Fingertips: Who was knocking on my window

Once upon a time, living in the village, the neighbor's aunt came to find her mother, did not enter the door, and idly pulled through the window, one was busy in the house, and the other was doing needlework outside the house. At that time, I felt that the window was really a good object, which could not only isolate doubts and dangers, but also know the situation outside, and had the meaning of attacking, retreating, and maneuvering. The aunt next door was leaving, and did not speak any polite words, as if she were passing by a bird or a wind in front of the window, undetermined and natural. The next time you come, if you don't have anything solemn, you don't have to push the door, still standing against the wall outside the window, your eyes facing the direction of the sky. The mother was unaware of her arrival, and after a few words to herself, she would bang on the window glass with her knuckles, when the mother raised her head and smiled at her, and her voice was echoed by the expression, that is, greeting each other. Hemiao called me to play outside, and would also knock on the window glass of my house, hissing, hissing, hissing, just like the telegram code in the movie, I could quickly hear and understand what she said, as a reply, I also smiled at her, jumped off the kang, put on my shoes and pushed the door out, and ran out of the yard with her. Of course, there are exceptions, that is, when you are sick. The scenery outside is also the size of a pane, square, neat and tidy, like the scenery on a small handkerchief, moving around piece by piece. After watching for a long time, people become sleepy. I woke up groggy and the sky was dark. I hope that someone's finger can knock on the window glass, hiss. Sounds from the inside of the body and the outside of the house, always strikingly similar, have the power to overcome and transcend the current predicament. But it seems that it is not a luxury, and the more fragile the interior, the rarer the external awakening. The village said too much, did not dare to do this, could not do that, people also behaved in a disciplined manner, not more than half a step. There are children in the family who are sick, and outsiders are always afraid to come to the door. If the child is aggravated, the adults will complain in private about the door-to-door visitors, saying that they have brought something unclean. If the child's illness is alleviated, the door-to-door visitor will mutter in his heart whether to bring the disease to his own child. My hopes were destined to fail. My grandmother saw that I was always paying attention to the outside, so she hung the curtains. The room immediately darkened, and everything was shadowy and trance-like. It was winding out of the window. The wind is wrapped in dust and sand, and it will also knock on the windows. Snapping, rushing and slowing, making people's hearts hairy. The adults packed up early, burrowed into the bed, and fell asleep to the sound of the wind constantly knocking on the window ledge and tearing everything apart. In the morning, white bird droppings fell on the windowsill, but no bird stopped. My mother casually said that it seemed as if there were sparrows under the eaves, and I looked up over and over again to patrol the shuttle, and there was no sign of the sparrow. Suspecting that we were asleep, birds and finches knocked through the window glass. At that time, they may have been seeking help, or they may have just wanted to bring some amazing news to people.

Every summer, swallows come to the eaves, repair the old nest, incubate the small swallows, and come in and out, quite calmly. When I watch, or point and show off to my buddies, who are always sensitive to attention from the outside and impending dangers, the big swallow leaves the nest cautiously and quickly, suspicious and defensive of us in a vigilant posture, and ready to fight, leaving the little swallow chirping and shouting inside the nest. After a few days, the little swallow began to practice flying, and a small swallow landed on the window sill, and it stared at the window glass curiously, making me think that it would use its beak to knock on it. But it and they never really stopped, and certainly never knocked on the windows of my house. One autumn, a large snake with black flowers, with its body, knocked powerfully on the window of my house. That day, my sister and I were playing on the kang, and I noticed a black shadow flashing on the left side of my face, and I didn't think so. Tie a small handkerchief to the doll's body, that is her cloak, and fold a small mouse with a handkerchief, that is the doll's toy, the doll cried, and then held it in her arms and shook it. The sister was going to the windowsill to cook for the doll, and the snake had been watching through the glass for a long time, but the sister was concentrating on cooking, saying something in her mouth, and did not notice the prying eyes of a snake outside the window glass. It wasn't until the snake got impatient and slammed the window with its body that my sister screamed. I saw the snake banging on the window, raising its head high, while its body slowly arched, trying to penetrate the glass and enter our game. The smell of danger weakened our spirits and bodies little by little, and I hugged my sister tightly, but didn't cry, and we all knew that the windows were clearly more secure than the doors. The doors were heavy, closed, and carrying an air of danger, and once opened, dangers that could not be captured by the naked eye and that we could not anticipate would intrude. But the window is different, it can not be moved, can not be opened, so it is relatively safe. At that time, the only thing I could do was close the door tightly, bolt it in, and wait for the snake to go away, or for the adults to come back and solve our problems. The window is the entrance and exit of the world, and a window glass is a screen or mirror that will reveal everything that is growing to you without concealment, leaving you surprised, melancholy, frightened and alarmed. For a person who likes to live at home, the window is undoubtedly the safest and safest in his life, and it is also the most authoritative, which can both prove your suspicions and dispel your doubts. When I was a child, I had a special desire to have a window at the bottom of the cave, so that I could see the other side of the world, the creatures at the bottom of the Warm River, the forests and the beasts—the secrets of the dark side of the world. Of course, this is not possible. When I became pregnant, I lived in a county-assigned dormitory. In autumn, the leaves of the plane tree are constantly blown down by the wind, and the ground is golden. Lying down at night, you can hear the leaves knocking on the window, poof, poof, poof. I suppose those leaves have something to say to me, like this little creature in my belly trying to talk to me through some vibrations and surges. The curtains were drawn, and the wide leaves curled up and pounced on the window panes, poof, poof, and I responded with a smile as I had done as a child.

A bright moon illuminated the mountains and rivers, and the life in my body kept gently kicking me. At that moment, I saw myself also become a window, and the child passed through me, seeing, listening, touching the world, and judging his own safety and danger, anxiety and fear. Now that I live on the sixth floor, there are nine windows, and I can see both the world in front of me and everything behind the house, giving birth to the illusion that I have countless eyes in my body. The more transparent the house, the more closed the people. The buildings are quite clean, but the neighbors do not move around, and even if there is a special event, they will not knock on each other's doors. That year's earthquake, neighbors rang the doorbell of each house downstairs instead of knocking on your door. This posture of consciously staying away from each other, creating distance, and protecting each other has become a habit of each other. Do not disturb, do not affect, but also become the basic rules of building residents. Home is more like an island, a place where we each guard and hide, not accepting, not opening, not blending. Sometimes in the corridor, you can smell the smell of food emanating from a certain door, but you certainly don't rush into someone's door to see the food on his stove as you did when you were a child in the hospital. Of course, the other party will not politely humble you. People live in high places, although they are still deep in red dust, but in the end they are a little far away from the dust. Creatures walking and escaping on the ground, such as cats, dogs, mice, earthworms and the like, can no longer be encountered, and there are losses and gains, and one day they found that the sixth floor was just the space where the birds and finches stopped. They like to stand in front of the kitchen window, with their heads facing the sky, their backs against my gaze, resting or chirping. Occasionally forget the shape, turn your head and knock on the window, which is a surprise. Magpies, doves, swallows, pigeons, sparrows, and so many other kinds of birds, not enough, I myself began to raise birds on the terrace, small literary birds, black red-billed chicks. In this way, more birds came, as if they had suddenly found a base. Trance is also the situation in the village in the early years, people come to visit the door, rest and fall, and then go their own way. They walked and walked on the terrace, pacing with their necks stretched out, as leisurely and elegant as a poet. The birds outside would shout at the caged birds, trying to encourage the birds, rush out of the cage, and soar with themselves to the wide sky. And sometimes they jumped on the windowsill again, knocked on the window of my study, hissed, hissed, hissed, telegraphed like a sound, trying to get some signal of feedback. Every morning, when I am woken up by a magpie, my heart is always happy. In the evening, several pigeons walked away from the flock and stopped on the terrace sprinkled with millet, suddenly giving birth to the assumption that their past and future lives had also been one of them. I patiently and persistently trained the red-billed susu to fly, to fly from my hands to the ground, and then from the top of my head, and later it could fly to the top of the seventh floor, and then it flew with a flock of birds to the fields and grasses, farther into the valleys and forests, and never came back to rain at night. The sound of rain is rapid and slow, virtual and real, dripping, knocking on the window, like a drum, like a wooden fish, gradually knocking and disappearing, gradually sinking and becoming silent, the bustle and noise of the world are not there, your impatience and greed are not there, between heaven and earth, only they are left, their illusion, their calmness, their frankness. Remembering that Qingshan said, "In the human world, a few yellow sorghum, the illusion is to leave, if you are reluctant, it is painful to endure", suddenly I am extremely at ease, and I have to dream with love, nostalgia and gratitude for the world. In the morning, I was awakened by the sound of hail. The wind and clouds move the city, and the window is like a tile. Gently pulling the curtain, the heavens and earth after the rain, illuminated by the morning sun, new enough to make people happy, where is there any hail? But it turned out to be a dove pecking at my window, and I smiled. Through the glass, for the first time, I saw the bird's eyes, so focused, so clear, so undefended.

Fingertip, a member of the Chinese Writers Association, has published many books such as "Pear Blossom Outside the Threshold", "Flower Brew", "Mother in the River", "The Empty Sound on the Snow Line", "The Last Photo Album" and so on. The essay collection "The Last Photo Album" won the 2016-2018 "Zhao Shuli Literature Award" prose award in Shanxi Province.