When I was a child, I always heard a story from my mother. It was a story about a small river in our village that never sees the sun. The river was not deep or wide, but it almost became a forbidden place in our village. People said that the river had an unspeakable power, and even the stars in the sky did not dare to bow their heads and pass by. Only old dogs and madmen dared to wander by the river. The old people in the village told us that in the last rainstorm of every summer, the river would bring back the souls of the people it had swallowed.
After hearing this story, I always secretly ran to the river without my mother’s knowledge, wanting to see what ghosts or evil spirits were in the river. I even had a fantasy that one day, I would be swallowed by the river and become a soul that did not belong to the world, floating on the water forever, and becoming a ghost without time and place.
Most people in the village live in a gloomy world. It was a place where the seasons were always wet. The crops on the land seemed to never grow. The walls of the houses were covered with moss. The tiles on the roofs seemed to be sick and leaked every year. Every night, accompanied by the sound of unknown wind, the children in the village would wake up from nightmares and hear the barking of dogs and the wailing of cows not far away. Although during the day, the people in the village would work hard like every ordinary farmer day after day, but at night, everyone always had an indescribable fear and helplessness in their hearts.
At that time, I always hoped that I could have a pair of eyes that could see through the secrets hidden behind daily life. But I also knew that no one could escape fate. No matter how hard you try to change something, it will always take you to where you are destined to go. The absurdity of fate is like that stream, so calm that people can’t see its depth, but once you are caught in it, you can never escape.
My father is a taciturn man. He is always the first to get up every morning and go to the fields to harvest with a worn-out sickle. I have never seen him smile since I was a child, and I don’t remember him ever saying a few words of comfort. Whenever I asked him why he didn’t like talking to us, he always answered coldly: “Because you don’t understand.” I know that my father has a lot of things in his heart, buried in his silent eyes, or buried in the sickle that is heavier than him. He often uses the sickle to trim the crops in the field, with a crisp and neat movement, as if everything he does has some irreversible meaning.
My mother is different. She always sits in a corner of the kitchen secretly and smokes after cooking. She said that she hasn’t been able to find her young self for a long time. Whenever I see her smoking, I can’t help but wonder if she is also thinking about a distant place or someone. The person she once loved deeply but is no longer by her side. I don’t know her past, I only know that there is a flash of confusion and despair in her eyes occasionally, as if she is also looking for a certain exit, but this exit has never appeared.
And I have become more and more silent like my father, and no longer interested in the outside world. Planting in spring and harvesting in autumn, life is like the operation of a machine, repeating emotionless movements. Although I have long buried doubts about fate in my heart, I know that I can’t escape it. Fate is like that river, its direction is destined, no matter how you struggle, it will take you to where it wants to take you.
One summer, I was lured to the river by a stranger in the village. He said that there was gold buried at the bottom of the river, and that gold was given by this land. He gave me a shovel and asked me to dig. I dug for several hours, but found nothing. After the man left, I continued to dig until my hands began to become numb, until the river became more and more turbulent. I finally understood that no matter how I dig, the river will never respond to your desire. At this moment, human greed and the inevitability of fate seemed to be intertwined into a net that entangled me.
Since then, I have never been to the river again, and even walked into the fields less and less. The people in the village continued to live their daily lives, as if everyone’s fate had already been written, waiting for everyone to go. And I, like them, no longer asked why, and no longer expected change. I found that life is like this, constantly being pushed by fate, and eventually taking us to a place where we don’t know where to go. No matter how we struggle, we can’t escape the final outcome.
Looking back now, I haven’t heard my mother tell the story about the river for a long time. Her voice has disappeared in the wind, and the river is still flowing quietly by the village, taking away people’s hopes and dreams, and also taking away those unchangeable destinies. I think, maybe this is the meaning of life, like that river, always flowing forward, although we can’t see its end clearly, it will always take us to that long-destined place.