Short
A woman flying in the sky
Author: Qiu Zihong
"Women are flying in the sky, and whoever fights down is whoever."
- The proverb of the town of happiness
1
As the old proverb of our town of happiness says, at that time, women, these beautiful bipedal beings, they flew high in the sky like swallows, pigeons, harriers and birds.
They are born with white, soft feathers, slender, dexterous legs and feet, and between their arms and their bodies, two thin membranes of flesh are connected to each other, one on the left and one on the right, and the flesh membrane is born with fine white feathers. If they wanted to fly, wave their arms, and the fleshy membranes that spread out on either side of their bodies, like a giant pair of wings of a bird, were enough to carry them anywhere in the town of Happiness. If you are a foreigner, whether you come to our town of Happiness in the early morning or in the evening, whether you are standing in the Rose Square of Happiness Town, or strolling on the bank of the Bluewater River, if you raise your head and casually look at the sky above your head, you will find the figures of those women flying.
Think about it, what a heart-pounding scene! Oh, those beautiful women with slender bodies, those beautiful women who are graceful and colorful, those beautiful women who are as beautiful as heavens, they stretch their arms, the beautiful bodies that are characteristic of women, stretched flat and frozen in the blue sky; they waved the membrane of flesh between their arms and the sides of their bodies, and with the help of the buoyancy of their arms, they glided in the sky; they chased each other in pairs, played, and fanned their arms vigorously, and flew into the clouds at once, and then swooped straight from the clouds into the air They lined up in a line, led by the first woman at the front, changing from one line to two or three lines in the sky, changing formations from time to time, and the sound of their lark singing was heard in the sky... When they are tired of flying in the sky, they fall on soft clouds, and their homes or nests are built in the clouds at the highest point in the sky.
They never fell to the ground, and for them, even the cleanest dirt in our happy town was not worth humiliating their dexterous, beautiful feet. Occasionally, on the night of the full moon, they would land on the top of the most lush and tall plane tree in the south of Happiness Town, on the south side of the Great South Mountain, and with the help of the bright moonlight, from the gap between the overlapping trees, they would turn a pair of watery eyes and look at our Happy Town.
At that time, our happy town was still at the beginning of its creation. The men descended from the sky in the desert of the Ink Sea, and they crossed the barren land, over the high Wudai Mountain Range, waded through the BlueWater River, crossed the swamp, and came to this virgin land surrounded by the Wudai Mountain in the north and the Great South Mountain in the south, surrounded by the BlueWater River flowing from east to southwest. They leveled the land by the marshlands, built the Rose Square, cut down trees from the South Mountain, mined granite rocks, built town government buildings, theaters, and courtyards of residents crisscrossing the streets, wielding pickaxes, shovels, shovels, and reclaiming the slopes of absinthe, tribulus, and vines into fertile fields for rice, corn, wheat and other crops. From sunrise in the morning to sunset in the evening, the whole town of Happiness is full of the clanging of craftsmen building walls with brick knives, the sound of carpenters cutting wood, the heavy wheezing of two craftsmen when they unravel the wood with a large saw, and the sound of people collectively working in the fields outside Happiness Town.
After a day of sweaty, cattle and horses, the night fell, the moon rose to the valley to the east of the happy town, the sky flashed like small stars like ice crystals, grandfathers and fathers of the older men went to bed early, but the sons and grandchildren of the boys could not sleep.
"When I drank water the night before yesterday at the pearl spring under the plane trees in the south of the town, under the plane trees of the Great South Mountain, guess what I saw?" The older brother lay down beside his younger brother and whispered in his younger brother's ear.
"What do you see? Brother! The younger brother asked eagerly.
"Shhh—" the brother pointed to his father, who was snoring like thunder on the other side of the bed, and said softly, "I saw the women on the top of the plane trees, who were more charming than when they flew in the sky, their hair long, scattered over their shoulders, darker than the darkest night, and their eyes were like the clear waves of the blue water river, like the moonlight falling in the river, shining charmingly!" The brother swallowed the saliva in his throat and said, "Guess what I picked up?" ”
"What did you pick up?"
"I picked up the feathers that had fallen from their bodies."
"Where?"
The brother got up on his side and groped under the mattress for a while, holding a long handful of white feathers in his hand. They were light, as smooth as satin, and though the room was pitch black, they saw the white light of the feathers, and at the same time, they smelled a mixture of lilies and jasmine flowers emanating from the feathers. The brother said that this was the smell of the bodies of the women who flew in the sky.
The older brother gave the younger brother three feathers. The brother and brother lay side by side on the bed, they stroked the thin fluff on the sides of the hard edges of the feathers, they gently slid over their bodies with their feathers, a feeling of furry comfort spread throughout the body, they were immersed in this comfortable, beautiful, dreamlike feeling, they smelled, a burst of lilies and jasmine mixed into the fragrance, their bodies suddenly became light, flew off the bed, flew out of the courtyard of the happy town they lived in every day, flew over the happy town, with the women, Fly high in the sky.
"Go to sleep, tomorrow morning the land on the banks of the Bluewater River will be turned over, and the sowing season will soon be over." Bed to bed, father whimpered at them like a dream.
2
But they couldn't sleep. The moon had risen into the sky, and the moonlight through the windowsills illuminated the wet tears in their eyes. Now, it is spring, which is the most beautiful season of the year, the heat and cold are moderate, there is neither the blazing heat of summer nor the bone-chilling cold of winter, and it is good to sleep at night and cover a thin silk quilt. But they felt that the bed was hot like a blacksmith's cutting board for laying iron, and what was hotter than the bed board was their body. They could feel that the desires that had been dormant in their bodies for years were now all awake, like hungry beasts, running in their bodies.
"I want to have women who fly in the sky." The brother said to himself.
"I want to too." The younger brother then said.
Outside the window, someone played the moon harp, chanting songs, from the blue water river outside the happy town, far away:
"Oh woman in heaven, my lovely little swallow,
Why do you fly so high and so high,
You brought my gaze to heaven.
Oh woman in heaven, my lovely white pigeon,
You brought my heart to heaven.
Oh woman in heaven, my lovely little lark,
You brought my acacia to heaven. ”
It was the first man in Happy Town to suffer from lovesickness, and he stayed up all night, wandering in Rose Square every night, wandering by the blue water river, hesitating under the plane tree, singing his inner thoughts and sorrows.
Soon this illness, which was associated with the woman flying in the sky, spread like the golden canola pollen on the hillside outside the town of Happiness, and one, two, ten, a hundred, and eventually all the young lads of the town of Happiness, without exception, fell ill with this terrible disease. They shrugged their heads and were listless during the day, like sick plague chickens. On the contrary, as soon as night fell, they became agitated and excited, and their gloomy eyes, which had obviously sunk deeper throughout the day, began to shine brightly. They stayed up all night, and the wooden bed boards on which they slept in the courtyard could no longer keep them. The rebukes, sarcasm, and ridicule of grandfathers and fathers have no effect at all, even the sticks and slaps that fall on their heads and faces, and they have long since ceased to be serious. They sat alone on a stone bench by the Rose Square in the middle of the night; or walked on the banks of the Bluewater River, lying motionless in the grass under the plane trees; or smoked a large leaf cigarette that choked people's lungs; or drank the rice wine and dried potato wine brewed by the people of Happy Town. They want to use these astringent and bitter things to extinguish the fire of lust burning in their hearts.
For a time, there were so many young people in the happy town who could sing and sing, they exported chapters, no teachers, the moon overhead, the stars, the swallows flying in the sky, the pigeons, even the crows and sparrows, the doves that cooed in the forest, the flowing water in the blue water river, the water grass and the swimming fish, would become the object of their singing, they saw what to sing, what they remembered, they put it into the lyrics they chanted casually, but the content of their singing was all about their love for the women who flew in the sky. Listen, on the Rose Square, there is the soft chanting of several young men:
"Rose, rose, when do you bloom,
I want to pick the most beautiful roses,
Give me the careful liver that I think about day and night..."
Before the song had even ended, I heard the affectionate singing of a young man in the valley east of the town of Happiness:
"Grunting little spotted dove, please tell her,
The man who waited,
It's me, it's me..."
And on the hill south of the town, there came a man's hoarse, sad song, accompanied by the clanging of the moon, and the song was so moving that it could make the stone shed tears:
"The back of the burning hand hurts, my dear little swallow, Oh,
It hurts not to look into your eyes;
Knife scraping bone headache, my dear little lark Oh,
I don't think your heart hurts..."
It was the golden age in the history of poetry in our happy town. Those simple, natural, melodic and charming love poems, like the flowers blooming everywhere in Happiness Town, are all everywhere, and they are all copied one after another by a kind teacher in our Happy Town, one after another, and compiled into a "Happy Town Love Poem". Lyric poems that sing about love have become the ancient source of our happy town literature. Parables such as "swallow", "pigeon", "lark" and "careful liver" are still the mantras that men in happy towns hang on their lips when they offer their courtesy to their beloved women.
In the happy town, people's lives are suddenly chaotic. Under each roof, there was the sound of the father's angry dishes and bowls, the barking of the dog after being kicked in the ass for no reason, the roar of the father scolding the son, the low and high argument between the grandfather and his own son because of the pain of the baby, the chattering complaint. Although the town government building, the movie theater, the resident street, the commercial street and other large buildings have long been built, but the indoor painting, decoration of the outdoor flat, greening and other work, still waiting for people to do, young people are now a little can not count on, those bald, gray-haired men, dragging tired bodies, from morning to night, but the work at hand is still like the weeds on the hillside, dense pressure is endless. Seeing that the planting season is coming, if the watery rice fields on the blue water river cannot be planted with seedlings, then the whole happy town will only drink the northwest wind in the coming year.
One by one, people who were at a loss ran to the house of the old mayor, Mr. Yass, and they wanted this tall man, who spoke loudly in the crowd, to help them come up with ideas and think of a way. But what could Mr. Yas do? The door of his house was open, and the three sons were sick against the courtyard wall, snoozing in the shade of the walnut trees under the wall, and Mr. Yas sat in the hall house, smoking large leaf cigarettes one after another, and the smoke in the house was steaming, as if it were on fire.
"Love, it's like the August flood in the Bluewater River!"
"No! They're more like a terrible plague! ”
Fathers and grandfathers cursed angrily and hoarsely.
It was at this time that the wise Man, Mr. Mosu, came to our happy town. He was far taller and stronger than people thought, his beard was dyed a long and hard ochre red by the winds of the world, and he did not bend his waist for many years, but on the contrary, they were wider and straighter than the strongest young man in Happiness Town. He wore the legendary black cloak, when it was hot, he spread it on the ground, it was a comfortable mattress, covered on his body when it was cold, warmer than the cotton quilt covered by the people of Happy Town in winter, if he encountered lakes and high mountains, shake it in the wind, the cloak would instantly become a magical flying carpet carrying him over the mountains and waters. It was a cheerful, kind man, speaking in a voice as loud as the old mayor, Mr. Yas, laughing, and his voice as charming and pleasant as the hum of golden bees flying in the flowers.
Mr. Mosu walked through the rose square with purple flowers and moon flowers, toward the shade of the trees on the side of the square, and the listless young people quipped: "Lovely little pony, do you want the little mare of your dreams?!" ”
Wearing high-waisted cowhide boots, he walked through the crooked streets of Happy Town, and he shouted to the sleepwalking young people he met: "Little sloth, the sun is rising overhead, still dreaming of your little pigeon, little lark!" ”
The young people of the happy town looked at him like displaced people, and suddenly saw their relatives, and their eyes of shame and grievance were covered with tears, and one by one they became tears.
In the living room of the old mayor's house, when Mr. Yas stuttered and spoke with shame about the current embarrassing situation in the town of Happiness, this talkative and well-informed man, after drinking a cup of jasmine tea and smoking a pipe of large leaf tobacco, said a sentence that has been passed down to this day in our happy town: "Oh woman, it is flying in the sky, who fights down, whoever fights it is." ”
People gathered around the living room of Mr. Yas's house, you looked at me, I looked at you, looking at each other, dazed and overwhelmed.
But soon, people understood the meaning of the words of the wise Man Mosu.
In less than a day, Mr. Mo Su became an idol chased and worshipped by all the young people in Happy Town, and became the child king of Happy Town. He led them through the marshland south of the town, through the thick groves of plane trees that flourished at the South Pass of The Great South Mountain, where the water of pearl springs flowed, along the index of white feathers in the kudzu bushes, looking for the perch of the women who flew in the sky; he climbed up the plane trees with the quick-witted young men and laid one big net after another on the tops; he stood with the young men on the hills east of the town in the evening, whistling and singing love songs to the women who flew in the clouds in the distance. Saying something blushing flirtatious caused the women flying in the clouds to panic, emitting a string of silver bell-like laughter and screams.
(This article is an excerpt)
concentrate
This article was published in the short story list column of Yanhe In 2022
The images are from the Internet