Chapter 2 a lot of housework

confidant "I hear whispers in the middle of the night, and the moon sets like a golden basin." What was said at that time, was it not just a heartfelt word, but also a heartfelt word?I'm not going to pretend to treat what I'm going to say here as a serious secret, but this article was written in a hurry because of the urging of the editor, so I'm a little anxious, and what I write is not to think about it , is always there, so to speak, part of the subconscious background.As if it was a night when the "moon sets like a golden pot", someone whispered to you and told you!

This morning the landlord sent someone to measure the length of the hot water pipe in the apartment, probably to dismantle it and sell it.My aunt couldn't help but sigh with emotion, saying that people nowadays have dirty thoughts and only care about it for a while, this is a troubled world. People in troubled times muddle along without having a real home.Yet I have an everlasting feeling for my aunt's home.My aunt lived with my mother for many years, although they moved several times, and my mother was not in Shanghai at the time, and my aunt was left alone. damage.The day before yesterday I broke a piece of glass on the tabletop, and I still had to pay 600 yuan for one piece. I happened to be bankrupt these two days, but I hurried to find a carpenter.Recently, for some reason, I have a tendency to break things. (Cups, plates, bowls and spoons are never counted. Occasionally my aunt smashed a teacup, and I always happily said: "It's my aunt's turn to smash it!") The last time I was eager to collect clothes on the balcony, I couldn't push the glass door open , put his knee against the door, and there was a bang, a piece of glass powder shattered, only a little bit of skin was scratched on the knee, but the blood flowed out, splashed on the feet, rubbed the red medicine, and the red medicine flowed all the way along the bloodstains Go down, as if you have eaten a knife from Wang Wu of the Great Swordsman.Showing it to my aunt, she bent down and took a quick glance, knowing that it was not fatal, so she asked about the glass with concern, and I went to match another piece.

Because the current home is complete in itself, and I just bumped into it to break things, but the real home should fit. As I grow up, I think of my former home. The first home is in Tianjin.I was born in Shanghai and moved to the north when I was two years old.I’ve been to Beijing too, and I only remember being carried around by servants, pulling the soft skin on her neck with my hands——as she gets older, the skin on her neck gradually sags; feeling.When I was a child, I had a bad temper, and when I got impatient, I scratched her face with bloodstains.Her surname is He, and her name is "He Gan".I don't know if it's the dialect there, but we call it Laomazi why do you do what you do.He Gan is very similar to the current fashionable pen names: "He Ruo", "He Zhi", "He Xin".There is a play by Bernard Shaw: "The House of Broken Hearts", which was bought by my father at the beginning.His English inscription is left on the blank:

"Tianjin, North China. Nineteen twenty-six.No. 61, No. 32 Road. Timothy C. Zhang" I have always felt that it is almost boring to solemnly leave the surname, the year and the month, and the address in the book, but I recently found a few lines in this book, and I like it very much, because there is an air of late spring , like our home in Tianjin. There is a swing frame in the yard, a tall girl with a scar on her forehead, so I called her "Scar Yaya". One time she swung on the swing to the highest point and turned over with a whimper. chicken.At noon in summer, I wore a white blouse with red peach gauze and red hakama seeds. I sat on the bench, drank a bowl full of light green, astringent and slightly sweet Liuyisan, read a riddle book, and sang, "Little Puppy, take a step and take a bite." The answer is scissors.There is also a selection of children's songs, one of which describes the most ideal half-village and half-country life in seclusion. I only remember the sentence "peach branches and peach leaves make a side room", which doesn't seem to sound like a child.

There is a bluestone anvil in one corner of the patio, and there is a man with a good understanding of writing and ink. The man with great ambitions often dips a brush in water to practice writing big characters on it.This man was thin and handsome, and he told me Romance of the Three Kingdoms. I liked him and gave him an inexplicable name called "Maowu".Mao's two younger brothers are called "Er Mao" and "San Mao".Maowu's wife is called "Maowu's bride", or "Maoniang" for short.Mao Niang had a red oval face, watery eyes, and a stomach full of "Meng Lijun disguised as a man's champion".Of course, I didn't know these things at that time, I only knew that they were a lovely family.They are from Nanjing, so I have always had a bright and rich feeling about the small families in Nanjing that does not match the facts.After a long time, they left our house and opened a grocery store. The maid took my brother and me to take care of their business, and bought a few low-quality colored flower thermoses with great effort. Candy, still has a sense of abundance.However, their store finally lost money, and the situation was extremely embarrassing.Maowu's mother also blamed the two daughters-in-law for not giving her grandchildren, and Maoniang complained behind her back that someone taught two couples to sleep in the same room, even though there were curtains on the bed.

The maid leading my younger brother is called "Zhang Gan", with bound feet, she is smarter and takes the lead in everything."Why do you want to lead me?" Because I was leading a girl, I felt guilty and let her do everything.I couldn't stand her patriarchal argument, and often argued with her, she said: "You have such a temper, you have to live in the exclusive village! I hope you will marry far away in the future—my brother doesn't want you to come back!" The position of the fingers holding the chopsticks predicted my future fate, saying: "The chopsticks are held close, and the marriage is far away." I quickly moved my fingers to the upper end of the chopsticks and said: "Where is the grasp far?" She said: " Of course, if you catch far, you will marry far." I was so angry that I couldn't speak.Zhang Qian made me think about the issue of equality between men and women very early. I must be strong and stronger than my brother.

My younger brother was really disappointed, because he was sick and had to eat without food, so he was very greedy. When he saw someone's mouth moving, he asked someone to open his mouth to let him see what was in his mouth.Sick in bed, clamoring to eat pine nut candy—the pine nut kernels were crushed into powder, mixed with rock sugar sprinkles—people added coptis juice to the sugar, fed it to him, and made him stop thinking. He cried loudly and stuffed his fist completely Mouth to go, still want to.So they rubbed coptis juice on their fists again.He sucked his fist and cried even more.

The pine nut candies come in small flower magnetic jars from Golden Ears.Next to it is a yellow and red flat peach-shaped magnetic cylinder, which contains prickly heat powder.The afternoon sun fell on the worn white dresser.Once Zhang Gan bought a persimmon and put it in a drawer. Because it was too raw, he put it there first.Every two days I went to open the drawer and began to wonder if Zhang Gan had forgotten its existence, but I couldn't ask her because of a strange sense of self-esteem.After a long time, the persimmon rotted into a bubble of water.I regret it so much that I still remember it to this day.

My mother was absent from the original home, and I didn't feel any deficiency because she was no longer there.When I was with her, I remember that every morning the maid carried me to her bed, which was a copper bed. I climbed on the checkered green brocade quilt, and followed her reciting Tang poems incomprehensibly.She was always unhappy when she just woke up, and she only became happy after playing with me for a long time.I started to read the word blocks, that is, I lay on the side of the bed. After reading two words every afternoon, I could eat two pieces of mung bean cake. Later, my father married my aunt and grandma outside, and he wanted to take me to play in the small mansion. He carried me to the back door, but I refused to go. I tried my best to hold the door and kicked my feet. I came over and hit it a few times, and finally hugged it.When I got there, I ate a lot of candy very easily.There are mahogany furniture in the small mansion, tall silver plates are placed on the round table carved with mica stone heart, and my aunt treats me very well.

My mother and my aunt went overseas together. On the day of boarding the boat, she lay on the bamboo bed and wept bitterly, with small twitching and glowing patches nailed to the green dress and green skirt.The servants came several times to remind me that it was time, but she didn't seem to hear, they didn't dare to speak anymore, they pushed me forward and told me to say, "Auntie, it's getting late." One room, so called uncle and aunt.) She ignored me and just cried.She sleeps there like the sea reflected in the glass of the cabin, little flakes of green, yet with the sea's endless turbulent sorrow.

I stood in front of the bamboo bed and looked at her, a little at a loss, and they didn't teach me anything else. Fortunately, the servant took me away. After my mother left, my aunt moved in.The family is very lively, and there are often banquets called Tiaozi.I peeked from behind the curtain, and I paid particular attention to the two sixteen or seventeen-year-old sisters who were sitting on the same sofa chair. Like together. My aunt didn't like my younger brother, so she tried her best to praise me and took me to Shilin to watch the dance every night.I sit at the table.The white cream on the cake in front of me was as high as my eyebrows, but I ate the whole piece and gradually dozed off in the reddish dusk. As usual, I went home on the back of the servant at three or four o'clock. The family hired a teacher for my younger brother and me. It is a private school system. I read all day long and swayed in front of the window in the evening.I just remembered it when I read "Tai Wang Shi Yu Yu" and changed it to "Tai Wang is addicted to smoked fish".During that period, I was often troubled by not being able to recite books, probably because I cried on the morning of the first day of the new year, so I cried all year round. —— On the first day of the new year, I asked my mother to wake me up at dawn to watch them welcome the New Year. Who knew that they were afraid that I would stay up late and work hard, so they asked me to sleep a little longer. When I woke up, the firecrackers had already been let off.I felt that all the hustle and bustle was in the past, and I had no share. I lay on the bed and cried and cried, refusing to get up, and was finally pulled up.Sitting on the little rattan chair, I still cried when people put on new shoes for me-even if I put on new shoes, I couldn't keep up. My aunt lived downstairs in a big dark and messy room, and I rarely went in, and stood in front of my father's smoke kang to endorse.My aunt, who was also literate, taught one of her own nephews to read "fish in the pond, swim around" and beat him wantonly, his face was often swollen to the point that he couldn't open his eyes.She beat my father too, smashing his head with a spittoon.So someone from the clan spoke up and forced her to walk.I sat on the window sill upstairs and saw two collapsed cars slowly coming out of the gate, all of which were silverware she had taken away.The servants all said, "Now it's all right!" I came to Shanghai when I was eight years old, and I took a boat through the black water ocean and the green water ocean. It seemed that it was black and dark, and green and green. Although I had never seen the praise of the sea in the book, I still felt happy.Sleeping in the cabin and reading books I have read many times, there are only high mountains and red hot dust. When I arrived in Shanghai, sitting in the carriage, I was very sly and happy, with blue butterflies flying on my pink foreign gauze shirt and trousers.We live in a small Shikumen house with red oil board walls.For me, that too has a tight vermilion pleasure. However, my father was overdosed with morphine at that time and was very close to death.He sat alone on the balcony, with a wet towel on his head, staring straight at the eaves, with thick white rain like tendon ropes.It was raining, and I couldn't hear what he was muttering, and I was very scared. The maid told me that I should be happy that my mother was coming back.On the day my mother came back, I was clamoring to put on what I thought was the cutest little red coat, but the first thing she said when she saw me was, "How can you dress her in such a small dress?" Soon I made new clothes, Everything is different.My father regretted his mistakes and was sent to the hospital.We moved to a garden house with dogs, flowers, and fairy tale books, and suddenly many rich and beautiful relatives and friends were added to the family.My mother and a fat aunt sat on the piano bench together to imitate a love performance in a movie. I sat on the ground watching, laughed, and rolled around on the wolf fur mattress. I wrote a letter to a playmate in Tianjin, describing our new house, wrote three pieces of letter paper, and drew a picture.Didn't get a reply—who would hate such vulgar boasting?Everything in my home is considered the pinnacle of beauty.The blue chair cover and the old rose-red carpet are actually not very harmonious, but I like it, and I also like England, because the three words England remind me of little red houses under the blue sky, while France is a little red house. The blue color of the rain, like bathroom tiles, smells like hair tonic. My mother told me that it often rains in England and sunny in France, but I couldn't correct my initial impression. My mother also told me that red is the best background to avoid when drawing pictures. The background should look quite far away. The red background always feels close to my eyes, but the walls of my brother’s bedroom and mine are that orange-red color with no distance, which is my choice. , and I like to paint villains with red walls, which are warm and close. In addition to painting, I also played the piano and studied English. It was probably the only time in my life that I had the demeanor of a Western-style lady.In addition, it is full of rich sentimentality. When I saw a flower in the book and heard my mother talk about its history, I actually shed tears.When my mother saw it, she said to my younger brother, "Look, my sister didn't cry because she couldn't eat candy!" I was praised, and when I was happy, my tears dried up, and I was very embarrassed. Lao She's "Two Horses" was published in the "Fiction Monthly", and the magazine arrived every month. My mother sat on the toilet and read it, laughing, and I leaned on the door frame to laugh.So until now I still like "Two Horses", although Lao She's later works are much better than "Two Horses". After my father was cured, he regretted it again and asked my mother to subsidize the living expenses, trying to force her out of all the money. At that time, she couldn't leave even if she wanted to.They argued violently, and the frightened servants pulled the child out and told us to be good and mind our own business.My brother and I were quietly riding a three-wheeled small bicycle on the balcony, neither of us making a sound. On the balcony in late spring, green bamboo curtains were hung, and the ground was full of dense sunlight. The parents finally agreed to a divorce.My aunt and my father had always disagreed, so they moved away with my mother, and my father moved to a house in an alley. (My father has never paid much attention to "basic clothing, food and housing". He only pays attention to "walking", and he is willing to spend some money on the car.) Although I did not ask for my opinion on their divorce, I expressed my approval. Disappointed, because the red and blue home can no longer be maintained.Fortunately, the contract stipulates that I can often visit my mother.I was very happy and comforted to see the raw floor tiles along the basin and the gas stove for the first time in her apartment. Soon my mother left for France, I lived in school, and she came to see me. I didn’t say goodbye, and she seemed very happy that things could pass smoothly and without any trouble, but I know she was thinking: "The next generation is so cruel!" Waiting for her to leave the school gate, I looked at the closed red iron gate from a distance through the tall pines and firs on the campus, and I was still indifferent. , but gradually felt the need for tears in this situation, so the tears came, sobbing loudly in the cold wind, crying for myself. My mother is gone, but my aunt's house still has her mother's air, delicate jigsaw table, soft colors, and some lovely people come and go that I don't quite understand.All the best I know, mentally and materially, is here.Therefore, for me, spiritual and material goodness have always been integrated, not the opposite of spirit and flesh as ordinary young people think, which always conflicts and requires painful sacrifices. On the other hand, there is my father's house, where I despise everything, opium, the old gentleman who taught my younger brother to make "On Emperor Han Gaozu", chapter novels, and live in a lazy and dusty way.Like the Zoroastrian Persians, I forcibly divided the world into two halves, light and darkness, good and evil, gods and demons.That which is on my father's side is necessarily bad, although I like it sometimes.I like the cloud of opium, the misty sunshine, the tabloids scattered in the room, (until now, the big stack of tabloids still gives me a feeling of going home) reading the tabloids, talking to my father about the jokes among relatives— - I know he is lonely, he likes me when he is lonely.It was always afternoon in my father's room, and after sitting there for a long time, I felt sinking, sinking. On the one hand, I have an ambitious plan. After graduating from high school, I will go to the UK to study at a university. For a while, I want to learn to draw cartoon films and try to introduce Chinese painting styles to the United States.I want to be more in the limelight than Lin Yutang, I want to wear the most fancy clothes, travel around the world, have my own house in Shanghai, and live a neat and tidy life. But here comes a solid, real thing.My father is getting married.My aunt first told me this news on Xia Ye's small balcony.I cried, because I had read too many novels about my stepmother, and I never thought it would happen to me.I have only one burning feeling: this must not be allowed to happen under any circumstances.If that woman was right in front of me, leaning over the iron railing, I would definitely push her off the balcony, and it would be over. My stepmother also smoked opium.Not long after we got married, we moved to an old bungalow in the style of the early Republic of China. It was originally our own property, and I was born in that house.There are too many memories of our family in the house, like repeated photocopied photos, the whole air is a bit fuzzy.A place with the sun makes people drowsy, and a place with shadows has the coolness of ancient tombs.The black heart of the house is awake and has a strange world of its own.But at the edge of the boundary between yin and yang, you can see the sun, hear the bell of the tram and play "Su San Don't Cry" over and over again in the cloth shop with a big sale, and there is only lethargy in the sun. I lived in school and rarely went home. Although I saw my younger brother and the old "He Gan" being tortured at home, it was very unfair, but because it was so rare to come back, I politely dealt with it.My father was very proud of my composition and once encouraged me to learn to compose poetry.I have done three Qijue poems in total, and the second chant "Xia Yu" has two verses that are thicker and denser, so I also think it is very good: "The sound is like a drum that urges flowers to bloom, and the first branch of rain lotus blooms. "The third chant of Hua Mulan is too ugly, so I have no interest in learning it any further. When I graduated from middle school, my mother came back to China. Although I didn't feel that my attitude had changed significantly, my father felt that this was unbearable for him. After following him for so many years, being fed and educated, my heart is still that side.I made things even worse and asked him to study abroad in the form of a speech, and I ate and ate it. It was a very bad speech.He lost his temper and said that I was provoked by others.My stepmother scolded on the spot and said, "Your mother is still interfering in your family's affairs even after she got divorced. Since you can't let go of this place, why didn't you come back? It's a pity that you are a step late, and you have to be an aunt when you come back!" The Shanghai War broke out, and my business was put on hold for the time being.Because our home is near the Suzhou River, we couldn't fall asleep hearing the sound of cannons at night, so we stayed with my mother for two weeks.On the day I came back, my stepmother asked me, "Why didn't you tell me when you left?" I said I told my father.She said: "Oh, I told my father! Where do you still see me in your eyes?" She slapped me on the mouth, and I instinctively wanted to fight back, but two old mothers rushed over and stopped me.My stepmother ran upstairs screaming all the way: "She hit me! She hit me!" At this moment, everything became very clear. Goldfish's goldfish tank, orange-red fish and algae are delicately traced on the white porcelain tank.My father rushed downstairs with his slippers on.He grabbed me, fisted and kicked, and shouted: "You still hit people! If you hit people, I will hit you! I must kill you today!" I felt my head turn to one side, then to the other, countless times. Once, the ears were also deafened.I was sitting on the ground, lying on the ground, and he grabbed my hair and kicked me.It was finally pulled away.I have always been very clear in my heart, remembering my mother's words: "If he hits you, don't fight back, otherwise, it will always be your fault if you tell it," so I didn't want to resist.He went upstairs, and I got up and went to the bathroom to look in the mirror, to see the wounds on my body and the red fingerprints on my face, and I was going to report to the police station immediately.When I walked to the gate, I was stopped by the patrolman who guarded the gate and said: "The door is locked, and the key is with the master." I tried to slap, yelled and kicked the door, trying to attract the attention of the guard outside the iron gate, but no, Sap is not easy job.When I got home, my father blew it up again, throwing a large vase at my head, tilted slightly, and scattered broken porcelain all over the room.After he left, He Gan cried to me and said, "How did you get this?" At this moment, I felt full of grievances, and burst into tears, hugging her and crying for a long time.But she blamed me in her heart, because she cherished me, she was timid for me, afraid that I would offend my father and suffer for the rest of my life, fear made her cold and hard.I stayed alone in an empty room downstairs all day, and slept on a mahogany kang bed at night. The next day, my aunt came to intercede. When my stepmother saw her, she sneered, "Are you here to catch opium?" Before she could say anything, my father jumped up from the cigarette shop and beat her on the head, wounding my aunt too. , entered the hospital, but did not go to the police station, because it was too embarrassing for our family. My father threatened to shoot me dead with a pistol.I was temporarily imprisoned in an empty room, and the house I was born in suddenly became strange, like a blue-white white wall in the shadows under the moonlight, one-sided and crazy. There's a poem by Beverley Nichols about the half-light of a madman: "In your heart sleeps the moonlight," and I read it and think of the blue moonlight on our floor, that quietly kills. I also know that my father will never kill me, but I will be locked up for a few years, and it will not be me when I am released.Within weeks I had aged many years.I squeezed the wooden railing on the balcony tightly with my hands, as if water could be squeezed out of the wood.Overhead was the magnificent blue sky, and the sky at that time had sound, because the sky was full of planes.I wish a bomb had dropped on our house, and I would die with them.He Gan was afraid that I would run away, so he repeatedly told me: "Don't walk out of this door! If you go out, you won't be able to come back." However, I still thought of many escape plans. " came to mind together.What I remember most clearly is that in "The Nine-Tailed Turtle", Zhang Qiugu's friend had a lover who made a rope out of a quilt and let it out through the window.I don't have windows facing the street here, so I can only go out from the garden over the wall.There is a goose shed against the wall where you can step on it, but when it is more quiet, what should you do if you startle two geese and scream? In the garden there are big white geese croaking and chasing and pecking, and the only tree is a tall white magnolia, with huge flowers, like dirty white handkerchiefs, and like waste paper, thrown there, forgotten, big white flowers All year round.There was never such a sloppy flower. While plotting my way out, I fell ill with dysentery and almost died.My father does not call a doctor for me, nor does he have any medicine.I was sick for half a year, lying on the bed looking at the light blue sky in autumn and winter, lime antlers were raised on the opposite door tower, and there were two rows of small stone Bodhisattvas underneath—I don’t know which dynasty it is now, which generation... I was born in a haze In this house, also die here dimly?When he died, he was buried in the garden. However, just as I was thinking like this, I also listened to every opening and closing of the gate with all my strength. The patrolman Guzikazi pulled out the rusty latch, and then opened the iron gate with a loud bang.I also heard this sound in my sleep and dreams, as well as a cinder road leading to the gate, and the creaking of sand under my feet.Even if they loosened their defenses because I was sick in bed, could they sneak out silently? As soon as I could walk with my hands on the wall, I was ready to flee.First, I asked He Gan about the time when the two patrolmen were changing shifts. In the middle of winter night, I leaned on the window and used a telescope to see that there was no one on the dark road. I touched the iron door step by step against the wall, pulled out the latch, and opened door, put the binoculars on the milk crate, and dodge out. — really standing on the sidewalk!There is no wind, just the lonely cold around the lunar calendar year, and only a piece of cold ashes can be seen under the street lamp, but what an amiable world!I hurried along the street, every foot on the ground was a loud kiss.And I was negotiating with a rickshaw driver not far from home—I'm so glad I hadn't forgotten how to bargain.What a madness!Can be caught again at any time.It was only after things had changed that I felt the absurdity of the adventure.Later I learned that He Gan was greatly involved because he was suspected of being an accomplice with me.My stepmother gave all my belongings to others, only when I died.This is the end of my family. I fled to my mother's house, and my younger brother came with me that summer, bringing a pair of basketball shoes wrapped in newspaper, saying that he would not go back.My mother explained to him that she could only afford one person's upbringing financially and therefore could not take him in.He cried, and I cried beside him.Then he finally went back with those basketball shoes. He Gan sneakily smuggled some of my childhood toys out for me as souvenirs. Inside was a pair of white ivory and light green ostrich feather fans. Because of the age, one fan lost its hair and flew all over the sky, making people cough and choke. shed tears.I still have a similar feeling when I think back to the day when my brother came. I make up books to prepare for the University of London.I was used to being alone in my father's house, and I suddenly wanted to learn to be a man, and it was very difficult to be a "lady" in a difficult situation.At the same time, I can see that my mother has sacrificed a lot for me, and has always wondered whether I was worth these sacrifices.I also doubt it.I often wandered around on the roof balcony of the apartment alone, and the Spanish-style white walls cut out decisive strips and blocks on the blue sky.Looking up to the scorching sun, I felt that I was standing naked under the sky, being judged like all the bewildered minors, because of excessive boasting and self-contempt.At this time, the mother's home is no longer soft. I was admitted to university, but because of the war, I couldn’t go to England, so I changed to Hong Kong. Three years later, because of the war, I returned to Shanghai before finishing my studies.The home in the apartment is still there. Although I don't believe in it so absolutely, it is still cherishable.Now I live in old dreams and dream new dreams in old dreams. As I write this, the wind blowing on my back is a bit cold, I went to close the glass door, and saw a fluffy yellow moon on the balcony. In ancient times, there was Genggu in the night, and now there are clappers selling wontons. For thousands of years, countless people’s dreams have been decided: "Tuo, Tuo, Tuo, Tuo" - a lovely and sad time!