The Romance of a Young Painter

After a short stay in the Middle East for a few days, Zhou Nianjiu and Shen Guangji went to the African continent south of the latitude line. After getting off the plane, there was a heat wave, and the scorching sun turned the blue sky into a dazzling highlight. However, Li Ying's repeated care before leaving was obviously Out of imagination, because the heat here is not as unbearable as imagined.

They stopped briefly for a meal, then took a car to a hotel in Amboseli National Park.

The guest rooms are stone houses with pointed yurts, and the structure woven of wood and some kind of plants tightly wraps most of the houses. From a distance, they look like dark brown fortresses.

Seeing that it was still early, the driver asked them if they wanted to take a stroll around the area again. Shen Guangji gave him some tips and said, "No need."

"Thank you, friend." The dark-skinned driver showed his white teeth. Before leaving, he kindly reminded them that there are sometimes ferocious beasts in and out at night, and try not to go out after dark.

"You look tired." Zhou Nianjiu said.

"I can't sleep well on the plane," Shen Guangji stretched out his hand to him, and said, "Stay with me for a while."

Zhou Nianjiu lay down beside him, and after a while, he heard slow and heavy breathing in his ears.

Shen Guangji fell asleep.

Zhou Nianjiu turned sideways gently. This was the first time he saw Shen Guangji sleeping up close. Without glasses to cover him, he easily found that the color around his eye sockets was a bit dark due to staying up late for a long time, and the drooping eyelashes cast thick shadows on the lower eyelids. The shadows of his eyes became more and more deep. When you look closely, you can find that there are fine lines at the corners of his eyes, which are the traces carved on this handsome face by the years. If you look up a little, you can see the center of his brows Unconsciously twisting, seeming a little preoccupied, a few strands of messy hair trembled slightly with breathing, rippling in waves on the forehead and ears that attracted affection.Zhou Nianjiu pointed at his brows and tried to push away the creases in the middle. This man made people feel gentle and powerful when he was awake, but when he was asleep, he made people feel distressed like a wronged child.

What are you worried about?

Zhou Nianjiu wanted to wake him up and ask, but reason stopped him.He stood up, and the window of the reserved room overlooked the grassland. Albizia trees dotted the field like giant umbrellas, and the snow cap on the top of Mount Kilimanjaro could be seen from a distance. The last sentence of the preface to Hemingway’s novel suddenly Bumped into his head:

No one knows what the leopard is doing at such a high place.

He felt a little uncomfortable, but he couldn't say why, and finally attributed it to the fact that the vastness of this place made people awe-inspiring.

Shen Guangji woke up in the evening, and they went to the restaurant to have something to eat. After the meal, they took a walk while admiring the distant elephants playing in the sunset.They make love tirelessly at night. They have slept in the same bed countless times over the years, but they have never been entangled with each other like this night. The sound of some unknown animal came from outside the room, but they could not hear anything. can not hear.

The next day they missed the buffet breakfast, so they made two capsules of coffee and ate the tropical fruit of unknown species given in the room, and then they went back to bed to warm up.

"Go out for a walk?" Shen Guangji asked him after taking a shower.

"Let's be late." Zhou Nianjiu stretched his waist, um, his whole body was sore, he opened two large suitcases one by one, first set up an easel by the window, and then stuffed the one with clothes into the cabinet.

Shen Guangji watched him finish these with amused expression, and then quietly opened and hung up the clothes.

"How many days shall we stay here? Should we stay longer than the last stop? How about half a month?" Zhou Nianjiu handed him a bottle of water.

Shen Guangji took a sip and said: "This time there is no time limit, I plan to draw what I want before leaving."

"What is it?" Zhou Nianjiu wasn't quite sure whether Shen Guangji was looking for an unformed theme here or that he already had a mature idea and was just waiting for an opportunity to express it.

"Want to know?" Shen Guangji nodded his lips.

Zhou Nianjiu leaned over and kissed generously, and the two quickly deepened the kiss, and when they were out of breath, they knew they couldn't continue.

"A gift." Shen Guangji calmed down a little.

"Is it the one you mentioned in your last message?" Zhou Nianjiu asked.

"That's already given to you," Shen Guangji smiled and pointed to the position on his left chest, "This is another one. I thought of it many years ago, but the idea was immature at that time. It’s not too late to implement it now.”

"What is it?" Zhou Nianjiu asked again.

Facing the puzzled eyes, Shen Guangji smiled and said, "Why didn't I know you have such great curiosity?"

Zhou Nianjiu let out a "huh" and said, "That's really the case." Obviously, he was not very interested in anything before, but now he began to pay special attention to Shen Guangji's affairs.

Shen Guangji felt that his troubled look was very cute, so he kissed again involuntarily, and said, "Because you love me."

This man was so tired that he couldn't stop, Zhou Nianjiu pushed him away in order to avoid getting angry again, and said, "Let's go have lunch? The sun is already high."

"Hungry?" Shen Guangji asked.

"I can eat an antelope." Zhou Nianjiu saw two antelopes grazing not far away.

Shen Guangji said: "This is my mistake, let's go, let's go have a big meal."

They ate, drank, painted, made love, and then embraced each other and fell asleep. On the third day and the fourth day, it was like this again. Time passed like a group of acacia bushes passing by, and no one mentioned the matter of returning home.

After staying for almost a month, they quarreled over a trivial matter. Zhou Nianjiu carpooled to the other end of the park with others alone. When he came back, he found that Shen Guangji had already fallen asleep, still frowning tightly, in the sleeping position Not relaxing at all, the feeling of tenderness and distress returned, and he lay down beside him and hugged him tightly.

"Back?" Shen Guangji opened his eyes.

"En." Zhou Nianjiu whispered.

"It stinks." Shen Guangji frowned.

"It might be hippos. They sprayed water into the car." Zhou Nianjiu smelled it, and it was indeed not good. He got up and said, "I'm going to take a shower."

When I came back, the sheets had been changed, and Shen Guangji's pajamas were not the same as before. Zhou Nianjiu lay down next to him again, and said, "It's my fault in the morning. I don't know why I got so angry. We won't quarrel in the future." OK, okay?"

Shen Guangji said: "Although I'm glad you said that, I don't guarantee that I won't make you angry in the future, so I will do whatever I want, but there is one thing, don't leave alone, okay?"

"It won't be like that anymore." Zhou Nianjiu buried his face in the other party's neck, and he was thinking about Shen Guangji all day outside.

They didn't do anything at night, they just cuddled together and had a good night's sleep, and the next day they were back to their original state.

The days are like quicksilver, and it is another month in the blink of an eye. The weather here is getting hotter and hotter, fewer and fewer tourists come and go, and the hotel starts to become deserted.

There was a power failure that day, and the maintenance personnel were delayed. Zhou Nianjiu looked out of the window, and the vegetation shrunk at a terrifying speed, exposing the bare yellow ground, and the wind could not bring a cool breath. Instead, the dust was blown up. The Albizia julibrissin tree had been uprooted by the passing elephants long ago, and all the parts that could be used as food had been eaten up. What was left was the lying huge trunk whose backbone was broken by the chaotic elephant hooves. The sky was so bright. The whitish sun is like an incandescent light bulb loaded with too much voltage, making people worry that the filament will be blown in the next second and the whole world will be plunged into darkness. The suffocating heat enveloped this continent, and only by looking at the whiteness in the distance can people find the coolness in memory by visual association.He glanced back, Shen Guangji was sitting behind the easel as motionless as a mountain, his clothes were soaked in sweat and stuck tightly to his body, but he stubbornly refused to be shirtless.

Zhou Nianjiu already knew what Shen Guangji was drawing, and most of the outline he drew showed the roof of Africa. What made him feel strange was that Shen Guangji never once said that he would go to the mountains to have a look. He did it deliberately, but no matter what, he looked forward to this work very much, especially after seeing the magnificence and cruelty of this continent during this period of time.

The power came back late in the evening, but the night was cool enough with the sun gone.

Zhou Nianjiu asked Shen Guangji to take a bath first, and when he finished washing and was about to ask the other party to eat, he found that Shen Guangji had fallen asleep again.

Recently, Shen Guangji has been very lethargic. In his own words, it is as if he wants to make up for the sleep he lost during the past [-] years. Moreover, he is dark and thin. He is always a little careless when eating, and sometimes even looks out of the window Absent.

"What are you waiting for?" Zhou Nianjiu noticed that his progress in painting was not fast.

Shen Guangji stared at the distant mountain with burning eyes, and said, "I don't know when it will rain?"

Zhou Nianjiu stood beside him and looked in the same direction as him. The distant mountains were not as good as Dai, and that bit of whiteness now looked like the incarnation of thirst in the entire grassland.

And the man next to Zhou Nianjiu, who was staring at the distant mountain with the same thirsty mood, was like lava dormant in the core of the mountain range, and his life was burning secretly and rapidly.He tried his best to restrain the urge to confess to his lover, and he hoped that such a pure and beautiful time would last at least until the day when the first rain fell.

The rainy season is finally here.

Black clouds enveloped quickly, a bolt of lightning tore through the sky and fell behind the mountains, followed by one after another, the rain curtain fell, like a torrent of water pouring down from the sky.

Shen Guangji and Zhou Nianjiu stood in front of the window, hugging each other. Their eyes could not be taken away from such a magnificent scene. Their hearts were throbbing in their chests, and they even became short of breath. In the newly formed light curtain, only the most intense love and desire can be reconciled with it.