Chapter 72 Basket

At three o'clock in the afternoon, a rumbling thunder came from far away in the sky. Experienced farmers know that this is a sky ready for rain, and in another quarter of an hour, the northwest rain will cover this small town surrounded by mountains on all sides. Experienced swallows also know that they have come from With tail feathers clipped on the wires, they flew into the earthen nest built under the eaves of other people's houses. But we who stood in the open land—my father, elder brother, relatives, and many villagers who had sweated, sunburned, and drenched in wind and rain, stood dumbly listening to the distant thunder, and no one wanted to Go in to hide from the northwest rain.Our hearts are more dull than the dry sky, and everyone is silent, because our hearts are also the sky that will rain, and this rain of hearts is more tragic than the rain in the northwest, and it will rain down from the sky.

The place where we stood silently was a banana farm in Xidizai. Two huge "strange hands" were operating in a hurry, opening their iron claws to grab the bananas we had planted so hard, and throwing them to the van parked next to it. These strange hands who usually pick up the sand and rocks in the stream to build a better home for us are now hired by the peasant association to trample the bananas we planted. These bananas that no one wants will be thrown into the stream Throw it away, or pile it up in the field as fertilizer.Because bananas are perishable fruits, the farmer's association is afraid that rotten bananas will pollute this clean banana farm.

Even though the sky is dark, the bananas piled up in the banana field still exude an emerald-like luster. In past harvest seasons, this luster was the color that brought us joy, brighter than the rainbow after the rain. ; Now it has become so dazzling that it makes people sad. The regular croaking sound of the strange hand echoed the approaching thunder. On the other side of the banana yard, I saw some old quilts piled up, and the baskets that farmers left beside the quilts. The quilt was originally used to cushion the delicate bananas to avoid damage, and the baskets were used by farmers to harvest, and they were originally filled with the laughter of the harvest.

The quilts and baskets are covered with dark brown juice, layer upon layer. After years, those banana juices are like bloodstains that have been condensed and dried up again and again. Now lying useless, quietly waiting for the scene of the end of the century. Not far in front of the banana field, a few children used bamboo to prop up an old basket, and a handful of rice was removed from the basket. The children hid in a corner and pulled the rope, waiting for the sparrows that were eager to feed before the heavy rain. A sparrow flew down from the roof with two hissing sounds, and jumped around the banana field. Slowly, it found the rice, and jumped into the basket step by step; the children pulled the rope, and the basket was covered with a slam, panicking. The sparrow flapped its wings, but could not find a way out and howled mournfully.Children cheered and came out from the wall, seven or eight hands scrambling to catch the little sparrow. An older child tied the sparrow's legs with the string that used to tie the bamboo, and then let it fly.The sparrow thought it was free, and flew vigorously, only to realize that its feet were bound when the roof was high, and fell to the ground slumped. On the ground, they gasped in despair and hissed sadly, as if they were calling for something in an unknown distance.

This game of catching sparrows was something I used to play when I was young, and now when I feel depressed, I can't help feeling sad. I thought about the scene where the little sparrow walked into the basket, just to peck a few grains of white rice, but unexpectedly fell into an unsurpassable life trap. Isn’t it like this for farmers?They work hard during the day and go to the water at night, sometimes just to get food and clothing for three meals. Unexpectedly, the hard work will also enter the basket of fate. Basket is an ordinary utensil for working people, it is a string of happy songs during harvest.In the harvest season, it is indeed a kind of sight to see people carrying empty baskets through the field road at dawn, and when the sun is slanting towards the mountain, they bend down and laboriously carry the full baskets, and walk across the field ridge cast by the sunset. The unspeakable beauty comes from life and work, and it is more beautiful than all art and music.

When I saw the farmers harvesting the harvest, carrying baskets and singing simple songs home, I thought of Tolstoy's art theory, that any great work is written with blood and sweat.If the earth is a piece of manuscript paper spread out, peasants are writing great poems on it with blood and tears; when sowing, there are commas, when plowing, there are commas, and the basket of harvest is just like the last circle of the poem A full stop.There is no more moving work in the world than this psalm. It is a pity that when farmers write poems praising the earth, there are inevitably exclamation marks, question marks, and sometimes semicolons leading to the unknown!I've seen fishermen who couldn't go to sea under strong winds, staring at the baskets in a daze; I've seen the salt farmers kicking baskets at home to vent their anger when the seawater flooded the salt fields;Such pure emotion and distraction are a hundred times more worrying than a poet who can't write after twirling a few hairs. The peasants at this time are the people who have no theme in Chehev's works. Become shallow, small, miserable, ridiculous, no-tomorrow little man, he is no longer a poet of the earth!

The inability to harvest due to the weather and the lack of a harvest are certainly sad things, and if the harvest is excessive and one has to abandon one's hard work, it is the greatest blow.This time my villagers had to destroy tens of millions of kilograms of bananas because of too much harvest, and everyone's heart was scratched with bloodstains.During the years in the past, they only knew the principle of "no pain, no harvest" and never heard of "surplus harvest". No wonder some villagers with white beards sighed: It's really unreasonable! When I heard that the bananas in my hometown could not be produced and sold, I took the dawn train and turned back to my hometown. The train ran across the fields empty and empty, and the sky was sparsely covered with light rain. The farmland is being plowed. The farmer puts the plow rope on the shoulder of the ox, and pushes the plow behind him. The mud turned up by the plow blooms like spring flowers on the ground.Occasionally, I saw green sprouts growing out of the freshly tidied fields. Those sprouts were very small and only showed a trace of bud tips, shaking and shaking in the rain. The bright green spots told us that in this gray land , There is a kind of vitality buried in the deepest soil.The farmers in Taiwan are the most diligent farmers in the world. They are always plowing like this, day and night. Our plains are also the most fertile land in the world, and new green shoots will always emerge from the soil. .

Looking at the rapidly receding farmland, I thought of my father working in the banana field wearing a bamboo hat.He has been planting in Shangdi for fifty years, and he and the land jointly gave birth to us, and he has planted extremely deep-rooted emotions with the land. His daily emotions are all following the joys, anger, sorrows and joys of the land.Sometimes the harvest is not good, and what hurts him the most is not material, but emotional.On the small piece of arable land we own, every foot has my father's footprints, and every inch has my father's blood and sweat.And this year's harvest is so good, and he has to accept the blow of a surplus harvest. For my father, I don't know how sad it is!

When I got home, my father was carrying bananas to the banana farm. I sat in front of the court and waited for his tall figure. I saw my father coming from afar carrying two swaying empty baskets. Walking beside him was my graduate student. The elder brother of the university, he made a lot of determination to return to his hometown to help his father in agriculture.Because of my brother's uprightness, I found that my father's back has become a little bent in recent years. The long sunset casts on the basket he picked, casting longer shadows. I remember that in the early mornings of my childhood, the soft sunlight would always stretch out my big hand unscrupulously, pushing through the gate and yard of my house, and stretching out to the divine table in the hall, making the four long offerings on the case bright on one side and dark on the other, as if alive. In general, the large expanses of sunshine are really intoxicating and warm.In that peaceful daylight, the morning breeze started the earth. I love to stand at the window and see my father wearing clothes stained with banana juice, wearing a hat with a few bamboo leaves that have been lifted; Holding a pair of swaying baskets, he walked across the court to work in the field; his father’s tall figure was extraordinarily majestic and strong under the sunlight. It looked thick and powerful. At that time, I always leaned on the window and thought: How happy it is to be a farmer!

When we grew up a little, my father often took us to the banana orchard to plant. He carried us with baskets. My brother sat in the front and I sat in the back. We sometimes played killing knives in the baskets, and sometimes used air guns made of bamboo tubes to fight each other. Beating bitter lingzi made the basket sway back and forth, but my father didn't get angry; when it really bothered him, he grabbed hold of the burden on the basket and spun around in place quickly until we all turned on our backs, and then we heard him Hearty and loud laughter rang out in succession. The memory of my childhood in the banana garden is the beginning of my happiness. The banana tree covered the fruits with its wide leaves. The scene was like parents holding their young son to offer incense, and it also contained devotion to life.The sweat dripping on the ground when farmers are irrigating, the yelling and chattering when carrying baskets when harvesting, and the laughter and chatting when they go to the banana field to check the customs, are always intertwined into a picture with colors and sounds.

There must be a river embankment at the end of our banana orchard, and in front of the embankment is the Qiwei River, which runs fast day and night.That stream provided irrigation for our land. My brother and I often touched clams, caught shrimp, fished, and played in the water in the stream. In my childhood cognition, I didn’t know why I was grateful for the land’s abundance.On the ground, it allows us to have a joyful harvest after the hard plowing; in the water, it sends a message of harvest that will never be exhausted. We were tired from playing, so we climbed up the embankment and looked back at the vast banana garden. Because the banana leaves were too luxuriant, we couldn’t see the people working in it, but the sound of their labor seemed to come from the depths of the earth. The symphony of the flowing water and waterfalls of the Qiwei River, the poem of the symphony of the earth, often makes me fascinated. It wasn’t until my father couldn’t fit us into the banana garden that my elder brother and I left our hometown to study in other places. What my father said when he sent us to study in other places still rings in my heart today: “Scholars It doesn't matter if you are poor, you can be poor enough to have a backbone, but farmers can't be poor, they will fall to their knees when they are poor." Over the next ten years, whenever I encountered any ordeals, I would always think of my father’s words, as well as the back view of him carrying the baskets to the banana orchard with high spirits. At this moment, I saw my father coming from afar, carrying an empty basket. He felt a little sad when he saw me. He piled up the baskets casually in front of the court without saying a word. I couldn't help but ask. Him: "Has the situation improved?" My father blushed: "Yi Niang! They said that farmers should not expand their acreage, that we hadn't signed a contract with the Green Fruit Cooperative, and that we should have developed a banana processing plant a long time ago. How did we know so much?" The shirt stained with banana juice was taken off and hung in front of the court, dripping with his sweat. Although my father knew that this year's banana harvest was hopeless, he still worked hard in the banana field today. My brother said softly to me: "Tomorrow they are going to throw away the bananas, you should go and have a look." My father heard it, facing the setting sun, I saw faint tears in his eyes. Our family gathered around and had a silent and tasteless dinner, only my mother said softly: "Don't be so angry, next year will come soon, let's change to another species." The whole thing sank into the mountains, and there was only the sound of insects in the dark land.On this cool and happy summer night at the farmhouse in the past, my son came back from afar, but he only smelled a desolate and lonely smell, and the stars hid far away. The two monsters quickly filled a truck with cargo. As expected, the northwest rain poured down mercilessly, drenching the crowd standing around, and everyone was drenched by the heavy rain without moving. Watching the bananas being piled on the car, it was like a dignified farewell ceremony .I felt the big raindrops falling until a slight coolness rose in my heart.I think that no matter how good a dancer is, there are moments when he is confused and lost, no matter how good a singer is, there are times when he seems to lose his tune, and no matter how good a poet of the land—a farmer, there are times when he can’t complete a sentence.Who beat this well-written poem into mud all over the place?Is it rain? In the heavy rain, the truck took away our bananas and discarded them, leaving only two wheel tracks, talking in the rain. The children who were catching sparrows all hid in the banana field to avoid the rain. The sparrow that was alive and kicking fifteen minutes ago died. The youngest child cried over the death of the sparrow, and the oldest child comforted him: "It's okay, I will bake it for you when I go home." We stood until all the bananas were cleared out of the arena, and the whistling northwest rain stopped before we left. The children were already jumping out, and the youngest child also forgot the little bit of sadness of the dead sparrow, and smiled happily. They walked past the basket and kicked it over mischievously, making it lie on its back; now they stopped catching sparrows, because they knew that after the rain, wax snakes would fly out of the sky. I looked at the basket lying upside down in the mud alone. It was the end of our harvest this year. Swallows soar briskly, flying all over the sky. Clouds are running in the sky like going to a market. A group of sparrows chatted on the eaves. Our hearts are the sky that will rain, or that has already rained. — November 26, 1982