Chapter 6 The Night of the Burial of the Moth

Neurasthenia is probably caused by too many boring idle days. The boredom of "life" is indeed a root cause of this fashionable disease; or on the other hand, it is like the emptiness that people feel in their mouths after a fever, the emptiness of life. , is a symptom of neurasthenia, the same. In short, since the beginning of summer, this symptom seems to be getting worse day by day; after moving, of course, this symptom moved with me. Although it can't be called recuperation, the newly moved cabin really has a bit of rural charm.Autumn is the season, and the vicinity of this hut, this area bordering civilization and wilderness, should be the most sensual time.The sound is the sound of autumn, and the color is of course the autumn color.

First let me tell you why I moved here. I don’t know when, after being stamped with the “Mark of Cain”, I disappeared from the society I usually go in and out of, and I dare not go there.Of course, society has many layers, but there seem to be many explanations for the "mark". The most important explanation, of course, is rebellion. In a country where being an official is "everything", the political explanation of this "mark" can include other kinds.But that's not always the case. Human beings like ambiguity the most, and when necessary, they also like to distinguish.

So the second explanation came, which seemed to be about the "era", which was "outdated".The two poles of the sky, the north and the south, can be used as long as they are needed, and they can be used at the same time. This is the wisdom of modern people. Traveling between the two poles, the old and the new alike can use the third explanation, which is the so-called "violation of morality". But if you rub it on the forehead, you will not be able to find out the "mark of Cain", let alone all kinds of explanations.Or the person who stole has a guilty conscience and thinks he has committed a serious crime, so it may be called a forced complex.The world is at peace, and there is nothing wrong with it, but people with neurasthenia will inevitably disturb themselves.So severing friendships, throwing away relatives, like the elves in hell, not daring to show up, just walking alone in a gust of wind, according to the analysis of Democritus Robert Burton, or maybe It is the most correct symptom of melancholia.

Because such a cross is carried on the back, within a year, I only learn to move clouds, only learn to flow water, and what I move around is moving.At the end of March in late spring, I occasionally saw some shallow horizontal bridges, old weeping poplar trees, and a few flocks of crows flying endlessly from the train window, and suddenly remembered that this was a place that was neither a city nor a country.It is probably at the beginning of May that I rented this hut and moved a few broken old books over.But now it is early autumn again.Time flies, really fast, really fast. On the left and right in front of the hut, except for an avenue slanting east and west, there are mottled open spaces.On the ridges of brown soil ridge after ridge, there are some candela cowpea and the like, and now it is the season when the cotton trees are half-blooming white pistils.And the most beautiful ones should be pushed up and wrapped tightly. The color is white with green inside, and there is a layer of fluffy white mist on the outside. The stalks of the vegetables are also purple from time to time, a kind of big-leaf cabbage called Lettuce by foreigners. ; Probably because of the proximity to Shanghai, the purely Chinese countryside has also been invaded by foreigners' hobbies.There were a lot of this kind of dish when I came here, but now it is gradually decreasing.In the middle of these clearings, as if suddenly remembered, standing humbly, scattered there are a two-room farmer's hut, a few old willow elms with strange shapes, and many unpleasant sights. Burial coffin.In addition, there are small rivers that look like ditches, and bridges made of old coffin boards; suddenly, in the middle of a small square, there is a florist's garden with brightly colored flowers and the like; in short, the ground near here , can probably be named after the Encyclopedia Encyclopedia of Pastoral in the Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Ping areas; and in this encyclopedia, it is unusual to use a piece of thick paper printed with light ink copper engravings, and it is counted as standing behind our house. The huge cemetery that was originally run by foreigners.

I don't know much about the history of this cemetery, but judging from the two rows of sycamore trees lined up from the entrance to the back of the chapel in the center, there are at least six rows of sycamore trees. Teenage age. According to the native farmers, this seems to be the first cemetery operated by foreign countries since the opening of Shanghai Port. Now no one has come to visit it, but thirty or forty years ago, it was also the winter solstice and foreign Qingming and Sundays. A place for foreigners in Shanghai to take a walk.Because it is only 30 or 40 minutes away from Shanghai by train, it is very convenient to travel.

The rent for the hut is eight yuan per month.Considering the location, it seems a bit expensive, but because there are not many such spare houses for rent, and there are a few open spaces in front of and behind the houses, which can be used by tenants to grow flowers and vegetables, so in comparison, I feel It is reasonable price.Especially the silence that surrounds the house, the silence like in a tomb, which is hard to buy in the vicinity of foreign farms, no matter how much you pay. When I first moved here, I was just like a patient who had just recovered from a long illness. I stretched my limbs and lay on a rattan chair every day. I didn’t bother to read books or read newspapers. Apart from simple food, what broke the monotony of this ordinary day was Xiangwan's walk on the field road to Tiancheng.In the setting sun and the setting sun, on the edge of those wild vegetable borders with green branches and leaves, a person walks with his hands behind his back, and in his lonely mind, sometimes there are many inconsequential thoughts surging up.The sky above is always blue, and the twilight around me is always dark.

But in the middle of these disconnected thoughts, sometimes the big and small brains will stop working completely.After standing there blankly in a wild field, like a dead tree, all thoughts and feelings are forgotten, the body can no longer move, and the blood seems to be stagnant and does not flow; The pillar of salt in the city of "Sodom"; Needless to say, the brain is completely turned into a flat sheet of white paper without ripples or blood vessels. When I came back from my walk, I sometimes had a little supper, and sometimes I crawled into bed and lay down without taking a sip of tea.The indoor equipment is extremely simple, and there are no civilized appliances such as electric lights and fans.On a moonlit night, when I wake up in the middle of the night, if the small clay window in front of the bed is exposed to the bright light of the moon, then the night's sleep cannot continue.

Not only at night when there is a moon, but also during ordinary sleep, it is very easy to wake up.His eyes were slightly open, but there was no snoring sound. Although he was sleeping there, he didn't lose his feeling completely. There was a sound in the dark room, the footsteps of insects and rats, and the chirping of night birds on the trees outside the house. It will break into the ear for a while.If you fall into this kind of false sleep during the day, while falling asleep, the activities and things around you will be clearly touched into the center of your consciousness.If the surroundings are kept absolutely quiet, there is no sound or action, then during the moment of dozing, the events of more than ten years will unfold very clearly, very quickly, in an instant.As for the random dreams, there are more, too many to describe clearly.

I also know that I have contracted neurasthenia.This was originally an old disease that came to the summer hospital in 1978. So I want to rest more, and I want to be lazy. This summer, there really isn't much hot weather, especially in my isolated wild apartment. One night, the weather was very stuffy. After dinner, I went to bed and lay down for a while, but finally felt that I couldn't fall asleep, so I got up again, opened the window, and sat with her in the patio to cool off. The two had nothing to talk about at first, so they just looked up at the flying clouds in the sky, and the one or two stars that appeared from time to time in the clouds.

While slowly shaking the cattail fan, while sitting there silently for an unknown how long, a foreign candle on the table in the room suddenly extinguished its wick. And people don't want to move or see anything, so it doesn't matter whether there is a light or not, and they still sit silently in the dark and shake their fans. After sitting for a long time, there seemed to be a cool breeze at the end of the day, the curtains moved, and the clouds in the sky were flying very fast. I was about to go to sleep, so I asked: "I don't know what time it is?" She stood up, walked slowly into the room, and went into the inner room to get matches.

After a pause, I saw a gleam of fire in the darkness, a black shadow around the fire, and half of her pale face under the shadow. The first match went out, so did the second, and it was not until the third match that the candle was lit. After the candles were lit, she hurried out, holding the big watch in her hand, and said softly: "I don't know what time it is, it's only past six o'clock on the watch?" He took the watch and put it close to his ear to listen, but there was no sound.I can't even recall that the watch was opened a few days ago. "The watch has stopped!" I replied softly, and my drowsiness also disappeared, and I wanted to sit on it in the cool breeze for another moment.But she continued: "A beautiful moth died there on the lamp panel." I ran in and saw that there was a light red body, green wings, a little smaller than a butterfly, but a fat moth lying there.There is a scorched shadow on the right wing, and the tentacles are burnt off.After watching silently for a minute, I flicked it a few times with my fingers. My eyes were still fixed on the beautiful corpse of the fluttering moth, but I couldn’t help but say: "Poor thing! Let's bury it in the courtyard!" After lighting the lanterns, they dug a round hole in the black mud pine with silver needles, and after burying the beautiful body, the wind picked up, as if it was going to rain heavily. After fastening the door and lying down on the bed, a gust of wind came, followed by raindrops like rocks, hitting the eaves. While listening to the sound of the rain, I said to her as if talking to myself: "Xia! It's time to cool down tomorrow. I want to go to see a doctor in Shanghai." Made in August 1928