音乐剧《河口之处》第四部

第一曲

《河口之处》第四部是一部以真实历史事件为灵感、但以原创人物生命故事展开的音乐剧。

故事的灵感来自瑞典医生、公共卫生研究者汉斯·罗斯林（Hans Rosling）在其著名著作《事实》（Factfulness）中讲述的一段亲身经历。1989年，罗斯林来到当时的扎伊尔，在班顿杜地区偏远的 Makanga 村进行关于 konzo 的医学调查。这种疾病与木薯加工不充分所导致的氰化物暴露有关。由于村民不了解这些外国医生为什么要抽取他们的血液，调查一度引发恐慌。有人甚至拿起砍刀，包围了罗斯林和他的同事。

就在最危险的时刻，一位大约五十岁的当地妇女从人群中走出来。她没有受过现代医学教育，却凭借自己的生活经验和判断力告诉村民：这些医生不是来偷他们的血，而是在研究一种困扰他们家庭的疾病。她向人们解释，疫苗和药物之所以能够拯救生命，也正是因为有人必须进行研究。最后，她卷起自己的袖子，对罗斯林伸出手臂，说：

“医生，抽我的血。”

罗斯林后来把这一幕写进《事实》，成为全书令人难忘的一个瞬间。

本剧从这个瞬间向前追溯。

我们不知道这位匿名妇女真实的姓名，也不知道她在1989年以前和以后究竟经历了什么。因此，《她的左袖》并不是她的传记，而是一部受到真实事件启发的历史想象作品。

故事从她（Nsala）十五六岁开始。

她出生并成长于刚果河流域的重要支流——开赛河（Kasai River）附近的 Makanga。村庄坐落在河岸森林与坡地之间，河流连接着遥远的地方，也把消息、货物、音乐和陌生人带进这个看似偏远的村庄。

几十年间，这个女孩经历了一个国家和一个时代的巨大变化：

从比利时殖民统治下的刚果，到1960年的独立；从刚果动荡的年代，到蒙博托统治下的扎伊尔；从一个在河边劳动、种植木薯的少女，到成为母亲、祖母，以及村庄里一个值得人们听取意见的中年妇女。

她种木薯，处理食物，养育孩子，爱过人，也失去过人；她听河上传来的消息，听收音机里的国家，听年轻人谈论未来。她在一代又一代人的生活中慢慢积累了一种并不来自书本的知识——如何观察，如何判断，如何在恐惧中保持清醒。

1989年，当罗斯林来到她的村庄时，她已经五十多岁。

那个瞬间改变了罗斯林，也让我们第一次真正看见她。

Her Left Sleeve is a musical inspired by a real historical encounter, but built around an imagined life.

The story takes its inspiration from an episode described by Swedish physician and public-health researcher Hans Rosling in his celebrated book Factfulness. In 1989, Rosling traveled to what was then Zaire to conduct medical research in the remote village of Makanga, in the Bandundu region. He was investigating konzo, a neurological disease associated with inadequate processing of cassava and exposure to cyanogenic compounds.

Because the villagers did not understand why the foreign doctors wanted to take their blood, fear spread through the village. Some men became hostile and even raised machetes. Rosling and his colleagues were suddenly surrounded.

Then a local woman, around fifty years old, stepped forward.

She had no formal medical education. Yet she understood something essential. She explained to the villagers that the doctors were not there to steal their blood. They were trying to understand a disease that had affected their families. She reminded them that medicines and vaccines exist because someone has to conduct research.

Then she rolled up her sleeve, extended her arm toward Rosling, and offered her blood.

That moment became one of the most memorable passages in Factfulness.

The musical begins where Rosling's story ends—and asks a different question:

Who was this woman before that moment?

We do not know her real name. We do not know the details of her childhood, her marriage, her children, or what became of her after 1989. For that reason, Her Left Sleeve is not presented as her biography. It is a work of historical imagination inspired by a documented encounter.

The story begins when she is fifteen or sixteen years old.

She grows up in Makanga, near the Kasai River, one of the great tributaries of the Congo River. The village lies between forest, hillside, and riverbank. Though remote, it is connected to a much larger world through the river. Boats arrive. News travels. People come and go. New music, new clothes, new ideas, and eventually new political realities reach the village.

Over several decades, the girl grows into a woman while her country changes around her:

from the final years of the Belgian Congo, through independence in 1960 and the turbulent years that followed, into the long era of Mobutu and the country known as Zaire.

But this is not a political history told from the capital.

It is history seen from a village.

She plants cassava. She learns how to process food from her mother and grandmother. She falls in love. She becomes a wife, a mother, and eventually a grandmother. She listens to news carried along the river and to voices coming through the radio. She watches younger generations grow up and dream of lives beyond the village.

Her knowledge does not come primarily from books.

It comes from living.

From observing.

From remembering.

From making decisions.

And slowly, she becomes the kind of woman people turn to when they are frightened and need someone to think clearly.

In 1989, Hans Rosling arrives.

She is now in her fifties.

A foreign doctor, a group of researchers, blood samples, fear, and a crowd with machetes bring her face-to-face with a world she has been watching from the edges of her entire life.

She steps forward.

She rolls up her sleeve.

And offers her blood.

Her Left Sleeve is therefore not a story about a European doctor saving Africa.

It is the story of an African woman whose life began long before the doctor arrived.

He is the stranger who enters her story.
She is the woman whose story we finally get to tell.

第一曲：《阳光下的木薯》

“CASSAVA IN THE SUN”

故事回到1950年代中期。

恩萨拉十五六岁，还是村子里的一个少女。清晨，她跟着母亲和村里的女人们一起处理木薯：从土地里挖出来，削皮、清洗、切开、浸泡，再把木薯铺在架子上晾晒。对于她来说，木薯不是一种“疾病的来源”，更不是医学意义上的植物。

它就是她的生活。

是母亲每天要做的食物，是家里的饭，是祖母教给她的手艺，也是村里的女人们一边劳动、一边聊天、唱歌、开玩笑的共同节奏。

她一边干活，一边唱起一首轻快的劳动歌谣。

歌中有木薯、有太阳、有母亲和祖母，也有少女第一次出现的朦胧爱情——一个路过的男孩，一个故意装作不在意的眼神，一点关于未来婚姻的玩笑。

歌曲的旋律简单、重复、容易传唱，仿佛原本就是这个村子里的民歌。

但在整部音乐剧的结构中，这首轻快的歌还有一层遥远的回声：

几十年以后，正是这种她从小熟悉的食物、这种代代相传的生活知识，将成为医学调查的核心。

只是十五岁的她还不知道。

此刻，她只是一个女孩。

她晒着木薯。

太阳正在升起。

明天还很远。

The story takes us back to the mid-1950s.

She is fifteen or sixteen years old, still a village girl. At dawn, she works beside her mother and the other women, processing cassava: pulling it from the earth, peeling it, washing it, cutting it, soaking it, and laying it out to dry in the sun.

To her, cassava is not a medical subject.

It is not a disease.

It is simply food.

It is what her mother prepares for the family, what her grandmother taught her to handle, and what the women of the village work with while they gossip, tease one another, laugh, and sing.

She begins a lighthearted work song.

The song is about cassava, sunlight, her mother and grandmother, and the small, half-hidden excitement of being a young girl: a boy who passes by, a smile she pretends not to notice, and jokes about the husband she may someday have.

The melody is simple and memorable, with a repeated refrain that feels as though it has been sung in the village for generations.

Yet beneath its warmth lies a distant dramatic echo.

Decades later, the same food she learned to prepare as a girl will become the center of a medical investigation.

She does not know that yet.

She is fifteen.

She is laying cassava in the sun.

And tomorrow is still far away.

【歌词】

CASSAVA IN THE SUN

Song 1 — Makanga, around 1955

[Verse 1]

Wake up, little cassava,
Wake up in the ground.
Pull you from the red earth,
Turn you all around.

Cut away the brown skin,
Wash you clean and white.
Mother says, “Work quickly, girl,
The sun is shining bright.”

[Chorus]

Peel it, wash it,
Cut it, lay it down.
Turn it in the morning,
Turn it when the sun goes down.

Cassava for my mother,
Cassava for my home,
Cassava for the hungry ones,
Cassava when they come.

[Verse 2]

Carry it to the water,
Let it sleep a while.
Mother has her own way,
Grandmother has her style.

“Do not hurry, little girl,”
Grandmother always says.
Then she laughs and takes my knife,
And shows me once again.

[Chorus]

Peel it, wash it,
Cut it, lay it down.
Turn it in the morning,
Turn it when the sun goes down.

Cassava for my mother,
Cassava for my home,
Cassava when the children call,
Cassava when they come.

[Verse 3]

Lay it on the wooden rack,
White against the sky.
Girls are talking, boys are passing,
Clouds are drifting by.

Someone starts a little song,
Someone makes it wrong.
I make up a better verse,
And everybody sings along.

[Chorus]

Peel it, wash it,
Cut it, lay it down.
Turn it in the morning,
Turn it when the sun goes down.

Cassava for my mother,
Cassava for my home,
Cassava for tomorrow,
Cassava all around.

[Verse 4 — playful]

If I marry, I will cook it.
If I marry, I will sing.
If I marry, I will make my husband
Carry everything!

Mother laughs, “You foolish girl,
You are sixteen today.”
I say, “Then I have many years
To learn the proper way!”

[Chorus]

Peel it, wash it,
Cut it, lay it down.
Turn it in the morning,
Turn it when the sun goes down.

Cassava for my mother,
Cassava for my home,
Cassava for the ones I love,
And more for everyone.

[Bridge — softer, almost spoken]

When the cassava has grown quiet,
When the pieces have grown dry,
We will pound them into flour
Underneath the evening sky.

Mother will make the fire,
Grandmother will taste the pot.
And I will steal the first warm piece—

“Girl!”

I know.
I know.

[Final Chorus — faster]

Peel it, wash it,
Cut it, lay it down.
Turn it in the morning,
Turn it when the sun goes down.

Cassava for my mother,
Cassava for my home,
Cassava for the hungry ones—

[All / rhythmic repetition]

Peel it!
Wash it!
Cut it!
Lay it down!

[Final line — alone]

Tomorrow, we will eat.

一南 | Yinan