Football Memories of Jingde (V)
Author: Zhu Anfeng. Originally published on QQ Zone on June 24, 2010.
Football skill, literary talent, a little drinking capacity, and a touch of sensitivity.
Yes, that was Pei, my friend of seventeen years.
To explain everything, I have to begin again from Football Memories (II).
After moving into town for school, I came to know Pei, Yan, and Min one after another.
My connection with Pei began with the arcade game Captain Commando. During the National Day holiday in junior high, the first time I went to the arcade with Pei, Feng, Tao, and others, Pei always chose the twin-sword character. In the game that character was the leader, but in real life Pei was the smallest and weakest among us, and we used to laugh that he had not even begun to grow yet. Perhaps Captain Commando gave him a chance to imagine himself as the boss. Back then we knew nothing of the outside world. Street hooligans often bullied boys as weak as we were and tried to extort the little money we had for games. So we invented all sorts of ways to deal with them. The best trick belonged to Pei: hiding the money in the collar of his school uniform. Easier than hiding it in your socks, and without the smell of feet. It worked every time.
Though physically small then, Pei actually had a bit of a temper. In junior high he sat right in front of me, and I often teased him from behind. Once I went too far, and he stopped speaking to me for an entire week. In the end, a few friends brought us back together, and he finally burst out laughing, just one step short of saying, "How annoying."
Pei fell in love with football at roughly the same time I did, around the second half of senior two, so there are many football memories tied to him. The most classic is the early period when we practiced kicking technique together. First we competed over striking the iron door, then over hitting the corners, then over hitting the posts. To be honest, I usually did a little better than he did, and every time he would argue with me until his face turned red. And when it came to playing football, there were always certain people you never had to invite twice. Pei was one of them, and always remained so.
Pei had a nickname: Tractor. It says everything about his style on the pitch. He played midfield, but he always wanted to carry the ball alone until the seas dried up, the rocks crumbled, and all human strength was exhausted before finally passing it. Once, while watching from the sidelines, our friend Tai, who did not even play football, blurted out the word "Tractor." The nickname stuck instantly, and before long the entire football world around us knew there was a master called Tractor. As for why exactly the name suited him, opinions differed. This Spring Festival I even asked Tai what divine inspiration had given him that name, and he smiled knowingly and said, "Classic, isn't it?" Nicknames only ever fall into two categories: loved or hated. Pei was clearly not in the first group, so he spent years competing with Doraemon for the title of Beckham.
Now that Min has grown into a Maitreya Buddha shape, Yan is pushing 170 jin, and my own waistline is heading toward two feet six, he alone remains in one corner of Huangshan still insisting on the simple joy of football, where there is a ball, friends, and matches. According to him, he no longer cares much about how good the football is. What matters is the joy of friends playing together. Only he has kept that joy alive. Sometimes he still likes to show off his figure in front of us, but I know he still gets carsick.
If Min gives me the feeling of a man charging across the world, and Yan that of a robed swordsman with wine and open grudges, then Pei is the one like a river flowing east. In life, he was sensitive. With better conditions, he could absolutely have become a classic petite-bourgeois type. Among the few of us, his writing was probably the best. He often tossed out lines like, "Chairman Yan stands in the wind and rain, one Little Smart phone in each hand, yelling hello, hello, but still can't get through." But every time schoolwork came up, he would talk about the year of the college entrance exam, when he saw me in front of him shaking my leg smugly after finishing an exam, which only made his own heart more chaotic. Every holiday, Pei, Min, Yan, and I would find time to heat some wine and reminisce. His delicate temperament always made him the easiest target for our teasing. Naturally, once the wine heated up, I tended to grow rather sharp-edged, leaving him to describe me only as impossible to finish listing.
Still, what I miss most are the evenings we spent talking under the red awning. Whenever I think of them, I remember the dim streetlamp making occasional noises, the scattered drinkers, the intermittent roar of motorcycles, the delicious river snails, the light beer, the cool air, and the Huangshan cigarettes hanging from the corners of our mouths. All of it made us calm and sentimental. He used to say that he liked drinking most with that version of me.
After graduation, Pei went directly to Huangshan City and, like Yan, became a glorious schoolteacher. I found it hard to connect him with the image of a geography teacher. In my eyes, his personality was much better suited to something more literary. If he had taught literature, his students would surely have ended up writing doggerel fluently.
This May Day, Pei also completed one of life's biggest tasks. He "signed the contract" and held his wedding banquet. Sadly, for various reasons, I could not attend. But missing something is not always only regret. With some friendships, perhaps what remains between people is precisely that lightness and the deep sediment left by time.
My dear friend Zhang Qipei left us forever on November 17, 2021. I post this in his memory. R.I.P.