On My Way - Chapter 7

Chapter 7 - The African Child Breaking Open the Stone

I did not answer immediately.

In our department, this assignment could be considered a form of persecution. Going to Africa meant getting over twenty types of vaccinations and facing genuine life-threatening dangers. Furthermore, while they said it would last for three years, if the project couldn't be completed, one might end up throwing ten years of their youth into it.

But I was different.

I had joined a large company and passed every certification I could; everyone thought I had become respectable and was making good money.

Yet, standing in front of Cheng Xia, I knew that the distance between us was still vast.

Real estate was on the decline. For a low-level employee like me, with no background and no pedigree, trying to get promoted was too agonizing. There was a guy in another team who held the same position as me, and he hadn't received a promotion or a raise in ten years.

Of course, he was a local who owned several properties and collected rent.

Old Feng was giving me an opportunity.

But I knew this trip carried immense risk, and I wouldn't be able to return home for years at a time.

In other words, by choosing to go, I would be closing off any possibility between me and Cheng Xia—that dream I had been nursing since I was a teenager would be completely shattered.

I had originally thought that if he asked me to stay, I wouldn't go. So what if he had a girlfriend? I could be friends with her, I could be even more humble, even more shameless...

But only when I watched him texting his girlfriend did I realize that I wasn't content.

I was not content to remain forever a shadow crawling on the ground, malevolently and uglily peeping at their happiness.

I wanted to converse with him as an equal, not to be pitied by him, ignored by him, or always treated as someone who was closest to him but never a candidate for his consideration.

This craving was so intense that it even surpassed the desire to "be with Cheng Xia forever."

At that time, I didn't know why either.

And so, I boarded the plane, not even saying goodbye to Cheng Xia—after that unpleasant parting, we never contacted each other again.

This was my first time on a plane. I was nervous the whole way, stealing glances at others and mimicking their actions until I finally managed to sit in my seat successfully.

Watching the blue sky outside the window, I suddenly remembered my feelings during my first train ride. They were much the same: trepidation, anxiety, and anticipation. Except, back then, I knew I was about to see Cheng Xia; his direction was my direction.

But now, I was going to a place where he didn't exist.

I wanted to send him a WeChat message, but everything I could think of felt so awkward and artificial. I typed and deleted, typed and deleted again.

Just then, after two months of silence, a message from Cheng Xia suddenly popped up: "Do you want to get spicy hot pot today? Should I come to your company to find you?"

"The plane is about to take off; please turn off your electronic devices."

At that moment, a flight attendant walked over to ask me to turn off my phone. Old Feng gave me a look, and I turned it off.

Amidst the enormous roar, the plane flew higher and higher. It was my first time seeing this seaside city from this angle. It was truly beautiful—the gemstone blue, the sparkling sea, looking just like a dream.

How fortunate I was, to have once met you.

How fortunate I was, that we would finally be separated.

Goodbye, Cheng Xia.

Later on, I finally understood why Old Feng wanted to bring me along.

His personality was unyielding; once he set his mind on something, it had to be done well. To put it nicely, he was a fierce general under the top leadership; to put it bluntly, he was stubborn.

He was the overall project manager, and everyone under his command had their own temper. The African foremen were particularly lazy; if you said even a little something to them, they would slap a label of racial discrimination on you.

Whenever he lacked the patience to communicate and negotiate, he needed one of his own people in the middle to smooth things over.

He had originally wanted to bring a man, but none of the young men in our cohort had much promise, so he chose me—he told me later that, truthfully, he hadn't expected me to last.

While following him to review blueprints and manage settlements, I braved the scorching sun to run to the site with the sub-project managers. At night, I still had to cram French; the Africans had too many complaints, and neither I nor Old Feng could understand them, putting us in a very passive position.

Old Feng’s brain worked faster than an average person’s, and he was a workaholic. I couldn't keep up with his pace at all and was cursed at relentlessly every single day.

The way Old Feng cursed people was incredibly nasty. There was a big guy in our engineering department, over 1.9 meters tall, who was reduced to crouching on the ground and sobbing loudly after one of his outbursts.

Fortunately, I had long since forged a face thicker than a city wall. As soon as he finished cursing, I would immediately hand him a cup of hot water: "Master, take a break before you continue cursing... by the way, could you explain this to me? How was this calculated?"

In the first month, I lost ten pounds.

In the second month, just as I finally got used to the work rhythm, I contracted Salmonella.

The illness wasn't lethal, but it was agonizing. I had always had a strong constitution since I was little, and this was my first time experiencing such a fierce high fever.

Lying in bed, I only felt as if fire was raging brutally through my entire body.

I had many, many dreams.

I dreamed of when I was very small, when my mother boarded a vehicle and left home without hesitation. My father smashed everything he could, and I was so scared I wet my pants. My father looked at me with red eyes, and I cried out, "Daddy, please don't kill me!"

I dreamed of my grandmother. She was hunched over, picking up a plastic bottle, smiling with satisfaction. Then, she caught sight of me and my classmates passing by and hurriedly covered her face and ran away like a thief. I chased after her, calling "Grandma! Grandma!" but I couldn't catch up to the old lady.

I dreamed of my sisters from the electronics factory. While they were playing, fooling around, and enjoying their youth, I was doing problems night after night. They mocked me, then bought lots of coffee and snacks and placed them on my desk.

But the one I dreamed of most was still Cheng Xia.

Sixteen-year-old him, with a crew cut, a clean and shy smile, standing at the entrance of the vegetable market in his school uniform waiting for me. The sunset of an entire city flowed from behind him.

He said, "Of course we won't be separated, you wasted a wish."

He said, "Whoever looks down on you, I’ll help you look down on them double."

He said, "What's the big deal about not finding a job? You have me."

He ran toward me in that seaside city, his hair blown into the shape of a unicorn, revealing his fair forehead.

I wanted to reach out to him, but I suddenly woke up from the dream.

It was the crude dormitory in Africa. In the dark room, there was nothing but spiders crawling about.

I went to the bathroom to throw up for a while, and finding I could stand shakily, I grabbed a flashlight and went to the room next door.

"Sir, how are you doing?" I asked.

Old Feng had caught it too, even worse than me. He was delirious with fever and convulsing.

Africa lacked medical resources, and everyone operated on the spirit that "minor illnesses won't kill you and major illnesses are inevitable," so going to the hospital was useless.

I fed Old Feng water and spent my time changing hot towels to lower his temperature. His brain was burnt to a crisp; I was bound to suffer along with him.

The next day, Old Feng still hadn't recovered, and neither had I. I stubbornly forced myself to help him organize the necessary documents into categories.

The chief engineer said, "I originally thought you two had 'that' kind of relationship, but looking at it now, it's not! It's like a TV drama!"

"What TV drama?"

"The Great Eunuch."

Another situation arose at the site: the African foremen went on strike. The engineering chief and I rushed over without pause to hear the complaints from the workers' representatives. They actually claimed that the Chinese looked down on them.

Our people were green with anger; they were constantly stealing oil, parts, and cement... they were sluggish in their work. How could you have a pleasant face toward a group of thieves?

If Old Feng had come, he probably would have pounded the table and started a shouting match. After patiently listening to the two parties cross swords for three hours, I used my clumsy French to tell them: "Look, they don't look down on a lady on the construction site, so why would they look down on such respectable laborers?"

The leader couldn't help but laugh, though he quickly regained his serious expression and pounded the table, shouting: "This matter involves racial discrimination; it must be resolved!"

I said, "How about this: you list every behavior you find offensive, and I will directly request that our head leader establish a code of conduct for the Chinese personnel. But as a price, you must also abide by the code of conduct we establish."

We took a step back. By the time both sides nodded, I already felt lightheaded and dizzy.

The car hadn't arrived yet, so the chief let me rest on a loading truck for a while. The African sunset was brilliantly gorgeous; even the dusty construction site looked somewhat magnificent.

I saw a few children running back and forth on the construction site's dump heap, seemingly looking for something. The workers constantly chased them away; they would scatter in a flurry, only to gather together again a moment later.

A child ran past me, and I asked, "What are you picking up?"

The children were very shy, but they spoke over each other to tell me: "Picking up rocks. There are treasures inside the rocks, they can be traded for money."

I hadn't even processed it when they giggled and scattered.

The chief walked over and explained that there was iron in this construction waste, and they would break the stones to trade for money.

"These children are very pitiful," he said. "Every family has four or five kids. Although free primary education is widespread, most of them can't attend, so they just run around blindly all day."

"But as they keep breaking them, they grow up," I said. "Children of poor families have their own way of growing up."

The high fever made me groggy. I only felt that I and those children breaking stones under the sunset had merged into one.

I was in the middle of breaking open a giant rock, hoping that inside, there were treasures enough.