Chapter 2 south gate

In 1965, a child began to have an indescribable fear of the night.I think back to that drizzling night when I was asleep, so small I was put on the bed like a toy.What the dripping water from the eaves shows is the existence of silence, and my gradual falling asleep is the gradual forgetting of the water droplets in the rain.It should be at this time, when I fell into sleep safely and peacefully, it seemed that a secluded road appeared, and the trees and bushes slipped away one by one.A woman's weeping cry came from a distance, and the hoarse voice suddenly sounded in the extremely silent night, making my childhood trembling in my memories at this moment.

I saw myself, a frightened child with wide, terrified eyes, the shape of his face blurred in the darkness.The woman's cry continued for a long time, and I was so eager and afraid to expect another voice to come, one that would answer the woman's cry and calm her crying, but it did not appear.Now I can realize the reason for my panic at the beginning, that is, I have never heard a voice come out to answer.Nothing shudders more than the cry of a solitary dispossessed, in the empty night in the rain. Another memory that followed was a few white lambs walking over the grass by the river.Obviously this is the impression of the day, the caress of the uneasiness caused by the previous memory.It's just that I'm having trouble figuring out where I am when I get this impression.

It may have been days before I seemed to hear a voice answering the woman's cry.It was evening, a heavy rain had just passed, and the black clouds in the sky were like billowing smoke.I was sitting by the pond behind my house, and in the damp landscape, a strange man approached me.He was dressed in black, and when he came, the black clothes fluttered like a banner under the gloomy sky.The approaching scene made the woman's clear cry suddenly reappear in my heart.The strange man's sharp gaze started from a distance and kept watching me when I approached.Just when I was terrified, he turned and walked up a field ridge, and gradually moved away from me.The large black clothes made a rattling sound due to the wind.When I look back on the past as an adult, I always stay in this place for a long time, wondering why I interpreted the sound of clattering clothes as an answer to that woman's cry in the dark night rain.

I remember such a morning, a clear and transparent morning, I ran behind several children in the village, with soft soil and green grass dancing in the wind under my feet. At that time, the sun seemed to be more like a gentle color painted on us, rather than a dazzling light.We run like those lambs by the river.After running for a long time, we came to a dilapidated temple, and I saw several huge spider webs. It should have been earlier, when a child from the village came from a distance.I still remember his pale face, his lips trembling in the wind, and he said to us: "There's a dead man over there."

The dead man was lying under the spider's web. I saw him. It was the man in black who came to me yesterday evening.Although I am trying to recall my original mood now, I have not been successful.The memories of the past have been stripped of the original emotions, leaving only the shell.The emotions embedded in this moment are my emotions right now.The fact that a strange man died suddenly can only be a slight surprise to the six-year-old me, and there will be no extended exclamation.He lay on his back on the wet soil, his eyes closed, with a comfortable and peaceful expression.I noticed that the black clothes were covered with mud stains, mottled like those gray nameless flowers on the ridge of the field.The first time I saw a dead man, it looked like he was asleep.This is what I really felt when I was six years old. It turns out that to die is to fall asleep.

From then on, I was so afraid of the dark night. I saw myself standing on the road at the entrance of the village. The falling night was like a flood, swallowing my eyes and swallowing everything.For a long time, I lay in the dark bed afraid to fall asleep, and the silence around me made my fear infinitely expand.I struggled with sleep again and again, its strong hands trying to pull me in, and I resisted desperately.I was terrified of falling asleep like a strange man and never waking up again.But in the end I was always exhausted, and fell helplessly into the tranquility of sleep.When I woke up the next morning and found myself alive, watching the sun shine through the crack in the door, I was thrilled by the joy that I was saved.

My last memory when I was six years old is that I was running.Memories revived the former glory of the city's shipyards, and the first cement ships they built were coming to the river at the Southgate.My brother and I ran to the river.The sunshine of the past was so bright, shining on my young mother, her blue checkered scarf fluttering in the autumn wind of the past, my brother sat in her arms, his eyes wide open inexplicably.My father, who laughed loudly, walked onto the ridge barefoot.Why is there a tall man in military uniform?Like a leaf drifting into the woods, he came among my family.

The riverside was already full of people, and my brother led me through the crotches of those adults, and the noisy voices covered us.We climbed to the river, stuck our heads out from the crotches of the two adults, and looked around like two turtles. The exciting moment was brought by the loud sound of gongs and drums. Amidst the jubilant voices of people on both sides of the river, I saw a cement boat approaching. Several long hemp ropes were hung on the boat, and the ropes were full of colorful knots. Pieces of paper, so many flowers blooming in the air? A dozen young men beat gongs and drums on board.

I shouted to my brother: "Brother, what is this boat made of?" My brother turned and answered me with the same cry: "Made of stone." "Then why doesn't it sink?" "Stupid," my brother said, "don't you see the hemp rope hanging from it?" The sudden appearance of Wang Liqiang in military uniform interrupted my memory of Nanmen for five years.This tall man took my hand and left the south gate, boarded a chug-sounding ship, and approached the town named Sundang on a long river.I didn't know that I had been given to someone else by my parents, I thought the place I was going was a fun excursion.On that small road, my grandfather, who was suffering from illness, brushed shoulders with me. Facing his worried eyes, I said to him triumphantly:

"I don't have time to talk to you right now." Five years later, when I returned to the South Gate alone, I met my grandfather again on this road. Not long after I returned home, a family named Su moved to Nanmen.One summer morning, two boys from the Su family moved out a small round table from the house, placed it under the shade of a tree, and had breakfast. This is what I saw when I was twelve.Two city kids sat there in store-bought undergarments.I was sitting by the pond alone, wearing homemade hand-sewn shorts.Then I saw my fourteen-year-old brother leading his nine-year-old brother towards the children of the Su family.Like me, they were all topless, as dark as two loaches in the sun.

Before that, I heard my brother say at the drying yard: "Let's go and see what the city people eat." Among the many children at the drying yard, only the nine-year-old brother was willing to follow his brother to two strangers.My older brother looked heroic as he strutted forward, my younger brother trotting close behind.The hay-baskets they slung in their hands dangled along the road. The two city children put down their bowls and chopsticks and watched my brother warily.My brother didn't stop, just walked past the small round table in a big way, and then came back from behind the houses of the city people.Compared with my elder brother, my younger brother's swagger seems a bit bluff. When they got back to the drying yard, I heard my brother say: "People in the city are also eating pickles, just like us." "No meat?" "No fart." My brother then came out and corrected: "They have oil in their pickles, ours don't have oil." The elder brother may have pushed the younger brother: "Go, go, go, what's so great about oil, we have it too." The younger brother continued: "That's sesame oil, we don't have any at home." "You know shit." "I smell it." After Wang Liqiang died when I was twelve years old, I went back to the South Gate alone, as if I had started my adopted life again.In those days, I often had some strange feelings, as if Wang Liqiang and Li Xiuying were my real parents, and the Nanmen family was just a kind of charity to me.This estrangement and separation originally came from that fire.My grandfather and I returned to the South Gate together after an unexpected encounter, and it happened that a fire was blowing on the roof of my house. Such a coincidence made my father always look at my grandfather and me suspiciously in the following days, as if we had brought about the disaster.Sometimes I stand next to my grandfather by accident, and my father will scream nervously, as if the hut he just built is about to catch fire again. My grandfather died the year after I returned to Nanmen.The disappearance of my grandfather made my father give up his suspicions about us.But my situation at home did not improve.My brother's dislike for me comes from my father's influence.Whenever I was around him, he told me to fuck off immediately.I was getting farther and farther away from my brothers. The children in the village were always with their elder brothers, and I was far away from them at the same time. I can only miss my life in Wang Liqiang's house and my childhood partner in Sundang for a long time.I think of countless joyful past events, and at the same time I can't get rid of some sadness.I sat alone by the pond, dusted and dusted by the passing time.My smile and tears alone amazed the villagers.In their eyes, I also looked more and more like a monster.So that when someone quarreled with my father later, I became a weapon in their hands.Said that a son like me can only be born of bad seed. During all my days at the South Gate, the only time my brother begged me for mercy was when he chopped off my head with a sickle, and blood flowed all over my face. This happened in my sheep shed.I didn't know what happened after I was hit hard on the head, but I saw a sudden change in my brother's attitude.Then, I felt blood running down my face. My brother blocked the door, looking panicked, begging me to wash away the blood.I just pushed him away and walked towards the entrance of the village, towards my father's field. At that time, people in the village were pouring manure in the vegetable fields, and the breeze blew, which made me smell a faint smell of manure.When I approached the vegetable field, I heard several women screaming in shock, and I vaguely saw my mother running towards me.My mother ran up to me and asked something, but I didn't answer and went straight to my father. I saw my father holding a long dung spoon, just lifted it out of the dung bucket, staying in the air, watching me go. I heard myself say, "It was my brother who beat me." The father threw the dung spoon away, jumped onto the ridge of the field and hurried home. However, I didn't know that after I left, my elder brother forcibly used a sickle to cut a gash on my younger brother's face.When the younger brother opened his mouth to burst into tears, the older brother explained to him, and then begged for mercy.My brother's begging for mercy didn't work for me, but it didn't work for my younger brother. When I walked home, what I saw was not my brother being punished, but my father waiting for me under the elm tree with a straw rope. Because of my younger brother's false accusation, the facts have been falsified to show that I cut my younger brother with a sickle first, and then my brother made my face covered in blood. My father tied me to a tree, and I will never forget that beating.While I was being beaten, the village children stood around me with great interest, and my two brothers were there pompously maintaining order. After this incident, I wrote down the big and small marks on the last page of the Chinese workbook.Since then, I have recorded every time my father and brother beat me. After many years, I still keep this workbook, but the musty smell emanating from the old workbook makes it difficult for me to clearly feel the feeling of vowing to repay it, replaced by a slight surprise.This surprising appearance reminded me of the willow tree at the south gate.I remember being surprised one morning in early spring to discover that the dry branches were covered with tender green shoots.This is undoubtedly a beautiful scene. When it reappears in memory many years later, it is closely connected with the Chinese workbook that hints at the humiliation of the past.Maybe it's memory, memory came alone after surpassing the grievances and grievances of the world. While my situation at home was going from bad to worse, another incident occurred which created a rift between me and my family that could never be healed and made me notorious not only at home but also in the village. The private plot of the Wang family in the village is next to ours.The two brothers of the Wang family were the strongest in the village. At that time, the elder brother of the Wang family was married, and the oldest child was the same age as my younger brother.Arguing over private plots is common at the South Gate. I can’t remember the exact reason for the quarrel. I just remember that it was in the evening. I was sitting by the pond, watching my parents and brothers standing there, and The six members of the Wang family were arguing endlessly.The people in my family seem to be weak, but their voices are not as loud as others.Especially my younger brother, who is not as articulate as children of the same age in the Wang family when he curses.Almost all the people in the village stood there, and a few people came out to persuade them, but they were blocked by both of them.Later, I suddenly saw my father rushing forward with his fists waving, but Wang Yuejin, the younger brother of the Wang family, grabbed his wrist, and then punched my father into the rice field.My father cursed and tried to climb up dripping water, but was kicked back into the rice field by Wang Yuejin.Father tried to climb up several times, but was kicked back.I saw my mother screaming and bumping into Wang Yuejin, and he pushed her, and my mother also fell into the rice field.My parents were struggling like two chickens thrown into the water.The humiliating sight of the two huddled together made me bow my head sadly. Later, my elder brother rushed over with a kitchen knife, and my younger brother followed closely behind with a sickle. The kitchen knife in my elder brother's hand chopped at Wang Yuejin's ass. Then the situation changed drastically. The two brothers of the Wang family, who were still very powerful just now, were chased by my brother, Caidao, and fled to the house in a hurry.When my brother chased them to the door of their house, the two brothers pointed at my brother with a harpoon each, and my brother swung a kitchen knife and threw himself on the harpoon.In front of the desperate elder brother, the Wang family brothers fled after throwing their harpoons. Inspired by his elder brother's spirit, the younger brother raised his sickle and shouted, which also seemed extremely heroic.But his center of gravity was unstable when he ran, and he tripped himself several times. In this dispute, because I have been sitting by the pond and watching, no matter whether it is those who support my father, those who oppose my father, or even the people of the Wang family in the village, they all think that there is no one as bad as me in this world. people.At home, my situation can also be imagined.My older brother became a universal hero. There were times when I sat by the pond, or when I was mowing the grass, I liked to spy on the Sues.The children from the two cities didn't come out much. The furthest they traveled was to the cesspool at the entrance of the village, but they went back right away.One morning, I watched them come out of the house and stand between the two trees in front of the house, pointing and talking.Then he walked under a tree, the elder brother squatted down, and the younger brother threw himself on his back.The elder brother carried the younger brother to another tree, and then the younger brother carried the elder brother back to the tree just now.The two children took turns repeating this action, and each time one lay on top of the other, I heard a pleasant laugh, very similar to the laughter of the two brothers. Later, three masons came from the city and brought two carts of red bricks.A fence was built in front of the Su family's house, and the two trees were also fenced in.I never saw the Su brothers' game that moved me, but I often heard laughter from the wall, and I knew their game was still going on. Their father was a doctor in the city hospital.I often see this doctor with fair skin and a gentle voice, walking leisurely on that alley after get off work. Only once, instead of walking home, did the doctor show up on that road on a hospital bike.At that time, I was walking home with a basket full of green grass.The bell behind me startled me, and I heard the doctor calling out to his two sons from the car. After the Su family brothers came out of the house, they cheered and jumped for the scene before them.They ran happily to their bicycles, and their mother stood in front of the fence, smiling at her family. The doctor took his two sons and rode on the field path.The two urban children sitting in the car uttered exciting shouts, and the younger brother sitting in the front kept ringing the car bell.This scene made the children in the village envious. I first tried to understand the word family when I was sixteen and a freshman in high school.I hesitated for a long time about my Nanmen family and Wang Liqiang's family in Sundang, and the understanding I finally settled on was the memory of this scene. My first contact with the doctor happened before the turmoil in the private plot. At that time, I had only been back to the South Gate for a few months, and my grandfather hadn't died yet. After he lived in our house for a full month, he went to my uncle's house.At that time, I had a high fever for two days, and I lay on the bed with my mouth and tongue dry, and my head was dizzy.It just so happened that our ewes were about to give birth, and the whole family was in the shed.I lay alone in the house, listening drowsily to their chaotic voices, with my brother's high-pitched voice in the middle at every turn. Later, it was my mother who came to my bed, said something, and went out again. When my mother came in again, there was a person beside me, whom I recognized as the Su family's doctor.The doctor put his palm on my forehead for a while, and I heard him say: "It's 39 degrees." After they went out, I felt a commotion from the other side of the sheepshed.The doctor's palm was lightly placed on my forehead just now, but what I experienced was a kind and touching touch.Not long after, I heard the voices of the two children of the Su family talking outside the house, and it was only later that I realized that they were bringing me medicine. After my condition improved, the child's attachment to adults hidden in my heart began to agitate.Before I left South Gate at the age of six, my parents and I were so cordial. Later, during Sundang’s five-year life, Wang Liqiang and Li Xiuying also gave me the love of adults, but when I returned to South Gate, I was very close. The son became helpless. In the first days, I often waited for the doctor on his way home from get off work, watching him coming from afar, imagining the kind words he said to me when he walked up to me, and looking forward to his big palm touching me again forehead. However, the doctor never paid attention to me. Now I think he would not pay attention to who I am and why I always stand there.He always hurried past me, occasionally looking at me, but with the way a stranger looks at another stranger. The doctor's two sons, Su Yu and Su Hang, soon joined the village children.At that time, my brother was mowing grass on the ridge of the field, and I watched the two children of the Su family walking over hesitantly, discussing something while walking.My brother, who felt at that time that he could command everything, waved his scythe at them and cried: "Hey, do you want to mow the grass?" In Su Yu's short life at Nanmen, he came up to talk to me only once.I still remember his shy expression at the beginning, and his smile was obviously timid.he ask me: "Are you Sun Guangping's younger brother?" The Su family only lived in South Gate for two years. I remember that the afternoon when they moved out, the sky was a bit gloomy.The last cart of furniture was pulled away by the doctor, and the two children pushed it on the left and right sides of the cart.Their mother came last with two baskets of odds and ends. When Su Yu was nineteen years old, he died of a cerebral blood vessel rupture.It was the next afternoon when I got the news of his death.When I came home from school that day, when I passed the house that used to be the Su family, the sadness welling up in my heart made me cry. In my memory, after my brother entered high school, there were significant changes in his body.Thinking about it now, I really miss my brother when I was fourteen.Although my elder brother was domineering at that time, his pride was unforgettable.My brother was sitting on the ridge of the field, commanding the Su family brothers to mow the grass for him. This scene has always represented the image of my brother for a long time. Not long after my brother entered high school, he began to make friends with classmates in the city.At the same time, his attitude towards the village children became more and more indifferent.As my brother's classmates from the city came to my house one after another, my parents felt that their faces were radiant.Even a few old people in the village asserted everywhere that my elder brother was the most promising among the children in the village. During that time, two young people from the city often ran to the village in the early morning to yell.Their shouts were pitted and uneven, especially when they broke their voices, it sounded creepy, and the villagers thought it was haunted at first. This made a deep impression on my brother, who once said sadly: "When we want to be city people, city people want to be singers." The elder brother was obviously the first reminder of reality among the children in the village. He began to feel that he would not be as good as his classmates in the city all his life. This was his initial feeling of inferiority complex.To be fair, my brother's association with city classmates was an extension of his habitual pride.The arrival of classmates from the city undoubtedly increased his value in the village. My brother's first love affair came during his sophomore year of high school.He fell in love with a stout schoolgirl, the daughter of a carpenter in the city.Several times I saw my brother in a corner of the school, taking out a bag of melon seeds from his schoolbag and secretly stuffing them to her. She often appeared on the playground nibbling our family's melon seeds. When she spit out the melon seeds, she seemed to have a group of children.Once after she spit out the melon seed shell, I saw a stream of saliva hanging from the corner of her mouth for a long time. That's when my brother and his classmates started talking about women.I sat by the pond behind my house and listened to words that I hadn't heard before.Some naked words about breasts, thighs, etc. floated out of the rear window, and I was horrified to hear them.Later they began to talk about themselves. The elder brother kept his mouth shut at first, but at the instigation of his classmates in the city, he revealed his relationship with that female classmate.He believed their oath not to tell the truth, and on the other hand, it was his whim.Apparently my brother exaggerated his relationship with that female classmate. Not long after, the female classmate was standing in the middle of the playground, surrounded by several girls who were equally presumptuous.She yelled at my brother to come over. I saw my brother walk over anxiously, he probably had a premonition of what was going to happen.It was the first time I saw his fear. She asked: "You said I like you?" My brother blushed.At that time, I had already walked away, and I didn't see the embarrassment of my usually confident brother after being overwhelmed. Amidst the cheering laughter of the female classmates beside her, she threw the leftover melon seeds at my brother's face. After school that day, my brother came back very late and lay down on the bed without eating.Almost the whole night, I heard him tossing and turning on the bed in a daze.The next day he endured the humiliation and started on his way to school.The elder brother knew that his classmates in the city had betrayed him, so he didn't show any anger because of it, and he didn't even mean to blame him.He continued his intimate relationship with them, and I knew he did this because he didn't want the villagers to see that his classmates from the city stopped coming all of a sudden.However, his brother's efforts ultimately failed.After they graduated from high school, they started working one by one, and they were no longer as idle as before, so it was time for my brother to be abandoned by them. When my brother's classmates in the city stopped patronizing my house, Su Yu came unexpectedly when the evening was approaching.Since moving away, Su Yu came to the South Gate for the first time.At that time, my brother and I were in the vegetable field.When the mother who was cooking saw Su Yu coming, she thought he was looking for my brother.The scene of my mother standing at the entrance of the village and calling out to my brother excitedly made me deeply moved when I recalled it many years later. When his brother jumped onto the ridge and returned home, Su Yu's first words were to ask him: "Where's Sun Guanglin?" So my mother understood in shock that Su Yu had come to find me.The elder brother was much calmer, and he told Su Yu casually: "He's in the vegetable field." Su Yu didn't expect to have a few words with them at that time, he left them without the slightest politeness, and walked towards me in the vegetable field. Su Yu came to me to tell me about his work, and he went to a fertilizer factory.The two of us sat on the ridge for a long time, looking at the former house of the Su family together in the evening breeze.Su Yu asked me: "Who lives now?" I shake my head.There's a little girl who keeps coming out of there, and her parents can be seen a lot too, but I don't know who they are. Su Yu went back when it was dark, and I watched Su Yu bow his back and disappear on the road leading to the city.Within a year, he died. When I graduated from high school, the college entrance examination had resumed.When I was admitted to university, I couldn't tell Su Yu the way Su Yu told me when he started working.I once saw Suhang on a street in the city, and Suhang rode a bicycle and a few friends happily drove past me. I did not tell my family about the college entrance examination, and I borrowed the registration fee from a classmate in the village.A month later, when I had money to return to that classmate, he said: "Your brother has paid it back for you." This surprised me.After I received the admission notice, my brother prepared some necessities for me.At that time, my father had already hooked up with the widow who was diagonally opposite the door. My father often got out of the widow's bed in the middle of the night, and then got into my mother's bed.He has no time to take care of the family affairs.When my elder brother told my father about me, my father just yelled carelessly: "Why? Let that kid go to school, it's too cheap for him." My father seemed very pleased when he realized that I was leaving the house for good. My mother understood better than my father. In the days before I left, my mother always looked at my brother anxiously. She hoped that my brother would go to college.She knew she would be able to live in the city once she graduated from college. When I left, only my brother saw me off.He picked up my bedding and walked in front, and I followed closely behind.Neither of them said a word the whole way.These days, my brother's actions have moved me, and I have been looking for an opportunity to express my gratitude to him, but the silence that enveloped us made it difficult for me to speak.It wasn't until the car started that I suddenly said to him: "I still owe you a dollar." My brother looked at me puzzled. I reminded him: "It's just the application fee." He understood what I meant, and I saw a look of sadness in his eyes. I continued, "I'll pay you back." After the car drove away, I leaned out the window to see my brother.Standing under the tree outside the station, he watched the car I was in go away blankly. Soon after, the land at Nanmen was requisitioned by the county to build a cotton spinning factory, and all the people in the village became urban residents overnight.Although I am far away in Beijing, I can still imagine their excitement and excitement.Although some people were crying before they moved out, I think they were very happy.Old man Luo, who was in charge of the warehouse, instilled his truths everywhere: "No matter how good the factory is, it will close down sooner or later, and the farmer will never close down." However, when I returned to my hometown many years later, when I saw old man Luo at the entrance of an alley in the city, the old man in a black and dirty cotton coat told me triumphantly: "I'm on retirement pay now." After I left Nanmen, Nanmen, as my hometown, has never been able to make me feel kind.For a long time, I cling to my own ideas.Looking back on the past or missing my hometown is actually just pretending to be calm after being at a loss in reality. Even if there is some kind of lyricism that appears, it is just a decoration.Once, I lost my temper when a young woman asked me about my childhood and my hometown with the formula: "Why do you want me to accept the reality I have escaped from?" If there is anything memorable about South Gate, it is obviously the pond.When I learned that the South Gate had been expropriated, my initial reaction was concern for the fate of the pond.The place that makes me feel warm, I feel that people have buried it like they buried Su Yu. After more than ten years, I returned to my hometown and came to the South Gate alone one night.At that time, it became the south gate of the factory, and I could no longer smell the faint smell of dung in the evening wind, nor could I hear the slight shaking of the crops.In spite of all the drastic changes, I was able to determine exactly where the old home was and where the pond was.My heart skipped a beat when I walked there, and the moonlight showed me that the pond from the past still exists.The sudden appearance of the pond confronted me with another emotional assault.The pond in memory always gives me warmth, but this real appearance awakens my past reality.Looking at the dirt floating on the water, I knew that the pond didn't exist to comfort me. Rather, it was a mark of the past. land, in order to give me an eternal reminder.