The summer days are long, and when the sky is completely dark, it is more than eight o'clock. It was sweltering and hot for days, and the small village was wrapped in green mountains on three sides, and it was even more encrypted that it could not enter the wind, and the heat burned many people.
There are many low houses in the village, sitting south and facing north, horizontal and vertical, and scattered. Green tile mud bricks, small courtyard in front of the house, moss under the eaves, pig pen behind the house, all obvious.
Looking down from the top of the mountain, every family, there are adults or children in front of their homes to cool off. The old man shakes the fan, the child chases the fireworks, and the woman sometimes looks at the man on the field in front of the village, and sometimes tells the children in the family not to go crazy. The man carried a hoe and stood by the embankment of his rice field, afraid that the water in his family's field would be let go. They shake flashlights in the darkness of the night to warn the "thieves" who try to steal water- this field should not be offended.
The beam of light shook into the village, and also into the pavilion her house.
Her family is the only two-story house in the village that has been stripped of its "peasant status", and the land and property distributed by the family have been contracted. The third sister-in-law sat alone under the camphor tree in the courtyard for a long time, and the bruises on her face gradually appeared. The two children stayed in their respective rooms, not daring to look at her green face, because after watching for a long time, she was like a monster without fangs.
The sound of frogs and cicadas on summer nights is Tingting's favorite rhythm, and she once wrote in her diary: "Frogs are like drums, cicadas are like flutes, this is the love of nature for me, the concert played for me." ”
And tonight they're just a cacophony.
The sky, obscured by dark clouds, was a pitch-black silence, and no one paid attention to the storm behind the appearance of silence—a heavy rain was coming. The pavilion stood in front of the bedroom window looking out, without turning on the light.
The large camphor tree in front of the window was like a big black hole, deep and terrible, she seemed to see a lot of ghosts jumping out of it, frightened and quickly pulled the electric lamp to pull the rope, the light was on, only to find that there was nothing.
The sound of ping-pong was heard in the next room, and my brother was playing table tennis against the wall.
In the middle of the night, there was a heavy rain, and the earth was refreshed, emitting a muddy smell.
Two days later, it was the celebration of the township government, and Tingting saw his mother's blue face and decided to go to the construction site to find his father. She came to the bedside of the third sister-in-law and said her decision, and the third sister-in-law sobbed through the quilt and did not respond. Tingting pestle for a while, see or no response, then went to the kitchen to fill the well with the mineral water bottle that the fat aunt sent her, and went out to the construction site where Du Laosan worked.
Du Laosan's current construction site is more than twenty kilometers away from home, and he inquired while walking in the pavilion, and when he arrived at the construction site, it was more than nine o'clock in the evening.
Because of the rain, the workers left early, and a group of big men gathered together to sip small wine, bump peanuts, and chat about lace news.
"Old Du went into Xiao Mo's bed again, hey, Old Du Yanfu is not shallow, I heard that the wife in his family is very beautiful, how can it be..."
"What is the use of the beautiful top, it is a shrew, yesterday Lao Du went back, almost bit off Lao Du's ear, it is simply a tigress."
"Ah, is it? No wonder his ears were red today. The ladies are really fierce. ”
……
Standing under the window and looking into the window, listening to them talk about their parents, several times she wanted to rush in and scold them for a dog blood sprinkler, but at the thought of the ugliness of the house could not be stretched, she quietly left in shame.
Dark came to Aunt Mo's room, the window was hidden, and I vaguely heard someone talking inside. She carefully glanced through the slit and saw that it was her father who was lying naked with Aunt Mo, and the pavilion was dry.
For the first time in her life, she scolded the four words of dog, man and dog woman in her heart, and when she realized the vulgarity, contempt, inferiority, and betrayal of these four words, she hated herself, and her whole body was strangled by these four words, and the acid water once again gushed into her throat.
She quickly covered her mouth and stomach and rushed into the dark night.
The rain kept falling, from last night to tonight, endlessly, and the air was overcast, like a layer of half-dried tulle covering people, uncomfortable. The pavilion splashed with muddy water, and in this dense rainy night, it rushed for a while, and then it was fast, trying to race against time to go back to the past. She felt that this was the only way to forget the picture just now, to forget everything that should not be known and what should not be experienced.
The mountain trails are even more muddy under the continuous rainstorm. One stumbled, her body leaned back, and she fell down. The run had exhausted her strength, and she gasped for breath and simply lay in the muddy water. The rain fell and ran down her cheeks along with her tears, and she covered her eyes to avoid the images that made her feel obscene and ugly.
Covered in muddy water, she huddled in the wilderness, surrounded by hesse trees, and even she didn't know where she was.
From morning to now, not a single grain of rice has entered, so I have taken a few sips of rainwater, and the mineral water bottles and umbrellas in my hands have long been missing. As the night grew deeper and the rain subsided, she felt neither hungry nor afraid, and even hoped that from the darkness she would come out of the demons and ghosts and take her away.
Closing her eyes, she was surprised to find herself barefoot on the duckweed, and the raindrops drew circles on the surface of the water not far away.
She bounced on top of the duckweed, the soles of her feet sore and itchy, scratching her crying and laughing. Having a good time, a man floated in the sky, his back to the pavilion, reaching out to her softly shouting, "Come on! Come on! Tingting did not hesitate to grab the hand and wanted to follow, and was about to get up on his feet, but found that he could not lift it, but was entangled in duckweed.
She bowed her head and stomped hard, scolding in her mouth "get out of the way, die away", and in a panic, she saw that the water circle just now had become countless sharp mouths, all shouting at her. She was furious and gritted her teeth: I am not afraid of you, you immoral prostitutes, shameless, people who have black hearts and livers and abandoned their wives and daughters...
The more she scolded, the more she cursed, the filthy words seemed to be able to understand the call, constantly pouring into her brain, she twisted her body to climb up, and when she looked up, the hand that had reached out of the sky had disappeared, and she was slammed on the duckweed. Faintly, a flute sound came from some direction, and she was unable to open her eyes to find that it was a dream...
"It turns out that dreams are so terrible and tiring, and there are so many gossip, it is better to wake up."
She got up and continued to walk forward, with no direction or destination, only top-heavy, and her soul deviated from her body by fifteen degrees.
Tomorrow's celebration, the bedridden crying mom, the silent brother, the cheating dad, even herself...
All of this has nothing to do with her anymore.
I don't know how long it took, the sky began to turn white, the rain had stopped, and the clothes were generally dried. The sparrow jumped up and down in the bushes, like the neighbors scrambling to watch the drama at her house. She didn't care to move forward, and even stood up, revealing a pair of obvious collarbones, like rushing to a feast, and suddenly couldn't wait to run...
After dawn, she saw the mighty Dongting Lake.
The continuous heavy rains have made the lake turbid, and the flying fish are difficult to see.
On the surface of the lake, hundreds of boats compete for the current, with the long sky as the curtain, and also fly with the gulls and swallows. On the embankment, the willows are ten miles, playing with the grass, and the mountains are stacked in all directions.
Tingting thought that Qu Yuanhuaicai did not meet and surrendered to the Miluo River, and it was also fortunate that she was buried in these eight hundred miles of water, so that it would be a hundred.
This isn't the first time she's discovered that life is a more terrifying thing than death, and she's tried all sorts of suicide over the past few years: hunger strikes, wrist cuttings. The most recent suicide method was something she had learned from a martial arts novel.
In the novel, the hero ended his life very simply for the sake of the national righteousness, and Tingting did not feel half a pain from it, so she immediately went to the kitchen to get a kitchen knife and went down the water tank to the sand tank along the left three down and three down the right. After sharpening, she put the knife on her neck with both hands, as written in the book, and then turned her head vigorously, a hundred times. But only after a small cut in the neck, the hands and feet were already weak with pain, and the people and knives fell to the ground together.
Tingting sat cross-legged on the wet grass, reflecting on his short and inactive life. Water from the willow leaves spilled over her muddy gray plaid cotton short sleeves and black trousers. I don't know how long I sat, but a long sad flute sound came from the other side of the small hill next to me. The music is like the holy water of the Nile, bringing peace to sorrow, and the pavilion stops talking to death and follows the sound to find the piper.
The piper stood by the water, and the cool wind blew from the east and poured into his ill-fitting clothes and pants. Tingting stood quietly behind him for a long time. At the end of the song, she approached him gently, and the piper suddenly turned back and asked her to take a few steps back.
"What kind of tune is this?" It's so good. ”
The piper was stunned, and when he heard the pavilion's question, he panicked and put the hand holding the flute behind him.
"Call, call 'Cool Summer', you, who are you?" How is it here? The piper hesitated for a few seconds and then replied.
"Who am I?" Tingting sneered, "Will anyone in this world care who I am?" Whether it is a daughter or a sister, no one cares. Seeing that the piper was confused and suspicious of her, he would smile and crisply said, "I don't know how I came here, by the way, this place is so beautiful, like a painting, what is this place?" ”
"It's called Rong... This is Dongting Lake. ”
"I know it's Dongting Lake, but..."
"Oh, this is the county seat, you look over there, it's the county one middle school, I'm studying there, how did you come here?" Only then did the piper begin to look up and down at the pavilion.
"I think I'm lost, are you also a student at County No. 1 Middle School?"
"Are you too?"
"Not yet, but I got in, just... Maybe..." Maybe she could only go to hell as a student in the future, and she was distracted, dodging his scrutiny.
"After that, we are alumni, my name is Li Zhixin, and in the second half of the year I will enter the third year of high school, count you as a senior."
"Hello, my name is Du Tingting, the song you just played is really good, can you blow it again?"
"Okay, no problem, it's just, how can you..." ZhiXin gestured in front of her, asking her how she could be so embarrassed.
She shrugged her shoulders, the upper socket of the collarbone was deeper, pulled the side line of the neck, outlined the face clearly and beautifully, and then breathed a sigh of relief: "Nothing, went to a terrible place, saw something terrible, felt life... Life is boring... It's boring for people to live... The mountains are not interesting... Water is not interesting... Everything is not interesting..." Staring at the depths of the lake, he smiled at Zhixin and said, "Don't you think I'm also bored?" ”
She sat on the ground with a dry smile, like a sailor who had gone through vicissitudes, looking at the endless water.
"Oh—no—" Zhixin sat down and thought to himself, "Only poverty and ignorance are really boring." He didn't ask any more questions and began to squint at this Su Lian-like girl. He looked at her pair of deep dimples, and seemed to know the whole thing and the context. He got up and draped the coat he had brought with him over her, sat down again, and blew the tune he had just played.
Both looked at the lake, the desolate air wafting with sad flutes, and the pavilion rested his chin on his knee. The tune is like crying, low or high, and the pavilion listens quietly until the end of the song.
"Why are you playing such a sad song?"
"Sad? Even sadder than the song is life. ”
"Yes, you're right, there's nothing sadder than life, not even death, no..."
"Death! What do you mean? Thinking of death at such a young age? He saw that Tingting did not reply, and continued: "I'm sorry, I..."
"No, it's none of your business, I just don't understand adults, or I can't understand a lot of people around me, and I don't know where to start." After a short silence, she changed her tone to a relaxed tone and asked, "By the way, on a rainy day, why are you here alone?" ”
"I'm not alone!"
"Well, who else?"
"And rhubarb, and a cow, you see—" Zhixin pointed to the big yellow cow on the hill that was grazing with its head down.
Tingting suddenly laughed, like a water lotus blown by the breeze, crisp and elegant, making people pity. And Zhixin was also amused by his illogical words.
"Thank you."
"Thank me for what?"
"Your music makes me feel the pulse of mountains and lakes, the life of grass and trees, are all the values of living."
"If you like it—" Zhixin stopped talking and wondered, "It's all good to be alive." ”
The two fell silent again—
The distant waves did not stop for a moment, hitting the embankment. Zhixin couldn't help but sneak another glance at the girl next to her, who was staring at the vast water and sky in the distance. Seeing her furrow her brows, he seemed to see the pain that had accumulated on her, and the comforting words that reached her mouth shrank back. A pain worse than death, he couldn't think of any other words to bring comfort.
"I'm going back." After a long time, Tingting got up and patted the sides of his legs and said.
"Oh," he said, "then—then you can go back." ”
"Goodbye." With a wave of his hand, Tingting turned and left.
"Goodbye. Glad you enjoyed my music. "The sound was so small that the pavilion didn't hear it.
Zhixin watched Tingting walk to the hill, and the shaky back made his heart tingle for no reason, and he shouted loudly: "Du Tingting-- " Tingting turned around, and the tears fell from the residual wind. Zhixin said loudly again: "Remember, if you are strong, you will not be desperate enough to be loveless..." She nodded heavily.
"Time will eventually make us stronger, don't worry." This voice, he tried his best.
She heard it clearly, "I know! Good bye. Then he turned and disappeared into Zhixin's sight.
It was midnight when Tingting returned home, his brother had already slept, and the third sister-in-law heard the movement and got up to check, and saw that it was Tingting who did not say a word and prepared to go back to the house. Tingting stopped the third sister-in-law: "Mother, I, I, pee blood..." Tingting showed his mother the panties he had just changed, with a look of fear on his face. The third sister-in-law looked at her nearly sixteen-year-old daughter, and the two of them hugged and cried bitterly...
The next day's celebration, only Tingting alone and no parents attended. Du Laosan did not return home all summer. Tingting helped his mother do farm work during the day, and at night he read books, immersed himself in the sound of the music, and all the troubles disappeared. But there are not many books for rural children to read, except that the textbooks issued by the school are monthly magazines issued by the education group, and Tingting will turn these books over and over again, at least the world in the books is much happier than those things at home.
Now, she is looking forward to the arrival of September, she wrote in her usual diary: "Heaven let me hear such beautiful music when I was most desperate, telling me that if life makes me loveless, I still have to believe that it is all temporary, and there will be a good world waiting for me." 」 ”