Chapter 3 third chapter

Just as it was lunch time, many people in the village were sunbathing at their gates and chatting away. Sima Lan's woman came back from the village.She is thin and widowed, and she walks as if floating in the wind.One winter, when the villagers came back from the Lingyin Canal, there was a strong wind, and others would at most stagger on the beams, but she was blown up by the wind and rolled to the bottom of the ditch, breaking two ribs.People wondered how she was thin enough to hold Sima Lan, the five-foot-eight-inch village chief, on the bed, but she gave birth to three daughters for Sima Lan smoothly: Teng, Ge, and Man.During Du Bo's grandfather Du Guaizi's lifetime, the village had a lot of dystocias, and women died of pain almost every year because they couldn't give birth to a baby. between sleep.Seventeen years ago, pregnant women in the village were all over the mountains and fields, and Du Guaizi’s footsteps of delivering babies kept ringing in the street all day long, but at noon, she said that my stomach was uncomfortable, and the eldest child was born when I returned home from the door. rattan.One year later, in the summer, when the wheat was being harvested, she lay down on the wheat shop, and Ge's cries filled the world.In another year, she put vines on the road carrying water again.She returned home with a load of water and a ball of red meat from the third daughter's vine.Her thinness and resilience are the miracle of the village.When the villagers saw a dry branch, they would immediately think of her naked body.Seeing a tough rope, I also think of her naked body.Wherever she went, it was like a whip being erected.During this lunch time, she was wading through the sun and gossiping with the villagers. When she entered the village, she intentionally carried a bamboo basket on her arm to her chest.There are a lot of herbs in the bamboo basket, obviously just dug out of the soil, the roots of the grass are still red and gorgeous, exuding a fresh grassy and rustic atmosphere.The villagers were busy eating, but no one noticed her coming.She stood in front of the villagers with regret, saying that they had already eaten?Teng's father is afraid that he will die, and he won't live for a few days, and his throat hurts even after drinking water.

With a bang, people froze the bowl in mid-air. "real?" "I've seen the cemetery." "What's in your basket?" "Herbs. Fresh roots, raw ground roots, and roasted Astragalus membranaceus. It is a new prescription that my brother specially formulated for him. The roasted Astragalus membranaceus nourishes both Qi and blood. I only dug it after traveling more than ten miles. That dead ghost is cruel to me. All my life I have been thinking about Blue Forty in my heart, but our Du family can't be unjust to him. My brother didn't sleep a night to prepare this prescription, and he tore the pages of "Huang Di Nei Jing". He is dying, and he wants to live past forty. , told me to dig sunburnt astragalus grass in the Hetou valley to replenish his Qi and blood, and I went to dig without a second thought, going back and forth for dozens of miles, and my legs were broken from running."

Sima Lan's woman Zhu Cui walked into the village from the head of the village with such a flowing confession.People started to stop eating, saying that Sima Lan had lived a brilliant life at the age of thirty-nine, and that she died as soon as she died, and there was nothing regretful about it.Saying so, she walked into an alley amidst the discussions.The sulphurous smell of new bricks and tiles in the alleys shows the prosperity of the world in this era, and the river flows endlessly in the village.She loves the smell of sulfur in new homes.The smell of sulfur made her think of her man Sima Lan, who lived a long and strong life, but failed to build her three tile houses like other men. This most aroused her hatred towards him.For so many years, whenever hatred surged in her chest, she felt endless strength in her body, and a kind of comfort and urgency to vent would blow through her whole body like the summer wind.There were three green brick and tile houses in front of her, and the yellow-brown smell from the brick kiln hit her like ripe corn and millet. Cloth strips, a kind of unspeakable blockage and stretching are stuck in the throat.She thought, the man is going to die eventually, will disappear from this world at last, and she will also come out from the shade of a tree and struggle out from a bundle of ropes.Du surnamed from her natal family in front and Sima surnamed from the same family swarmed to sit and eat on the grinding plate at the crossroads, talking, eating and drinking in waves.She stepped down in front of people, and said with a half-smile of sadness on her face: "You know, my man's throat hurts."

People were stunned, their faces froze in a vast whiteness. "I'm afraid I won't live for a few days. I've seen the cemetery. It's time to prepare the coffin." She said that you all know that he is unkind to me, and he has never treated me better than that broken shoe of Lan Shi in my whole life.But I can't be unrighteous to him, he told me to dig Sunburned Astragalus, I got up early in the morning and ran for dozens of miles.She changed the arm of the bamboo basket, displayed the herbs in the basket, and said that he had lived a long life of thirty-nine, but he still wanted to live forty or fifty.After saying this, she followed people's startled and idiotic eyes, and floated forward lightly and quickly, her footsteps were like two bamboo boards going down the water.She didn't walk from the intersection to Sima's alley, but walked straight along Lan's alley.

There is wind blowing from the mouth of the alley, and the fragrance of early spring is stretching brightly in the wind.A flock of chickens from Lanshishi's family gathered around the Shishiwai who were eating, and their warm and sweet cuckoo filled half of the alley with spring tide.Zhu Cui walked over with her warm cuckoo, and when she saw Lan Shi, her face immediately turned half purple and half red with excitement, as if it was really not her husband Sima Lan who was about to die, but Lan Si. The flesh and blood relatives of the ten families.She slapped Lan Shishi's face and body, hurried forward, stood up in front of her with a bang, and blurted out hello, and when Lan Shishi raised her head suddenly, she was not in a hurry. Panic: "Sima Lan is dying, her throat hurts, I have seen the cemetery, it's time to prepare the coffin." Saying this, it's like saying that a baby chicken is sick, infected with the plague, and can't live for a few days Lah, the coldness on his face was flat, like a wet cloth.Lan Shisi was sitting on the root of an elm tree in front of his house, eating a bowl of lo mein, with green vegetables and yolk eggs dotted among the noodles, and the smell of sesame oil entangled in the air like embroidery threads. .The head-on sunlight shone on her spacious forehead, and she seemed to be a Bodhisattva eating, with her face supported by a red sweater like a lotus flower.But at this moment, the light on her face disappeared, and the peace like a Bodhisattva disappeared.Raising her head slowly, her original flushed face turned pale, and the bowl was dangling in her hand as if she was about to drop it.She stared at Du Zhucui in front of her, opened her mouth to say something, but couldn't say it.

Zhu Cui said: "Your lover has a sore throat, and he will die in three days and two days. My man has worked hard and sweated all his life, and you can enjoy it. Today, you should dig the sunburned astragalus grass for him, but I got up early in the morning and dug until now. .” In a blink of an eye, Lan Shishi was exhausted.As if inadvertently, the thin yellow and tough woman in front of her hit her on the head with a stick.She poured the frozen bowl of noodles into the chickens at her feet, and went home without a word, closing the door slowly.She disappeared in front of Zhucui like a extinguished fire.Du Zhucui stared at her two tightly closed doors, picked up a tile and threw it towards the yard of her house, then kicked the chickens in front of her a few times, kicking the chickens away, and the screams fell down. So he detoured home from the front of the forty house with peace of mind.When passing by that door, she did not forget to call out loudly:

"Sima Lan is going to die, and you, Lan, are forty to thirty-seven. Both of you have to die before me." Zhucui returned home triumphantly with a sense of pride in her victory.She is thirty-six years old.Thirty-six years old is already the end of the life of the villagers with three surnames, but Zhucui never thought of the day when she would die.Sima Lan was about to die, and the dying Sima Lan made her feel that the day of her life had come.On the way home, she turned her head and glanced back at the courtyard gate of Lan Shishi's house. The two gates with peeling black paint were still tightly closed, like the gates that had to be blocked when soldiers approached the city and were unable to defend.Inspired by an inexplicable victory, Zhu Cui went out early in the morning and walked down the mountain road for tens of miles at noon, she didn't feel hungry at all.The excitement in her stomach was like chicken, duck and beef, which made her feel that the strength in her body was boundless.She brushed the hair from her forehead to the back of her ears, and lifted the herb basket in her arm, and the road under her feet was like a piece of earth-woven cloth, which was drawn behind her.She regretted that she didn't spit on Lan Shishi's face, and regretted that she didn't kick Shishijia's reed hen.The tiles thrown at the forty houses were too small.These things in her fiery heart felt as if she had missed a good opportunity and regretted doing something wrong, which made her feel somewhat discounted from the joy brought to her by her husband's death.She went to the front and back of her house with her chest up, and the boundless excitement made her feel sweaty and hot. She unbuttoned the jacket under her neck, revealing a piece of skin and flesh under her neck hanging in the sun as if it had been dried by the sun.Because she made a detour to walk back from the front of the forty house, she had to pass in front of her brother Lu and Hu's house.Both Sima Lu and Sima Hu were having lunch at the door, and when she approached them, she deliberately puffed up her breasts and placed a basket of herbs on her stomach. "Is the cemetery ready?" she said, "I'm going to dig the Astragalus herbal medicine for your brother. Knowing that it is terminally ill, I have to treat the dead horse as a living horse doctor, so that he can live another day." Sima Hu walked from the threshold The station will rise.He had sat on the threshold to eat. "Sister-in-law," Sima Hu said, "in the past few days, you can scour a basket of wheat and grind some noodles, bake a dozen oil buns for me and fifth brother to make dry food, and we will go to the Jiaohuo Academy to sell skins for fourth brother."

Du Zhucui's footsteps were nailed down: "Sell skin...what are you doing?" Sima Hu said, let the fourth brother go to the county hospital for surgery.Want to run into an unjust business? With a good doctor and the new machines in the hospital, maybe the fourth brother's life will be saved, and he will live an extra year or two. The basket slid down from Zhucui's chest, and suddenly she felt backache, leg pain, and hunger.She said terminal illness can be cured?You all have families and mouths, and you cut skin and sell meat for him, even if he lived ten days and a half months longer, he would die at last.Simultaneously, Sima Lu glanced sideways at his sister-in-law, and said that maybe he could live another year or two, if you bake a few more buns, your brother Du Bo will go with us.

Zhucui came home.All of a sudden, the fire in her heart was extinguished by the tiger and the deer, the excited redness on her face dimmed, and a little bit of coldness emerged from her feet, slowly permeating her body. As soon as she entered the courtyard gate, she threw the herb basket in her hand on the ground, and called to the upper room: "Vine, kudzu, vine, you damned ones, don't die, hurry up and serve mother's food."