Chen Shixu: There is a sound of snow falling

Living in Lingnan for more than ten years, I have never seen snow. Once upon a time, my favorite weather was snow. The white snow, hiding all the dirtiness, makes the world crystal clear. Whenever it snows, my heart is filled with joy and emotion. Ancient and modern, Chinese and foreign, people chant too much about snow, and it is too beautiful. The slight difference is that as an adult, my joy and touch of snow is a little bitter.

Snow reminds me of my farm brothers who were born on the same day of the same month of the same year and went to the countryside on the same day.

When I was with his classmates, I didn't know each other. When we met, there was no way to learn. In the three years of junior high school, we were not in the same class, and the acquaintance was after graduation.

One afternoon near the end of the summer vacation, the class teacher of the third grade personally came to inform me to attend a farewell party the next day, to send more than 100 orphans in the city to plant cotton on a farm in northern Gan. At the meeting, the class teacher asked me if I would like to go to the countryside with the orphans. I looked around as if I were begging for help. My brother was sitting next to me, and I had only heard that he had a very high IQ and was a top figure in mathematics, physics and chemistry. His homeroom teacher is also mobilizing his own students. I saw my brother nod his head. That's the first step in our entire lives towards society. Looking back now, at that decisive moment, who exactly did I influence with him? If his nod affected me at the venue, the next day it was I who was trying to persuade him.

The registered students went to the school the next day to concentrate. I saw my brother standing alone under the horizontal bar on the edge of the playground. Barefoot, blindly paddling the road in the sand.

He doesn't go to the farm anymore. The family had already found him a factory apprentice.

If you don't go, I don't have anyone I know.

I was stunned.

He ended up following me. Today, when I write this reminiscence, my heart is full of guilt and regret. If it was this step that made him unhappy for the rest of his life, then I was the main driver.

There is no need to drink blood wine, no need to worship the Son, both of us, including our families, regard us as brothers. The most solemn day of the year is our common birthday. On the days of returning home to visit my family, I often fell drunk in his house, and they were busy and caring for by the family, and he remembered my mother's birthday more clearly than I did.

We've been on the farm for eight years. In what I saw as a miserable life, he seemed competent and happy. He never lost his temper with anyone else. If you are bullied, you just look at people with tears in your eyes. He was meticulous and skillful, following the local girls to learn the soles of socks, make insoles, embroider flowers, and make them scream within a few days. Red cases, white cases, car, tractor, electric motors, generator repairs, less than a month to master the mastery. He was extremely easygoing. Whoever asked him for help, he seemed to have been rewarded by others, someone was obviously using him, I was upset with him, he always smiled: forget it, do it all.

I will never forget that snowy night.

The "Lermontov Collected Poems" was brought by me in the reading room of the field department, and I didn't want to return it at all, he said, how can it be? That's stealing. I said that stealing books is not stealing, he said, how can it not be stolen? Forgot that Kong Yiji stole the book in the textbook and broke his leg? Don't argue, I'll help you copy it, and return it after copying it. (Chen Shixu)

What a snowfall! The old north wind blew snow particles in through the tile cracks, rustling all over the house, and soon covered with a thick layer of snow. The cold wind blew through the cracked doors and windows, and the snow quickly turned to ice. Fingers frozen like carrots, unable to grasp the pen. From time to time, I put my hand to my mouth to sigh, but he kept his head buried, occasionally asking: Are you so afraid of the cold? Or you can drill into the bed, I'll copy it alone!

There was no electricity, and the smoke of the kerosene lamp blackened the nostrils, wiped the snot, and the face went black.

Lermontov of Hades has turned us into Yama!

I smirked and felt a pang of sadness.

In 1972, I went to the county seat to work as a temporary worker. This separation has set us on a completely different path of destiny.

Two years later, he started a family. The days were very hard, they actually raised three little people, and they actually had time to worry about me.

I heard I started publishing novels. He wrote to me overnight. Saying that he was really happy for me, remembering that snowy night many years ago, he copied a collection of poems, and he really didn't do it in vain. At the end of the letter, he especially instructed that we must remember my mother's words, and that we must be careful when eating and writing this bowl of rice. To put it bluntly, it is undoubtedly a golden and jade good word. My life has a lot less trouble and right and wrong, which is not unrelated to his reminders.

After most of the young people on the farm returned to the city, the brothers who had no way out of the family had to try to relocate to the farms near the provincial capital.

The situation is getting better. Just a clump of white hair that began to rise. In the wrinkles of the forehead and the corners of the eyes, youth is deeply buried. The worst part is that his body is already visibly unwell. He often fainted on construction sites.

Five years later, he died on his way to the operating room, in his early forties. (Chen Shixu)