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The air contains a thick water vapor, the light sunlight is covered by clouds and mist, and the scenery on both sides of the water alley in front of you still seems to be immersed in water. The damp Xuanqing warped corner roof, the damp white powder wall, and the drenched limestone bridge and stone port...... The scenery in sight has absorbed enough water, but the fog around is still flowing around, looking for a gap and a place to be. The drunken water vapor kept fluttering, and the water alley in front of Zhou You was also shaking. Each color block seems to have been melted by the mist—the black tiles will flow to the white wall, the white wall will flow to the gray street, the green bridge will flow to the bridge piles, the brown wooden boat will flow to the green river, and the pedestrians with blue umbrellas seem to turn into a pool of blue water and flow into the blue reflection in the water.

Zhou You's eyes continued to drift into wisps, strips, and traces of black, white, blue and blue cool mist. He gradually felt an indescribable charm and soft power in Jiangnan Water Lane. The gentle moisture and soft rain mist can seep into the stone tiles, the cracks in the wall tiles, the carved wooden windows, and even the bones of men. It slowly and delicately rubbed, caressed, and eroded all the hard and solid objects, and then gathered them into the vast embrace of rivers, lakes and seas. Zhou You couldn't see anything angular in front of him, everything was soft, spineless and boneless, like the mud of Taihu Lake, ground by thousands of years of water. Is the scenery of Gangnam also made of water? He thought. He seemed to feel that he had captured the beautiful and sad aura of the famous girl in Jiangnan who had long since passed away.

Zhou You uses a cold thin pigment full of toning oil, allowing his own feelings to be vividly applied on the canvas. Under his pen, the scenery of the water lane is a little unstable and untenable, as if it has not been dissolved and has not collapsed. The eaves of the close-up and the bridge railing in the distance, dripping and dripping, like wine and tears, blending wine and tears, silently flowing into the small river to the east, like a Jiangnan woman wearing a gauze skirt, like clouds and mist, fluttering and flying, the whole picture seems to be wet with water vapor, shrouded in a looming, sad and mysterious atmosphere.

The rain and fog suddenly became thicker, and Zhou You felt a long-lasting wave of dampness and cold. The mist seemed to have a kind of spirituality and sensibility, which infiltrated his cuffs and collar affectionately, gently enveloping him, spreading a cool, moist film between his clothes and his body, sticking to the skin of his whole body. Zhou You shuddered, trembling slightly, and at that moment he seemed to have a hallucination, as if he heard a woman's cry from the underworld. Chinese civilization has given birth to countless great painters, but the ice and snow skin of Chinese women have long been deeply buried by the yellow earth. Classical beauty is gone, but where is modern beauty? Zhou You once again experienced the heavy loss of seeking beauty and roots, and was deeply trapped in the double emptiness of history and contemporary. He had never had such a strong desire for love and beauty as he did at this moment, and he really began to doubt that he and the Chinese body artists would become outcasts without a source, a mother, or a father......

It was nearly noon, and the sky was getting darker and darker, and there seemed to be a thin streak of rain passing through his forehead. Zhou You was going to make up the last few strokes on the picture and close the stall, he didn't want the painting to get wet in the rain.

"Uncle Painter, have you finished painting?" Suddenly, a clear child's voice came from behind him.

Zhou You looked up abruptly and found a small pink umbrella above his head, held high by a small white hand. There were a couple of smaller girls next to him, who seemed to have just come home from school, and came to watch him draw. When he turned his head again, his eyes lit up.

It was the first time in more than a year that Zhou You's eyes lit up.

An unusually beautiful little girl, about fourteen or fifteen years old, was standing behind him holding an umbrella for her easel. The girl with the umbrella was wearing a set of pink tight-fitting thin sweaters and pants, a pair of crimson rain boots, and slightly red cheeks in white, like a pink rose in the rain. A soft and warm warm color poured into Zhou You's eyes, and most of the coolness on his body dissipated. The sudden change of cold and warm colors in front of him made Zhou You feel that this warm color was particularly pleasing to the eye.

"Little sister, what's your name?" Zhou You asked with a smile as he gently twisted the tip of the brush with waste paper. He felt his heart pounding suddenly for no reason, could it be that this water alley really had a sense to send such a different girl, maybe a descendant of Jiangnan people, to him?

"Wu Yunni, everyone calls me Ani, you can also call me Ani." She speaks Suzhou Mandarin, the kind of Wu Nong's soft and soft voice.

"Which Ni character?" Zhou You's voice couldn't help but soften.

"Neon Neon ......"

"Neon lights?" Zhou You said funny. In the past, when he went out to sketch, he met onlookers and asked too amateurish questions, and he never wanted to talk to people more. But he was afraid that the little girl would leave, and he soon decided that he had to try to make friends with her.

"The neon of the clouds is the neon on the sea, and the neon after the rain!" The little girl blinked flickering, and the umbrella in her hand spun like a cloud.

"What a beautiful name." Zhou You said with a smile. He finished packing up his paintbrush and scraping the remaining paint off the palette, but he didn't close the paint box so that the little girls could continue to admire his paintings.

"You're from Beijing? Coming here specifically to paint? Ah Ni asked.

"Yes, have you seen any other painters in Beijing?"

"Yes. Last year, there was a professor Zheng who took a few college students to paint in this place, and I came to see it every day. ”

"You like to draw too?"

"Like! I've been learning to draw for years, and I'm ...... I'm still in the art group of the Children's Palace! ”

Zhou You couldn't help but be overjoyed. He felt that he had caught this beautiful and lively bird, a little bird with a paintbrush. Looking at her so attentively looking at the painting, it really looked like a little peer of his.

"Do you like this painting?" Zhou asked.

Ah Ni nodded and said, "I like it, the house is like a drunken shrimp in a cup, so drunk that I can't move, and my body is still alive...... The fog seems to be moving, and the house is like being immersed in water, but, well, you're drawing so cold, it doesn't seem like it's spring yet. ”

"Isn't that right?"

"Yes, the teacher said, you can draw whatever kind of ...... you want."

Zhou You listened carefully to Ah Ni's feeling of looking at the paintings, and he felt that Ah Ni's artistic feeling was really good. It seems that he has encountered a piece of material that he was born to paint today. He really wanted to give this painting to Ah Ni, but he was reluctant. This painting was done in a feeling and mood that he had rarely felt in the past year, and he always guarded and kept it to himself like a miser.

Ah Ni said again: "Uncle, you are so good at drawing, can you teach me?" Look at my paintings? Last time, I showed the picture book to Professor Zheng, and he was so nice that he spent an hour teaching me. ”

Zhou You hurriedly said: "That's no problem. People who draw are all friends. Then he quickly added, "But you have to promise me one condition." ”

From the first moment he saw Ah Ni, Zhou You already had a desire to draw Ah Ni. This desire was so strong that Zhou You felt hot all over. At the moment when Ah Ni appeared, the river in front of him seemed to have flowed in the opposite direction, from the vast Taihu Lake, upside down into the water alley, Ah Ni floated from the water, like a gift from the goddess of Taihu Lake to Zhou You.

"I know your conditions." Ani tilted her head mischievously. "Do you want to draw me? Last time I was a model for a painter, and I painted it on the riverside. ”

The rain seemed to be intensive, and Zhou You brushed the water droplets from his hair, closed the painting box and stood up. He was a little worried, if the rain didn't stop, where would he go to paint Ah Ni?

Ah Ni pointed to a simple two-story building not far from the edge of the water alley and said, "That's my house, and you've already painted it in this painting, so I want to invite you to my house." My mom and dad both like painters, anyway, I don't have classes this afternoon, go to my house, you can still show me paintings, teach me to paint, hurry up, it's raining heavily. Ah Ni said, already took Zhou You's hand and jumped down the bridge.

Zhou You gently held Ah Ni's little hand, a smooth and soft little hand, so soft that it seemed that there was not a single bone in it. He habitually held up the little hand and lowered his head to look closely. When he slightly pinched the white and tender, slightly transparent thumb belly, he suddenly felt that it was clearly like a Xinjiang seedless grape full of juice. Looking at Ah Ni's ruddy and white face that seemed to be somewhat translucent, he was sure that he had captured the feeling that Ah Ni gave him. He repeated this feeling in his heart, and he couldn't help but feel a little excited.

"Uncle, I haven't asked your name yet?"

"Zhou Yu, the surrounding Zhou, the freedom of Yu."

"Huh? Are you Zhou You? It's true? Ah Ni squeezed his hand in delight. In the last art appreciation class, Mr. Lu told us about your award-winning work, and later I saw it in an art magazine, and my mother cut it out and put it in a small frame. ”

Zhou You laughed loudly and said, "Then we have known each other for a long time, and we are old friends, right?" ”

"You're good-looking, oh, not long, you're tall, you're a good-looking uncle."

Zhou You asked Ah Ni how old she was and what grade she was in. Ah Ni replied that he was thirteen and a half years old, that is, almost fourteen years old, and was in the second grade of junior high school. Zhou You asked her if she was taller than the girls in the same class, and Ah Ni said: Since elementary school, I have always sat in the last row.

Zhou You took a closer look at Ah Ni's figure, her body was slender and developed early, if she was fifteen years old, he would have believed it. Ah Ni is at the beginning of the fourteen-year-old flower season, such a beautiful girl, in a few years will be picked up by dance, acting, film and television groups. If he missed today's encounter by the river, he might never see her again when he came to Suzhou in a few years. Zhou Youzhen wanted to come to Suzhou to paint her every year in the future, and he felt that the kind of girl image he had been looking forward to creating in the painting for a long time was the Ah Ni in front of him.

Passing by a small restaurant in the alley, Ah Ni stopped and said, "I'm hungry." I forgot I hadn't eaten lunch yet. ”

Let Ah Ni remind him, and Zhou You's stomach suddenly gurgling.

Ah Ni said: "Mom and Dad went to work, there was no food at home, Mom is a teacher at the university, she went to school twice a week, and if she didn't come back at noon, she let me eat at Uncle Lee's restaurant." At the end of each month, my dad would come to pay the bill. Dad was a surgeon, a well-known doctor. ”

Zhou You said: "Then I'll treat you." What do you think? ”

A delicate young lady came out of the restaurant and asked them to sit inside.

Ah Ni said to her: "Sister Ah Xiu, this is my uncle, a painter in Beijing, his name is Zhou You. ”

"I didn't know that (you) had an uncle who was a painter?" Ah Xiu looked at Zhou You with a smile.

Zhou You nodded, and happily responded to his uncle's identity. He looked at the waitress of the restaurant in the secluded alley in front of him, and found that this girl named Ah Xiu was one of the few beautiful ladies he had seen in the past few days in Suzhou. It seems that the beauty of Suzhou has been hidden in the alleys. However, Zhou You felt that Ah Xiu was still too heavy in makeup, and the costumes were a little vulgar, especially the two eye-catching gold earrings on the earrings.

In the end, Ah Ni ordered food, and Zhou You treated. The chill on his body disappeared, and there were bursts of heat surging in his chest, as if he had drunk warm rice wine, and there was a slight burning dizziness. Ah Ni held up the orange juice to toast him, and he poured down a large glass of beer in one go, and Ah Ni's eyes were round. He wiped the foam from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand, put down the empty glass, and said, "Look, the northerners drink like this!" ”

"Would you like another drink?" Ah Xiu walked over and asked. Zhou You shook his head. If it weren't for the fact that he had to paint Ah Ni in the afternoon, Zhou You really wanted to drink it. His alcohol consumption is very famous in the circle of friends who engage in oil painting in the capital, and every time he paints a good painting, Zhou You will definitely invite a few friends to completely relax himself with a drink. Some people say that he used wine to wash his brushes and then use wine to bring out the paint for his next painting. But even Zhou You himself is strange, he has never been drunk on any occasion.

He suddenly noticed that Ah Ni was looking at him in distraction.

Ah Ni held the cup in both hands, as if she had never drunk a sip. The golden orange juice in the cup was reaching the wings of her nose, revealing the two crystal eyes on the rim of the glass, fluttering and shimmering like fireflies. The two curved eyebrows, slightly raised at the tips of the eyebrows, adorned on her smooth forehead, were delicate and delicate like velvet; Zhou You didn't seem to have seen such beautiful eyebrows before, and he really wanted to reach out and touch them gently.

Zhou You pondered Ah Ni carefully, and felt that she already had a moving charm, which was hidden under the girl's lively and bright appearance, and only occasionally leaked out when she was not smiling. Ah Ni must be a stunning Jiangnan when she grows up, but will she follow in the footsteps of beauties at that time, or marry abroad, or be "contracted" by the powerful and rich? Zhou You suddenly had a pinprick heartache of fear that beauty would be desecrated. He seems to prefer to stay in Suzhou, watch her grow up, and teach her to paint every day......

The dark eyes on the rim of the cup blinked.

Those beautiful eyes narrowed one moment, and then suddenly opened wider. She seemed to be observing Zhou You with the eyes of a painter, and her eyes clearly showed unusual interest in Zhou You. She doesn't seem to hide her liking for Zhou You at all. She even admired him as a work of portrait art. Zhou You was secretly amused. Ah Ni seems to have become a female painter at ease, and he has become a model for this female painter. Unexpectedly, the kind of yin and yang decline he often feels among his girlfriends in Beijing has also begun to show its edge in Jiangnan girls. When he looked at Ah Ni, Ah Ni smiled at him, Zhou You was shocked, and he received Ah Ni's precocious breath in that smile.

Ah Ni at the table became more and more lively and active, she served him vegetables, and spoke quickly and urgently. She asked him which unit he worked in, from which academy of fine arts, how many awards he had won, whether he had ever been to the Louvre, why he didn't go abroad, etc. Zhou You gradually felt as if he was not talking to a girl, but a girlfriend of the same age, which was both fresh and awkward.

"Uncle, do you have a phone at home in Beijing?"

"Yes. However, it was my parents' house, and if there was an emergency, they could tell me. I don't have a phone myself, I live in a studio in a big warehouse, like a big mouse. ”

Ah Ni laughed loudly, then frowned again and asked, "Then why will I call you in the future and ask you to teach me to draw on the phone?" ”

"I can call you, isn't it just a call, definitely!"

The two of them had a good meal. When they walked out of the restaurant, Zhou You and Ah Ni, who were fifteen or sixteen years apart, seemed to have become old acquaintances. At this time, Ah Ni was happy and seemed to be a few years younger, like an innocent girl.

But she's not even fourteen years old. Zhou You stopped abruptly. He suddenly remembered the French post-impressionist master Paul Gauguin, who was called "the madman of primitiveness" in the art world. In his famous painting "Ghost on Watch", Tefra, an indigenous naked girl lying on the bed, is thirteen years old. When Gauguin traveled to Tahiti to paint, Tefla's mother gave Tefla to Gauguin as his wife. The simple, rugged and primitive beauty of the thirteen-year-old girl inspired Gauguin's enthusiasm for life and artistic talent, and he later created many strange and strange works on the island, which had a great influence on modernist painting. The girl's eyes in "Ghost on Watch" have a "phosphorescent shooting" look......

For a while, Zhou You's mind appeared many stories of painters and girls. Some critics and biographers have said that passionate artists often have a childlike heartstring in their hearts that resonates emotionally with young girls. Zhou You understood that he was already liking Ah Ni more and more. But this Ah Ni came too late - why did he never meet a cute girl like Ah Ni in his youth? All the time of his youth, except for schoolwork, was to practice painting like crazy, and his emotions were devoured by the monster of art. Zhou You felt that his love life as a teenager was simply blank, and it was really in vain.