257: Chapter 257 Resonance Between Two Worlds

Outside the window, the rain grew heavier.

It pattered against the glass, as if providing an accompaniment to this old story.

Mrs. Zola took a sip of hot tea.

Her gray-blue eyes, always scrutinizing, now seemed somewhat hazy through the rising steam.

She pointed at the radio that had just been repaired and suddenly spoke:

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate..."

Her pronunciation was impeccable, a genuine London accent,

every syllable articulated with an academic precision.

Lin Que, who was about to take a bite of apple pie, paused.

He looked somewhat astonished at the old woman before him, wearing an old apron and haggling with a vendor over a few marks.

"Shakespeare," Lin Que put down his fork.

"Mrs. Zola, your pronunciation is even more standard than what I've heard on BBC radio."

"Naturally," Zola snorted faintly, her tone not particularly proud.

"Before those damned shells fell, I taught English literature at the University of Sarajevo for twenty years."

Lin Que sat up a little straighter.

Zola stood up and walked to the small cabinet covered in black-and-white photos.

She extended a rough finger and gently brushed the glass of a picture frame.

"This is my husband. He was the best bridge engineer in all of Yugoslavia.

Next to him is my eldest son, who had just gotten his medical license. The youngest one..."

Zola's finger stopped on the photo with the brightest smile.

"...called himself a romantic and wrote a drawer full of poems no one could understand."

She turned around and looked at Lin Que, her tone calm:

"In the third month after the siege began. They walked out this door, one after another.

My husband went to repair a water pipe that had been blown up, my eldest son went to the hospital to treat the wounded, and my youngest son said he wanted to go see the barricades."

"And then?" Lin Que asked softly.

"There is no 'and then'," Zola shrugged and sat back down on the sofa.

"War doesn't read poetry, and it doesn't need bridges repaired. They evaporated, like steam in this rain. Not even a bone fragment was ever found."

Silence fell in the room.

Only the fat cat named Berg purred.

Lin Que looked at this old woman who had lost all her loved ones.

She wasn't crying; her eyes weren't even red.

Her back was still ramrod straight.

"Back then, this building had no water or electricity," Zola suddenly changed the subject, pointing to an enamel mug in the corner.

"That was the only possession our family had left."

"You know, in those days, the most important thing I did every day wasn't looking for food or dodging shells."

Zola stretched out her hand and mimed an ironing motion in the air.

"Every week, I would use that extremely scarce, even muddy water to wash my husband's white shirt spotlessly clean.

Without an electric iron, I would boil a kettle of water and pour it into that enamel mug.

While the mug's sides were still scalding hot, I would iron out every single wrinkle on that shirt, bit by bit."

Lin Que was stunned.

In the ruins where even survival wasn't guaranteed, using life-saving water to wash a shirt no one wore? And ironing it with an enamel mug?

"Why?" Lin Que couldn't help asking.

"Wasn't staying alive the most important thing back then?"

Zola put down her teacup, pushed the thick lenses on the bridge of her nose.

Her gray-blue eyes shone so brightly under the lamp they were almost piercing.

"Alive?" she sneered.

"Remember this, boy. A person can die, their flesh can rot in the mud, but not their dignity."

Zola pointed out the window into the pitch-black night, her voice not loud, but each word like iron:

"The sniper on the hill opposite could put a bullet through my heart at any moment.

But he will never make me die like a dirty rat, disheveled and filthy in a hole.

Even in death, I will meet God wearing my cleanest clothes, with my chest held high."

Lin Que's fingers gripping the teacup tightened sharply.

Looking at this short, wrinkled old woman, the sound of the rain in his ears seemed to fade away at this moment.

His gaze pierced through the dim lamplight; he no longer seemed to be in an apartment on the Balkan Peninsula,

but standing on that vast, desolate Loess Plateau.

He seemed to see that man wearing a tattered red vest, his face black with coal dust.

In that era so barren even grass wouldn't grow, in front of that brick kiln belching black smoke, he held his back as straight as a mountain.

That was a man from the Northwest, doing it so his whole family could eat white-flour steamed buns, to turn a miserable life into a good one.

He saw again that frail figure hiding deep in the coal mine, reading by the dim light of a miner's lamp.

Even in the darkest depths of the mine, even while carrying a heavy basket of coal, his soul still soared high within the pages of a book.

At that moment, Lin Que suddenly understood.

Why that Mr. Lu extended his pen's reach towards those people covered in coal dust.

He had finally found the soul, the core, of that book.

Because whether it was this dimly lit apartment saving electricity,

or that man from the Northwest saving money by drinking vegetable soup,

the same kind of blood flowed in their bones.

That blood was called 'unyielding'.

It had nothing to do with borders or skin color.

Whether in the rain of bullets on the Balkan Peninsula, or in the barrenness of the Loess Plateau, there was always something that could not be crushed.

That thing was like wild grass.

Even if crushed under a thousand-pound stone, if there was the slightest crack,

it would push its way out and grow towards the sun.

Lin Que's fingers dug tightly into the armrest of the sofa.

This world still needed a rougher, heavier kind of power, one that smelled of blood and earth.

"Haa..."

Lin Que let out a long, slow breath, feeling the blockage in his chest finally clear.

"Hey, Eastern boy, what are you staring at?" Zola's voice pulled him back to reality.

The old woman seemed a little embarrassed by her earlier emotional outburst.

She pushed her glasses up and picked up her teacup as if to cover it up:

"Do you think this old woman has gone mad?"

"No," Lin Que shook his head, his expression more serious than ever before.

"Mrs. Zola, you looked... beautiful just now."

Zola was taken aback for a moment, then waved a dismissive hand:

"Enough of that smooth talk."

She was silent for a while, then suddenly turned her head to look at the notebook Lin Que had placed on the coffee table.

"Since you collect stories, you must be able to write them..." Zola hesitated, her voice dropping.

"Could you write a piece for me too? Just write about... that white shirt."

"I want people to know that when this city had cried all its tears, we also lived with dignity."

Lin Que looked at her.

Looked at this old woman who, in this broken world, still polished her floors to a shine and ironed her shirts crisp.

He nodded solemnly.

"I will write it, Mrs. Zola."

Lin Que stood up, picked up the notebook, and gently rubbed his fingers over its cover.

"I won't just write a piece. I'll write it into a very, very long story.

In that story, there will also be people like you, chewing on dry rations in the midst of hardship, yet holding their backs straighter than anyone else."

Zola looked at him, not fully understanding, and finally just waved a tired hand:

"Alright, go to sleep."

"Remember to turn off the light. Electricity is expensive."