Shen Congwen - "Border City Lower"

The weather gradually became hotter and hotter, and my grandfather seemed to have forgotten about the marriage of the eldest elder, and Cuicui seemed to have forgotten about it. However, soon the matchmaker came to probe again, still the same as the last time, pushing the success to Cuicui and sending the matchmaker on the road. I talked back to Cuicui again, but I still couldn't get results.

The old boatman could not guess what kind of knots there was in this matter, and he could not sleep at night and lay on the bed and fell into deep thought, and after thinking about it, the old boatman understood Cuicui's heart: vaguely realized one thing - Cuicui liked the second old, not the eldest old. Thinking of this, he smiled, grudgingly out of fear. In fact, he was a little sad, because he suddenly felt that Cuicui was all like that mother, and vaguely felt the common fate of mother and daughter.

The ship's general shun family, the matter of the elder Tianbao was known to the second elder, and the second elder also let the brother know the younger brother's heart. This pair of brothers and sisters fell in love with the granddaughter who was holding the ferry at the same time. When the eldest elder understood that the second elder also liked Cuicui, he agreed to the fair solution proposed by the second elder: the two brothers took turns to sing to Cuicui, and whoever sang Cuicui's heart, Cuicui would belong to whom.

At dusk, Cuicui sat under the white tower behind the house, watching the sky being baked by the sunset into a thin peach-colored cloud. The dusk is still gentle, beautiful and calm, there is the smell of earth in the air, there is the smell of grass and trees, there is also the smell of beetles, Cuicui looks at the clouds in the sky, but there is a thin desolation in her heart.

In the evening, when the two grandchildren were cooking, my grandfather told Cuicui some interesting stories. Mentioning Cuicui's dead mother, talking about her mother's well-behavedness, and also talking about the toughness of her mother's personality, Cuicui was fascinated. Mentioning the custom of singing in the city twenty years ago, Cuicui's father was the first hand of local singing. How Cuicui's mother loved to sing, and how to sing with her father in the daytime days when she didn't know, one cutting bamboo in the middle of the mountain, one ferrying on the creek, the later story is very long, the important thing is that this song sang Cuicui. What is not said is that after singing Cuicui, the father and mother also died.

In the morning, Cuicui told her grandfather that in the dream she heard a particularly beautiful song, soft and lingering, and she flew everywhere with this song. Grandfather smiled softly and compassionately, not telling Cuicui the truth of last night. The old boatman thought that last night was a song sung by The Elder Tianbao, and in the daytime let Cuicui guard the boat, and took the opportunity to go to the city to deliver medicine and explore the situation.

It turned out that these two brothers came to BixiYuan last night, because the brother took the lead in the car, no matter what, he refused to sing first, and he must sing first. As soon as the younger brother opened his mouth, the older brother knew that he was not an opponent, and he did not open his mouth to sing. The songs that Cuicui and her grandfather heard at night were all sung by the second elder. When the eldest brother came home with his brother, he decided to leave with the place of Cha Tong. The eldest elder walked down the river with the new oil tanker, leaving the second elder at home.

The second elder had the opportunity to sing but never sang at Bixi Pass again. Fifteen passed, sixteen passed, and by seventeen, the old boatman could not resist going into the city to look for the young man on River Street, but he learned that something had happened to the old man and fell into the whirlpool of water under the beach and drowned.

He felt that the old boatman was crooked and unhappy, and the death of the old man was related to him. Shun Shun felt that the girl who did not want to indirectly kill one of his sons came to be the daughter-in-law of the second son, so the attitude of both father and son was much colder.

At dusk, the weather is very depressed, and red dragonflies fly all over the creek. There were also clouds in the sky, and the hot wind blew the bamboo baskets of the two mountains very loudly, and it seemed that it would rain heavily at night. Sure enough, it rained heavily at night, mixed with frightening thunder.

The two grandchildren silently listened to the rain and thunder on the bed. No matter how much rain it rained, Cuicui was still asleep.

When I woke up, it was already dawn, and I didn't know when the rain had stopped. Seeing that my grandfather slept well, opened the door and went out, the front door had become a ditch, and the vegetable garden next to the house was also washed away by the mountains and water, and the vegetable seedlings were hidden in the coarse sand mud. The creek also swelled and flooded the dock; the road down the dock, like a small river, rushed with yellow muddy water; the cable of the transition was flooded, and the ferry moored under the cliff was gone.

When I looked back, the white tower had also collapsed, and a large pile of rocks was scattered there. Cuicui was panicked and overwhelmed, and could only call out to her grandfather loudly. The grandfather did not get up, nor did he agree, so Cuicui ran back to his grandfather's bed and shook his grandfather for a long time, and the grandfather did not make a sound. It turned out that the old man was already dead when the thunderstorm was about to end.

Cuicui cried all day and was busy all day. After his grandfather was buried, the ship's general manager discussed taking Cuicui to live at home, but Cuicui wanted to guard her grandfather's grave hill and did not want to enter the city. Let Yang Mabing live with her temporarily.

Yang Mabing was a fifty-year-old man, diligent and clean, and he was particularly concerned about everything, so he lived with Cuicui, making Cuicui feel like a grandfather, but he had a new uncle.

Every evening the two of them would talk about their grandfather and the things related to the family, and then they would talk about everything before the old boatman died, so Cui Cui also understood many things that his grandfather did not mention when he was alive. The song of the second old, the death of Shun Shun's eldest son, the indifference of Shun Shun's father and son to his grandfather, the Use of Mills as a dowry by the Zhongzhai people, the temptation to send the Second Elder, the death of the Second Old Man's memory brother, and so on... Everything that Cuicui didn't understand, now she understood. Cuicui figured things out and cried all night.

After four or seven, the ship's general sent someone to invite Ma Bing into the city to discuss the matter of taking Cuicui to live at home, as the daughter-in-law of the second old. Ma Bing said that this matter needed to be asked about Cuicui's meaning, and when he returned, he told Cuicui the meaning of Shunshun, and then made a claim for Cuicui, saying that it was inappropriate to be famous in the past, and waited for the second old man to return from the boat, looking at the second old meaning.

After the method was decided, the old horse soldier thought that the second elder would return soon, and then accompanied Cuicui at Bixi Pass, and lived day by day.

In the winter, the collapsed White Tower was also repaired. The young man who sang under the moon and made Cuicui float his soul gently in his sleep for the song had not yet returned to the tea house.

Cuicui was still ferrying every day, waiting for the return of the man. This person may never come back, maybe "tomorrow" will come back!

People say that there is no right or wrong in love, only courage. But sometimes rejection is not a kind of harm, sometimes do not know how to refuse or have been in a state of wavering, but let people miss many good opportunities, and lose the people they love the most.