It is like
those depictions in the movies: ancient buildings, wet pavement, pedestrians dressing
all in black walking by in haste, clouds are grey or dark, hovering on the brim
of the sky. The rain in this city seems never ending, their song dropping on
the stone walks that have hundreds of years of history, singing tik-tak tik-tak
in a deep voice, fogging the whole city with a sense of melancholy.
Before she arrives back on the campus, she reflects on when she
just moved from her hometown to this overwhelming city. It is no longer news when
the never ending march of urbanization has devoured one more young soul. She
found a job in an office, was asked to sit at the counter desk and be pretty.
She would point out the direction for the visitor sometimes with her finger and
sometimes with impatient eye gesture. London by the time seemed less rainy than
now. Once in a while, when she raised her head up from the piled documents, she
would see a few visitors entering the door. They took off their hats and flipped
out the weight of raindrops. She would frown, pick up phone and ask the
cleaning lady to mop the floor dry. But most of the time, she did not even
notice whether the sky outside was rainy or sunny.
The job at the counter bored her, so one day, when a window popped
out on her computer shouting an admission advertisement to her, she clicked on
it. The college is not very remarkable in size nor in reputation, but it
offered her one year’s time, and if she was lucky enough, a degree that will name
her a “master.” She still remembered the
day when the semester began. She took off her high heels before going out, but
the flats she changed into kept sinking into the puddles of the street. When
she paddled into the school building, her shoes were half soaked already. From
that day on, the rain seems never ending.
It was raining when she looked out a window of a classroom; it was
raining when she finished studying and stepped out from the college library.
Before going out to the discussion for a group report, she grabbed a water-proofed
coat with a hood attached because it was raining outside. She bought herself a
pair of long boots from Doc. Martin. She likes the movement when she pulls the
boots up to her knees in one breath and she also likes the sound the heels make
walking down the pavement. Even so, there are times when she cannot hear the
crisp sounds, because it is raining.
When she left her hometown, she had known that the next return would
be a long time after. She is not often homesick, but on one rainy day, she
started to miss the warm fire in their fireplace that one Christmas, as well as
the cracking sound the wood made. She also missed how her mother always does
housework on Saturdays, and how she flaps the freshly-washed white sheets and
lets them float in the air. The room she rents here is not too small, once one
steps in from the door, everything is exposed to the inspecting eyes, everything
from the small kitchen, to her bathroom, to her single bed by the window. She
always feels like she brings in all the raindrops she absorbed on the streets, letting
them fall all over her room. No sunlight reached here, so the room is always
humid, layered with an invisible wet fog, all year long.
Among her belongings, the driest things are those boring
textbooks. They are thick and heavy, like bricks, listing one business theory
after another. In fact, she fails to see the relation between these theories
and the practice of real life, and she doesn’t see the relation between them
and how she can find a job and feed herself. She studies on, despite the odds.
She emerges herself in books, because beside this, she does not have any clue
of what other things she might do. Sometimes she tries to memorize the faces
she passed by on the streets that day. Did they know nothing about their lives
like her? Or had anyone ever given her a brief smile? She could not remember.
All she can remember is the grey and dark curtain of rain. She
looked at the window, the cactus on the flat space besides the window stood
straight, looking at the raindrops outside.
