Chapter 18 The Escape of 1934.4

For so many years, my father kept the wooden door of our house open day and night. He always thought that our relatives were on the way, and he opened the door as if to welcome the arrival of relatives.The hay at home was later divided into six stacks.He said that the smallest pile was for his elder brother’s puppies who died young, because he had never seen his brother’s puppies, but would the ghosts of the puppies lie in my house and grow extremely huge? Being alive is much bigger.Before my father entered the hospital last year, he divided the haystacks at home. He told us that the largest haystacks belonged to our grandmother Jiang and grandfather Chen Baonian.I watched from the side as my father divided the haystacks among his deceased relatives. When he got to the sixth stack, he hesitated, holding the stack of hay and didn't know where to put it. "Who is this for?" I said.

"Huanzi," said my father, "where do you put Huanzi's hay?" "Beside Grandfather," I said. "No." Father looked at the hay in Huanzi.Then he went into his room.I saw my father stuff ring hay under his bed.Where is this little girl, Huanzi, now?My house is waiting for her arrival like hay.She is a city woman.Why did she enter my family history of the Maple Poplars?Neither my father nor I could explain it.What I can't forget is the significance of this complex stack of hay.Can you explain why this hay was hidden under my father's bed?The old people in Fengyangshu told me that Huanzi appeared in Maqiao Town on a snowy evening.Her petite body was wrapped thickly in the blue clothes popular in the city, and she happily stomped on the snow on the muddy ground.There is a man with the ring.The man wore a dog fur hat and a woman's scarf to hide his face deeply, revealing only a pair of indifferent eyes.Someone recognized the man as Chen Baonian from his walking gait.

This is the most secret homecoming among maple, poplar and bamboo craftsmen.Obviously, many people saw Chen Baonian and Huanzi driving home on a unicycle, but later they found that Chen Baonian, who had returned home, disappeared in the dusk.My grandmother Jiang stood at the door and watched the little woman stepping on the snow towards the Chen family's ancestral house.Huanzi's blue cheongsam cast a strong blue light on the snow, hurting Jiang's eyes.The voices of two women talking for the first time fifty years ago are now clearly heard in my ears. "Who are you?" "I am Chen Baonian's woman."

"I'm Chen Baonian's woman, who are you?" "You say that so I don't know who I am anymore. I'm pregnant, and it's Chen Baonian's child. He drove me here to give birth. I didn't want to come and he tricked me." I can see it." "Have you given birth this year? I brought you a lot of children's clothes." "I don't want your children's clothes. Did you bring Chen Baonian's money?" "Bring a lot of money, all of which are covered with Chen Baonian Look at the red seal." "I know his money is stamped with a red seal. He hasn't given me any money this year. Five children died in autumn." "Let me in the house, I'm almost freezing to death Chen Baonian He doesn't want to come back." "It's actually the same cold whether you enter the house or not. Did he ask you to come to the countryside to have a baby?" (I also heard Chen Baonian's footsteps stepping on the snow behind the ancestral house. Was Chen Baonian also listening?) Ring When I stepped into my house, I first saw six strands of wild wormwood rope hanging from the wall and burning slowly, and the home was filled with a bitter smell of grass ash.Huanzi pointed to the grass rope and said, "What is that?" "Spirit-calling rope. Don't you understand that people who are dead have to call back souls to the dead?" "Have six children died?" "Chen Baonian is also dead." Jiang Shi stared at the straw rope for a long while and went to the cradle in the corner to pick up her baby. She smiled and said to Huanzi, "Only one survived, and the others died." The living baby was my father.When the little woman Huanzi bent her face towards him, the smell of the city caressed his little face.The baby moved his lips to cry, but in an instant, he broke into his original smile again.Father learned to laugh in the city smell brought by Huanzi.His little hand gradually lifted up to touch Huanzi's face, and Huanzi's motherhood was fully awakened. She screamed and trembled, opened her mouth and bit the baby's little hand, and said vaguely: "I love children so much, I dream dreaming." Seeing that a boy is born is like your baby." Recalling the life of my grandmother Jiang and the little girl Huanzi under the same roof is a difficult problem for me to write family history.After five generations of my ancestors, there has never been polygamy, but the folks in Maple and Poplar told me that the two women did spend the winter of 1934 together.Huanzi's blue clothes are often washed and dried, flying over my ancestral house.They said pregnant Huanzi was walking down the maple and poplar country lane with her infant father in her arms, her belly already heavy under her blue cotton robe.Huanzi is a city woman who loves children very much. She also loves the wild dogs scattered here and there in the trees, and she often throws the chewing gum in her mouth to the dogs.You don't know where Huanzi wants to go with the child in her arms. She always wanders in the village when the sun is out, and she smiles seductively when she walks past men.You see her stepping into the deep bamboo garden, patting the baby and singing, and looking around the winter maple and poplar village in bewilderment.When Huanzi appeared in the bamboo garden, the folks who met her on the way found that Huanzi resembled my dead great-aunt Fengzi.There are striking similarities between the expressions and demeanors of the two of them covered by the bamboo leaves.Huanzi and Fengzi are the two most beautiful women in my family.It's a pity that they didn't leave a picture, I can't tell if they are so similar.They are all red phoenix birds under the wings of my grandfather Chen Baonian.One is Chen Baonian's biological sister, and the other is not my family member at all. She is my grandfather Chen Baonian's female neighbor and the owner of the sesame oil shop in the city. Is she the sister bird of my aunt Fengzi?My grandfather, Chen Baonian, which bird do you want?Future generations will never know all this.I would love to dive into the rocky heart of my grandmother, Chiang, to study the sauerkraut soup she made for Huanzi.Huanzi took bowl after bowl of sauerkraut soup from my grandmother Jiang during the winter when she was waiting to give birth at my house, and drank it all in one gulp.Huanzi smacked her lips and said to Jiang Shi: "I love this soup so much. I can only drink this soup now." Jiang Shi held a bowl and stared at Huanzi's gradually swelling abdomen, her eyes were a little dull, and she kept repeating He said: "It's winter, and there are no wild vegetables in the field. I can only make sauerkraut soup for you to eat." The sauerkraut is pickled in a large jar.When Huanzi wanted to eat, he dipped his hand into the black salt water to scoop up sauerkraut, grabbed it and ate it.One day, Huanzi grabbed a handful of sauerkraut and suddenly couldn't swallow it anymore. Tears welled up in her eyes, she threw the sauerkraut on the ground, stomped her feet, and cried, "Why is there only sauerkraut in this house?" Grandma Jiang Shi walked over to pick up the sauerkraut and put it back into the big vat. She said majestically to Huanzi, "It's winter, and only sauerkraut is for you to eat. If you don't like it, you can't throw it on the ground." "Money, Chen Baonian's What about the money?" Huanzi said, "give me something else to eat." "Chen Baonian's money is gone. I bought two acres of land for Chen Baonian. There are so many dead people in the Chen family that there is no graveyard. People don't eat vegetables If you can survive, there will be no living head without a cemetery." Huanzi hugged her crying face under the bronze-like eyes of her grandmother Jiang.She felt that the skin on her face had turned yellow and rough, which was the punishment given to her by Chen Baonian's hometown.For the first time, the weeping Huanzi thought of the tragic direction of her life.She softly called Chen Baonian, Chen Baonian, you bastard, and walked towards the big vat of pickling vegetables again.She desperately grabbed a handful of sauerkraut and stuffed it into her mouth, chewing the handful of sauerkraut with wide-open eyes until she felt a strong nausea in her stomach.Wah wah bang.Huanzi began to vomit from the depths of her being, spitting out a sour black stream that splashed on her beautiful blue cotton gown.I know that Huanzi went to Maqiao Town to sell rings for pork after that time of vomiting.It was said that it was a gold square ring given to her by her grandfather. She threw it on the counter of the butcher shop without mercy, grabbed the pork and left Maqiao Town.That was the second time the townspeople saw the little girl Huanzi in the city.It is said that she is as thin as a cat and walks as if she can't support her three-month pregnant body.She carried the piece of pork and walked on the yellow mud road across the maple and poplar trees. When she met a young man, she still couldn't forget the winking eyes of her city women.I have described many times that a stone grew out of the yellow mud road, and the stone almost tripped over the ring with murderous intentions, and the ring screamed and the pregnant body flew out like a fallen log.The piece of pork flew out too.Huanzi's scream resounded through the yellow mud road under the setting sun, sad and far away.At this moment, she seemed to realize that the disaster that fell from the sky pointed to the fetus in her womb. She fell down in the desolate rice field and clasped her abdomen tightly with her hands, but she still felt a huge pain in her abdomen.She clearly and unmistakably felt the loss of the little life in her belly.She suddenly becomes a hollow woman.Huanzi sat on the ground and wept weakly and sharply. She watched a pool of red waves rippling under her body.She desperately picked up the scattered blood, and saw a child with Chen Jiafang's face stay in her palm for a short moment, and then flew to the sky of maple and poplar, just a puff of blue smoke.Huanzi, the little girl who had a miscarriage, was buried on the straw bed in my house and sobbed for three days and three nights.Huanzi didn't eat or drink, and lost her former appearance for three days and three nights.As usual, my grandmother Jiang served the sauerkraut soup to Huanzi, and stood by to observe the suffering city women.Huanzi cast his haggard eyes on the sauerkraut soup and a stone stirred up waves.She seemed to have discovered an unusual smell from the black soup, and she felt that the fetus in her womb was gradually aborted under the water of sauerkraut soup.Waking up suddenly like a dream:

"Sister, what did you put in the sauerkraut soup?" "Salt. Eat more salt if you are pregnant." "Sister, what did you put in the sauerkraut soup to kill my child?" "Don't talk crazy. I know you went to the town to cut up the meat and dropped the child." Huanzi climbed down from the straw shop and grabbed the grandmother Jiang. Shi's hand, looking up at Jiang Shi's calm face.The ring shook Jiang and shouted: "The child who can't fall for three months, what did you give me to eat? Why are you plotting against my child?" My grandmother Jiang finally got angry, and she took the ring Pushed it to the grass bed and then pounced on and grabbed Huanzi's hair, you bitch in the city, you bitch, why did you come to my house to give birth to Chen Baonian's dog day.Half of Jiang's gray eyes were tears, but the other half was burning with a great flame of hatred.During the fight with Huanzi, she told Huanzi intermittently: I can't let you give birth to a child... I have six children who died when they were born...It is better to die in the mother's womb than to be born... I put filth in my sauerkraut soup, I won't tell you what filth...you don't know how much I hate you guys...

In fact, I should avoid describing these scenes.I am uneasy to smear the image of my grandmother Chiang to this point, but facing the family history of 1934, I have no choice.I miss Huanzi's unborn baby. If he (she) can be born in my hometown of Maple and Poplar, there will be another relative in my family, and my father and I will have more yearning and waiting. The blood of the Chen family will also extend a branch, so will my family history be richer? The disappearance of Huanzi is like her appearance leaving a hard-to-heal scar in my family. This scar will fester until the fermentation lasts forever. We will reluctantly lick this scar to heal it.When Huanzi left home, he kidnapped his father in the cradle.She disappeared from Maple Poplar Village with the Chen family's baby, apparently taking her father with her as compensation.Women may be like this, what is lost can be compensated for.No one saw the city woman who kidnapped the Chen family's baby. Did Huanzi grow a pair of wings by virtue of her mother's love?My grandmother Jiang chased Huanzi and my father all winter.Her footprints extended to the Yangtze River before stopping.That was the first time she saw the Yangtze River.In the winter of 1934, the mighty waters of the river seemed like the first generation of the world in the prehistoric period.The turbid yellow color of the river water, which has been precipitated for thousands of years, is as powerful as steel, hitting the heart of a rural woman.Jiang carried her worn-out eighth pair of straw sandals along the bank of the river, her disheveled hair fluttering in the wind, and her emotions swirled into the river like dead leaves.She threw her eighth pair of straw sandals into the vast river and turned her head.The edge of the world in Grandmother Jiang's heart is this great river.She cannot cross this great river.I need you to pay attention to Grandmother Jiang's return trip to understand her life destination.She walked through the long winter of 1934, and traveled 500 miles of towns and villages, and the road has been completely reborn.Fengyangshuren remembered that it was already the end of the year when Mrs. Jiang came back.People in Maqiao Town hung paper red lanterns to welcome 1935.Jiang walked through those red lights empty-handed, with red shadows flickering on his tired face.She was wearing men's padded clothes and shoes on her body and feet, and a straw rope was tied around her waist.People who knew Jiang asked: "Have you chased the children?" Jiang leaned against the wall and smiled at them, "No, they have crossed the river." "Shouldn't they chase after crossing the river?" I can't catch up." Grandmother Jiang walked back on the eve of 1935, and gradually walked out of my long family history with a smile on her face.Later, she stood on the northwest slope of the maple poplar tree, looking towards the black brick building of the rich man Chen Wenzhi.At this time, a group of dogs came running from every corner, surrounding Jiang and smelling the strange smell on her body. The dogs in the maple and poplar trees no longer knew Jiang after winter.Jiang waved away the group of dogs, then she stood on the slope and began to shout Chen Wenzhi's name towards the black brick building.

Chen Wenzhi was called upstairs by Mrs. Jiang. He and Mrs. Jiang looked at each other from a distance in the night, and saw the woman standing on the slope like a bamboo shaking its tangled leaves.Chen Wenzhi had a premonition that the bamboo would flee at the end of 1934 and planted it in his palm. "I'm gone—do you still want me—you can use that red sedan chair to carry me—" the iron gate of Chen Wenzhi's house rattled open amid Jiang's shouts, and Chen Wenzhi led the three A strong unidentified woman came out carrying a red sedan chair and slowly moved towards Jiang Shi under the moonlight.That sedan chair team is rarely seen in history, but my grandmother Jiang really entered Chen Wenzhi's house in this red sedan chair.In this way, I had to gradually erase my grandmother Jiang from the family history.My father told me he didn't know her name until now.Many of his memories of his mother are also inaccurate, since he was a baby in 1934.

But our family has prepared the largest stack of hay to welcome Chen Wenzhi's wife, Jiang Shi, who arrived here again.Father said she would always come.Grandmother Jiang and little girl Huanzi Xingyue Huiying raised my father. They are the most outstanding mother images in my family history.They may be two different meteorites that collided in 1934, and the faint blue sparks that came out were the father, me, our son and grandson. The city where our family lives now is where the little girl Huanzi fled back then. This city is nine hundred miles away from my hometown in Maple and Poplar.Since I was seventeen or eighteen, I like to say to my friends in this city, "I am a foreigner." What I tell is actually the story of escape.That's how early the flight happened, that's how the flight began.You can still remember the cause of my grandfather Chen Baonian's death while you wait for the end of this story.

Attachment: A secret about Chen Baonian's death On the eighteenth night of the 12th lunar month in 1934, when Chen Baonian came out of the brothel in the south of the city, someone hid on the roof of a wooden building and poured three pans of cold water on Chen Baonian.After being attacked, Chen Baonian ran towards his shop desperately. He wanted to break out in a sweat, but when he returned to the bamboo shop, his body was covered with ice, and he fell ill.He died at the end of the year, holding the ancestral big-headed bamboo knife tightly before he died.The owner of the Chen Ji bamboo ware shop changed hands.The current owner is a blind man.News leaked from the brothel in the south of the city that the person who poured the three basins of cold water was a blind man.

I would like to present a huge flower basket to my family history with the death of my grandfather Chen Baonian.Immediately I will take this flower basket and go out, through the streets at night, and through your windows.If you open the windows, you will see my shadow floating in the city.Who can tell what kind of shadow it is?