As night went, we returned to her cramped but welcoming bedroom and began our mid-youth dinner. She lit the brazier, red mud and black charcoal, illuminating the loneliness in the cold mountains. She simmered fish soup on the stove and cooked meals, and I watched her figure, sharply dotting the green onions and white garlic.
What could be more desiring to life than a picture like this? I think of Van Gogh's evening exclamation. She smiled at my sigh and said sarcastically: You are hungry for fish soup!
I know that she is always defusing my cues and dodging my topic. I had to say sarcastically: Fish, I want it. She wisely teased: The next sentence, you don't have to say it.
I was a little embarrassed, and I realized that something was wrong, so I hurriedly stopped and said: What a fragrance you made. She stirred the fish soup and gently advised me: Linyuan envies the fish, and Mo Ruo retreats to tie the net. I think you should still go to graduate school again, get out, this is not where you have lived for a long time.
I smiled bitterly and sighed: That's a thin line. Uh, how we feel like we're playing Zen! She would smile and start serving her meal.
After the meal, she poured the remaining charcoal from the small stove on the table into the brazier, and added a little charcoal, and the room was warmer. The lights went out one after another throughout the town, leaving only a few village dogs to occasionally bark low outside.
She whispered, autumn is late, the night is cold, roast the fire! A few lightning bolts passed outside, and it gradually began to rain. Outside her window is the backyard of the supply and marketing cooperative, where some medicinal herbs and idle flowers are planted. The rain hit the leaves, and the song and tears were like songs, which set off the silence in the house.
It is the end of another year of autumn, listening to the wind and listening to the rain until dawn. I remembered the verses I used to have. She quipped, are you sentimental again, poet!
I said that this little half year really made me understand a lot! It felt like I had suddenly grown up. She sneered and said, Do you remember when we were at the same table in junior high school, and you drew lines and healed? Actually, you were so bad then!
Am I bad? At that time, male classmates were like this, do I dare not take a stand? She blushed and thought, Well, you're not too bad compared to that. I deliberately teased and said, then do you remember me a little better? Who knew that she suddenly became serious, whispering and sighing to remember.
I actually didn't know it myself, and I hurriedly asked which point. She blinked her eyes and said, "Anyway, there is, but I forgot." I laughed and said, "Remember and forget, what logic is this?" You're going to praise me once!"
She suddenly bowed her head and blushed and said: After the "Gang of Four" was overthrown, the school organized us to participate in the conference to criticize my father, and the students all shouted the slogan of knocking down my father and stared at me. Only you, just raise your arms, but don't shout, I know you are kind, I was very touched at that time.
I was a little surprised, I had forgotten, and when she said this, I remembered that there was indeed such a thing. I said yo, you've noticed it too! I'm just afraid to see your tearful eyes. I didn't expect you to remember, this is actually not good, but it is not too bad, I remember your kindness to me... What good am I to you? Talk nonsense! She said suddenly with some shyness.
I said a little salivatingly: There was a month to learn farming on the farm, you were divided in the kitchen, every time I went to get hot water to wash, you gave me an extra scoop, at that time, it was stipulated that one person was only allowed to receive a scoop, and the male classmates laughed at me behind my back, saying "There is a private under the butterfly fan gun."
Butterfly fans this sentence comes from the novel "Lin Hai Snow Field", butterfly fans are one of the beautiful bandits. Children of our time are familiar with the ridiculous meaning of this sentence.
She pretended to be a little annoyed and sneered: You boys are talking nonsense, it is you who are begging for mercy and refusing to go, holding up the basin and shouting something like "Big sister, do well, enjoy a bite", you have been bad since you were a child. Besides, everyone works, just count you as the dirtiest, and a scoop of water is not washed into mud!
I laughed and said: The grace of dripping water should be repaid by the spring, how should this scoop of water be repaid? She may have realized my provocation again and interrupted: Hey, don't talk about these old things, it was really rare and not more then.
The sound of rain outside the window gradually became dense, and after a thunderclap, the power suddenly cut off, and the room sank into darkness, only the charcoal fire in the basin still had the afterglow, faintly illuminating the faces of the two people.
The laughter of the two people stopped abruptly, and the sudden arrival of darkness plunged us into a sudden embarrassment, and we did not know what to say to save this stalemate.
My hands were shaking, and I was a little flustered, hoping to pull her into my arms under the cover of the night, and I might never have the courage to miss this moment. She had a vague sense of what was about to happen, and she tried to control her nervousness, but seemed to be expecting the irresistible temptation.
The riot is brewing, I want to grasp something, but I dare not act rashly, I am afraid of the embarrassment after refusal, I do not know the end of everything after it happens.
So I sniffled and tried again, and I felt my own trembling, and the sound of thirsty stuttering was suddenly so full of desire, but so weak-hearted. I whispered: Li Wen, when I was a sophomore in high school, I once left a letter in your bag, did you read it? Don't you want to answer so far?
Her heart seemed to be experiencing a dying struggle, and she was barely able to stop an event from happening, but she did not dare to encourage it to happen. Because she can't see the future, she can only extinguish the flame in her heart. She seemed to know exactly what her words would determine at this moment, and could only tremble and say: Is it? I...... I haven't received it, maybe I lost it!
I mustered up the courage and never wanted to give up again, and I continued to ask: Do you now want to know what I have written?
She was silent, afraid to look me in the eye; the pot of fire reflected her peach cheeks and hid her cramps. Her breathing was somewhat intermittent, and her breasts rose and fell like frogs in the light of the fire. In the middle of the night, she said weakly and almost inaudibly: Time has passed, they have grown up, they don't know the past, they don't know.
The air in the house froze again, the wind and rain knocked on the window, and the fire in my eyes gradually darkened. I bowed my head and looked at the handprint sadly, as if hoping to read the fate out of it.
But I still want to break through on this rainy night, and I would rather let this night determine my life than reason to decide this night. I tried her desperately again: The power was cut off, did you light the lights?
She trembled and said, "There is a fire, I can see you!" I was overwhelmed and couldn't guess her thoughts—was this to encourage my recklessness, or was it to quell my love?
I muttered: That... that...... No, not to mention. We looked at each other in silence at times, and then we dodged our eyes, knowing that some precious opportunity was slipping from our hands. My fingers were throbbing in my palms, eager to try, particularly manic, eager to cross the flames and reach into the depths of darkness to fish her back out of the void.
I wish she were struggling in my hands like that little fish, and I believed that as long as she caught it, she would never escape my fingers. However, she was too honorable in my heart, so honorable that I did not dare to have the slightest thought of desecration. I was afraid that even a little reluctance would be enough to shatter the pure affection between us.
We faced each other around the fire, in dead silence, listening to the cold rain outside the window. These rains come and go, and there are always times that we can't keep. The charcoal faded in self-immolation, and the light of the fire dimmed or even collapsed, making a faint and loud crashing sound.
She took the hand of the tongs, trembling like a decaying old woman; she tried several times to light the charcoal fire and re-build the heat, but seemed afraid to ignite the breath and air in the house from then on. In this way, we are frozen in our spotless purity...
In the middle of the night, like the end of our youth, I said dying: It is late at night, the rain is hard to stop, I am gone, okay? I myself feel that there is some brazen compliment. She was silent, did not dare to get up, bowed her head and said: There is an umbrella behind the door, don't get wet.
I had to get up, hesitate to get the umbrella, open the door, I begged to look back at her, she still did not look at it, I had to go out to take the door, whispered outside the door: I am gone, you close the door...
I collapsed weakly under the eaves, holding the umbrella and not opening it, watching the faint light of the fire on the window gradually darken, watching her sink into the darkness little by little, and I couldn't help but feel sad and tears falling from it.
I leaned weakly against the wooden wall and could not move, raised my hand several times to knock on the door, and then put it down in frustration, the rain drifting all over my clothes, and lightning tearing at my pained face.
She did not get up and close the door, but lay motionless on her knees, clasping her hands on her knees, staring at the embers in the basin, tears sliding down and dripping on the charcoal and making a hissing sound.
The light of the fire faded in her tearful eyes, and she didn't hear the sound of my departing feet. She seemed to know that I was just outside the door, and she suddenly suppressed her sad voice and sobbed, and her shoulders trembled and she couldn't help herself...