Chapter 17 Talisman

When I woke up, the mice were galloping on the ceiling. A mouse ran like a wild horse galloping across the grassland; a group of mice ran, chased, biting and fighting like ten thousand horses galloping. I just woke up from a dream, sweating all over, the moon was shining on the pane of the south window, the room was so quiet that I could hear the breath of the earth outside the window, and the chasing and screaming of mice destroyed everything to the fullest. I felt the smoke and the match in the dark, and the moment the match was struck, the rats on the roof stopped.I was smoking a cigarette, lying with my eyes closed, waiting for the dawn...

After I was rehabilitated, my child went to work instead of me, my daughter was already married, and only my wife and I were left in the house.My wife no longer calls me Mr., and she no longer looks timid when she sees me. She puts her hands in her thick waist and directs me to farm the land and do all the housework that she has consciously undertaken in the past. At first, it seemed like revenge. , and later became a habit. "What are you doing moaning all day?" she asked me, "Do you miss that wild woman?" I said that I was carrying the burden of the rightists, and sighing became a habit.

"What are the rightists afraid of? As long as they are paid, it's not the same as the blanket pie!" She said indifferently, "I think it's good to be a rightist. You have become well-behaved, and you don't dare to follow the wild..." I can't get angry.If I opened my mouth to explain, she would yell, so that the neighbors could hear. "Are you going to do the laundry?" she told me, "My back hurts." In the countryside, the habit of men washing clothes is not yet common. When I walked to the well with my clothes in my arms, men and women all looked at me.I bit the bullet and passed.

"You roll the dough." She said. I learned to cook. I understand that she is not just for enjoyment, but she is not a lazy woman.She asked me to do the laundry and cook, which would improve her status among the villagers, especially the women. She felt that the past situation made others look down on her too much. After I retired and went home, she also got better: "The two acres of land we planted are enough to eat. The retirement money you received is enough to spend. As long as you don't want to go wild again... I will treat you well, We'll be happy until we die..."

A year after saying this, she died suddenly, fell and suffered a myocardial infarction. I was lying alone on the kang in this ancestral house, listening to the rats and horses. Someone introduce me to the next woman.Even my children objected, saying that I am almost sixty years old, don't I even care about face?Uncle Wa was even more furious, saying that I had ruined the Xu family's style of reading and literacy... Seeing that my life is difficult, my older sister and younger sister persuaded my son and daughter, and you gave my eldest daughter some work, so they finally agreed. This matter of mine should have been done.However, when things came to an end and I was asked to do this, I wavered again.Why do you ask?I can't tell... I always feel like I'm still curled up in the small warehouse of Niuwangbian Elementary School.That small warehouse cannot allow others to enter and break the condensed air inside.Likewise, I also felt uncomfortable leaving other places than that small warehouse.Even though I retired and returned home, my heart still seemed to be curled up in that small warehouse, unable to stretch out. Tian Fang was able to take off my blue robe, but now she can't stroke and stretch my curly spine...

I send my Mr. Prime Minister down the hillside. The spring breeze greens the river and the source slope, and it is March again when the apricot blossoms fade and the peach blossoms are brilliant.The wheat seedlings on the slopes are green and lush, and the weeds on the ridges are flourishing. Only the red stones of the cliffs between the ditch walls are colored, showing the dilapidated and ugly appearance of the Loess Plateau. He walked up the slope and went back to his source, Yangxu Village.He bowed his back, step by step, and slowly walked up the winding path between slopes. My heart seems to be caught by something.

August to November 1985 Grass-reformed in the eastern suburbs of Xi'an