Smile
Bing Xin

As the rain gradually ceased to patter, a glimmer of light began to filter into the room through the window curtain. I opened the window and looked out. Ah, the rain clouds had vanished and the remaining raindrops on the tree leaves glistened tremulously under the moonlight like myriads of fireflies. To think that there should appear before my eyes such a beautiful sight after the miserable rain on a lovely evening.

Standing at the window for a while, I felt a bit chilly. As I turned round, my eyes suddenly dazzled before the bright light and could not see things distinctly. Everything in the room was blurred by the haze of light except the angel in a picture on the wall. The angel in white was smiling on me with a bunch of flowers in his arms, his wings flapping.

"I seem to have seen the same smile before. When was that?..."Before I knew, I had sunk into the chair under the window, lost in meditation.

A scene of five years ago slowly unveiled before my mind's eye. It was a long ancient country road. The ground under my donkey's feet was slippery with mud. The water in the field ditches was murmuring. The green trees in the neighboring village were shrouded in a mist. The crescent new moon looked as if hanging on the tips f the tree. As I passed along, I somehow sensed the presence of a child by the roadside carrying something snow white in his arms. After the donkey had gone by, I happened to look back and saw the child, who was barefoot, looking at me smilingly with a bunch of flowers in his arms.

"I seem to have seen the same smile somewhere before!" I was still thinking to myself.

Another scene, a scene of ten years ago, slowly unfolded before my mind's eye. Rainwater was falling drop by drop on to my clothes from the eaves of thatched cottage. Beside the earthen doorstep, bubbles in puddles of rainwater were whirling about like mad. Washed by the rain, the wheat fields and grape trellises in front of the cottage door presented a picturesque scene of vivid yellow and tender green. After a while, it cleared up at long last and I hurried down the slope. Up ahead I saw the moon rising high above the sea. Suddenly it occurred to me that I had left something behind. When I stopped and turned around, my eyes fell on an old woman at her cottage door smiling at me, a bunch of flowers in her arms.

The three subtle smiles, drifting in the air towards each other like gossamer, became interwoven.

At this moment all was right, clear and calm in my heart. I felt as if I were ascending to heaven or on my way back to my hometown. In my mind's eye, the three smiling faces now merged into a harmonious whole of love and became indistinguishable.