Lu Xun: This is also life

This is also a matter of illness.

There are some things that a healthy person or a sick person doesn't feel, maybe they can't meet it, maybe it's too subtle. When you are first healed from a serious illness, you will experience it, and in my case, the terrible fatigue and the comfort of rest are two good examples. I used to be conceited and never knew what fatigue was. There is a round chair in front of the desk, where you can sit and write or read a book attentively, which is work, and there is a rattan recliner next to it, and you can rest by chatting or reading the newspaper casually. Now I know that it is not right, so there is no big difference, but because I am not tired, that is, I am not working hard.

I have a relative's child who graduated from high school, but had to go to the hosiery factory to work as an apprentice, and the mood is already very unhappy, and the work is very heavy, almost all year round, without rest. He is so tall, he refuses to be lazy, and he has supported him for more than a year. One day, he suddenly sat down and said to his brother, "I don't have any strength at all." ”

He could not get up from this time, and was sent home, lying down, not wanting to eat, drink, or move, or speak, and called the doctor of the church of Jesus to see him, and said that all of them were not sick, but all of them were tired. There is no way to cure it. Naturally, the connection comes a quiet death. I also had this for two days, but for a different reason, he was tired, and I was sick. I really don't have any desires, it seems that everything has nothing to do with me, all my actions are eventful, I don't think of death, but I don't feel alive either, this is the so-called "desireless state", which is the first step of death. There were those who loved me who wept secretly, but I had a chance to drink a little soup, and I sometimes looked at things near me, such as walls, flies, and so on, and then I felt tired and needed to rest.

It is a great pleasure for the elephant to lie down indulgently, to stretch out his limbs, to yawn loudly, to put the whole body in the right place, and then to relax all the exertion. I've never enjoyed it before. I don't think the strong, or the blessed, have ever enjoyed it.

I remember that the year before last, after my illness, I made a "Miscellaneous Talk After Illness", a total of five sections, and submitted it to "Literature", but the last four sections could not be published, and only the first section was left after printing. Although there is obviously a "one" at the beginning of the article, and then it suddenly stops, and there is no "two" or "three", which is strange when you think about it, this cannot be expected of every reader, and even of critics. So someone concluded according to this verse: "Lu Xun is in favor of getting sick." It may be time to avoid such a catastrophe for now, but I might as well state here: "This is not the end of my story. ”

Four or five days after the turnaround, I woke up and woke up Quang Binh.

"Give me some water. And go and turn on the lights, and show me a look. ”

"Why ?......" her voice was a little panicked, probably thinking I was talking in a faint voice.

"Because I'm going to live. You know? It's life. I'm going to take a look at it. ”

"Oh......" she got up, gave me a few sips of tea, wandered for a moment, and lay down softly again, not turning on the light.

I knew she didn't understand my words.

The light of the street lamp penetrated through the window, and the room showed a faint light, and I took a cursory of looks, and the familiar walls, the ridges at the end of the walls, the familiar stacks of books, the unbound picture books on the edge of the piles, the night going on outside, the infinite distance, and countless people, all related to me. I existed, I was living, I was going to live, I was starting to feel more realistic, I had the desire to move – but soon I fell asleep again.

The next morning, I looked in the daylight, and sure enough, the familiar walls, the familiar stacks of books...... These, in normal times, I often look at them, in fact, they are counted as a kind of rest. But we have always despised such things, even if they are a part of life, but they are under the itch of drinking tea, or they are simply not the same thing. What we pay attention to is the special essence, which is not in the branches. The people who write biographies to celebrities are also mostly blindly extravagant about their characteristics, how Li Bai wrote poems, how he played upside down, how Napoleon fought wars, how he didn't sleep, but didn't say how they didn't play tricks and wanted to sleep. In fact, if you play or not sleep in your life, you will definitely not be able to live, and people can sometimes play and not sleep, just because sometimes they do not play and sleep. However, people think that these ordinary things are the dregs of life, and they don't look at them.

Then the people or things that he saw were like a blind man touching an elephant and touching his feet, and he thought that the elephant looked like a pillar. The ancient Chinese often wanted to get their "whole", that is, to make the "black chicken and white phoenix pills" used by women, and also collected the whole chicken and even the hair and blood in the pills, although the method is ridiculous, but the idea is good.

Those who cut off the branches and leaves decided not to get the flowers and fruits.

In order not to turn on the electric light for me, I was very dissatisfied with Guangping, and attacked people when I saw them, and when I was able to walk, I went to look through the publications she read, and sure enough, during my illness, there were many publications full of essences, and some things, although they were still "Beauty Magic", "Ancient Wood Glow", or "The Nun's Secret", but there was always a little passionate and generous article on the first side. The composition already has the "most central theme": even Sai Jinhua, who slept with the German commander Wadsey for some time during the Boxer era, has long been named the Nine Heavens Protector of the Country. What is particularly surprising is that the "Spring and Autumn Period" on the "Declaration", which used the "Imperial Fragrance Ethereal Record" to talk about the court of the Qing Dynasty with relish, has also been very different from time to time, and one day in the "Drip" at the end of the volume, teaching people to eat watermelon, they should also think of our land being cut, like this watermelon. Naturally, this is unpatriotic and undeniable all the time. But if I think like this and eat watermelon at the same time, I am afraid that I will not be able to swallow it, and even if I swallow it vigorously, I will inevitably not be able to digest it, and it will rumble in my stomach for a long time. It's not necessarily because of my post-illness neurasthenia. I think that if you use watermelon as an analogy and talk about the national shame, but immediately eat this watermelon happily and become the nourishment of flesh and blood, this person is probably a little numb. No matter what handouts are given to him, they are useless.

I haven't been a volunteer, so I'm not sure. But I asked myself: If a soldier eats watermelon, does he probably have a ritual of eating and thinking about it at the same time? I think: Not necessarily. He probably only felt thirsty, wanted to eat, and tasted good, but he didn't think of anything else. After eating watermelon, my spirits are lifted, and fighting is different from when my throat is dry, so eating watermelon is indeed related to resisting the enemy, but it has nothing to do with the strategy set by Shanghai about how we should think. Eating and drinking with a sad face all day long, it didn't take long for the appetite to fall, and what enemies to fight.

However, people often like to talk strangely, and they don't even advocate eating a watermelon normally. In fact, the daily life of a soldier is not all singable and weeping, but all of them are related to the singing and crying department, which is the actual warrior.

(This article is included in the "Supplementary Collection of Essays on Jiejieting")