Francesca introduced the bridge to Robert Kincaid
1.
In the winter of 1999, I went home from school. The sun is a little warm. In the gloomy corridor, there was a cement grid common to that era. The sunlight was cut apart and the pain fell to pieces on the floor.
Just like those pictures that have already begun to bleach.
Mother's tears. Father's silence. Broken porcelain pieces in a teacup. Divorce agreement transcribed in carbon black ink on red document paper.
It's all shaking and shaking like that. It seems hoarse in the memory.
Two years later, our family moved from the small county to the city. I accidentally saw the VCD movie in my mother's suitcase. The scent of jasmine perfume was dyed in her mother's close-fitting clothes.
The men and women embracing on the cover, the dark red and old covered bridge in the twilight.
I was speechless because of the depression of such a cool tone.
2.
The story happened in the summer of 1965.
The two-seater small card drove abruptly into the fields of Madison County from National Highway 11.
White professional waistcoat. Camel cigarettes. Black long barrel Nikon.
The middle-aged cowboy rolled up his sleeves and looked at the shy country woman in a light brown striped shirt. He smiled, the lines flowing through time on his face are deep and charming.
As a photojournalist, in Madison County, he did come with a simple purpose.
He likes the clear blue sky in Iowa, the large sorghums on the farm, and the most vicissitudes and oldest covered bridge — the locals call it Rothman.
However, he ran into a more modest woman, Francesca—an ordinary peasant woman in that white roadside cabin. Mother of two children.
Her warm smile is like a cradle, making a very tired heart in the travel and wandering at ease instantly.
In those days, the family was not around. She is also happy to be accompanied.
She talked to him about his hometown, read to him the poems of Irish poet Yeats, and he told her about the cities, rivers and mountains he passed along the way.
He took a picture of her, in the photo, she had a girlish smile.
Love is like candlelight, and they snuggle and dance together in the dark night. In the dry air, they ignited each other.
When they were affectionate, he swept over her smooth body like a strong and powerful leopard. The moment when the souls mingled with each other reminded the cowboy of the unburned campfires, frozen rivers, and breezy tropics along the way. The grassland remembered the pure girls who were dedicated to the temple by the Indians.
Encounter and parting are the strange twin sisters of the god of destiny, who have repeatedly verified to people that the beauty of love can never be equal to the sharpness of reality.
Robert Kincaid’s request was so direct, he said, Francesca, come with me. I am selfish, but I, but I can't resist loving you.
If I leave, everything will change.
As an answer. She just said something softly in the dark.
It was a night after they lingered for four days, and then the silent man went out to start the small truck and melted into the boundless night alone.
Love is like candlelight, that is, in response to such an instantaneous light and extinguishment.
The sound of the door closing gently masked the woman's sobbing.
What she couldn't forget was the fascination and rotation behind the brandy, the gasps and sighs in the dark, and the sense of love that she gradually awakened from that man, which suddenly made her look back to the other side of her youth.
From that moment on, she felt the meaning of her life, as if she suddenly left after an unexpected reunion.
Inexplicably confused.
3.
The winter of 1995.
"The Bridge of Last Dream" was released in the United States.
The acting skills of Eastwood and Streep are impeccable. The classic Hollywood cowboys and French lieutenant's women, on the screen, they warmly experience their respective breaths, giving the movie the soul of American country folk songs.
Because of my deliberateness, I am still willing to use love to describe this relationship. Although since many years ago, there have been so many people constantly criticizing. They say that in this era when derailment is much simpler than publishing a book, such a portrayal will beautify the betrayal and obscure some social norms.
Faced with doubt, Waller, the author of the novel "The Bridge of Last Dream", once said in an interview that Francesca's prototype came from many women.
Those women who have lost the beauty and sorrow of love because of long marriages.
I later thought that there should be my mother among them.
My mother was very beautiful when she was young, with long hair fluttering, full of youthful passion and talent.
She can play the accordion and she can write poems. Her slender fingers can make beautiful sentences.
In some people's love letters, she is a girl like a white swan.
And my father is just a rural young man who has just graduated from a college and entered the county seat. He is honest, wooden, and rustic.
In the eyes of many people, they are not a good match.
This is not about snobbery, but sometimes it is true. In the marriage of that era, people would unconsciously think about the subtle benefits of firewood, rice, oil and salt.
So grandparents made a decision for their daughter's happiness. Married to a simple and kind father, they felt confident that their mother would be happy. It was a game between the two elders who felt that they were able to win the game with stability.
In the end everyone won, except for her.
Later, my mother said to me, maybe, this is called destiny.
And it was me that made her feel that in such a fate, it was not completely regret and regret.
4. The
summer of 2007.
I will never forget my mother's expression when she told me about her past. She told me for the first time about the man in her life except my father. Although it is not as warm as the men and women encountered in Madison County, there is not much pain and entanglement that tortures lives.
Her face was always calm when she told the story. In vain, telling about his previous life.
Once people's feelings are deep, they always seem to be much weaker when talking about them.
Mother said that father is a very good person. After many years of marriage, she finally fell in love with this man I called "Dad". Although the previous marriage was also harmonious, it was still unable to find the kind of feeling called "love".
Some choices, although not necessarily great, must be sacrifices somewhere in her life that we cannot see as children.
Memories are painful to many people. For those extramarital romances that are regarded as inhumane like scourges, perhaps we should explore the cause rather than simply blame. For the mother, her past, like the butterfly caught in the yellowed page, has long become a specimen of love.
At that moment, the mother in her arms really reminded me of Francesca.
Woman in Madison County.
5.
The beige wild chrysanthemum was given by Robert Kincaid.
In return, Francesca posted a small note on the wooden planks of the covered bridge and invited a photographer from National Geographic to come to her home for dinner.
First sight. You come and me, the beginning of love is often such a spring.
It's a pity that life can't stay at first sight forever.
So, I kept those pictures.
Many years later, as in a poem my mother wrote when she was young:
"You are sitting on the oak window sill, drinking the sunshine, and
thinking about it carefully." -END-
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