The dying of a river
Wen 丨 Chen Yao
There is no love and hate in the world, just as you love birth and death.
——Chen Xiaochuan
A ripe purple grape pierced through the mist of water and landed on the wet lawn of the back garden, like my heavy eyelids. I know, it's coming again, and this is the third time. It always comes quietly at night, muddy, wrapped in door panels, bodies, dead wood, huge toads, and countless tadpoles that are turning into toads. The sky is full of land, I don't know where it originated and gathered, but it came in a huge soup, rampage, destroying houses and villages, and flooding the mountain peaks. I danced my legs heavily, and a feeling of powerlessness struck. I became countless mes, countless me and I gathered and overlapped into one me. The cloudiness spread from the ankle to the thigh, receded, and came again. It can't drown, I can't escape. Will Noah's Ark appear tonight? Following the light of a kerosene lamp, a large ship appeared deep in the dense forest, and it stopped above a swamp. It was the ship of the Father, a voice said. I knew that Father Kwa had no boat, he only had legs, but I ran toward the boat anyway. Someone had already boarded the ship, and suddenly countless arrows with light shot straight at me from all directions, and the light made me unable to open my eyes, and I could not tell whether the rain of arrows came from the flood that was chasing me or the big ship waiting for me.
"Go to bed, it doesn't look like tonight." Dad said to me.
The night coldly flapped my wings, brushing away the dust off my body, and I shook off the soot. The mahjong table in the outer room is very noisy, pretending that the mountain rain is about to come and the wind is full of buildings, waiting for something big to happen. I brought a blast of air conditioning from outside, my cousin shouted cold, and I took it to the door.
The house was narrow and dimly lit, with only a small window connecting to the kitchen, just enough to fit two rows of sofas and a stove. He had been placed on the couch two days earlier, covered with a quilt he had used before, and the smell of urine was covered underneath. His head was facing inwards and his feet were facing outwards, and if a week had he been, he might have risen at any moment and walked out the door. The great-grandfather had his mouth half open, dry as old bark, his chin dislocated like a long stretch, his cheekbones bulging, his eye sockets deeply concave, and if you uncover this skin, you can see a fresh skull. The eyelids were half open, and the eyeballs were like a rough and full of impurities in the glass ball, and dust fell on the glass. Through the dust and impurities, occasionally the eyeballs could be seen learning to move, which it would have been, perhaps forgotten. The crowd waited with bated breath, waiting for him to say a few last words, waiting for him to stop breathing peacefully. However, like a hand and a card waiting for the key one but touched the irrelevant, the expectation was not always realized, as if it was appetizing. The clock ticks... He inhaled briefly, and the phlegm in his throat obstructed the rise of the air flow like a mountain peak, "whistling and whistling." He exhaled long, the sound returning to the distant place where it had belonged, and perhaps the next second the air would stop pouring into his chest cavity from the pipe. But his breathing was always like an old mobile phone, and after passing through the caton, it could run hard again.
The ticking of the clock was like a dense rain of arrows in a dream, penetrating me and taking me back to that afternoon. The sun basked on the budding leaves, like a child who rolled up his tongue and refused to speak. The sound echoed the hot wind, and the gusts rose and fell. The great-grandfather sat on the stone steps and wiped the tip of his hoe with moss. I couldn't tell if it was tears or water on my face, I was soaking wet, my clothes were pressed against my skin, and my trousers and liberation shoes were covered with mud, and I appeared in front of him. He threw away his hoe in fright and almost planted his heel as he walked toward me.
The cousin followed behind, "Caught the tadpole and fell into the pond, fortunately the water is not deep." ”
"It's a river." I turned back and said stubbornly.
The great-grandfather cleaned up the hoe, which meant that the grass was finished that day. He filled the tank with water again, and I asked what the boiling water was for, and he said I was dirty and wanted to take a shower. We never take a shower. At least I never had the impression that we had taken a bath, and I was very impressed with the sound of cicadas and baths on this day, perhaps because of something else.
My great-grandfather changed my clean clothes and brought me rice stewed on the stove, and he picked out the white rice for me and ate the cornmeal himself. Dad was fined a lot of money and kept us from eating pure white rice for a long time. My great-grandfather said that the fine was because of the addition of a new brother, and it was for this brother that I would be with him and my sister would be at my grandmother's house. At that time, I didn't understand why I couldn't eat white rice when I had a younger brother, was it my brother who snatched my white rice?
I was five years old and ate and slept with my great-grandfather. We never bathe, or rarely bathe.
The night is hard. There were men shouting that they were hungry, and after a while, the women brought plates and saucers. People gathered around the stove and the food protested between the teeth. The aroma of wine does not matter whether it is alive or dead, the silk thread is like a random drill into people's mouths and noses, sitting or lying. His thumb moved, as if pulled by the aroma of wine. The third uncle scooped a small spoonful of white clouds and flowed into his closed mouth next to the corner of his lips. He was an alcoholic, and when he couldn't finish eating anything, he still had to take a sip, which was the cheapest bud grain in the town's distillery. He failed to swallow, allowing the fragrant cold liquid to remain in the gaps in his tongue and teeth. His tongue shrunk into a round clump, like a pebble lying quietly on a dry riverbed, without flowing water, it was motionless. His eyes probed in the direction of the third grandson, but he couldn't get too far. He wanted to say good wine, or he wanted to say something more. But the third grandson could not understand what he meant, so he had to turn his head and continue eating.
Late at night, I withdrew my cups and plates, retreated in a lively way, and snoozed with my head down on my seat. His head was crooked, and no one noticed. The more vigorous the fire in the stove, the more ash on his eyelashes, the man was about to fall into the ground, and the dust on his face did not seem to have to be wiped away with effort.
My great-grandfather scrubbed the mud off my hands and feet. The water in the pot was still burning, grunting. My great-grandfather scrubbed for me, and the water in the wooden basin was steaming hot, steaming so much that I was sweating profusely and my body was as crimson as a rash. The first time the muddy water fell and merged into the river in front of the house, the silt returned to the riverbed and met it. The second time the water was finally clean, and my body was also very clean, pink, white, no cocoon, and no hair. Unlike my great-grandfather's hand, his palms and knuckles clucked at my bones because of the calluses of his hoe and sickle, the touch of old bark. The needle-like hairs were ingrained on his hands, covering every finger and sticking straight into my skin. As if caught by a magic force, he was cautious and obsessive, making me ache, and as soon as I cried out in pain, he tapped. The steaming wooden basin suddenly resembled an ice cellar, making people shiver. It wasn't until I cried that he woke up like a dream and panicked for a third basin of water. It was as if something had gone away with the bathing water, flowing into the river in front of the door, some settling on the riverbed, and some dispersing and disappearing with the current.
People are addicted to magic. In the dark, dark bedroom, where there was no light, the bandage bed was placed against the wall, I was placed against the edge of the bed, and my grandfather was placed against the inside. There were a few pieces of old clothes piled up on the bed, and two pieces were pulled and placed at the head of the bed to make pillows. There were some new clothes and pants hanging on the bamboo pole opposite the bed, and he was reluctant to wear them. My great-grandfather was a frugal man, and so was I; His great-grandfather was also a hard-working man, and he measured and cultivated every piece of land with his industrious hands, not sparing any corner, day after day, day and night. Many nights, rats rats ratmed corn, and I couldn't sleep. But the rat was afraid of his great-grandfather, and as soon as I woke him up, the rattling sound disappeared without a trace. Some nights without rats, I fell asleep or woke up, and the bamboo poles for drying clothes began to shake, more and more violently. New clothes and pants flew up from the bamboo poles and fluttered throughout the room. I stared dizzy, swirling around, reaching for a handful, and all that remained on my hand was the blackness of the paint. "Can you light a lamp?" I say. The match cut through the pitch black and trembled as it hooked up on the wick. The fire of the kerosene lamp flickered until dawn.
It was dawn. He stayed up another night. The parents between the fires are getting shorter and louder. Some people fight landlords, some people brush vibrato, and the mahjong table outside is becoming more and more irritable. "It's a little cold!" The cousin said with a sigh of relief that they had also wanted to rub the fire of the dying man, but the house could not be opened.
When will the coffin be transported? Is there enough table? Paper money wax firecrackers to buy some more. The second brother and his father-in-law looked at the ground well, and could ask him...
The hilarity arises because of him, but it has nothing to do with him. He couldn't close his eyes or ears, and lay there quietly, occasionally opening his mouth and tilting his head to move his eyeballs. His face, no matter how he looked at it, even if he filled the hollow place round, did not have any resemblance to his father and uncle. He wasn't my grandfather's father, he had picked it up, someone had said. I have only heard parents pick up their children, and I have never heard of their sons picking up their fathers. Until one time I heard my father say, "It was Grandpa who picked up a younger brother for himself, and not long after, when there was a famine, Grandpa saved his son and this brother, and he and Grandma starved to death." Later, when I was born, my current great-grandfather was called Grandpa, but he was only a few years older than my father. Grandpa pulled my dad to grow up, married him and had children, and later took care of me and your uncles, and even took you for a few years, similar to the ones. ”
When I was seven years old, I started elementary school, and he sold the honeysuckle he had accumulated for a long time, bought me a pair of new liberation shoes, and sewed me a flower school bag by hand. When I got home, I excitedly opened the outermost layer of my bag, trying to surprise him. As a result, the two rock sugars turned into water. "Classmates give it, I want to give it to you to taste." I rubbed my eyes and said reluctantly. He smiled and picked me up and said it was okay, I'll buy it again. Later, whenever he rushed to the scene, he would bring me a bag back, and the rock sugar at home has not been broken since then.
I covered the worm teeth that had once drilled my heartache, as if it were now beginning to faintly hurt again. Four days had passed, and he still had his mouth half open, and there were still three or four teeth left in his mouth, like a few dead trees on the wasteland. His long breathing was sometimes jammed, as if he would lose his breath the next second, and as if he would get up the next second.
"Dead and not dead, alive and not alive, die quickly!" The cousin cursed with a look of resentment. The second aunt immediately hit him with her elbow. The long-distance phone call woke him up from the sound of mahjong, and the company has been busy lately. The others were silent. The youngest cousin was in the second year of junior high school, and after taking half a day off, she went back to class.
A fat woman squeezed in from outside the crowd and stared at her great-grandfather's face for half a day, "When my grandfather died before, he always didn't breathe, and my uncle helped him sit up and wipe his body with a towel. No one said a word, and she added with a sincere face: "Really. But there was still no one to talk, she rolled her eyes and walked away sadly.
Why not try it? The aunt whispered to the uncle. The uncle glanced at her.
Believe in medicine, uncle three said, making a video call to his daughter who was studying medicine. He turned the camera on his great-grandfather's face, cleared his throat and asked, why has it been so long, people are not good... Bad. "Shine a flashlight into his eyes to see if his pupils will contract." Under the gaze of everyone, the third uncle's calloused hands trembled because of the perennial shelf, operated two fingers like a raw hand operating tweezers, laboriously opened the eyelids of his great-grandfather, and tilted his head for half a day without seeing a name. "Cut hard along the periphery of his soles with fingernails, starting at the base of his big toe." What he broke was his left crotch, and the left paw did not respond. When he cut the outer edge of his right sole again, his entire sole was crooked as if he wanted to break free. The cousin increased his strength, his nails about to sink into the flesh, and his whole leg bounced. "That means he's still conscious, and it's hard to say for the time being." The cousin concluded.
An old man with gray hair was lured by his second aunt, and the liberation shoes on his feet were still stained with fresh dirt. His eyes narrowed into a slit with a smile, and his voice was so loud that he wanted to scare the person lying down to sit up. He half-dazed his eyes wandered around the couch, the eyes of the crowd moving with him. Finally, he touched his beardless chin and said, "Heaven must not leak, but..." The steward knew their rules, and quietly Mimi stuffed him with a cigarette. He said slowly, "I can't pass the ninth grade." "On the seventh day of the first day of today, some people said, and so the crowd seemed to see hope. The second uncle arranged for someone to haul the coffin and the remains stored in his hometown, and the second aunt retrieved the custom-made birthday clothes. Everything was ready, the wind was blowing all over the building, just waiting for the rain to come. When Mr. Yin Yang went out, he gave the second uncle a look and whispered, "Call me in time if there is a situation." ”
My mother looked unhappy and pulled my father out. "This time it's good, let the second brother take the lead." "Panic, it's not time to see the ground yet." "If this is accurate, look at the designated invitation to him." Please ask him to ask him, I inexplicably interjected. "You know what, the second elder invited Mr. Yin and Yang, and the ground will be biased towards him." Not to mention his father-in-law. A bowl of water is uneven, there are you unlucky, waiting for their family to make a fortune. "You made your great-grandfather live one more day. If he doesn't allow it, he won't be invited.
Not at all, I don't believe you anymore, I shouted. My great-grandfather took off the bag I was holding in his arms, changed my clothes for the breathless, and sighed, the sky is accurate, the weather forecast is made by people, and people are not allowed. He was also drenched, and when he had finished cleaning me up, he went over the bed, facing the bamboo pole, and stripped naked. I stood on the bed, and for the first time I felt that he was low and low, like a planed potato, and the potato pulled off the dried skin on the bamboo pole and twisted a few times to wrap himself.
I studied in the academy for three years, and in the fourth grade, I had to go to Zhangjiaba, a few kilometers away. Depart on Sunday afternoon, if you and your friends do not play blindly on the road, two hours to school, the day has just wiped dark. The biggest change I made after living in school was that I came home and stopped sleeping with my great-grandfather. Living in school allowed me to enjoy the freedom to sleep alone, no more rats crunching and crunching, no more dangling clothes drying poles and clothes flying all over the room. I tasted the sweetness, so I carried it through to my home. There was no way, he gave up the bed to me, and laid a few hollow bricks under the door panel with several holes in it to sleep on his own. Later, I refused to sleep with him, so he moved his door panel to the hall. I also refused him to bathe me again, and even poured the bath water myself. He was silent about my changes. I was eleven years old that year, and we've been silent about it ever since.
"Then why didn't he marry himself?" When I was seventeen, I had dropped out of school to work for three years, and I had the opportunity to ask my father by chance. Three years ago, I went to my father in a car with an acquaintance, and I never saw him again. Before leaving, he asked me sadly if I would come back to see him.
"He originally had a wife, but he got sick, as if he had fallen ill, and his wife ran away with someone." She never remarried. "Disability? I didn't see any disability in him.
"Your grandparents died early, and my grandparents died early, so this Chen Fu, who didn't stick to his relatives and didn't bring a reason, had a long life."
"Deadpool, don't chew on the root of your tongue." After scolding me, my father whispered, "In that era, it was a blessing to go early." ”
Now, too, the dying man, is blessed to go early. He saw the sun of the ninth day, and the sunlight shone on the faces of the dying, and on the faces of the living and the living, as if it were shining on all things. The faint band of light moved from his face to his body, from his body to his legs, like a river. He never seemed to be awake, and he seemed to be awake all the time. His mouth suddenly opened and closed, perhaps with some unfulfilled wish. Daddy called out "Grandpa," his eyelids lifted, his tongue trying to squirm. Trying to feed a few spoonfuls of sugar water, he swallowed. The second and third uncles helped him sit up and propped him up, his eyes rolled down, his chin struggled to resist the tendency to fall, and closed up. "What else would you like to eat?" Dad asked. He gasped and muttered a few words, and Daddy leaned over to his mouth, "What, orange?" "My mother hurried to buy oranges." Tangerine "seemed to have exhausted all his strength, and for half a day there was no movement, and some speculated that he could not wait for the orange to return." After resting for half a day and asking him what else he wanted to eat, he said "fish" again, this time at a volume loud enough for those present to hear clearly.
But fish, for a moment and a half, can't make it. "Supermarkets have fish with good ingredients, which are only boiled with scales, but all that is killed is dead fish." Some people say. The sister-in-law went to the supermarket.
"Fish? Fish can't be eaten..." The little fool who was roasting the fire by the fire suddenly came to be interested, "It's not fresh!" She looked at the man sitting on the couch as if to say to him, "Dead is not fresh... Not fresh... Can't eat..." No one paid any attention to her. The second daughter of the second aunt's brother's family is said to be stupid because of the marriage of close relatives. The boss is fine, and the study is not bad. The third daughter sent a rich man, and she should have a good life.
The great-grandfather waited not only for the oranges, but also for the fish, and drank a small half bowl of soup and two small sips of wine. He moved his mouth like an old cow regurgitating, but did not chew the food, and the liquid slowly flowed into his throat with his chewing movements. He seemed to have regained a little bit of spirit.
The second uncle pondered the words of his father-in-law, whether it would be "not more than the ninth day of the first ... It's going to get better"? He frowned, but there was a hint of happiness on his father's and mother's faces.
If it is good, our leave will be in vain, and time will be delayed. Things are also prepared in vain, white tossed... Some relatives and friends looked more anxious than they had just now, as if to say.
I thought, maybe he should say something to me. I waited for his eyes to fall on me. But no, he didn't look at anyone, just stared at the bowl in front of him. The man who came from the famine years could not be hungry, and only had food in his eyes, and the weak sick body could not stop him from facing the urgency of food.
Maybe it's not that there is no possibility of return. At that time, it was only a fall, and the doctor hit a bottle or two of hanging needles to let the drag back. Eating something restored his complexion a little, and he looked like he was asleep.
In the dead of night, the second uncle's head lit up and nodded like a chicken pecking rice.
"His hands are moving!" The third aunt said something casually, and everyone gathered around. He tried to raise his hand, but he couldn't lift it up, and I stood in front of him and reached out and held it. His eyeballs moved back and forth a few times, his mouth opened and closed twice, and he exhaled a long breath, pausing for two seconds before continuing to inhale. He exhaled again long, long, long, then tilted his head, his eyes rolled upwards, his legs and feet spasmed, and his long breath never continued. His chest did not rise and fall anymore, and there was no longer the sound of his inhalation hindered by phlegm in the air, and it was suddenly incomparably quiet. The father probed his pulse and motioned for someone to write down the time: 11:57 p.m. on the ninth day of the first winter month of the Year of the Dead.
To dress before the body stiffened, an experienced relative commanded by the second uncle.--the second uncle's father-in-law. It came quickly, cheap old two, the mother muttered. The four grandsons hurriedly carried the remaining warm bodies together with the quilt to the door panel that had been prepared. When the quilt was uncovered, a foul smell spread out, mixed with the smell of feces and urine and carrion. The cousin said that his ass was rotten in a big piece, the flesh was blurred, but there was no blood, just black, black piece. He wouldn't let me see, I just saw that his eyes were still half-open and his chin was pulled farther away, probably surprised by himself. In the moment they fiddled with him, just a glance, a casual glance, I saw the place between his legs empty, as it had always been, and always had been. Handicapped...... I see. I was dizzy and vomited violently as I held on to the door frame. Some say it was smoked by this smell, others say it was because I just shook his hand and looked into the eyes of the dying man.
Between the corners of my great-grandfather's eyes and the temples, those who were firmly like cowflies were stung by a half-drop of tears.
"It's not fresh, it's not fresh..." The little foolish girl was woken up by the movement and muttered with drowsiness.
On the day of the burial, it was the first time I returned to the old house after I left. Dad said that he had been here for generations and would continue to do so after his death.
Ten years is like a moment. Twenty years ago the river that didn't drown me, I came back to see you, I thought.
The dead go up the mountain before dawn. If the night is not bright, how can we tell whether it is black after the sun sets or black before sunrise and dawn? At that moment, there was only black. The tiles of the old house fell to the ground, and the loess wall collapsed from the southeast corner to the northwest corner, leaving a few beams crooked, at any time at risk of falling down and hitting people. Fortunately, no one can smash it.
The land has not been cultivated for a long time, and there is a lot of grass in front of the door. At a glance, the weeds grew wildly all over the mountains, but the decline was unstoppable, and it spread like a yellow fire. I pulled out the dry grass and looked for it piece by piece, what about the river that had developed from the trickle? Dry should also have pebbles, or riverbeds.
"Ogawa, what are you looking for?" River? Where there is a river, there is a pond, you caught tadpoles when you were a child and planted them, or I fished you up... Oh, there..."
Chen Yao, post-90s, Hubei Enshi people, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, school of humanities doctoral candidates.