Bai Xianyong "The Azalea as Red as Blood"

They found Wang Xiong near Keelung, on a deserted beach. His body was washed into the crevices of the rocks by the tide, and it never floated away, and when my aunt asked me to identify the body, Wang Xiong's body had been soaked in the sea for several days. Wang Xiong's whole body was black, his stomach was swollen, and his clothes were torn; His head and face were bitten by fish, red and black, all with small holes one by one, and his eyebrows and eyes were eaten. A few feet away, there was a foul stench of rotting corpses, which made people feel sick. If it weren't for his surprisingly large palms, ten round and bald fingers, still undeformed, I couldn't have imagined that the huge monster lying on the ground would be Wang Xiong, a male worker in my aunt's house.

Wang Xiong's death caused a commotion in his aunt's house. My aunt burned a large stack of money paper in the garden that night, and while burning, she squatted on the ground and muttered a lot of requiem words. She said that she died like Wang Xiong, and it was difficult to keep her home clean. I told my aunt that Wang Xiong's corpse was rotten and stinky, and the next girl Ximei screamed in horror next to her, and no matter how my aunt tried to keep her, she refused to stop, and fled back to her Yilan house with some luggage on the spot. Only my cousin Li'er, we hid from her, and never let her know, because we were afraid that she would be afraid, my aunt and I went to Wang Xiong's house to collect his relics, and she gambled on me, and after this lesson, she would never hire a male worker again in her life.

The first time I met Wang Xiong was two years ago in the spring. I was doing junior college military service on Kinmen Island, and I had just been transferred back to Taipei to work as an administrator at the Joint Logistics Command. My family lives in Taichung, and the only relatives in Taipei are my aunt's family, and as soon as I finished reporting, I went to my aunt's house to visit them. My uncle was a big businessman before his death, but he died early, and he only gave birth to his cousin Li'er. My uncle left behind a considerable inheritance, so my aunt and cousin have always lived a very wealthy life. At that time, my aunt had just moved and lived in a large garden house of more than 300 square meters in Section 4 of Renai Road. On the day I arrived at my aunt's house, she was playing cards in the living room, and after asking me a few words absentmindedly, she told me to go to the garden to find my cousin Lil. My mother told me that Lil grew up with her aunt in her mouth, and that she was six years old, and that her aunt had to feed her herself, and that Lil was in the sixth grade, and she refused to tie her own shoes. But Lil's appearance is really cute, I have never seen a child born as white and round as hers: round face, round eyes, even the nose and mouth are so round; Especially when she shook her short hair and giggled, her unique baby girl's naïve attitude was the most instructive, living like a jade doll, but her kind of pampered and willful temper was also rare for other children, and she didn't do what she wanted.

My aunt's garden is very spacious, and the newly planted plants and flowers are very neatly decorated, with a green and fluffy Korean lawn in the middle, and the surrounding flower beds are full of bright red azaleas, many of which have begun to bud. As soon as I entered the garden, I heard Li'er's crisp and slippery laughter. When I walked around the banana tree, I saw Lil riding on the body of a big man, the man was crawling on the lawn, learning to walk as a beast, but Lil was straddle his back, her fat little white hand was holding a rhododendron branch, like a horsewhip, waving in the air, Lil was wearing a red corduroy skirt, two snow-white round legs were exposed and kept kicking, one end of the short hair was shaking, and she was laughing happily.

"Cousin, watch me ride a horse—" Lil shouted when she noticed me, threw away the branch in her hand, and waved her hands at me, and then she jumped over the man's head and ran to me. The man hurriedly got up and laughed at me:

"Young Master Cousin—"

I found him surprisingly tall, probably more than six feet, with a huge head, with a shaved scalp, a black head and a black face, and his whole body was as black as bronze and shining, and he grinned at me, baring his white teeth, and a little ashamed, and kept rubbing his huge palms, but his ten fingers were a little bald. He wore a pair of white-washed military trousers, and his knees were covered in mud and grass.

"Cousin," Liel said to me, pointing to the man, "Wang Xiong said that he could crawl for miles like that." ”

"That's when we used to fight—" Wang Xiong hurriedly argued, his accent tinged with a thick Hunan accent.

"Nonsense!" Li'er interrupted him with a frown, "You said that day: you can let me ride to school." ”

Wang Xiong looked at Li'er in a daze, speechless, and his dark face flushed, as if Li'er had leaked some secret between him and her.

"Cousin, I'll take you to see it, Wang Xiong caught a lot of gnats for me." As she spoke, Liel ran ahead of me, led me into the house, and after a few steps, she seemed to suddenly remember something, stopped, turned around, and stretched out her snow-white round arm to Wang Xiong, and shouted:

"Wang Xiong, come."

Wang Xiong hesitated for a moment, and finally stepped forward, Li'er grabbed his thick black arm, held hands with him, jumped straight up, and ran into the house, Wang Xiong dragged his huge body and ran with Li'er's stupid run.

In the evening, after my aunt finished playing cards, she chatted with me and told me that Wang Xiong was her newly hired male worker. Originally, he was born in the army, but he just retired, and he couldn't be more honest, and his aunt praised him, and he didn't make a sound all day long, and he would do things with his head stuffy, and he couldn't see that he was such a rough man, taking care of flowers and trees, but he had a different mind. My aunt said that the hundreds of rhododendrons in the garden were planted by Wang Xiong himself. Why do you want to plant so many azaleas? My aunt sighed and explained, it's not for Li'er. It's because that little magic star likes azaleas.

"I've never seen it before," my aunt suddenly laughed and covered her mouth with her hands, "a forty-year-old man actually let a female doll lead her by the nose, and everything depended on her." ”

In the end, my aunt shook her head and exclaimed: It's rare that the two of them are fated!

Lier and Wang Xiong are indeed destined. Every time I went to my aunt's house, I always saw the two of them playing together. Every morning, Wang Xiong takes Li'er to school on a tricycle and picks her up in the afternoon. Wang Xiong often polished the tricycle he stepped on, and the front of the car was full of some colorful pompoms, phoenixes with paper hinges, and small windmill wheels, which were decorated like phoenix chariots. Every time he goes out to pick up Li'er, Wang Xiong always cleans up his head and face, even on a hot day, he dresses decently. When Li'er walked into the door from outside, she raised her face, shook her short hair, and made her tall like a little princess, Wang Xiong followed her, carrying her schoolbag for her, holding her waist, with a serious face, like Li'er's escort guard. As soon as she returned home, Li'er took Wang Xiong to swim in the garden, and Wang Xiong always came up with all kinds of tricks to please Li'er. Once, I saw Wang Xiong sitting alone under the eaves, with a large pile of red, green, and green glass beads on the ground next to his feet, and he was holding a gold thread in his hand, and he was concentrating on stringing those beads. When he stretched out his huge black and bare palms to catch the slippery glass beads all over the ground, it looked very clumsy and funny. When Li'er returned home that day, Wang Xiong was in the garden, and she was dressed in a handbag and necklace made of glass beads. Li'er wore two loops on her head, five or six on each side of her two arms, she kicked off her shoes, hit a pair of bare feet, scooped up her skirt, and exposed her snow-white legs, and on her ankles, there were also several multicolored glass foot circles. Lil was babbling and laughing, holding two balls of bright red azaleas in her hands, waving her chubby little white arms, and dancing the mountain dance she taught at school on the green grass. Wang Xiong also surrounded Li'er, jumping and jumping, and kept patting his big palms. His big black face was bright red, his mouth was grinning, revealing a mouthful of snow-white teeth, and the two of them, one big and one small, one black and one white, jumped and danced, singing and dancing in the sea of red flowers.

During my time at the Joint Logistics Headquarters, I stayed at my aunt's house for two or three days a week, and my aunt asked me to tutor Li'er because she was going to take the middle school entrance exam in the summer. I was used to going in and out of my aunt's house, and Wang Xiong and I gradually got acquainted, and occasionally he talked to me about his life experience. He told me that he was originally a farmer in the countryside of Hunan, and that he had beaten the Japanese to draw strong men. He said that he was only eighteen years old at the time, and one day he took two loadloads of grain to the city to sell, and as soon as he left the village, he had them intercepted.

"I thought I'd be going back in a few days," he said with a smile, "I didn't know how I would never be able to go home after all these years." ”

"Young Master Cousin, can you see the mainland on Kinmen Island?" Once, Wang Xiong asked me thoughtfully. I told him that I could see people walking around there through the binoculars.

"Is it that close?" He looked at me in disbelief.

"Why not?" I replied, "There are still corpses floating around over there." ”

"They came to find their relatives. Master Cousin, you don't know," Wang Xiong shook his hand to stop me, "There are corpses in our Hunan countryside, and people die outside. ”

When I was in Kinmen, there were a few old soldiers in the battalion, and they had been in the army for more than ten years, but I always felt that they still maintained a kind of innocence, and their joys, sorrows, and sorrows were like the scorching sun and sea breeze on Kinmen Island, so primitive and direct. Sometimes, when I see a large group of them naked in the sea fighting in the water, their faces full of lines suddenly bloom with childlike smiles that cannot be found on the faces of other adults. One night on a night patrol, I was on the rocks on the seashore outside the barracks, and I noticed an old soldier sitting there alone playing erhu. That night, the moonlight was clear, and there was no sea breeze, and I don't know whether it was his pensive posture or the very melancholy sound of the huqin, which suddenly reminded me that his nostalgic sorrow must be as deep and far away as those soldiers on the border in ancient times.

"Wang Xiong, who else are there in your family?" One night, Wang Xiong and I were chilling out in the garden, and when Wang Xiong and I talked about his hometown in the countryside of Xiangyin, Hunan, I asked him.

"There's an old lady who doesn't know if she's still there," Wang Xiong said, "and—"

Suddenly, he became a little embarrassed, and stammered to tell me that he had already made up his mind before he came out. It was a little girl that his wife bought from the next village.

"She was only ten years old at the time, and she was only so tall—" Wang Xiong said, comparing it with his hand.

His little girl was so lazy to do it, and his wife used to spank her ass with a broom, and when she hit her, she hid behind him.

"The little girl is white and chubby, and she is a very silly girl." Wang Xiong said, grinning.

"I'll give you a hanging of squid to eat." Xia Nu Ximei suddenly walked behind Wang Xiong and stretched out her hand and carried a hanging of grilled squid to Wang Xiong's face. She had just washed her hair and went out into the garden to cool off. Ximei is a very fat woman, but she likes to wear tight clothes, her whole body is always trembling, her face is painted white, she is painted with a pair of thick false eyebrows, and when she looks at people, she also slanted a pair of small eyes, and she plucked her mouth very untamedly, thinking that she was very amorous. Aunt said that Yuxiong and Ximei's eight characters must have made a mistake, Wang Xiong became a sworn enemy with her as soon as he came, Wang Xiong avoided her every time he saw her, but Ximei liked to tease him, and whenever she teased him with a red head and a red face, she was very happy.

Wang Xiong recklessly pulled out Ximei's hand, roared twice, turned his head, frowned, and refused to speak. Ximei laughed loudly, she raised her head, put the grilled squid into her mouth, shook her long wet hair, and walked to a rattan chair under the banana tree, and lay down, and a big yellow moon in the garden had just climbed over the wall, and the fat banana leaves were shining. Ximei was shaking a big pu fan, slapping her thighs to catch mosquitoes, but on the other hand, she hummed Taiwan's crying tune "Five Watches" in a very sharp voice. Wang Xiong stood up without looking back, dragging his huge body, and walked into the house.

Li'er is a very smart child after all, during the summer vacation, I only tutored her for a few weeks, and she was admitted to the provincial second girls' high school very easily. My aunt smiled from ear to ear, and as soon as she put the list out, she took Li'er out to sew uniforms and buy schoolbags and stationery. On the day of school, a room full of people were busy, my aunt personally took care of Lier's schoolbag and ironed her uniform, when Lier wore her straight scout uniform, hung up a full body of wear, very playfully crooked wearing a scout hat, carrying a new black leather schoolbag, swaying, full of spirit when she walked out of the door, in an instant, she seemed to have grown up a lot, as if she was a middle school student. Wang Xiong had been waiting at the door with a tricycle for a long time, as soon as Li'er walked out, Wang Xiong seemed to be taken aback, staring at Li'er, unable to speak for a long time, Li'er threw her schoolbag on the tricycle, jumped on the car very briskly, waved at us, and then pushed Wang Xiong violently and shouted:

"Let's go, Wang Xiong."

Lier was fascinated by her middle school life, and in the first few days, when she came back from school, she refused to take off her uniform, looked and looked in front of the mirror, and when she was free, she picked up a Far Eastern English reader and read it aloud with triumph. One day, she was standing on the stone steps leading to the garden, holding her English book in her hand, and Wang Xiong stood at the bottom of the stone steps, tilting his head and watching Li'er intently as she listened to her read English.

“Iamagirl.” Li'er pointed to her chest and said, then to Wang Xiong.

“Youareaboy.” Wang Xiong's mouth was slightly open, and his face was full of reverence.

“Iamastudent.” Li'er read another sentence, she glanced at Wang Xiong, and then suddenly pointed at him and shouted:

“Youareadog.” (You're a dog.) ）

Lil giggled, leaning back with laughter, her short hair swaying. Wang Xiong blinked his eyes a few times in confusion, looking a little overwhelmed, and then he also followed Li'er and grinned happily.

Three weeks after school started, at noon on a Saturday, Lil came back from school and we were all waiting for her to have lunch in the living room. When Li'er came in, she slammed the door of the living room open, her face full of anger, and Wang Xiong followed her, carrying her schoolbag in his hand.

"From next week, I don't want Wang Xiong to send me to school." As soon as Li'er sat down, she said to her aunt. We were all very surprised, and my aunt hurriedly asked Lil why.

"People are laughing at me." Li'er raised her head sharply, her face flushed.

"What's so funny about that?" My aunt walked over, wiped the sweat on Li'er's forehead with a handkerchief, and comforted her softly, "There are also people who go to school on a tricycle." ”

Li'er pushed away her aunt's hand, and suddenly pointed at Wang Xiong and said:

"His classmates are saying that he looks like a gorilla!"

Li'er squinted at Wang Xiong, and her face showed a look of disdain. My aunt looked at Wang Xiong and couldn't help laughing. Ximei picked up the corners of her skirt and bent over with a smile. Wang Xiong pinched Li'er's schoolbag and stood there, very ashamed, his dark face suddenly turned purple. He stole a glance at Li'er, his lips twitching, as if he wanted to make a smile to her, but he couldn't smile.

Since Li'er switched to cycling to school, she has rarely been with Wang Xiong, and she is very active in school, often leading a large group of classmates back home to play. One Sunday afternoon, Li'er brought seven or eight classmates, all twelve or thirteen-year-old girls, to the garden of her home to kick shuttlecocks. I was standing on the stone steps, looking at the group of little girls, all of them scooped up their skirts, and happily kicked the shuttlecock, when suddenly I saw Wang Xiong flash out from behind the banana tree, beckoned to Li'er, and whispered:

"Lil—"

"What are you doing here?" Lil walked over and asked a little impatiently.

"Look, what did I get for you?" Wang Xiong took out a delicate glass water tank from a brown paper bag, in which two goldfish were swimming. I used to buy a tank of goldfish for Li'er, Li'er loved it very much, hung it on her windowsill, and asked Wang Xiong to feed the bloodworms to the fish every day, and then let a cat next door run over and eat it. Lil cried so hard that I coaxed her into agreeing to buy her another one, but then forgot about it.

"Who's going to play with that?" Li'er raised her face and said disdainfully.

"I've been looking for a long time to find these two." Wang Xiong said eagerly.

"I'm kicking the shuttlecock." Lil turned her head and tried to run away.

"These are two phoenix tails—" Wang Xiong grabbed Li'er by the arm and put the pot of goldfish on Li'er's face for her to see.

"Let go of my hand." Lil exclaimed.

"Take a look, Li'er—" Wang Xiong begged, and he squeezed Li'er tightly, refusing to let go of her. Lil struggled twice, but she didn't break free, she suddenly raised her other hand and slapped the glass water tank, and the goldfish bowl fell to the ground with a clatter, smashing to pieces. Li'er broke Wang Xiong's hand and ran away without looking back. The water in the tank splashed to the ground, and the two bright red goldfish jumped desperately on the ground. Wang Xiong screamed, squatted down, clenched his fists with both hands, and faced the two struggling goldfish, not knowing how to save them. The two delicate goldfish finally jumped a few times, and then fell to the ground and could not move. Wang Xiong tilted his head and stared blankly at the two dying goldfish, and after a while, he picked up the tails of the two goldfish with his hand, rested the fish on his palm, held it, and walked out of the garden.

Since that time, Wang Xiong has become extraordinarily silent. Whenever he had time, he avoided the garden and watered the flowers. Every day, he had to water the hundred or so rhododendrons several times, and in the early morning and evening, he always saw his huge body, wandering lonely among the flowers. He hung his head, bent slightly, holding a long bamboo pole in his hand, and again and again, and again, and he was irrigating the rhododendrons he had planted with his own hands. Whoever spoke to him, he paid no attention. Sometimes my aunt was in a hurry, and he responded in a hoarse voice: "Yes, madam." Then he was silent and hid himself in the garden. Until the day before the accident, Ximei was washing the sheets at the faucet in the garden, and Wang Xiong had already hung a bucket on the faucet to water the flowers. Ximei took down Wang Xiong's half-filled bucket and put her laundry basin under the faucet. Wang Xiong walked over suddenly, and was silent. kicked the basin over, and the water in the basin splashed Ximei's body. Xi Mei's face was crimson with anger, she pulled her long hair back, stood in front of Wang Xiong in a flash, blocked the faucet with her body, and shouted to Wang Xiong:

"Don't think about water today!"

Ximei raised her face, inserted her waist, her chest was high, she was covered with water beads, and the corners of her skirt were dripping with water, she kicked off the clogs, bare feet, and confronted Wang Xiong very badly. Wang Xiong closed his mouth and looked at her fixedly. Ximei looked at Wang Xiong for a moment, and suddenly, her indulgent wave laughed, laughing so much that her whole body trembled, and while laughing, she screamed:

"Gorilla-gorilla-"

Before Ximei's words fell, Wang Xiong stretched out his giant hands and grabbed Ximei's fat shoulders, shaking them back and forth desperately, shaking them as he went, his throat couldn't help but make a roaring sound, like a seriously injured beast, roaring with grief and indignation. Ximei's face twisted in pain, probably stunned, and she couldn't shout at once. Just as I rushed over to stop Wang Xiong, Ximei screamed, and as soon as Wang Xiong let go, Ximei hurriedly grabbed her skirt and ran away. While running, she rubbed her shoulder, and when she ran away, she turned around, spat at Wang Xiong, and scolded:

"Test your back!"

Wang Xiong was still standing there, motionless, he was panting heavily, the beads of sweat on his forehead were rolling down in large pieces, and his eyes were so red that they seemed to be about to breathe fire. I suddenly realized that Wang Xiong's appearance was out of shape. His face was full of stubble, his hair had grown an inch and had not been shaved, his whole head stood upside down like a hedgehog, and his eyes were all pitted, black and black, as if he had not slept in many nights. I didn't expect that it would only take a few days for Wang Xiong to become so haggard and violent.

Something happened, for several days, my aunt refused to believe it, she said that she never dreamed that an honest person like Wang Xiong would do such a thing.

"That dead ghost—" As soon as Ximei mentioned Wang Xiong, she scooped up her skirt and hid her face and cried bitterly, while caressing her neck, as if she had lingering palpitations.

That morning, when we found Ximei, we thought she was really dead. She lay in the garden, unconscious under a clump of rhododendrons, her dress torn to shreds, her upper body exposed, her breasts were patchy, and she was bruised one by one, and her neck was full of nail marks. On the same day, Wang Xiong disappeared. My aunt told me to take the clothes he left behind and give them to us and the old soldiers. In his suitcase, he turned out a large bag of colorful glass beads, which he had used to string the handbags for Lil.

After retiring, I went back to my home in Taichung, and it was not until the spring of the following year, when I came to Taipei to look for trouble, that I went to my aunt's house again. My aunt had been sick for a long time and had been lying in bed, and she looked very pale and unfocused. My aunt said that since that unlucky incident happened in her family, her health has not been better, and she has insomnia every night, she struggled to get up, held my hand tightly, and whispered:

"Every night I hear the sound of people watering the garden."

My mother said that my aunt was a woman with a very nervous breakdown, and she loved to tell nonsense all her life. When I walked into the garden, I saw more than 100 rhododendrons, one ball after another, rolled up one by one, and all of them burst out. It was as if a blood could not be contained, spurting out violently, spilling all over the garden with blood and blood, and I had never seen rhododendrons bloom so presumptuously and so angrily. Lil was playing hide-and-seek in the garden with a group of girls, weaving through the blood-red azalea bushes. The sharp and crisp laughter of the girls was rippling in the clear spring sky.

Modern Literature, No. 36, 1969