Chapter 5 elder

I thought of a few old people: The first one that came to my memory was an old servant in my grandmother's house.When I was young, I often lived in my grandmother's house.It was a huge old house at the foot of the pale rocks.There is a bamboo forest behind the house, with whip-like gnarled bamboo roots hanging down from the walls.An abandoned well below covered with duckweed has become the best hiding place for frogs. I was afraid of the seclusion but felt a kind of attraction, because the colorful wings of the butterflies fluttered among the almost untouched grass paths, and there were red and green sunny flies that are rare elsewhere.I myself grow as silently as the unnoticed vegetation.There are only four owners in this huge ancient house: my grandmother is very old; my grandfather is often sick; the eldest uncle is in the middle school in the county; the second uncle who is only two years older than me likes to run out Some wild children play.How shall I pass my time?Those locked yards, those buildings where things are stored.And the back of the house, they rarely go.The rooms with their patterned windows were full of shadows again.And once, my grandmother opened the dressing box on the table that she hadn't used for many years, and found a small snake coiled in it, which made me afraid to rummage around in the house.I often play alone on the steps outside the main house.It was a long staircase with stone railings and black-painted wooden benches.Standing there and looking up, I saw three huge plaques hanging high.

On the edge of the hollowed out dragon shape, the sparrow has found an ideal home, so occasionally a piece of dry grass or a feather will fall from midair. But now these have become the background of the old servant in my memory.I saw him come from the left end of the long steps with a handful of lit incense, step over the two-foot-high threshold that is difficult for children's legs to enter the main room, and stick a stick of incense in the incense burners in front of all the shrines. Burn incense, and then reverently knocked on the round bowl-shaped copper bell. A clear and silvery voice trembled, drifted away, and finally disappeared in the loneliness of this ancient house.

It was a work of his morning and evening. He is a deaf man.People always shouted loudly to him.His sense of hearing can sometimes catch a few simple sounds, so he smiles and nods his head, satisfied with his comprehension or guess.He hardly speaks himself, but sometimes when he tells his master about something, he shouts loudly and gestures with a smile.How old was he himself, and when did he come to this old house, no one mentioned and I never asked.His gray hair speaks of his age.His varied but skilful daily work spoke of a long history of servant of the house. I don't know how to enumerate his daily tasks, should I make a long list here, or just describe a few at random.In addition to burning incense in the morning and evening, every day we got up to see the stone-paved yards exposed as clean as in the morning, and that was all due to the labor of him and a broom.In the kitchen, he was given a lot of odd jobs, and he managed a pot and stove for fattening pigs all by himself.Every morning he went out with a flock of ducks to herd in the stream, and at dusk he returned with the little troop.He often bends down in the vegetable field.We ate vegetables grown by him during the dinner.And, when we went out for a walk, we saw the sunflowers holding up their big golden blooms, and the radish patch floating with little lavender and white crossflowers.

Sunflower flowers are proud and happy; radish flowers are so humble.How much I used to love the grass outside the gate, the ancient cypress tree was like a giant, the castor tree had big star-fish-shaped leaves, and the evergreen with long hair.But now it's all an ensemble anthem sung to the hardworking old man.How many years he has been a servant in his grandmother's house, and when he left the old house, I can't say exactly.It's just that while I was wasting my time in another environment, I heard that one day he suddenly fainted by the stove in the kitchen.After waking up, he went home by himself.Only then did people think of his aging.After some days, I heard that he returned to the old house again, still doing those various jobs.Afterwards, he didn't know whether it was another fainting or some other reason, he went home by himself and left the old house forever.

I am on the village.I grew up among the cold and hard stones. Adults even demand the restraint of a thirty-year-old adult from a ten-year-old child.But an honest and well-behaved child sometimes shows naughty tendencies, just like adults sometimes do some boring or even harmful actions for the sake of loneliness.In this situation, I sometimes played tricks on the gatekeeper in the village. He was a quick-tempered old man with a gray goatee and a small braid of hair hanging down the back of his head.He has been watching the gates of our village for several years.Beside the doorway he has a hut.He took turns eating at each house for a day, but when the area was relatively quiet and many families had moved back to their residences, he would go to those houses every month to collect a few liters of rice and cook for himself.I don't know whether it was because of his natural impatience or the poverty and hard work of the world that made him irritable. In short, when he appeared in my memory, he was mostly sitting on the low wooden bench in front of the gate with an angry face, grunting, and using his The iron part beneath the long pipe beat the stone-paved street.The water bamboo pipe that has turned yellow is also his walking stick, with a copper mouthpiece on it and an iron pipe on the bottom.It's also the reason why I sometimes end up hating him.I used to hide it when he wasn't looking and make him look for it everywhere.Once I made myself a toy called a water gun.It is made of a bamboo tube with bamboo knots and holes pierced at the bottom, and a chopstick wrapped with many layers of cloth on the head. It can suck in a large glass of water, and when it is pressed out, it can shoot into the mouth. a place far away.I can't remember if the weapon offended him, but anyway, he told my grandfather.The punishment I got was two chestnuts and a few reprimands. At the same time, the weapon was taken away by my grandfather, over the city wall, and thrown to the foot of the rock.

Later, he often engaged in a kind of amateur work: sitting on a special wooden frame, weaving straw sandals with yellow straw and bamboo hemp.In this country with rugged mountain roads, this simple but convenient shoe can be seen on the feet of almost every laborer.His initial products were very clumsy, but gradually improved, and he sold them to bearers, craftsmen, or servants in and out of the village at the price of three copper dollars per pair. I seem to see him sitting on such a wooden frame now.Work has softened him up a bit.So another old man appeared in my imagination, living in a thatched hut next to a main road, weaving straw sandals all day long and selling them to passers-by of various professions.He traveled less than ten miles in his life, but the straw sandals he wove traveled to many places and encountered many miracles.

When will I start writing this "The Adventures of Straw Sandals"? It's dusk.The night closes softly like a flower.We sat on the stone steps outside the gate of the village.The distant mountains gradually disappeared from the sight.Bats were flying above our heads.We have just returned from a wandering around the foot of the village.We walked through the woods strewn with pine needles and pine cones, passed the thatched huts of several farmers, passed wheat fields and flowering pea fields, and walked a wide circle around the hill on which our village was built. Climb up the dozens of winding stone steps with tiredness, and sit down to rest at the gate of the village.

Me, my grandfather, and an old man who occasionally comes to my house to play for a few days. He was tracing a horse with sonorous voice and gestures.It seemed as if there was a tall brown horse standing in front of us, raising its neck with long mane and whistling.He has a lot of knowledge about horses: he is good at riding, discerning, and healing. He is a martial artist.I once heard from him the scene of the previous martial arts examination: how to wield a broadsword, how to lift a stone step, how to ride a horse, gallop, suddenly turn around and shoot three arrows at the target.When he talked about archery, he always bent his arms vigorously in the posture of holding the bow with one hand and pulling the string with the other.

I have also heard some legends about warriors from him.In an ancient temple somewhere, he said, there once lived an old monk who was famous for stick skills; he taught many disciples, and one day, he carried an earthen pot on his back and stood by the wall.Tell his disciples to besiege him, as long as anyone knocks on the crock with that long wooden stick, he will surrender.As a result, it goes without saying that the old monk will not lose. He himself is very old, but he has a loud voice that should not be possessed by an old man, and he likes to talk about things related to martial arts.But I was a child at the time, not aware of the many injustices and misfortunes in the world, and I only listened to his narratives as stories, and never imagined that I would dress up as a knight errant and go outside in the future.I listened more eagerly to the situation beyond the hill.He has traveled far to sell horses.

On the other side of the mountain, on the other side of the distant mountain that meets the white clouds and engulfs the setting sun, what kind of places are there, what kind of people and things are there? Whenever I sit outside the gate of the village and stare at , I guessed on my own.The old man's narration did not give me clear ideas and satisfaction.Gradually he came more and more sparsely.Probably a few years later, I heard that he has gone into another world.Human life is short.At last I saw that I was an old man, alone and peacefully hiding in the countryside like a winter tree.I study botany or horticulture.I live with those humble vegetables, those tall fruit trees, those plants with beautiful flowers.I obey the seasons of nature as much as they do.Always in my hand is the hoe, with which I approach the earth intimately.Or I'll keep a bucket of bees under a sunny eaves.Life is too bitter.Let's put a little sugar in the tea.In the long night with reduced sleep, under the glowing oil lamp, I recalled and wrote the story of my own life slowly and in detail...but I woke up from my meditation.What an absurd dream it was.There is still a long distance between adulthood and old age.What shall I fill it with?It should not be a dream but serious work.

Night of March 31, 1937