It was a Thursday in October, autumn had arrived, and the heat was still rolling, and the weather suddenly cooled down after two days of autumn rain on Tuesday and Wednesday. That is, this time, I know that as long as this rain occurs at the end of autumn, the weather will no longer be hot, and I will have to wait until next summer to feel the scorching heat wave. Our graduation exhibition opens this Thursday, in an open space surrounded by a school building, and all the paintings of the graduating students are hanging on the walls around them.

My painting hangs on the outside of the west wall, and it's a decent oil painting, so decent that even the size is set according to the golden ratio. I am not an excellent student, but I am not a bad student, I always follow the rules and regulations, abide by the school rules and discipline, never go to the Internet café all night, do not speak ill of the teacher behind my back, and I clean carefully when it is my turn to be on duty. In the past three and a half years, I have not escaped a single class, and even in the political class with an average of only a dozen people in each of the two classes, I must come to every class, listen carefully, take good notes, and complete the homework of writing three or four pages of A4 paper text on time for each class. Still, none of my teachers remembered me.

At that time, I didn't have any dreams, and I applied for art because the cultural courses were too poor, and I didn't go to a professional art college, so I didn't think I had any talent in art, and I didn't want to learn painting or design so brilliantly that people worshipped. However, I couldn't accept that my professional skills were too mediocre, so I never got the best evaluation from my teacher on my drawing and design assignments, but they were at least rated as average or above average.

As graduation approached, I didn't know what I could do or what I should do in the future. My classmates were busy looking for jobs or relationships, but I was indifferent. I didn't have high expectations for life, I had to get by, and my classmates were discussing what to make money and which country to go to, and in my opinion, none of that made any sense. Therefore, I usually have a good relationship with my classmates, but when I was preparing for graduation, I always acted alone, as if I was isolated from the world and lived alone.

I know that my graduation project will definitely pass, and I also know that my graduation project will definitely not be excellent, and I never care about that. I drew an autumn wilderness on that modest 20 x 24 inch board, with a few trees, a river, withered grass, and a golden sunset......

Very few people who came to see the graduation exhibition stopped in front of my painting, and I also knew that it was just a normal art graduate. I didn't think hard like those students who demanded a lot of themselves, as if I was going to devote my whole life to this graduation exhibition, and of course, more importantly, I knew that I couldn't do it that well.

Next to my painting was a painting by Hai Linlin, and at first I didn't know who the author of that painting was. The painting was very good, it was hung up relatively late, my painting was hung in the morning, it was hung in the evening. When I returned to the exhibition venue after dinner, I saw that there was a painting hanging next to my painting, and although I didn't paint very well, I could still tell whether a painting was good or bad.

It was also an oil painting, the same size as mine, of a woman holding a candle in a modest room, on the bed behind her, with the sheets pulled on the floor, and the upper part exposed under a loose suspender, and barefoot on the floor. The woman in the painting has a gentle gaze, and her eyes seem to look out of the picture intentionally and unintentionally, obviously in the neoclassical style of the 19th century, but there are also the characteristics of the author in it. The work has a deep foundation, sophisticated brushwork, and mature colors. In particular, the subject of the painting, the woman holding the candle, seems to be alive.

My feeling tells me that this painting is from the hand of a woman, and only a woman can paint a woman so expressively. I stared at the painting for a long time, but I couldn't come back to my senses. I looked at all the paintings in the exhibition that day, and I didn't think that painting could be more outstanding than this one.

My painting hangs next to it, dwarfed by it, but I'm not embarrassed or presumptuous about it.

I was eager to see the author of the painting, and I waited until late to see the author appear. Until some students took their works off the exhibition wall one after another and brought them back to the dormitory. Some students don't worry about anything, and will leave the painting at the exhibition until the end of the exhibition, and then throw the painting away or take it away. No one took the painting with them until everyone was done in the venue, and I was left sitting at the table in the booth, and the lights around me were turned off by the building caretaker, leaving only two stacks at each end of the passage. I sat quietly, listening to music with my headphones on, the breeze of the autumn night blowing across my face.

As the dormitory was about to close, she appeared at the other end of the exhibition space. At first, the light on the other side of the passage shone on her face, but it was too far away for me to make out what she looked like. As she approached, I had to look at her in the backlight. She looked slender in the backlight, but she couldn't see her face clearly. I have not the slightest doubt that she is the author of that painting.

And in the years that followed, all my memories of her began at this time, and I never forgot them. Her eternal figure in the interweaving of several dim lights and shadows, accompanied by the dark memories of the autumn nights that will never be erased. There was a time when I regretted that I had been in the exhibition venue for so long, and for a time I was glad that I had been there late, and it felt like I was listening to an aria that never ended.

She approached me with simple steps in the quiet of autumn evenings, wearing a thin black sweater and black pants. Her slender figure makes her arms and legs look very slender. It's just that the light is too dim for me to see her face very clearly. She walked over to the painting, folded her arms over her chest, and paused for a moment to look at me. I was sitting five or six meters away from where we were painting. At that moment, I was half-lying on the back of my seat, with my legs on the table in front of me, her hands crossed behind my head, headphones on, her eyes slightly closed, and I could see her turn her head to look at me. She looked at me, and then went to get the painting, she stood on tiptoe, holding the lower position of the frame with both hands, trying to take the frame down, it seemed very difficult, and she tried several times without success, and then she stood next to me again, and exhaled helplessly, and looked at me again.

I knew it was her painting, and seeing how she struggled, I wanted to help her, but I didn't know how to speak. I was struggling in my chair, and there was a force urging me to ask if she needed help, but again, there was a force restraining me from speaking. If it was someone else, I would definitely not hesitate to help, but in the face of this woman, I could only sit still. It was a very mixed emotion, a little shy, and a little afraid. In the days that followed, this feeling stayed with me for a long time.

She continued to stand there looking at her paintings, perhaps too embarrassed to ask a stranger to help her, and she could feel that she would have to take them down and bring them back with her at night. She stood for a long time, and it was an awkward scene, and no matter which of the two of us spoke first, her painting could be taken down immediately. But they didn't speak, as if the two of them had agreed in advance not to talk to each other.

Finally, after the sound of a car passing outside the exhibition venue, she said to me, "Classmate, can you help me take the painting down?" I always remember that there was an apology in her voice that seemed to be self-reproaching for disturbing others' cultivation, and for a long time afterward, I would remember her apologetic request every time I heard the sound of cars passing by the road at night gradually weakening. I had already turned off the music at that moment, and the headphones were just stuffed in my ears, so I took them off, got down from the chair, approached her and said, "Yes, the ladder is in the tool room, the door is closed, you come and move this table with me, I can take it off by stepping on the table." ”

She walked quickly to me to lift the table to the painting, and I went to look at her face, which was as apologetic as she was. She saw that I was looking at her, smiled slightly, and I saw that she saw that I was looking at her, and looked away in a panic at the table that was being moved by the two of us. I felt that my wandering, panicked eyes betrayed me, and she must have sensed my unnaturalness.

We lifted the table under the painting, and I stepped on the table to take down her painting, which I held up to my chest, just parallel to the sight of the woman in the painting. At such a close distance, the traces of the brush are clearly visible, and the color blocks are uneven.

I turned around and handed her the painting, and she leaned it against the wall and tried to help me down, but I didn't let her help it, I didn't want to—I didn't dare touch her hand. I jumped off the table, so close to her that I could smell the shampoo in her hair. She should have washed her hair in the morning or afternoon. Occasionally, her shawl hair would be blown up by the wind, fluttering in the air, or blocking her view, and she tipped them behind her ears with her hands. The hair on her forehead was pushed back by her, and it appeared that the hair was thick, revealing a very explicit sensuality.

She and I lifted the table back to its place, turned to pick up the painting leaning against the wall, turned to me and said thank you, and walked back the way we came, half-holding the painting in both hands. I saw her back in the backlight, her slender legs constantly changing the shadows cast by the light.

The only thing left of that place was my painting hanging alone on the wall, with a few trees, a river, withered grass, and a golden sunset......