It's a story about five cents.
In 1962, I was studying at an elementary school in my hometown. At that time, our family was very poor, and we couldn't afford to buy a homework book. When I was in urgent need of homework books, my mother would sell one or two eggs for a few cents for me, and I would go to the set to buy a piece of paper, cut it, and nail it to write the homework. Ben was terrible, thin and brittle, yellowish in color, and quite scarred on paper. In the homework book made of such paper, I use it on the front and then use the reverse, and then use the reverse side to write large characters.
Once, I asked my mother for money to buy paper, and after several times, my mother gave me a few dollars. Our hometown is used to saying that making money is a spelling, and I think it means nothing more than two things: one is to fight blood and sweat; the other is to piece together. I don't know how my mother spelled the five cents, except that it was a big, perfect coin, and the coin was still very new, shining silver all over. The national emblem and wheat ear pattern highlighted on the coin are very delicate and beautiful, and I can't see enough when I turn it over and over. I put the coin at the bottom of the page, borrowed a classmate's crayon and painted it on it, and the beautiful pattern on the coin surface was displayed. I scribbled several in a row, and the written gap was a lot of money. Then I found an empty matchbox and put the money into the drawer of the matchbox. I picked up the matchbox and shook it in my ear, sure that the big money was really inside, and I was relieved.
Unexpected things happened, I put the matchbox containing money in the bucket under the desk, after doing the recess exercises back to the classroom to see, the matchbox and money are gone, I am anxious, and I am hurtful, I don't know what to do. Losing five cents was a big deal for me, and I felt unable to account to my mother. My mother, who was a model worker in the county and received a bronze medal, disappeared from my house box the other day. The two sisters had always suspected that I had taken the medal and exchanged it for jelly beans with the local cargo man, and I was having a hard time arguing. If I can't find the five cents, I can't tell. My first thought was that I must not let my family know about this, but if I didn't tell my mother, I wouldn't have money to buy paper, and I wouldn't be able to write my homework, so I cried, and my classmates sympathized with me and washed themselves in front of me. Some classmates quietly provided me with clues, saying that my money was stolen by a male classmate surnamed Fan, and some people said that it was stolen by a female classmate surnamed Zhang. The male classmates surnamed Fan are landlords in their families, and the female classmates surnamed Zhang are outsiders in our village, and if something bad happens in the class, they are generally installed on their heads, and I realized this. I also did not have any evidence to prove that they took my money, but I had no other way, I had to report the clues provided by my classmates to the teacher in good conscience, the teacher probably considered that I was a class leader, the family was indeed very poor, immediately interrogated the two classmates, they firmly denied stealing my money. Despite this, the teacher still instructed the two of them to lose me two cents each, and the loss of the other penny was borne by myself, and the teacher thought that I did not keep the money well, and I also had to bear certain responsibilities. The male classmates surnamed Fan and the female classmates surnamed Zhang both felt very wronged, and they both cried.
Both classmates were also poor at home. Two cents is not a small amount for them, I don't know how they went home and told their parents, I don't know where they spelled out two cents, and two days later, they gave me the money through the teacher at the urging of the teacher. Later, I thought that because of the loss of money, those two classmates must have made a lot of difficulties and suffered a lot of grievances, and the two points of forgiveness must have left a deep wound on the hearts of the two innocent classmates.
Since then, those two classmates have made a vendetta against me and no longer pay attention to me, and I am embarrassed to ignore them. Until the beginning of elementary school, we did not say a word between us.
More than thirty years passed, and later I found out that the male classmate had wandered to a foreign country because of discrimination from his own village, and he had settled in a foreign country to sell burnt cakes for a living. The female classmate had already married into another village and had become a wife and mother, and I thought that if I had the opportunity to meet the two of them, I would definitely mention the matter of the five cents. I must ask them to forgive me. I'm afraid I won't necessarily have the chance to meet the two of them in my lifetime.
Is this the story of money?
Liu Qingbang, born in December 1951 in Shenqiu County, Henan Province, is a first-class writer who has authored five novels, including "Red Coal", "Fault", "Poetry in the Distance", "Song on the Plain", and more than 20 kinds of short story collections, essay collections such as "Walking Kiln Han", "Mei Niu Herding Sheep", "White Flowers Everywhere", and "Loudspeaker". The short story "Shoes" won the second Lu Xun Literature Award from 1997 to 2000. The novella "Shenmu" won the second Lao She Literature Award. The film Blind Well, based on his novel Shenmu, won the Silver Bear Award at the 53rd Berlin Film Festival. He has won the first Beijing Virtue art double xin award.