作者：张致君
编辑：何清风 责任编辑：罗志飞 翻译：程铭
“写字要胆子，擦字要钉子；故而最响的，常是那张什么也不写的纸。”
我向来不信天灾能连续三年。天灾不过一口气，人祸才是长命烟。三年前，城门忽然合拢，门缝里吐出几张告示，字迹大得像春联：为了大家好。大家于是各自回家，把门反锁，把窗钉死，把嘴巴也用胶纸贴上。街心的石榴树照开，开得像无声的火，可那火只用来照花名册——谁出门谁回家，几时出、几时回，门口摄像头一睁一合，像庙里的钟。庙钟不问人，只问规矩。
规矩日日更新，比天气还勤快。昨日可以下楼做核酸，今日不行；昨日核酸阴的可以上班，今日也不行；昨日“静默”，今日“再静默”。我见过邻居家乳名“壮壮”的孩子隔着铁栏杆冲我笑，牙缝里卡着面包屑。第二天他不笑了，栏杆那头多了一块红纸，上写：封。第三天，壮壮与红纸一起不见了。我本想问问，可问话需要出门，出门需要通行证，通行证需要理由，而我没有“必要的理由”。于是我把嘴角的面包屑抠掉，仍然沉默。沉默也是一种通行证，还是万能的。
我在窗里数日光，光像一枝没气的铅笔，时粗时细。偶有刺耳的喇叭车驶过，喇叭喊话，声音一半像劝、一半像审：“不要聚集，不要传播，不要思考——哦，不，是不要信谣。”我便想起古书里说的“绝学无忧”，此处稍作改良：绝言无忧。无忧久了，连梦也变得安静，梦里人都戴着口罩，彼此点头，点头算是最大的风流。
直到有一夜，风忽然换了方向。西北城传来火光，火光里有人喊娘，喊得嗓子像被门扣住。第二天城里贴出讣告，字仍旧很大，意却很小：一切正常。可街心的石榴花却在风里乱跳，像谁掌心攥紧又张开——张开的，是一张白纸。白纸没有字，偏生最吵。它越空，人的心里越满；它越轻，人的脚步越重。于是许多人走到路灯底下，举起那一张空白，像举起一口无名的碑。碑不写字，写字就要被涂黑；碑不雕像，雕像就要被推倒。人们便举空白，空白里有他们不敢写、也来不及写的全世界。
我也去了。不是去写，而是去看。乌鲁木齐、长安、广场、河边，每一座城都有一条街叫“中路”，因为它们都在我们心里正当中。年轻人站在那儿，像新磨的刀——不是要砍谁，只是想照照自己到底长成了什么样。他们唱歌，有人把歌词吞回肚里，只把曲调扔给夜风；他们说话，有人把名字藏在口罩里，只把眼睛亮给摄像头。我看见一位姑娘举纸的手在抖，纸也抖，纸上的无字便像千百个小黑字在跳。旁边有个小伙子笑，她问笑什么，他说：“我第一次拿起纸，发现比拿起任何东西都沉重。”
我知道，这一夜之后，白纸会被没收——不是从手里收，而是从记忆里收。收走以前，总得先装裱。于是城里忽然勤快，忙着给每张纸加框、给每双眼睛加帽。帽子上有字：聚集，煽动，扰乱，寻衅。字多了，纸就轻了，手也空了。它们要把一夜的火，改写成一阵风，风吹过，叶落尽，树还在。树在，是为了明年再开石榴花，好让人误以为这一切周而复始，天下太平。
不过，还有人不太识相。他带了台不大不小的机子，站在路灯和白纸之间，用镜头把夜色一寸寸折叠，叠成一部我要叫它“人眼的备忘录”的东西。他不喊口号，也不挑灯火，只让街上的脚步自己响，让纸边的沉吟自己长。他只是把“看见”这件事，照相了。后来我才知道，他姓陈，名字像雨后的玻璃：品霖。玻璃最怕被敲，可也最爱反光。他把那夜的风映在玻璃上，玻璃便有了温度。可温度一高，玻璃就容易碎。果然，没多久，有人来敲门；门开了，他的机子被装进袋子里，他的人被装进另一只袋子——袋子叫“手续”。手续走得很快，说辞走得更快：上传、传播、寻衅、滋事。四个词像四颗钉，把一个拍过“空白”的人钉在文件上。文件夹厚得像城墙，城墙外头，石榴花照旧开。
有人问我：你看这些年，总算是“解封”了不是？我笑笑。解封像拆创口贴，贴久了，皮都跟着走。门上的白条撕了，心上的那一道还粘着。那道看不见的封条更牢，它把许多夜晚封在我们喉咙里，遇到风就勒一下，提醒你：别抬头，别出声，别做梦。若一定要做，做个省油的梦——梦见排队，梦见核酸，梦见“为你们好”。梦醒了，手机里还会跳出提醒：今日新增零、社会面零、舆情零。零真是好字，圆滑，没有棱角，塞进任何缝里都不硌人。只是被零包围久了，人也就学会了把自己削成一个零，恰好镶进缝隙，彼此安之若素。
我偶尔也去街上走。街上新换的路灯又白又冷，照得人影像没栽稳的树。有人把那一夜剪成了短视频，发上去，像把纸鸢放进天井。天井很高，风也很高，可除了四面墙，再没有云。纸鸢绕了一圈，线被人轻轻一扯，稳稳落回地面，落在“违规”的标签上。贴标签的手很熟练，像老裁缝缀扣子，找准洞眼，一戳、一拉，一颗扣子就端端正正系在你胸口。你若觉得勒得慌，它会说：“这是为了体面。”
体面原来也分配。分配像口罩，一人一只，罩住不同的脸，露出同样的沉默。有时我看见公交站里的告示牌，镜面反光，反出来的不是广告，而是几年前空荡荡的车站——那时候车并不空，是城在空。空城的风喜欢说话，可风后来也学会了避嫌；它绕开人群，去吹没有备案的草。
我也想过写点什么。写字是一种坏习惯，像咳嗽，会传染。有朋友劝我别写，写了也别发，发了也别贴真名。我说好。于是我改了个名字，像给尸体化妆。化完妆的尸体看着舒服，大家都敢靠近。只是我写着写着，笔尖沾上一点冷汗——那是纸渗出来的。纸是白的，汗也是白的，干了就不见。我把汗吹干，继续写。写到后来，忽然觉得这文章最好什么也别写，空着。空着的文章像那张纸，既省事，又省命。我便在页眉打一行字：此处无字。页脚也打一行：此处更无字。如此一来，上不言，下不语，中间的沉默就像一枚硬币，两面都是真。
陈君的纪录片里有很多人，举纸的，不举的；唱歌的，闭眼的；走过的，停下的。我也混在里头，像一滴水混进水里。后来他被带走，我才猛然觉得嗓子有点沙，像吞进一粒玻璃渣。医生说多喝水。我确实渴，可水越喝越干，像从石头缝里挤出来的。人说时间能磨平一切，我看未必。时间只是把凸起磨成不痛的形状，叫你忘了它还卡在肉里。等你翻身的时候，它又硌了一下，你便知道，三年的封门没有真的过去，白纸也没有真的过去，甚至连那台机子里微微发热的芯片，都没有过去。它们化在空气里，像看不见的粉尘，时不时被呼吸带出来，又被我们自己咽回去。
有人要我给这几年下个名字。我不敢。起名是种权力，权力是种病，它爱把复杂的痛，简化成方便的药名。我只好照旧，用一张纸，白纸。纸不说话，可它在风里翻动，就像一只手从水底探上来，摸到谁算谁。摸到我时，我把它按回去，笑道：别闹。按下去的那一刻，我听见远处像有人在敲门。敲了三下，又三下。门没有开，心先开了一条缝。缝里有一点光，像石榴花刚要绽。花开得慢，慢到足以让人误会它根本没开过。可我知道——它开过。开过一次，就够我一辈子记。
到这里，本可收笔。可我又想起那些喜欢“为我们好”的人，他们最怕的不是谣言，是记性。记性像草，禁了还长。于是我决定把记性放进一个无字的匣子里，贴上标签：无害。倘若有朝一日，有人问起：那一夜，你们见了什么？我便把匣子递过去，叫他自己照一照，匣子里有他，也有纸，也有镜头。镜头的玻璃反射出一张脸，脸上既没有口号，也没有笑，只有一对眼睛——不是怒，是醒。
醒来的人不一定说话。醒只做两件事：把窗打开，和把灯关小。窗打开，风就进来；灯关小，影子就不那么吓人。至于别的，我不敢想，也不敢教。教人是危险的行当，尤其在一个连风都要备案的地方。便这样吧。我写到这里，停笔，像医生把刀从伤口里慢慢抽出来，刀是冷的，血是热的，二者互相谁也不服。等它们自己去交涉，我只把纱布按住，再叮嘱几句：别跑跳，别哭闹，别去看热闹。因为看热闹的人，迟早也会变成热闹里被看的人。
纸上无字，字在纸外。
你若要看，抬头；你若不看，低头。
抬头有风，低头有土。
二者之间，刚好够一张纸通过。
Epidemic Trilogy (I) — No words on paper
Abstract: Urumqi, Chang’an, Square, Riverside, every city has a street called “Zhonglu”, because they are all right in our hearts. There are many people in Chen Jun’s documentary, those who raise the paper and those who don’t raise it; those who sing, those who close their eyes; those who walk by, those who stop. Teaching people is dangerous, especially in a place where even the wind needs to be filed.
Author: Zhang Zhijun
Editor: He Qingfeng Responsible Editor: Luo Zhifei Translator：Ming Cheng
“It takes courage to write, and it takes nails to wipe words; therefore, the loudest thing is often the paper that doesn’t write anything.”
I have never believed that natural disasters can be for three consecutive years. Natural disasters are just a breath, and man-made disasters are the long-lived smoke. Three years ago, the city gate suddenly closed, and several notices were spit out in the crack of the door. The handwriting was as big as the Spring Festival couplets: For everyone’s good. So everyone went home, locked the door, nailed the window, and put glue paper on their mouths. The pomegranate trees in the heart of the street bloom like a silent fire, but the fire is only used to illuminate the flower list – who goes out and goes home, when they go out, when they come back, and the camera at the door opens and closes, like the clock in the temple. The temple bell does not ask questions about people, but only about rules.
The rules are updated day by day, which is more diligent than the weather. Yesterday, I could go downstairs to do the nucleic acid test, but today I can’t; yesterday, I could go to work if the nucleic acid was negative, but I can’t do it today; yesterday it was “quiet”, and today it’s “quiet again”. I have seen a neighbor’s child with the name “Zhuang Zhuang” smiling at me through the iron railing, with breadcrumbs stuck between his teeth. The next day, he stopped laughing. There was an extra piece of red paper at the end of the railing, which said: seal. On the third day, Zhuang Zhuang disappeared with Hong Zhi. I wanted to ask, but I need to go out, I need a pass to go out, and I need a reason for the pass, but I don’t have a “necessary reason”. So I took off the breadcrumbs from the corners of my mouth and remained silent. Silence is also a kind of pass, and it is omnipotent.
I spent a few days in the window, like a dead pencil, sometimes thick and sometimes thin. Occasionally, a harsh horn car passed by, and the horn shouted, half of which sounded like advice and half like a judge: “Don’t gather, don’t spread, don’t think – oh, no, don’t believe the rumors.” I thought of the ancient book saying “no worries about learning”, which is slightly improved here: no worries. After worrying for a long time, even the dream became quiet. The people in the dream were wearing masks and noddding to each other. Noding is the biggest trend.
Until one night, the wind suddenly changed direction. There was a fire in the northwest city. In the fire, someone shouted mother, and his voice seemed to be held by the door. The next day, an obituary was posted in the city. The words were still large, but the meaning was small: everything was normal. But the pomegranate flowers in the center of the street are jumping in the wind, like someone’s palms are clenched and opened – open, it is a blank sheet of paper. There are no words on the blank paper, and it is the most noisy. The more empty it is, the fuller the heart is; the lighter it is, the heavier the pace. So many people walked under the street lamp and held up the blank sheet, like a nameless monument. If the stele is not written, the writing will be blackened; if the stele is not a statue, the statue will be pushed down. People cite the blank space, and there is a world that they dare not write and have no time to write about.
I also went. Instead of writing, I went to see it. Urumqi, Chang’an, Square, Riverside, every city has a street called “Zhonglu”, because they are all right in our hearts. The young man stood there, like a newly sharpened knife – not to cut anyone, but just to see what he had grown up to. They sang, some swallowed the lyrics back into their stomachs, and only threw the melody to the night wind; they talked, some hid their names in masks, and only showed their eyes to the camera. I saw a girl’s hand shaking when she held the paper, and the paper was also shaking. The words on the paper were like thousands of small black words jumping. There was a young man next to him laughing. She asked why he was laughing. He said, “The first time I picked up the paper, I found that it was heavier than anything else.”
I know that after this night, the blank paper will be confiscated – not from the hand, but from the memory. Before taking it away, you have to frame it first. So the city suddenly became diligent, busy adding frames to every piece of paper and hats to every pair of eyes. There are words on the hat: gather, incite, disturb, quarrel. With more words, the paper is lighter and the hands are empty. They want to rewrite the night’s fire into a gust of wind. The wind blows, the leaves fall, but the trees are still there. The tree is here to bloom pomegranate flowers next year, so that people mistakenly think that all this is repeated and the world is peaceful.
However, there are still people who don’t know each other very well. He took a large machine, stood between the street lamp and the white paper, folded the night inch by inch with the lens, and folded it into something I would call the “memo of the human eye”. He didn’t shout slogans or pick up lights. He just let the footsteps on the street sound by himself, and let the pondering on the paper grow by itself. He just took a picture of the “seeing” thing. Only later did I know that his surname was Chen, and his name was like the glass after the rain: Pinlin. Glass is most afraid of being knocked, but it also likes to reflect light. He reflected the wind of that night on the glass, and the glass became warm. But when the temperature is high, the glass is easy to break. Sure enough, not long after, someone knocked on the door; the door opened, his machine was put into a bag, and his people were put into another bag – the bag called “procedures”. Procedures go quickly, and rhetoric goes faster: uploading, spreading, quarreling, causing trouble. Four words are like four nails, nailing a person who has taken a “blank” to the file. The folder is as thick as a city wall. Outside the city wall, pomegranate flowers bloom as usual.
Someone asked me: You see, these years have finally been “unblocked”, right? I laughed. Unsealing is like removing the wound sticker. After pasting it for a long time, the skin will follow. The white stripe on the door was torn, and the one on the heart was still stuck. The invisible seal is firmer. It seals many nights in our throats. When we encounter the wind, we will strangle it and remind you: don’t look up, don’t make a sound, don’t dream. If you must do it, have a dream of saving fuel – dreaming of queuing, dreaming of nucleic acid, dreaming of “good for you”. When you wake up, a reminder will pop up in your mobile phone: zero new additions today, zero social face, and zero public opinion. Zero is really a good word. It’s smooth, has no edges, and it won’t be hard to put into any crack. It’s just that after being surrounded by zero for a long time, people have learned to cut themselves into a zero, just put them in the gap, and feel at ease with each other.
I also go to the street occasionally. The newly changed street lights on the street are white and cold, shining on the trees that are not stable. Someone cut that night into a short video and sent it up, like putting a paper kate into the patio. The patio is very high and the wind is also very high, but there are no clouds except for the four walls. The paper kite circled around, and the thread was gently pulled by someone, fell steadily back to the ground, and fell on the label of “violation”. The hand that affixes the label is very skillful, like an old tailor who decorates a button, finds the hole, pokes and pulls, and a button is tied to your chest. If you feel panicked, it will say, “This is for decency.”
Denemness is also distributed. The distribution is like a mask, one for each person, covering different faces and showing the same silence. Sometimes I saw the notice board in the bus stop, and the mirror reflected the light. Instead, it was not an advertisement, but an empty station a few years ago – at that time, the car was not empty, but the city was empty. The wind in the empty city likes to talk, but the wind later learned to avoid suspicion; it bypassed the crowd and blew the unrecorded grass.
I also want to write something. Writing is a bad habit, like coughing, which can be contagious. Some friends advised me not to write, not to post even if I wrote, and not to post my real name. I said yes. So I changed my name, like putting makeup on a corpse. The corpse after makeup looked comfortable, and everyone dared to approach it. It’s just that I wrote, and the tip of the pen was stained with a little cold sweat – it was seeping out of the paper. The paper is white, and the sweat is also white. It will not be seen when it is dry. I dried my sweat and continued to write. After writing, I suddenly felt that it was better not to write anything about this article, but leave it blank. Empty articles are like that paper, which saves both trouble and life. I typed a line on the header: There is no word here. Also type a line in the footer: there are no words here. In this way, the upper side is silent, the lower side is silent, and the silence in the middle is like a coin, and both sides are true.
There are many people in Chen Jun’s documentary, those who raise the paper and those who don’t raise it; those who sing, those who close their eyes; those who walk by, those who stop. I’m also mixed in, like a drop of water mixed into the water. Later, he was taken away, and I suddenly felt that my throat was a little sandy, like swallowing a glass slag. The doctor said to drink more water. I’m really thirsty, but the more I drink the water, the dryer it gets, like it’s squeezed out of a stone. People say that time can flatten everything, but I don’t think so. Time just grinds the bulge into a painless shape, so that you forget that it is still stuck in the meat. When you turned over, it shook again, and you knew that the three-year door closure had not really passed, the white paper had not really passed, and even the slightly hot chip in the machine had not passed. They melt into the air, like invisible dust, brought out by breath from time to time, and swallowed back by ourselves.
Someone asked me to give a name for these years. I don’t dare. Naming is a kind of power, and power is a kind of disease. It likes to simplify complex pain into convenient medicine names. I had to use a blank sheet of paper as usual. The paper doesn’t speak, but it turns over in the wind, just like a hand coming up from the bottom of the water, touching whoever it is. When it touched me, I pressed it back and said with a smile: Don’t make trouble. The moment I pressed it down, I heard someone knocking on the door in the distance. Knocked three times, three times again. The door didn’t open, and the heart opened a slit first. There is a little light in the gap, like a pomegranate flower that is about to bloom. The flower blooms slowly, so slowly that people misunderstand that it has never bloomed at all. But I know – it has been opened. Once I drive it, it’s enough for me to remember for a lifetime.
At this point, I could have collected the pen. But I also thought of those who like “for our good”. What they are most afraid of is not rumors, but memory. The memory is like grass, and it is still long after prohibition. So I decided to put the memory in a wordless box and label it: harmless. If one day, someone asks: What did you see that night? I handed over the box and asked him to take a picture by himself. There was him in the box, as well as paper and lenses. The glass of the camera reflects a face with neither slogans nor smiles on the face, only a pair of eyes – not anger, but awake.
People who wake up don’t necessarily talk. There are only two things to do when you wake up: open the window and turn off the light. When the window is opened, the wind comes in; when the light is turned off, the shadow is not so scary. As for the rest, I dare not think about it or teach it. Teaching people is dangerous, especially in a place where even the wind needs to be filed. That’s it. I wrote this, stopped writing, like the doctor slowly pulled the knife out of the wound. The knife was cold and the blood was hot, and neither of them was satisfied with each other. When they negotiate by themselves, I just hold down the gauze and tell them a few more words: don’t run, don’t cry, don’t watch the excitement. Because people who watch the excitement will sooner or later become the people who are watched in the excitement.
There are no words on the paper, and the words are outside the paper.
If you want to see, look up; if you don’t want to look, bow your head.
Looking up, there is wind, and looking down, there is soil.
Between the two, just enough for a piece of paper to pass.
