Chapter 3 Chapter 3 The Village Without Men

In one afternoon, Banzi Village lost more than 30 young people, and the village was limp and lifeless like an old man who had lost his crutches.There was a faint cry, and the cats and dogs in the village alley lay together in a daze, biting each other's tails.The smoke from the kitchen in the evening is as scattered as this anger, as if you were old when you woke up.The setting sun hangs heavily on the corner of the distant mountain, as if it will go down with a sigh.The women fought back their grief over their children, their red, swollen eyes hurt by the burning firewood.The old people rarely gather together, lingering at the entrance of the village, leaning on crutches made from various branches, wrinkling the same solemn brows, looking at the fading night in the distance, walking back and forth in small steps, Take a look every time you walk, and every time you look up, the night will be deeper, the road will be darker, and the disappointment will be more.The hunchback's little feet couldn't stand anymore, so he sat by the well or on the donkey pile, blinking his eyes that would go blind at any time, smacking his mouth that was sunken in the years, watching the end of the road melt into the darkness, and sighing Gloomy and old air.

However, life must go on.The old people said that more than ten years ago, there were also generals who came to arrest soldiers, this one came and that came, wearing strange clothes, dragging different guns, and some even took away some pretty women.This time it was slightly different, and the old people couldn't tell why it was different.The women didn't want to ask any more.Anyway, once the men left, they could only resign themselves to fate.Living in this remote village, figure out what it does?It is not beneficial to the growth of crops, it is useless to donkeys running in circles, and it has no effect on the growth of the big pagoda tree at the entrance of the village and the flow of the Daizi River.The sun will go down as usual, the moon will still be cold, cattle and sheep will still give birth to young, and children will still catch sparrows by the river.Men go, they go; if they come back, they come back.These are the years of the village, and this is the life of the farmers for generations.

The moment Lao Dan's car was drawn down the rear curtain, Cui'er burst into tears, feeling that the sky was falling, and she sat on the dry loess and wailed.All the toughest women in Banzi Village were crying like this, and the women were screaming one by one.Their tears made the dry day wet, and there were more clouds in the sky.With his hands behind his back, Mr. Yuan Bai saw that the convoy was not on the ground, he flicked his long gown covered in dirt, and walked slowly towards the village.The turtle monster followed behind slowly, helped up Cui'er who was restrained from crying, and put the stunned Yougen on his back, helping her to send her back.

"Don't worry, let them cry. I will hold it in my heart in the future, and the crops will not grow well..." Mr. Yuan Bai said back. But Tweety was already up, she snatched Yougen, and walked with Mr. Yuan Bai together with Turtle Monster.The old man touched his bleeding forehead from time to time, and Tweety went up and said to go back with him and help the old man with cooking.Mr. Yuan Bai agreed, sighing and said: "Natural disasters can be avoided, but man-made disasters are inevitable. Tweety, don't be too frightened, Lao Dan will come back..." Without Lao Dan, the yard seemed to be missing a tree. Tweety walked around, always feeling empty, unable to touch the front, back, left, and right sides.The donkey blinked beautifully, and its back hooves bounced on the ground anxiously. If it was not given something to pull, it would be as if it had lost its soul.Tweety took out half a bag of corn from the firewood room and sprinkled it evenly on the mill.The donkey ran happily, wagging its ears and snorting.The small mill trembled and made a cheerful sound, like Lao Dan chewing freshly pickled pickles.Cui'er watched the corn kernels disappear into the hole of the millstone, and her concern for Lao Dan also fell into it.Lao Dan is the millstone she pulls every day. Without him, she will become this lonely donkey. Only then will she know that the originally perfect little world is her greatest happiness.

You Gen defecated in the yard, and casually picked up a lump to watch in surprise.Tweety lost his mind in a hurry, slapped him a few times, and hurriedly stuffed his hands into the firewood stove, his buttocks were also covered with ashes.You Gen stammered and asked where did Dad go?Because most of them are his father who cleans up the excrement and urine.Tweety'er's eyes were reddened by what he said, but she smiled and said: "Your father is away from home, and he will come back when your boy speaks fluently." Of course Tweety had this expectation.She doesn't know how long this war will last outside, and she has no idea how far Lao Dan will go.God only knows how high he will come back when the root grows.Maybe there is another one in my stomach, and it will come out when the heavy snow falls.Thinking of this, she hurriedly stuffed an apron around her waist.The twilight had already dyed the roof red, and the strange rooster of the Bieguai family began to crow. It never crowed in the morning. Mr. Yuan Bai said that it was a night owl that was wrongly placed in a chicken fetus, and it was full of tears when it got dark.Tweety cried again when the rooster crowed, because at this time Lao Dan should have slammed into the door with big strides, yelling at her and You Gen'er, while putting down the heavy plow hoe, using a pot she had prepared long ago. The water washes the muddy feet in the courtyard.She prepared the basin of water inadvertently, and a few osmanthus leaves were floating in the basin, and no one listened to others.Yougen ran to the basin again, squatted down with his bare bottom, scooped up water with a small spoon, and watered the ant nest under the tree.The ants lined up in a large group, and hurried to the entrance of the cave, carrying dirt and grass sticks. It seemed that a spring rain would come at night.

There was no rain at night, only a low south wind.Tweety hugged You Gen, who had fallen asleep, and sat on the cool kang head, watching the lamp seedlings swaying to and fro.Sometimes she raised her nose and inhaled vigorously, trying to smell the smell of Lao Dan in the wind from the south, but she only smelled the wetness of sadness and empty bitterness.Tweety felt that she was becoming an old well with dry water and could not cry again this night.A sleeping smiling face is her medicine, there will be no more old Dan's shoes on the kang, no loud farts from Lao Dan under the bed, no more his slight snoring in the room.Cui'er put the roots away, covered him with a thin quilt, kissed him on the forehead, and stared at the flames in a daze.She resisted falling asleep alone, afraid that if she lay down, she would wake up sweating in a nightmare, or cry loudly in her dream, chasing after the car that took Lao Dan away.The wind got into the crack of the door, made a low whining sound, swept up from the ground, and circled the faint flame of the lamp.Tweety hurriedly covered it with her hands, holding it carefully in the palm of her hand, the light of the flame leaked out from between her fingers, and the room was mottled immediately, like a butterfly fluttering in a halo.The familiar room instantly became strange, Cui'er looked at the room full of people, and sat on the edge of the kang in a daze.The new kitten squeezed through the crack of the door and came in shivering, as if it was drenched in the rain—the rain finally came, and the Xie family and the Guo family no longer had to fight over the mud soup in the well.Tweety watched it come over with relief.The kitten looked at Tweet who was sitting there in a daze, and seemed to hesitate for a while, then wagged its tail and jumped onto the kang, turned around at the corner of the kang, and curled up lazily into a black fluffy ball.

"Mr. Yuan Bai said that he will come back." Tweety said to herself.She let go of her hands covering the flames, and the room suddenly brightened. Villages without men still wake up early in the morning.She woke up listening to the cry of the magpie, and saw one kicking on her chubby legs, poking a hole the size of a fist in the window paper, drooling, moaning and looking outside.Tweety snatched her back, and Yougen grinned when she saw that she was awake.Tweety changed his diaper, wiped away the night's excrement and urine indiscriminately, rolled up her hair and went down to boil water.The yard was damp, and the big basin Tweety put in was overflowing.She found Lao Dan's fried noodles, added some sugar, put them in a bowl, and waited for the water to boil and let them dry. Suddenly, she couldn't sit still, so she locked You Gen in the room, without washing her face, Went to the entrance of the village.There were already many people standing at the entrance of the village, all of them old people and women, standing or squatting, walking or stopping, quietly moving in one direction.The smoke pots of the old men are extremely spicy, and the little steps of the old women are faltering.There are also those women who are like me gathered together, wearing red, green, gray and blue headscarves, clasping their hands and whispering something.Seeing them huddled together like they were going to a market, Tweety'er hesitated and wanted to turn back.A voice like a rotten loofah stopped her, it was Xie Shuanzi's Shanxi wife next door.This woman was born with the eyes of a night owl seeing a mouse, so of course she would not let her fat man go.

Now that you have been called, it would be petty to leave.The women waved to her again, yelling colorfully, so she could only walk into the group of women.Most of the girls have red eyes, cocoon-like eyeballs, and a sense of sadness.They seemed to have a lot to say, but when they got together, they all lowered their heads. Occasionally, they raised their eyes to look at the foggy distance, and then they hung down like thieves.Tweety came in, as if she hadn't been there, the atmosphere was completely out of tune with just now, it suddenly faded and became quiet, they seemed to be waiting for her to speak first, or they seemed to be waiting for her to say nothing , They just want to stand like this, standing is everything, and all this is just looking at the distance together and sighing.Tweety heard the ding-dong of the water in the Daizi River, and the tender green buds of the locust trees. She knew that a spring was coming, and even if the years were long, Lao Dan would return on another perfect day. Get together with them like a hen to comfort each other, especially stand with Shanxi women.Yougen is still waiting for her to prepare fried noodles and feed it spoonfuls, the donkey is still waiting for her to scatter grass, and the five acres of land are still waiting for her to take care of it before the sun comes out.She looked around the crowd again, and sure enough, some of the half-grown children didn't come, and Tweety became annoyed.

"Tweety, did you sleep well?" the Shanxi woman asked. "What's the matter? Why don't you just sleep?" Tweety said angrily. "Oh, I can't sleep. Shuanzi is gone like a ghost." The Shanxi woman looked from afar exaggeratedly.Everyone knows that she and Xie Shuanzi fought from the kang to the entrance of the village the day before yesterday because he gave the green widow from the east a pair of old shoes.The Green Widow had no affair with Xie Shuanzi at all, because the Green Widow had no affair with anyone. She said she was a widow, but everyone suspected that she was an unmarried stone girl, and God did not give her the capital to seduce men.Xie Shuanzi just gave her a pair of shoes with several holes to wear, and the Shanxi woman jumped as if she had drunk a vat of vinegar.

"I heard that the devils are about as tall as a bench, and they all come on donkeys. They only eat half of a meal. How can they beat our men?" said the woman from Xie's fourth family. "Isn't that right? Japan has heard that it is at sea, so how can they ride a donkey?" said the woman from Guo Ergou's family. "What's so strange about that, maybe the donkeys of the Orientals can swim? I heard from people in other villages." Xie Laosi's woman was a little sullen, and turned her face away. "My Shuanzi is tall and burly, and the devil can't take advantage of it. It would be bad luck for him to hit him." The corner of the Shanxi woman's mouth was raised, and half of her face was green with the green scarf.His Shuanzi is not as thick as Lao Dan with one leg, thanks to her being tall and burly.But Tweety had no intention of arguing with her about this, she didn't have the time to spare.

"I'm going back. There's water on the stove, and I'm hungry." Tweetie finished speaking, smiled at everyone, turned her head and walked home. "Tweety, I'm looking for you at noon? Let's discuss how to plant this land?" the Shanxi woman shouted.The lands of their two families are next to each other, and when the man left, the crops would not be barren, and the wheat would break through the ground. This is indeed a problem. Tweety responded, and trotted back home.The kettle was boiling hot, she picked it up with a rag, let it dry for a while, poured out two bowls of fried noodles, and stirred them with a spoon while flushing.The aroma of the fried noodles made Yougen burst into tears, Tweet hurriedly opened the door and carried him out, walked to the stone table and sat down, coaxing him, waiting for the fried noodles to cool down gradually.There are many tender green branches growing on the laurel tree, which are so brittle that it makes people feel distressed.And the ant nest under the tree, which was repeatedly tossed by roots, has quietly arched a hole, and black ants gushed out.They scramble to climb under the tree, looking for something they like. "Dan'er, if you come back, I won't slap you again..." Tweety said to herself. After Mr. Yuan Bai was hit by the gun butt, half of his head hurt for several days, and he couldn't get off the ground.Early this morning, he pushed the turtle monster up and asked him to go to the well at the entrance of the village to have a look at the water level in the well, whether it was clear or muddy.He asked the turtle monster to watch it every day, but he didn't know what it meant.The turtle monster hurriedly ran away, and saw that the water in the well was much higher than yesterday, almost bursting out, and it was much clearer than the previous few days, but it seemed that the smell was wrong, and it smelled like rust.Turtle got up early and had a dry mouth, so he drank his fill first, and before he got back to the yard, he started to have a stomachache, so he went straight to the pigsty and squatted down.After squatting down, I couldn’t get up. I wished I could pull out all my heart, liver, stomach and lungs, which made the pig below get annoyed. With a pig’s snout, it lifted up the turtle monster that was lying down and hadn’t grown up like a pig. The shit fell on the wall, and the turtle monster passed out. Mr. Yuan Bai rushed over after hearing the sound, rolled the turtle monster's eyelids, opened his mouth and looked again, endured the headache and ran to the entrance of the village, and rang the iron bell with his crutches.Tweety Er was cutting Yougen's hair, when she heard the bell ringing, she almost cut off her ears.Ringing the bell was no small matter, so she picked up Yougen, who had a yin and yang head, and rushed to the entrance of the village.The men left for a few days, did they come back?Cui'er was thinking of Bodhisattva in her heart, and she couldn't hold the baby vigorously, so she simply pinched her armpit, kicked her legs and ran away.Yougen is a person who doesn't like to cry. On the day his father left, other children's lungs burst from crying, but he didn't say a word, but now he is still laughing, stretching out his little hand to grab his mother's belt, talking about fun, fun all the way . All the people from the village came at once. The Guo family and the Xie family were still standing on both sides at first, but soon got mixed up.Those who fight are young people, and the old people have long been indifferent.Now all those who can be beaten are taken to Japan, and the old guys become friendly, knocking on each other's walking sticks, patting each other's shoulders, and asking about the unattended crop fields.Both the Guo family and the Xie family recognized Mr. Yuan Bai as an outsider.Mr. Yuan Bai is full of knowledge from the past to the present, knows the heavens and the earth, and is good at divination and calculation. He is half a living god.In fact, Mr. Yuan Bai has never been a gentleman. He looks white and black, but in fact he is only in his early fifties. He thinks that he has experienced too many vicissitudes and made him old in advance. Pulled the young man.Cui'er and Turtle Monster got close to each other, and asked about Mr. Yuan Bai's details.Knowing that he had a wife in the past, Tweety Er asked if this gentleman didn't want to remarry since he was not old.The turtle monster shook his head and didn't say anything, he just said that the old man didn't care much about women, and he was practicing some kind of breathing. He counted the time every day and sat cross-legged. Immortal. Mr. Yuan Bai saw that it was almost here, so he said something scary: "The well water is poisonous, don't drink it now..." Everyone panicked, and someone from the Guo family shouted, did you drink this water yesterday?Everyone started touching their stomachs. "Oh, I'm a little sick too!" "No wonder I feel dizzy early in the morning!" "It's okay to drink it yesterday, but it's okay to drink it today. The turtle monster has already been poisoned and has a high fever. Looking at the toxicity, if you drink two more sips, you will die." Mr. Yuan Bai removed the cloth on his head, and a jujube-like bulge appeared on the wound. The bag was swollen crystal clear, like a chrysalis about to hatch something.After hearing what he said, the symptoms of stomachache and dizziness disappeared, but more doubts arose. "Then what's going on? You can't drink the good well water? Could it be that someone poisoned it? Did your Guo family do it?" "Fart, obviously the Xie family did it..." "Stop arguing, how can you poison the water you want to drink? I think it must have been done by those who captured the soldiers, just to make us feel better!" "Everyone is taken away, why should they poison us, are they going to force the old people and women into it too?" Women are all earthen stoves, and thick smoke will come out when they are lit.A few sparks made them quarrel immediately, with their hips akimbo shaking their legs and their eyes staring. "Don't talk about it!" Mr. Yuan Bai looked at the crowd, swallowed his saliva with a sullen expression on his face, and said, "There are records in the county annals, but every time there is a severe drought in the beginning of spring and heavy rain in the wake of stings, the ancient wells in the county will rise with poisonous gas, drinking light from people and animals. If you use it to irrigate the crops, the leaves will turn yellow and the roots will rot, and the grains will not be harvested. It takes three months for the water to be detoxified. Let’s drink the water of the Daizi River first. There is absolutely no other reason, folks. Don’t doubt yourself any more, and don’t doubt him.” "Sir, are you sure there is something wrong with this day?" "Whenever there is a big change in the sky and disasters happen, there will be such strange things. The last time it happened was during the Guangxu period. If this is the case, don't try the risk again. After the 100-year period is over, use the animal to test that there is nothing wrong, and then drink this Well water. God has eyes. Although the Daizi River is small, it has not stopped flowing. This is the blessing of Banzi Village.” Tweet hugged You Gen, and listened to Mr. Yuan Bai's words in a daze. She always felt that the old man had something to say, but she deliberately didn't say it.She stretched her head to look at the ancient well, and felt that it was gloomy inside, and an ominous feeling made her pimple all over. "It's a big deal, if you don't drink it, don't drink it, isn't there a Daizi River?" the Shanxi woman said contemptuously. "Well water doesn't need to seep, it's cold and ice cold, it's better than river water for making porridge and tea, and it's even better for taking a bath to get rid of prickly heat..." "If you want to drink, you can drink it, but you will also be smashed by a pig." The Shanxi woman laughed after she finished speaking, causing half of the women to laugh.Tweety laughed dryly, thinking that this was not a joke, the well water was replaced by river water, even if it was a bit dirty, it didn't matter.It's just that she couldn't help linking the poisoning of the well water and the arrest of the men. Is this the kind of "day" that Mr. Yuan Bai said, and it comes every few decades?The old well is the acupoint of this world. If it only makes people suffer from minor illnesses and disasters, and there are no serious disasters, that's nothing.As long as the village is peaceful, what is suffering?Perhaps the day when the well water turns sweet is the time when Lao Dan returns home! "There are soldiers coming again!" The voice of the sharp-eyed Shanxi woman frightened everyone.Tweety was so frightened that she almost threw You Gen to the ground.Everyone cheered and looked towards the main road, only to see a figure wandering towards this side, holding a... gun in his hand.Even at a distance, it is indeed a gun.The women trembled for a moment, then hula turned and ran away. They were armed with guns again. Without a man to catch them, they couldn't have sex with women.Mr. Yuan Bai stood on the platform and squinted his eyes. A dexterous old man from the Guo family climbed up the tree. He only took one look and shouted: "It's a person, as if...injured." Tweety stopped after running two steps, and the women stopped when they saw her stop, and slowly everyone came back.The old people didn't move at all, whoever came, the people who were about to fall into the ground, even if they came, so what? The crowd was still loose just now, but now they gradually gather together, sticking their little feet together, shoulders and heels back and forth, watching the people come out of the fog together.He didn't hold the gun, but leaned on it like an old man, and it was quite heavy when he lowered it.Seeing that there was no danger, the women's words came up like poisonous water in a well. "A lost..." "It's not like, can you get lost here?" "It looks like a soldier, but he's not short." "Bah! Just after your man left, you wanted to hook up? What if he was a bandit?" "How can someone in military uniform be a bandit?" "Hey, look, I'm limping, I'm going to fall, I'm going to fall..." The man was about to walk to the front of the village, only then did he see that his face was covered in blood and was scorched black, and the woman yelled at him like this, the man fell down with a thump, and the gun fell to the side.The women squirmed a few times, but no one went forward.Mr. Yuan Bai jumped off the stage and ran to the man.As soon as the man fell, Tweety's heart suddenly darkened, and the women groaned and gathered into a flock of chickens sleeping on the trees in the middle of the night. The person holding the gun was Guo Shuiying's son, Guo Tietou, a young man who got into the car with Lao Dan and others.The car he was sitting in was hit by a devil's shell, and he and the car fell down the valley. According to him, he was the only one who killed the car.There were more than a dozen young people from the village on the car, some of them recognized and some of them were unfamiliar. Guo Tietou's mother hugged her son's head and cried and laughed. A whole room of women eagerly asked about the fate of their husbands or sons. When they learned that they were in the car, they cried loudly, and when they learned that they were in other cars, they also fell down. tears.They questioned every old detail they could recall, imagining every possible new outcome.Until Guo Tietou's mother rubbed fire and drove everyone out of the yard. The son who came back was bruised and his leg seemed to be broken.Mr. Yuan Bai looked at it but said it was all right, and it will be fine after a month of raising it.Guo Tietou's iron head was scorched and scarred everywhere, and a piece of scalp that was as long as a thumb was missing. He said it was shrapnel, and the skull would be gone if it was lower.Mr. Yuan Bai said that the boy must have been frightened, he avoided the mouths and eyes of the women, and shivered in his mother's arms. He climbed up from the valley, was rescued by a few miscellaneous people, fed, ate and drank, slept on the side of the road for a few days, walked with a limp for dozens of miles before returning to the village, and died on the road with one breath.Fortunately, he was not arrested again. His mother was afraid that the villagers would sue, so she told the villagers the next day that the child was crazy, screaming in the middle of the night, knocking over his father's spirit seat, and was about to rush out with his bare butt foaming at the mouth , you women, be careful. Tweety also asked among the women, is Lao Dan in that car?Guo Tietou was crying like a woman, wishing he could get back into his mother's belly.Tweety knew that there was nothing she could ask today, but the dozen or so people who died in the car had already become a nightmare for the women in Banzi Village, and the answer to this mystery would be revealed at some point.If this Guo Tietou is really crazy, what he said can't be counted. Those terrible doubts are hidden in that crazy iron head, and it will take years to pour out. Doesn't this make people crazy? All the women in the village were sleepless all night, and Tweety was no exception. This hope seemed to be harder to bear than despair.Since Guo Tietou was insane, it would not be credible for him to tell the names of those on the car.The women and the old people were hopeful again. The women worshiped the Bodhisattva at night, and the old people watched the sky in the courtyard.They hope that their husbands or sons can come back like Guo Tietou, even if they are crazy and disabled, even if they become half as tall as a turtle, just come back.