Who can tell me the story about Carmen?

According to legend, Carmen appeared in every bar on the way from the end of solar system to Sagittarius.

Carmen always sings loudly and dances beautifully. Their long ebony hair is filled with large bundles of jasmine or acacia, and the fragrance is intoxicating. Carmen's skin is as shiny as gold, her slender eyes are as shiny as cats, and her lips are always half open and half closed, revealing white teeth as thin as almonds; Carmen is wearing an ancient bohemian dance skirt, with dark red lace dragging from her waist to her bare feet. The worn shawl is full of holes, big and small. Once the music starts, you can see them dancing between her arms and shoulders like life.

If you are a navigator on the way to and from the stars, I mean, whether you are a businessman with strict morality and grandiose words, a well-trained and legendary mercenary, a new immigrant with a tired and poor face, or even those pioneers whose hearts and faces are harder than interstellar meteorites, you can't help but miss Carmen as soon as you step out of the spaceship and breathe the breath of rocks and elves. Maybe she just sat quietly in a corner with a vague light and shadow, and the tobacco at her fingertips was filled with a blue fog; Or she leaned against the bar and bickered with seven or eight malicious men around her, and finally no one would want to take advantage of her; Or when she sees you, she silently separates the crowd like a cat and raises her little chin at you:

"Hey, fellow villager", she always sees the brand left on you by the place where you were born and raised. "Let me figure out how many good girls you can charm along the way."

However, even if she is drunk, she sits on your lap, swaying, singing and laughing, but as long as the music plays, ah, as long as the music plays, you will only see her soaring like a flame, her skirt flying, the castanets in her hands making raindrops, and the floor will shake at her feet, blooming round after round of charming ripples.

This is the legend about Carmen, which has been circulating for more than a century from the beginning of the development of Star Road, but who can finish the story about Carmen? Tragic, sad, enchanting and wild, together with Carmen's graceful figure, spread in the gibberish of every generation of navigators.

Speaking of it, even we children who have lived in such a small place as the moon since childhood and have never been out of the solar system have heard several stories about Carmen. Although everything about Carmen, Voyager and Voyager is so far away from us, the stories handed down from generation to generation have been washed away beyond recognition by the long journey and become as vague and pale as all ancient myths and songs. However, how can we not yearn for those romantic, mysterious, wild and cruel stories? How can we not yearn for those famous Bohemian girls who shine in every corner of the star path? You know, over the years, even the most conservative and down-and-out immigrant girls have to put a bunch of camellia in their hair to pretend to be affectionate.

It all happened before Carmen Navarro arrived.

It was a gloomy spring when Carmen arrived. We squeezed out of the classroom and saw a thin and old man holding an equally thin young girl at the end of the corridor. The latter, with unkempt short hair flying about, wore a plaid shirt of a larger size and stumbled with the clumsy steps typical of earth immigrants. When he approached, the man stopped, his sharp gray eyes slowly swept over each of us, and finally stopped on the girl, patted her on the back twice, and turned away without saying a word.

We formed a circle and stared at the new girl curiously. She stood alone, glassy-eyed, staring at her worn toes. The teacher came forward to hold her hand and said to her kindly, "Introduce yourself to everyone."

The girl raised her eyelids, still staring at her toes, and slowly answered with an unusually strange accent:

"My name is Carmen. Carmen Navarro. "

After the news spread around Yuecheng, countless people came to see Carmen, first the children in the next class, then their sisters and parents, and finally even the serious priest came not far from Wan Li and pretended to pass by casually. The teacher always tries to persuade them to leave kindly and asks them not to disturb the normal teaching order. However, after leaving a batch, there will be another batch. Who let her be the unique Carmen here since ancient times? And who let her come to this boring place on the moon? We have lived in a palm-sized underground city since we were born, facing taupe rocks and concrete and breathing warm air filtered by the circulation system. Many people have never seen the starry sky in their lives, and have never thought of seeing any stars or spaceships. Star or Carmen? That's just a legend.

As a result, our Miss Carmen let everyone down. She is even more mediocre than all the mediocrity on the moon combined, and more boring than all the boredom. Her pale and thin face is neither pungent nor stubborn, and there is no burning flame in her dark eyes. Even her figure is as thin as it has not yet developed. Even our precocious moon girl can't compare with her, although she was like all of us when she was fifteen or sixteen. What I can't stand most is her accent, which is always so slow, so low as to answer everyone's questions word by word like a deliberately slow recording:

"Yes, I'm Carmen, and I'm from the earth; No, I haven't been anywhere; Yes, Mr. Navarro is my father. "

As for dancing, nobody asked her at all. Carmen's walking posture is uglier than anyone on earth. There are also one or two troublemakers who follow her to imitate her footsteps, or jump around to make fun of her, so for a long time, you can only see Carmen sitting alone in the corner, staring at the feet under the table, as if looking at herself there every day.

Perhaps I was the only exception in the days when the residents of Yuecheng were disappointed and indifferent to Carmen.

At that time, I was 16 years old, with short hair like a little boy and only average beauty. But from time to time, there is an inexplicable fire shining in my heart, which is wilder than the girl who attracts butterflies the most.

In the spring after Carmen's arrival, the fire in my heart finally burned violently, which deformed my mind and kept watching her secretly. However, no matter what people around me think, how humiliating and how to ignore Carmen, I always keep a straight face. You can think I'm cruel, shy or have ulterior motives. In short, this is it.

Until three weeks later, when no one was watching, I finally got up the courage and let the badminton in my pocket accidentally fall to her feet.

Carmen picked up the ball and held it in her hand. I deliberately ignored her eyes, pretending not to care who I was talking to, and casually said:

"I heard that this is from the earth, but unfortunately I don't play very well."

Carmen looked at me without a word, and my heart almost jumped out. I quickly added:

"Can you play?"

After the silence, Carmen lowered her eyes and whispered:

"Yes, I will."

Our friendship began with this sentence.

Many people think badminton is a simple toy. It is controlled by electromagnetic gloves in the palm of your hand. No matter how you turn it, you can't escape the space controlled by the magnetic field, and you can finally change a lot of tricks. It was popular on the moon for a while a few years ago, and then everyone quickly turned to other exciting games. However, only real experts know how wonderful and addictive those more subtle patterns are. I thought I was an expert, but I was surprised to find that Carmen is better at this hand-held sport, which has nothing to do with gravity and is very suitable for a person to entertain himself.

In the next few weeks, as long as we have free time, we will sit in the unattended corner of the stairs and play for a long time. When two people concentrate on playing games, they rarely take into account other people's accents. At first, we just silently competed with each other, occasionally saying a few words, and then gradually became talking about everything. Besides playing badminton, Carmen also taught me other older earth games, such as black and white chess and even handspring. These stupid and outdated games make us all enjoy it.

Today, it is difficult to explain exactly why I have been trying to establish friendship with Carmen. All the legends related to romance show no signs of resurrection in her. But from another perspective, Carmen is really different. She is clumsy, shy and a little inarticulate, but she has wonderful qualities that only people who are used to long-term loneliness have, which makes people want to explore her inner world. Sometimes when you sit beside her and stare at her trembling eyelids and sensitive lips so closely, you will feel trance-like that you have come to the ancient fairy tale world and met the cursed princess and the imprisoned witch. However, in an instant, the illusion dispersed, and all you saw was the pale and thin little Carmen who needed your company and protection.

On the surface, our friendship is not so warm. Carmen doesn't live in school, and Mr. Navarro picked her up. At lunch, she just sat in a corner and silently overcame those moon dishes that made her hard to swallow. More than once, I saw some boys and girls swarming past, hula-hula-hula, pretending to ask:

"Tell me about your life on earth, miss?"

Carmen put down her spoon, looked at them and said slowly, "There is nothing different on earth. We also live in the city, but the city is on the ground, and occasionally we can see the sky, and there are ... stars at night. "

"Stars-stars!" Those guys laughed, deliberately stretched their voices to imitate her, and finally piled all the sticky cabbage chowder on her plate one by one, and then left.

After all this, I sat beside her silently with a plate, gave her a fork for frying sausages, and said:

"What about the stars, Carmen?"

She lowered her head: "The stars are so vague that you can't see them unless it rains." Every time I mention the starry sky, she will stare at my eyes. "You didn't know until you saw it yourself. If you can find a shining little star from the darkness, it will be a very magical feeling, as if it has been shining for you for so long, and you will always wonder what makes it so different. "

"We can go to the ground and have a look, Carmen." A good idea suddenly occurred to me. "They say that every star can be clearly seen from the surface of the moon."

Carmen shook her head. "Mr. Navarro won't agree."

So the rest of the time, we just bow our heads to overcome our own cabbage chowder, wasting food is a big sin.

Now I have to talk about Mr. Navarro.

Mr. Navarro is a mysterious figure. He claimed to be Carmen's father, but Carmen never called him Mr. Navarro. His file at the immigration office is almost blank. Some people speculate that he has either held an important position or been a thug, and only the latter has the right to completely sell his resume after retirement.

It is said that Mr Navarro is in his forties, but he looks much older. His appearance ... how can I put it? In short, it is unforgettable at first sight. He is tall and thin, with a dark complexion, prominent joints on his hands, white and firm teeth and sunken eyes. According to the aesthetics on the moon, he is handsome, but he is the most overbearing man I have ever seen. No one on the moon would supervise his 16-year-old daughter so severely. Anything Carmen does is enough to make him unhappy and make his gloomy eyes colder. So Carmen didn't dare to do anything. She took part in sports activities, laughed with boys, sang and danced, wore beautiful clothes and had afternoon tea with everyone.

I said to Carmen more than once, "God, I don't know what happened on your earth. A 12-year-old girl can move here to live by herself. How can he take care of you like this? " ! "

Carmen just lowered her eyes and shook her head. She was really in pain.

If it weren't for chocolate muffins, I might not have developed to hate Mr. Navarro.

Chocolate muffins are what Carmen promised me countless times.

"If you win this round," she always said, "I'll treat you to a chocolate muffin baked by myself. Wow, "she made a drooling expression strangely. Or make cabbage and carrot chowder, or do linear algebra homework, and so on. But nothing can be fulfilled, and everything is just a verbal game.

However, one afternoon, Carmen suddenly invited me to her house.

"Mr Navarro has gone to the immigration office and won't be back until tomorrow." She solemnly announced: "Carmen is going to bake chocolate muffins and milk pudding at home." I wonder if anyone would like to join us. "

It was originally a pleasant afternoon. When I first came to Carmen's house, I was surprised to find that the decoration of the house was simpler than that of the most well-behaved lunar residents. There is a simple kitchen, a toilet and a small room, which is used as a living room during the day and a bedroom at night. There is hardly anything extra except the most basic folding furniture. I can't help thinking that people who live here can only survive by breathing air.

Nevertheless, Carmen magically baked muffins and puddings with the simplest ingredients. We put all the furniture in the wall, sat on the spotless clean floor, ate snacks and drank bagged black tea, and were happier than those governors' wives.

At this time, the net lamp hidden in the wall spread the softest light evenly all over the room, like a light and bright corolla, covering Carmen's blue-black hair. I stared at her and couldn't help laughing.

"Why?" She saw my expression and wiped her mouth hard to see if there was any scum on it.

"I just feel," I solemnly announced, "how honored it is to have afternoon tea with Miss Carmen on her floor. She is unique in the whole Moon City!"

Carmen, don't leave to talk. Her face blushes involuntarily. I smiled and couldn't help sighing. I leaned down and gently pulled her hair down to her shoulders. She turned to look at me.

Carmen, you don't belong here. I said softly, "You were born a little witch. Can't you figure out your destiny?"

Carmen pursed her lips, which made her face redder. Finally, she just shook her head, looked at the ceiling and sighed softly.

"Do you know?" After a short silence, she said, "Sometimes I feel that I am not the real Carmen."

I looked at her in surprise. She hesitated, pulled open her bed and took out a dynamic hologram from a well-hidden interlayer.

"I found this when I moved. Don't tell anyone. "

I take the photo and guess what I will see. The young Mr Navarro took a photo with a beautiful Bohemian girl. The former wore a tight silver-blue suit popular with hitters decades ago, and a pair of grumpy gray eyes stared at his lover. The girl wore a long skirt, bare arms, plump arms around her chest, enchanting and twisted, full of teasing, but she looked as unruly as a wild cat.

I returned the photo to Carmen and watched her carefully hide it. The relationship between the two people in the photo and Carmen in front of me will probably remain a mystery forever.

Carmen sat down again, pale. I smiled again, deliberately messed up her hair, and then simply stretched out, comfortably lying on the floor, pushing all the cups and plates aside.

"Forget it, forget it, no matter how fate arranges, you will always be my little Carmen." I said idly.

So Carmen lay beside me and put her little head on my shoulder. So we lay side by side on the floor, watching the motionless shadow on the ceiling and the trembling light waves projected by the unfinished black tea, and we couldn't help but forget the time. The clock is beating silently, and there is silence all around. Only the sound of our breathing fills the room warmly.

Yes, it was a fantastic afternoon, but it ended in a nightmare. That night, Mr. Navarro came home early and accidentally found the messy cups on the ground, the remaining black tea snacks and two sleeping girls. After a few seconds of consternation, he grabbed me sleepy and threw me out of the door cleanly. In the darkness, I only saw his bottomless eyes, but it contained all the hatred, contempt and ruthlessness, which made me completely lose my resistance for an instant. It took me a long time to understand why he could exert such a bad influence on Carmen.

The next morning, I waited at the school gate early, and finally saw Carmen sent to school by Mr. Navarro as usual. I found two blue-gray fingerprints on her wrist when I was eating.

This time, I silently scooped all her stew into my plate and secretly vowed that I would get revenge one day.

In a blink of an eye, more than a month has passed, and everything is unremarkable, but the temperature in the air is gradually changing. When the short summer comes, the whole Moon City is no longer silent, but takes on a brand-new look.

Carmen, as always, sat in her corner in an outdated plaid shirt, as if it had nothing to do with the boys and girls dressed enchanting and hot. However, when I walked over and sat down, she looked at my legs that were almost exposed with a little teasing eyes and said with a faint smile:

"What a beautiful skirt."

I grimaced, leaned down, pulled her hair and said, "Miss, you should pay attention to the trend."

She smiled and pushed my hand away, but I ran after her and grabbed her skirt. "I wonder if you would do me the honor of playing truant and coming with me this afternoon?"

"Play truant? Why? "

"Because," I sat up straight and pretended to be serious, "today is liberation day."

No matter who liberated what at first on this day, for Yuecheng people, Liberation Day only means a few things, such as wine, carnival, summer, life, liberation and so on.

Throughout the afternoon, Carmen and I wandered aimlessly in the street. There were grotesque colored lights and flags hanging on both sides of the street, countless garlands with exaggerated shapes, and various geometric figures with unknown meanings and extraordinary perspectives were constructed. The air was filled with fragrant flowers. I picked a bunch of white gardenias and stuck them in Carmen's fluffy hair. Somehow they looked neither fish nor fowl. I shrugged and said with a smile:

"You look beautiful, dear."

This is a beautiful and crazy summer night. As night fell, the city turned off the lighting system, but the lights everywhere lit up one by one to piece together a colorful night, and people took to the streets one after another. Boys and girls at the age of eleven or twelve or middle-aged people in their fifties and sixties are all wearing the most exposed exotic clothes, swinging their bodies with the gradually playing music, and the bare skin is painted with different styles of grain patterns with heat-sensitive materials, and they begin to glow because of excitement. However, all this is just warm-up exercise, in order to get through it.

I dragged Carmen through the crowd, feeling that her palms were wet and cold, but my hands were full of sweat. There are countless ghostly figures floating around, but when they are close, they can feel the burning smell of sweat, alcohol and desire, emitting from every pore, being drunk and mixed into a mystery, being inhaled by us again and burning every cell.

Finally, we arrived at Freedom Square, which has completely turned into a sea of flickering flames and drums. Men and women are wet and greasy, like bathing in water vapor, clinging together and twisting their limbs to the maximum extent. Music shakes the air and breaks it down into elements of madness and enthusiasm. From time to time, strong boys and girls leap as high as fish, flipping and prancing a few meters above the crowd, with wild and wonderful movements. The light fell on their undulating muscle contours as if they were alive.

I suppressed my desire to sway with the crowd, turned to Carmen's ear and loudly said:

"Wait for me here, I'll buy something to drink!"

Carmen nodded stiffly. Sweat flowed from her pale forehead to her neck, and her hair was wet with humid air and stuck to her face.

I rushed to the edge of the square and took out two cans of psychedelic green demon from the vending machine. Usually, these drinks containing a lot of alcohol are difficult to buy in formal channels. When I returned to my original place, Carmen was still standing there, her eyes shining with confusion, and the gardenia in her hair had begun to wither, emitting more and more beautiful breath.

I gave her a can and said:

"Have a drink, little one. It will make you feel better." In fact, I was extremely nervous, drinking and partying, and everything in front of me was mixed together, which seemed so unreal. For an instant, I saw Mr. Navarro's gloomy eyes in my mind, and then they were washed away by the bubbling fluorescent green liquid.

The two of us poured the drinks in our hands into our stomachs in one breath, and the strong alcohol burned in our stomachs, rushing down our chests to our throats and brains, feeling that the whole person was going to explode. I threw away the jar and asked Carmen loudly:

"Want to dance?"

Carmen coughed violently and shook her head at me. Her cheeks are as red as fire.

I couldn't help laughing loudly, and a cloud began to float in my mind. Just then, a group of boys and girls who were almost topless and covered in gold and purple patterns passed by, and one of them looked over here. I recognize them as people who often have trouble with Carmen in the class.

Just before I decided how to deal with it, they had quickly gathered around their prey, and I subconsciously stepped forward and stood in front of Carmen.

"Hey, look who it is!" A boy pushed my shoulder and shouted happily. His tattoo turned blue-green, with a faint light. "Great Miss Carmen, no one asked you to dance?"

A group of people laughed, and I reached out and pushed her shoulder, leaving spots mixed with sweat.

A girl jumped out lightly and began to swing to the music. Her shiny breasts swayed under the sweaty and transparent tight sling, deliberately hitting Carmen with her shoulders and hips. Then several people joined the dance, their arms intertwined and passed by us. Boys hold girls high, throw them to their peers easily, and then turn around to catch the next one. They make for a while, and finally hand in hand in a circle, while turning around and shouting together, forming a shaking light and sound:

"Miss Carmen doesn't dance ~ ~ Miss Carmen doesn't dance ~ ~ Carmen-Carmen-"

I stretched out my hand to push them away, but was tightly surrounded in the middle. At this time, Carmen pulled my hand behind her, her fingertips were cold and her palms were hot.

I looked back in surprise and met her eyes. There is a strange flame burning in her heart. Her cheeks are getting redder and redder, but her lips are as pale as dead people, sipping a stubborn and contemptuous curve. When the chorus around gradually weakened, Carmen finally spoke and said in an unusually clear and indifferent voice:

"Want to see it?"

What happened next is something I will never forget. Carmen let go of my hand, unhurriedly grabbed the belt of the plaid shirt, gently pulled it, so that one neckline slipped below the shoulder, revealing the bare neck and arms, and the other hand lifted the hem of the long skirt to the waist.

The music stopped for half a beat.

Then there was lightning and thunder.

Carmen took off and circled five or six times in the air. A hot light wave roared out of her and radiated in all directions. At first, I could only see the dazzling white gardenia in Carmen's hair. Then, with the violent drums, her toes and heels gently and smartly beat the ground, as if it were undulating on the water. Her shoulders, arms and waist are twisted so elegantly and powerfully that it seems that countless currents meander through her. Her chin held high, her mouth was smiling proudly, and her eyes seemed to penetrate everything and look into the endless distance. However, the light in her eyes is getting more and more gorgeous, which makes people afraid to look straight. In a short moment, she became another Carmen, a burning Carmen buried in the depths of genes and fate, as light as wind, as hot as fire, as fierce as electricity and as bright as light.

I just stood there staring at her. Carmen danced like nobody's business, and people stopped everywhere and looked at her dance steps blankly like me.

Suddenly, someone grabbed my shoulder behind me, and I almost cried out in pain. I looked back and saw Mr. Navarro's gloomy face, full of surprise and vacant expression, so I whispered:

"What is she doing? ! You little witch! What did you do to her? ! ! "

I trembled for a moment, just for a moment, and then suddenly realized that his power had completely failed-it was shattered by a much more powerful and irresistible magic. I summon up courage to loudly say:

"Didn't you see? Carmen is dancing! "

Mr Navarro stared at me savagely. I have never seen a face mixed with so many emotions, such as shock, hatred, anger, disappointment, sadness, helplessness, fatigue, and that kind of deep despair. His five senses completely collapsed and became as relaxed as a dying old man.

For an instant, my heart was filled with the pleasure of revenge and a little pity. However, at this moment, gardenia gently bounced my eyebrows and turned my sight. Carmen stood in front of me with a triumphant smile on her bright lips, a terrible crimson burning on her forehead and cheeks, and extended her pale hand to me.

Then, before I could put my hand on her palm, she fell down.

The square was in chaos, and the flickering lights stirred wildly. I was squeezed in the crowd and dangling. I can only vaguely see Mr. Navarro walking with heavy steps, picking up Carmen's thin body and disappearing into the chaotic light and sound. At this time, I found my hand still in mid-air, holding withered gardenia between my fingers.

This is the last time I saw Carmen. After that night, she and Mr. Navarro disappeared without a trace, and the Moon City returned to its original calm, and the short summer was coming to an end.

There are several different versions about Carmen's whereabouts. One is that Mr. Navarro took her back to earth by spaceship overnight and never set foot on the earth again. Another way of saying it is that they went to Callisto, which is a more monotonous, cold and indifferent world.

Of course, the most popular ending, which is also my favorite ending, is about the star road leading to Sagittarius and bars. Carmen went there alone, followed her melodious and passionate dance steps, and continued to write one of countless legends about Carmen, although she has left such a splendid and unrestrained legend on the moon forever.

On the last day of summer, I came to the surface of the moon alone in my spacesuit. I saw the bright blue earth just rising from the distant horizon, and its light was shining on the lonely and desolate crater around me. It's so sad and touching. I looked to the other side, and countless stars, large and small, hung in the dark space, quietly emitting faint light from hundreds of light years away.

I put the dried gardenia under a stone and turned away. Behind me, my Carmen gave me her brightest smile after the starry sky.