Home Categories contemporary fiction Selected Works of Yu Hua's Short Stories

Chapter 15 why no music

When my friend Maer comes to lunch or dinner, he basically does this: he comes to the table with his mouth slightly open, his mouth opening has nothing to do with a smile, he bends over and sits down in a chair, then lowers his head, He lowered his head to a position parallel to the table, and he started to eat. The sound of chewing was very small, but the food was delivered to his mouth very fast. He would not raise his head until he finished eating, otherwise he would not destroy the food. The head is parallel to the table, even if you talk to him, he will answer with his head down. Therefore, when a horse eats, we all call him eating, and eating is a very formal term. You must wear appropriate clothes, sit at the appropriate table, and then eat the food in an appropriate way. , in short, this is very particular.As for eating, the word eating is really too sloppy. You can sit at the table to eat, you can sit at the door to eat, you can also run to the neighbor’s house with a bowl to eat, which we often did when we were young.Sometimes we would walk into the toilet with a bowl in our hands and eat while shitting.

The horse never eats, he always eats.Ever since I met him, when we were both only ten years old, he started to eat, and he was as serious as writing a composition when he was eating.He lowered his head. At that time, his head was already parallel to the table. He ate conscientiously and obsessively. After eating, the bowl in his hand seemed to be washed, and the table in front of him seemed to have been washed After wiping, the fishbone and fishbone on the plate are still lying there like a fish. This is the horse.We are always in a hurry on the road, as if we are always going to catch a train, but for a horse, when he is on the road, it is never a hurry. He is always a walk, with his hands in his trouser pockets, gazing Ahead, walking leisurely.This is him, he is not in a hurry in everything he does, and at the same time he is meticulous. Even when he speaks, he speaks clearly, at an even rate, and is very particular about rhetoric.

Ma'er kept himself clean, and when he was twenty-six years old, he met Lu Yuan, whom we all already knew.We sat together to eat, and we invited Lu Yuan, who also brought two other young women. We have five men here, and we all have their ideas in our hearts, and they, that is, The three young women also chose us in their hearts.In this way, we ate, talked and laughed, and each of us tried our best to express ourselves. The men talked and talked, and the women made gestures. Only the horse didn't say a word, because he was eating seriously, his head was parallel to the table, and he had a faint smile on his face, listening to us talking and laughing.That night he spoke only a few words, and even ate very little, except six prawns and a glass of beer.

We quickly forgot about him.At first we occasionally glanced at him and saw him take a sip of beer slowly, after a while we saw him pick up a shrimp with chopsticks and put it into his mouth, and after a while we saw him puff up his cheeks The mouth squirmed, and then we stopped looking at him.Just after we completely forgot about him, Lu Yuan suddenly uttered a cry of surprise. We saw Lu Yuan's eyes widen, and we saw her pointing at Ma'er's desk with her finger, so we saw Ma'er's desk. There are five prawns of different sizes side by side in front of us. We can see that the transparent prawn shells are shining under the light, and the meat inside the prawn shells has been eaten clean by the horses.At this time, the other two women also cried out in shock.

Next we see the horse pick up the last shrimp of the night.When his arm stretched out, it was almost as high as his lowered head. After the chopsticks in his hand caught the shrimp, he bent his elbow as quickly as shrimp claws, and then he put the shrimp in. in his own mouth. This time he raised his head and calmly looked at us in surprise.After his lips were closed, his cheeks protruded, and then his mouth wriggled like a duodenum, and the throat joints on his neck moved up and down briskly. About five minutes later, we saw his bulging cheeks suddenly sucked in.At the same time, the larynx stays there after being lifted up.He was clearly swallowing, and he looked grave and careful.

Then, we saw his larynx slipped down, and then his mouth opened, so it was time for us to be dumbfounded. We clearly watched him take out a whole shrimp from his mouth, The important thing is that the shrimp inside has been swallowed by him.He put the whole shrimp without meat on the table, neatly placed with five other shrimps of the same type.The three young women let out another series of exclamations. Later, half a year later, Lu Yuan became Ma'er's wife.Two other women who were sitting at the time were also married, to two men whom none of us knew. After Lu Yuan married Ma'er, she separated Ma'er from us.When we sat down to eat again, there were no horses to eat.To tell you the truth, we were a little unaccustomed to it, and we began to realize how interesting it was to have those two parallel lines at the other end of the table, the horse's head and the face of the table, with the constant distance between them like the pier and the shore.Sometimes, when the horse is sitting in front of the window, and the sun shines in from the window again, we see that the horse's head has its brother on the table, and the dark shadow starts from an oblate circle, and as the sun shines Moving slowly, it turned into a thin strip. None of us have seen such a long and thin head, even in the comics.Another time, we were sitting in a dark room with a dim lamp hung very low. That time I stood up and bumped my head against the lamp. The top of my head hurt and burned, and the lamp The lamp began to shake violently, so the shadow of the horse's head also shook on the table, quickly and exaggeratedly, and it shook for a full two minutes. The shadow on the table completed the whole life of the horse shaking its head.

After Ma'er got married, only Guo Bin kept in touch with Ma'er intermittently.He often puts on a gray windbreaker in the evening, puts his hands in his pockets, walks on the longest street in the city, walks from one end to the other, and then comes to the horse's door, bending long fingers, knocked on the door of the horse's house. Guo Bin told his friends that Ma'er's new residence exudes the atmosphere of Lu Yuan. From the bedroom to the living room, the walls are covered with close-ups of Lu Yuan.The history of these photos is from the full moon to the present, and there are a total of twenty-three.Only three photos showed the smile of the horse, and there was a more charming smile of Lu Yuan next to it. Guo Bin said: "If you don't look carefully, you will not pay attention to the horse."

Guo Bin continued to tell his friends that the furniture in Ma'er's house was on a white basis and shone pink, the carpet was beige, and the walls were also beige. It was Ma'er's clothes. They all have a tone of beige. Guo Bin thinks that this is Lu Yuan's hobby and idea. Guo Bin asked his friend: "Have you ever seen a horse wearing beige clothes before?" "No." He answered himself first, and then said: "After putting on those beige clothes, the horse looks fatter and a little whiter than before." Guo Bin said that Ma'er's home is like a single woman's dormitory, filled with all kinds of gadgets, from bookshelves to cabinets, all small animals, made of velvet, glass, and bamboo .Even on the bed, there was a fat black bear in flannel.As for what belongs to Ma'er, even a pen of his can't be found on the table, and only when his clothes are hung on the balcony before drying, can he see traces of him in his home.When talking about the velvet black bear on the horse's bed, Guo Bin couldn't help but smile, and asked his friends, and at the same time asked himself: "Could it be that Lu Yuan still sleeps with a black bear in her arms after she gets married?"

With the passage of time, Guo Bin's understanding of Ma'er's house gradually deepened. He boasted that even if he closed his eyes and walked in Ma'er's house for half an hour, he would not come across a chair.Moreover, he said that he knew the distribution of things in Ma'er's house, what cabinets put what things, where things were, and as long as his friends were interested, he could let them know. He said: "There is a drawer in the cabinet next to their bed. In the drawer are all the documents of the two of them and all their bank books. The drawer is locked. Under the drawer is Lu Yuan's shorts. And bras, and socks and scarves."

As for the horse's shorts, socks and scarves, there is no separate place, and they are piled up in the same closet with all the horse's clothes, winter, summer, spring and autumn, and in the same compartment.Once, Guo Bin saw the hard work of Ma'er in order to find a sweater. He seemed to be picking out the rags in a pile of rags. He first inserted his head into the cabinet, and then his shoulders followed. Half an hour later, he came out, just holding a pair of shorts in his hand. He threw the shorts on the carpet, and then took out all his clothes and put them on the carpet. The carpet seemed to be piled up like a hill. After kneeling in front of the hill for another half an hour, he finally found his undershirt.

Guo Bin said that he already knew the delicate relationship between Ma Er and Lu Yuan very well.The relationship between them is beyond what you can imagine.He said this to his friends, and to make his words more believable, he began to give examples. When Guo Bin gave an example, he was sitting in a chair. He stood up and walked to the door, then turned around, looked at his three friends, and said. He said that the day before yesterday, when he walked to the door of Ma'er's house and raised his hand to knock on the door, he heard crying voices inside, the crying sound was very low and thin, and each sound was very long. Let him feel that there is a tear-jerking sadness inside.So he raised his hand and put it down again.He stood outside the horse's door for a long time, until the cries died down, too low to be heard.During this period, he repeatedly thought in his heart why Lu Yuan was crying?What made her so sad? Did the horse hurt her?But he didn't hear the horse scolding her, not even the sound of speaking. Later, after the crying disappeared for a while, Guo Bin thought that Lu Yuan should wipe away her tears, so he raised his hand and knocked on their door again.It was Ma'er who came to open the door. To Guo Bin's surprise, Ma'er's eyes were full of tears, while Lu Yuan was comfortably leaning on the sofa watching TV with the remote control in hand.Only then did he realize that it wasn't Lu Yuan who was crying just now, but Ma'er. Do you understand?Guo Bin asked his friend with a smile, then he walked back to his chair and sat down comfortably. On this day, that is, the afternoon of June 30, 1996, Ma Er came to Guo Bin's home.His wife, Lu Yuan, went to Shanghai the day before and would not be able to return until a week later, so Ma'er, who was alone, thought of Guo Bin, because Guo Bin had a rich collection of video tapes, and Ma'er was going to borrow some video tapes to go back home. Home to decorate your life when you are alone. When Ma'er came, Guo Bin was taking a nap. He walked to the door in briefs and opened the door for Ma'er. The first thing he did when he saw the horse was to slowly open his mouth, yawn slowly, and then asked the horse with tears in his eyes, "Lu Yuan left?" Ma'er was a little strange, thinking how he would know that Lu Yuan was on a business trip, so he asked him, "How do you know that Lu Yuan is gone?" Guo Bin wiped his tears with his hand and replied, "You told me." "When did I tell you?" The horse couldn't remember. "That's what Lu Yuan told me." Guo Bin said. Guo Bin walked into the bathroom while talking, and he peed without closing the door.Ma'er sat down on the sofa, looked at Guo Bin in the bathroom and yawned "ahhhhhh", then wiped his tears with one hand, and pulled the rope of the toilet with the other hand. Amidst the sound of running water, Guo Bin walked out of the bathroom, walked to the horse's sofa, hesitated for a while, then turned around and lay down on the bed, and then looked sideways at the horse. Ma'er saw a palm camera in the corner next to the balcony, and he asked Guo Bin, "Whose camera is this?" Guo Bin said, "Mine, I bought it a month ago." Ma'er nodded, and after a while he said, "I want to borrow some video tapes." Guo Bin asked him: "Do you want violence? Or romance?" Ma'er thought for a while and said, "All of them." "Go get it yourself." Guo Bin said. Then Guo Bin told Ma Er: Violent movies are on the third and fourth shelves of the bookcase, while romantic movies are on the fifth shelf and on the right side of the sixth shelf.While talking to Ma'er, Guo Bin kept digging his eyeballs with his hands and yawning at the same time. Ma'er walked to the bookcase, put his eyes close together, looked carefully for a while, and took out a video tape from the third and fifth shelves.He held two video tapes in his hand, and when he turned around, he saw that Guo Bin's eyes had been closed. After hesitating for a moment, he said softly, "I took two." Guo Bin's eyes opened, he propped up his body, and then sat on the bed with his head tilted.The horse said to him: "Go to sleep, I'm leaving." At this time, a smile appeared on Guo Bin's face, his smile became more and more weird, and then he asked Ma'er: "Do you want to watch pornography?" A smile appeared on Ma'er's face. Guo Bin jumped out of the bed, knelt on the ground and dragged out a box from under the bed. After opening the box, Ma'er saw half a box of video tapes.Guo Bin told him triumphantly: "It's all pornography." Then Guo Bin asked Ma Er: "Do you want Hong Kong and Taiwan? Or foreign countries?" "I don't know," replied the horse. Guo Bin stood up and saw that the horse was at a loss, so he patted him on the shoulder and said, "You can take a box yourself, just take any box." The horse casually took a box.That night, Ma'er was lying on the bed alone, first watched a romantic movie that made him cry, and then watched the violent movie that made his hair stand on end.In the end, he decided to watch porn. He inserted the video tape into the already hot VCR, and while rewinding, he went to the bathroom.When he came out of the bathroom, the video tape had been rewound and started to play automatically. He saw a snowflake on the TV. After the snowflake flashed for a few minutes, the picture appeared. A woman was lying naked on the bed, her face buried in the Inside the fluffy pillow, the two legs were bent and crossed together.A man's arm swung on the left side of the picture, then a shoulder connected to the arm appeared, and then the entire back. The horse saw a man walking towards the bed, and when he came to the edge of the bed, the man moved forward Stretching out his hand, he bent his legs one after the other. He used his knees to climb onto the bed, and then he separated the woman's legs, and his body stacked on top of it. The horse heard a slight "um" and saw the man's body move over the woman's. The horse noticed the man's shaking buttocks, shaking as if it had been frozen.The horse heard the man's panting, and at this time the woman's "hmm" came one after another.Afterwards, the picture did not change, and the two bodies stacked on the bed trembled slightly.In this way, the monotonous picture continued for a while, and the horse heard their calls.Afterwards, the two overlapping bodies stopped still, as if they died all of a sudden.After a while, the man's body turned over and he came down, so the horse heard the woman coquettishly "hmm" for a long time.The man who rolled over was kneeling on the bed, with his back to the camera, and he was doing something with his head down. The horse realizes that their work is over, but... the horse thinks to himself, "Why is there no music?" He found it weird and thought to himself, "Don't there be music in porn?" At this time, the man lay down again, lying side by side with the woman. The two raised their feet and pulled a blanket together to cover the two naked bodies. The horse heard the man ask, "How is it?" "Excellent," said the woman. After a moment of silence, the man suddenly mentioned Ma'er's name, which surprised Ma'er.The horse heard him say: "I am better than the horse, right?" The woman said: "Much stronger." Ma'er was wondering if he had heard it wrong when the man said his name again.The man said, "How did the horse do it?" "I hate it." The woman hit the man and said, "Didn't I tell you?" The man said, "I want to hear it again." The woman laughed at this moment, and after laughing for a while she said, "He didn't move." "Why didn't you move?" the man asked. "It's disgusting." The woman said with a smile. The man continued to ask, "Why didn't you move?" "He didn't move when he came in...you're really annoying." The woman waved and hit the man again. "Where's his body?" the man asked. "His body was pressing on me, he was pressing on me so motionless that I couldn't breathe... okay?" the woman said. "How long has he held you so still?" the man asked. "Sometimes it's long, sometimes it's short, and a few times he fell asleep on top of me," the woman said. "What do you do when he falls asleep?" the man asked. The woman said, "I turned over hard and pushed him down...is that okay?" Both of them burst into laughter. After laughing for a while, the man suddenly sat up and got off the bed facing the camera. The man said, "Let's watch our video." Ma'er recognized Guo Bin's face from the man who came over.Behind Guo Bin, after the woman sat up, Ma'er saw Lu Yuan's smile. A week later, Lu Yuan returned home. When she opened the door and walked in, she saw a horse sitting at the table in front of the balcony, and the horse was eating.Lu Yuan naturally saw two parallel lines, and she also saw a steaming bowl of noodles making Ma'er's face flushed, so she threw her handbag on the sofa, and said to Ma'er, "Go and get the noodles." Bring up the suitcase." The horse looked up at her, then continued eating.Lu Yuan walked into the kitchen, turned on the faucet and splashed water on her face.After splashing the water, she began to pat her face lightly with the palm of her hand.After patting for a while, she took the facial cleanser from the shelf and washed her face carefully.When she finished washing her face and walked back to the living room, the horse was still eating meticulously. She looked around and did not see her suitcase, so she asked the horse, "Where is my suitcase?" The horse continued to eat without lifting its head.Lu Yuan continued, "Where's my suitcase?" Ma'er still didn't answer, Lu Yuan's voice suddenly became louder, and she yelled at Ma'er: "Go downstairs!" Ma'er raised his head, took out a napkin from the napkin box on the table, wiped his mouth politely, and asked Lu Yuan, "Why do you say I'm motionless?" Furious Lu Yuan was not prepared to hear such a sentence, so she didn't react, she still said forcefully: "Go and pick up the suitcase!" Ma'er continued to ask her, "Why do you say I'm motionless?" Lu Yuan began to realize what had happened, she stopped shouting, but stared straight at the horse.He saw Ma'er pulled out another napkin, Gently wiped the sweat from his forehead, Ma'er said, "Actually, I still moved..." The horse paused for a moment and then said: "When it comes to the critical moment, I still move." After speaking, Ma'er lowered his head and went to eat his last two mouthfuls of noodles.Lu Yuan walked into the bedroom quietly. After sitting on the bed in the bedroom for a while, she went downstairs quietly and lifted the suitcase up by herself. Afterwards, nothing happened.My friend Ma Er did not return the three video tapes to Guo Bin, and Guo Bin did not mention it to Ma Er.In later days, sometimes Guo Bin still put on the gray windbreaker, put his hands in his pockets, walked the longest street in the city, came to the door of Ma'er's house, and bent his long fingers to knock on the door. Thief's door.
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