrow. After all, I am his son. He would be furious if I said that.”

“Ting.” Bai Changyi put Ting Shuang down, “Let’s go out for a while.”

Hugging Bai Changyi’s neck, Ting Shuang asked, “Where are we going?”

“The Central Cemetery.” Bai Changyi said, “I wanted to take you there yesterday, but it closes at 8pm and it had gotten too late yesterday.”

“Cemetery?” Ting Shuang asked, “Why are we going to the cemetery? Is it someone’s death anniversary?”

“No.” Bai Changyi said, “We’re just going for a walk.”

“Then, why are we taking a walk in the cemetery…”

“To look at death.” Bai Changyi said, “To talk about aging, and about death.”

Ting Shuang was startled.

“I should have taken you there a long time ago.” Bai Changyi gently combed through Ting Shuang’s bangs with his fingers, “Aging and death are as commonly found as roses. I don’t want you to be afraid of aging or death, and I don’t want you to be at a loss when you meet them.”

Only when they drove to the central cemetery did Ting Shuang realise that it was not far behind the church in the old town. In fact, he often passed by the area, but had never noticed the cemetery. The marble walls of the cemetery only reached up to the waist of an average person. Within the walls was a circle of tall green shrubs. From outside the wall, you could vaguely see the tombstones and the flowers in front of the tombs through the shrubs.

“It’s kept so beautiful here, like… A garden.” After entering the cemetery, the surroundings were quiet, causing Ting Shuang to lower his voice subconsciously.

It was his first time seeing so many tombstones.

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They were rectangular, cross-shaped, oval-shaped… Flowers were planted in front of each of the tombstones, and some of them even had bibles or sculptures of angels. A distance away, someone was watering the flowers in front of a tombstone, and some people sat on the benches looking at the tombstones in a daze.

The atmosphere in the cemetery wasn’t scary, but calm.

Ting Shuang stopped to look at the words on a tombstone. 1911-1951, a man named Günter had been sleeping here for 68 years.

Being from an older time, the epitaph was written in Gothic, and was difficult to decipher. Ting Shuang looked at it for a long time before trying to translate the sentence, “He’s lived forty… precipitous… extraordinary years.”

“Prosperous.” Bai Changyi translated it concisely, “He had forty prosperous years to call his own.”

“He’d owned forty prosperous years.” Ting Shuang slowly and softly recited the sentence several times, and was suddenly touched by this sentence, touched by the use of the word “own”.

He didn’t know if this man named Günter had thought about what his life after fifty would be like when he was young, or whether he’d thought about how to spend the rest of his life.

But people didn’t really have a future, nor a so-called ‘rest of their lives’. ‘The rest of our lives’ was just a vision, just a figment of one’s imagination. The only thing that truly belonged to you was the years you’d lived, and the present moment.

Ting Shuang stood quietly in front of the tombstone, his chest suddenly feeling lighter.

The breeze blew gently by, on this clear autumn day.

“Should we move on?” Ting Shuang asked.

“Mm.” Bai Changyi answered, and the two walked forward side by side.

After taking a few steps, Bai Changyi said, “If I die tomorrow, my epitaph can have this written on it—”

“‘He’d owned thirty-six prosperous years, and a young lover named Ting Shuang.'”

The tone he used was so natural and ordinary, that Ting Shuang did not feel opposed to it at all.

“It’s not scary, right?” Bai Changyi smiled and said humorously, “If I’m lucky, I could also have an epitaph that reads: ‘He’d owned a hundred prosperous years, and an old man named Ting Shuang.’”

Ting Shuang also smiled, “Then I’ll be an eighty-eight-year-old handsome old man who smokes, drives a convertible, and hugs and kisses you while waiting for the traffic light. Whoever dares flip me off, I’ll do the same to them. Anyway, when that time comes, no matter which young lad it is, I can treat them like my grandson.”