In the morning, the six o'clock window is still dark green. Xiaomei was still sleeping, and her breathing could only be heard close to her face. - It's hard to guess all the sounds of other people's houses: a bang, a sting, a quack, a thud of water, you are all familiar with it, but what is the collision, what falls on the ground, how to walk, how to sit on the chair and get up again, put the rice bowl on the table, put the food on the plate, pour a glass of water, the cough of a man, sometimes a roar, and then the cry of a child...... The makers of these sounds seem to be close at hand, but with a mystical tinge.
I lay quietly, listening to the voices of the two houses next door and outside, and listened and listened and listened to and It's December, and every day is getting colder and colder, as if you can hear the ground deepening into the frozen layer, like an iron plate thickening. The northwest wind was almost howling, and the snow on the house was drifted up and fell into the yard. Seven o'clock; The window is white, Xiaomei sits up as soon as she turns over, and lies down again, and the child sleeps enough is a satisfied smile. She looked around and wanted to say, "Mom?" as light as she had done something wrong, and laughed again, and I kissed her. When the curtains were opened, it was snowing, and it was silvery white, and there was not even a fine line in the yard - when I was a child, I could always see dog hoof prints at times like Katsusha, and later the chickens and ducks were released, and the paw prints were superimposed like plum blossoms.
There were only two buckets in my yard buckled to the ground, three inches of snow on top of them like their lids. After the snow, the distance illuminates people old, familiar to people, but not adapted to this blade-like light, jumping, piercing into the eye. In the past, on moonless nights, my mother would say, "If there is snow outside, don't take a flashlight when you go out." When we came back, my mother affirmed, 'It's bright outside?' and besides, if there is less snow this winter, there will be a drought next year, people say. Also, sunny days after snow are colder than when it snows, just like snow has a bad habit of finding fault after the fact.
Ice and snow, everything rests!
We had a bowl of meat every night, and out of the steamer, long, thin, densely packed in a large bowl, brown skin, fan-shaped, orange fat. Every time I serve the table, I am secretly excited, the first bite of other dishes, my eyes observe, after others have sandwiched out the chopsticks to clip a piece, I usually eat three slices, that is, three times. The aroma of this cooked and steamed meat creeps into my head from my nose to the top of my head! I'm at the right restaurant, and I can roll around and tell people it's coming. Moreover, it was the first time that I grew so big that I ate grapes and bananas. When serving the dish, I secretly grabbed a piece and put it in my mouth, it was too hot, and I pushed it back and forth with my tongue, as if I heard the sound of stabbing and stabbing in my mouth, of course I couldn't spit it out, so I kept flipping, arching my shoulders to chew it, swallowing it, it was crisp and sweet, and the banana was as delicate as oil.
Steamed pork is Chef Wang's specialty, and he has won awards. He was not tall, narrow-faced, and a little hunchbacked. His white smock was always spotless, and there wasn't much black hair under his white smock. His eyes are small, and the whites of his eyes are cloudy, like rice water. He rarely speaks, answering others as if he were talking to himself, and looks like he is fifty-five or sixty years old. - He doesn't look like my father, I treat him as a relative. Oh, I want to sit next to him and watch him drink without saying a word, he doesn't drink much, quietly and quickly finishes. His arms were stretched out before, and his apprentice brought him an overcoat, neatly dressed in black, with a woolen hat and a gray scarf. If he could go to my mother's house, the garden would have all kinds of greens in the summer, and more than a dozen plum trees had been newly planted. If he had lived there all the time, our family would have been able to eat his steamed meat, every year, every day, and then I would have given him a pension, and he would have dressed neatly when he couldn't walk...... What am I imagining? How do I come up with this kind of knitting thing? People are always delusional about bizarre things when they need it.
——
During the Spring Festival, I took Xiaomei to live at my mother's house until the sixth day of the new year, and after dark, my little brother and I sent Xiaomei back to her grandmother's house. Passing by Wang Feng's window, he has been divorced for more than a year. He built a house in the summer, and at the gate, a single room, with a corridor on one side into the original yard at the back. His window was floor-to-ceiling glass, and the windowsill was very low, and at the moment I passed, although I didn't want to look at it, I just glanced at it, and saw a pot of Junzi orchid in my house, which had only four leaves at that time, and now it bloomed, and the bamboo also grew taller, and there were a few conspicuous pots of flowers. His calligraphy and paintings are hung on the wall here, "Mingzhi of the Pond", rectangular shape, with a purple wooden frame. It's like adding a desk, and the pen holder we bought from Beijing is on the table.
- On the second day of the divorce, he came to pull things, clothes, bedding, pillows, televisions, record players, decorative cabinets, and all the crafts inside, and moved out. He looked at the wardrobe and didn't move it. More than ten large pots and small pots were withdrawn from the restaurant in the courtyard and moved out, and the salted duck eggs pickled in a small jar, he went to move them and I shouted in the house, "Don't take that." He picked up the big jar on the side and smashed it into the small jar, snorted, didn't hear much sound The two jars were broken, the duck egg yolk was connected with the egg skin in the middle of the fragments of the jar, the dark yellow egg yolk was oval, the gray egg white, more than 30 duck eggs, it was a pity to look at.
Wang Feng is gone, and everything that can be moved has been moved.
I stood at the door with Xiaomei in my arms, "Dad?" Xiaomei looked out of the door, got down from my arms and ran to the broken duck eggs, her fingers picked up the egg yolk, like a thread dripping onto her pants and shoes, making her hands all over, I pulled her into the house and she ran out again, continued to snap and step on it, and the whole yard smelled salty
The things in his room looked compact. Of course, he didn't know that my brother and I were coming, and he didn't see him, Bai Sensen's fluorescent lamp.
My little brother and I came back to sleep, about eleven o'clock, two knocks on the door, I woke up and didn't react to what's going on, the door was kicked open, a strong smell of wine rushed in, the two doors were open, the cold wind immediately filled the whole room, the lights were on, Wang Feng stood on my head, holding a kitchen knife and handed it to my face, shook it, stopped, back and forth, high and low, I smelled the iron smell and cool air on the knife, "Xiangxiang? You divorce me, you are really ruthless, do you think it's really enough?" Yes, or not? You say, you say, do you say it?" I didn't move, I didn't speak, I didn't mean to give in, my hands held the quilt and I shook a little, and my legs trembled. The kitchen knife shook a few more times, and when Chang Chang fell to the ground, Wang Feng knelt on top of my head, crying and saying:
"Do you know how pitiful it is for a child to have no mother? Do you know how miserable it is for a child to have no father? How can you not think about the future of your child? Can you be worthy of her? The soul seems to have been thrown out, and the heart has not settled, as if it is jumping in and out.
I couldn't have imagined him kneeling, and certainly not how it would end. He took out a cigarette and lit it, and the puff would never affect the crying, and kept slapping my pillow and pushing my head, and my head was pushed by him to shake again and again, "Xiangxiang! Xiaomei! Xiangxiang......"
To be continued.
2024.4.29
