Chapter 34 Chapter Thirty-One (1)

one Du Yan went to the town to sweep the courtyard and buy vegetables. On the day he left, everyone in the village had blue eyes. Sima Taohua no longer goes to the town to serve Director Lu's wife.When she came back from the town for the last time, she had a few bloody red marks on her face. It was said that when she was walking at night, she stumbled into a bush of thorns.The whole village believed that she fell on a thorn, and even the red cloth jacket she borrowed was torn several times.The only one who didn't believe it was sixteen-year-old Sima Lan.On the day she went to return the jacket, she called Sima Lanniang to call her sister-in-law, saying that she was really sorry and tore the jacket.Originally, Sima Lanniang wanted to say something, not to pick up the rotten jacket, but Sima Taohua also brought some sesame candies, Sima Lanniang didn't accept the sesame candies, but Sima Lu and Sima Hu both took the sesame candies Sugar gobbled it up.

At this moment, Lan Baisui appeared at the door with a full black canvas bag, stood timidly for a while, and stammered, asking Brother Sima to go to the village and carry some bundles of firewood to the opposite mountain ridge.There is a new tent and kitchen, and the terraced fields of a village have been repaired far away, and all food and accommodation have been moved away from the village. Sima Lan said: "Are you all going? Brother deer and tiger are going too?" Lan Baisui said: "Let's go, you can't carry a big bundle and a small bundle." With a doubt, I hesitated and went.

The time was just after breakfast. The Sima brothers, Lan Liugen, Lan Yanggen, and several other teenagers, some carrying firewood, some carrying grain, and some carrying buckets, followed in a mighty team. Behind the house, climb across the ravine on the opposite beam.The sun on this day is melting and humid, like water that has just been heated.Winter seems to be coming to an end, and spring is coming quietly.Walking on the road in the wilderness, kicking away the white grass that has withered for a winter, you can find that the heart of the grass is bright yellow again.They can also smell a faint trace of green air, like tiny water-wet green silk threads slipping down their noses.More than 400 acres of fields, half of the terraced fields have been repaired.Walking on the beam and looking far and wide, it already has a brilliant appearance.Director Lu is happy for this large terraced field.The leaders came from the county, and they were also happy about the large terraced fields. They patted Director Lu on the shoulder like Director Lu patted Sima Lan on the shoulder.Passing through the terraced fields, looking at the bright yellow land, the strong earthy smell rushed straight to Sima Lan's nose.He thought that maybe the 400 mu of land would be thoroughly refurbished, and all of them would be terraced like large steps. People from the province and region would pat the county leaders on the shoulders, just like the county leaders pat Director Lu on the shoulders.At that time, Director Lu will be transferred to the county.Director Lu is about to announce that he will be the village head at the mass meeting when he leaves.Lan Baisui is about to be replaced.Thinking of the time when Lan was a hundred years old, Sima Lan's heart thumped twice, as if a door was closed, and another door was suddenly opened, which made him stop in his tracks, and his face became pale.

He tied the bundle of locust tree branches and willow branches on the ground. He said he had to take a shit. He walked a few steps into the ditch, leaving aside his younger brothers and other boys in the village, and then ran along the bottom of the ditch for a while, avoiding the path with people passing by. When crossing the river at the bottom of the ditch, he did not take off his shoes, bang bang bang Stepped on the water and ran over.The water splashed on his body immediately soaked into his body, making him shiver unbearably cold.As for the two cloth shoes, they were completely wet, and the shoe sockets were filled with river water, leaving behind a whitish, gurgling sound when running.He didn't feel his feet were cold, but felt some tingling pain like needles.His face was covered with beads of white sweat.Without stopping, without stopping, he just crossed the river ditch and climbed up the slope. When he reached the entrance of the village, he saw two sisters, Lan Jiushi and Lan Bashi, talking in the sun, so he walked behind them and detoured to the west of the village , entered the alley of his own house, slowed down, and walked towards the house.

The gate was bolted from the inside.It's locked in broad daylight! With his hands frozen on the door, Sima Lan immediately panicked.With a crackle, the blood on his face completely receded, turning into a vast expanse of white.The blood on his body also seemed to be frozen to death, and suddenly he was stunned, and the cold was uncontrollable.He bit his lips tightly, stayed at the door for a moment, and walked slowly towards the back of the room.He went to a tree on the backyard wall, looked around for a while, then climbed up the tree, moved a few steps on the courtyard wall, and got down from another tree. He came to his own toilet, where he had stepped on a few days ago. The urine canister is still in place.He remembered Lan Baisui's flickering figure walking towards the terraced fields, tiptoeing, and walking along the wall, he heard the sound of his feet kicking the sun like slowly wading across a river.A few budding toon trees began to spew out in the courtyard, and their shadows cast their shadows on his face like strips of black cloth.When he got to the door of the upper room, he saw the door was ajar and the other door was ajar. He let his eyes rush in through the crack of the door, but he saw nothing, only two wooden doors. Stools slouched against the wall.At this moment of death and life, his chest and back were like a horse farm, and his heart galloped there like a crazy horse.He heard the white creaking of the bed, and the murky voices of men and women.When the sound passed through his heart slowly but powerfully like a sawtooth, the galloping crazy horse ran not only in his chest, but also in his head, into his intestines, and into his heart. on his calves and toes.His hands trembled a little, and his upper and lower teeth knocked with landslides and tsunamis.The crack in the door smashed towards his forehead like a black stone pillar.The sound of footsteps passing outside the gate fell on his head like a bluestone slab.He longed for the sound of the white bed and the red voice to be as weak as the sound of footsteps, and disappear soundlessly.But the sound was one after another, as long as an endless loess beam.He wanted to rush into the house at once, to go in and chop off a man's head.When he was about to go in, his hand stopped on the door.He tiptoed again and walked towards the kitchen.When he arrived at the kitchen, he picked up the kitchen knife without hesitation.When the kitchen knife fell heavily into his hand, his heart stopped beating, and the racetrack came to a peaceful rest.All the gallop is concentrated in the throat.Throat was swollen and stuffy, and it seemed as if it was about to explode.

He walked out of the kitchen.The sweat on his hands prevented him from holding the knife tightly.He roughly wiped sweat on the door frame.However, when he took his hand back from the door frame, his eyelids were pulled, and he felt a red blood pain in the corner of his eyes.On the corner of the cutting board, he saw a bunch of Chinese medicine bags wrapped in straw paper, and the empty black cloth bag that Lan Baisui had brought when he came.He looked over the chopping board, and saw that there were also several packs of Chinese herbal medicines in the willow basket that had always been hanging in the air.

Bending his head, he saw nothing under the chopping board.When they reached the pile of firewood on one side of the pot platform, Sima Lan stood still when he pushed aside the pile of firewood.He saw a medicine pot and a pile of boiled traditional Chinese medicine dregs placed under a pile of corn stalks, cotton stalks, and bean trees. That is to say, my mother has a sore throat. That is to say, these Chinese medicine dregs were boiled and drunk by the mother. That is to say, my mother will not be able to catch up with the food from the new land, and she will live in this world for at most three or five months.

That is to say, this traditional Chinese medicine was brought by Lan Baisui. Sima Lan was standing in the kitchen, he smelled the smell of traditional Chinese medicine and rushed towards him.He wondered why he didn't smell Chinese medicine at home for such a month.He thought that he should have bought these traditional Chinese medicines from other villages, but it turned out to be Lan Baisui.He turned around and grabbed the black canvas bag on the chopping board, grabbed one end of the bag with one hand, clamped the other end with his knees, and cut the bag to pieces with two strokes of the kitchen knife, and then he Throw the medicine bag on the ground, step on it with your foot and twist it, then pick it up and stuff it into the stove, grab a handful of bean stalks, light it on the fire, and stuff it into the stove.

He looked at the black smoke and prosperity of the medicine bag before he walked out of the kitchen. He was standing in the courtyard, the sun beating on his face. He heard the white creaking of the bed again. He stood for a moment, picked up a laundry mallet in front of him, swished it towards the window where the white sound came from.The mallet flipped the bucket in mid-air, smashed on the window, flew up a puff of dust, landed on the ground and rolled towards the distance. The creaking sound of the white thorn stopped abruptly. The silence in the house and courtyard was as dull as after a house collapsed.

Sima Lan walked towards the outside of the gate, pulled the latch hard, and opened the gate wide open. Then he stood at the gate for a while, watching the people walking around in the village and the busy crowd on the opposite terrace. He went to Lan Baisui's house. gone.He yelled forty a few times at the door of Lan Baisui's house, and saw Lan Forty running out of the upper room in a hurry wearing a newly made red flower shirt, and asked if it looked good?He said you come here, then turned around and walked behind Lan's house.It was a locust forest.The light yellow smell of the locust tree has dissipated in early spring.What did she say?It's not good to run here and let the villagers see.He didn't speak, turned the corner of the room, turned around and stared at her with piercing eyes, as if staring at an enemy, the veins in his neck kicked violently.

She said, "Brother Sima Lang, what happened?" He said: "Forty, I tell you, your father is not a human being, but a pig." She was stunned for a while and asked, "You scolded me for offending you?" He said: "Your father is really a pig. Pigs and dogs are worse." She said, "Your aunt is a pig. I saw your aunt Sima Taohua sleeping with Director Lu of the commune." He stopped talking.He put his eyes on her flexible lips, raised and lowered his hands, and slapped her face a few times, then before she woke up, he grabbed her hair and slammed her head against the wall.He saw the loess on the wall, powder and dust rolling down.Hearing her screaming cry that seemed to have been suppressed for a year, she rushed out of her throat lividly, twitching in mid-air like the green skin on a willow tree, and then exhausted her last strength to slap the extremely loud one. With a slap in the face, he strode through the locust trees and walked up the mountains. He heard screams from Lan Baisui's house and the sound of running as loud and dense as hailstones, but he didn't even turn his head. two The terraced fields are being built farther and farther away. Those outsiders who still live in the village and only leave the village for work leave their frame carts, shovels, and shovels in the field when they return to the village, so they lose the two frame carts and Good shovel and shovel, reported the matter to Director Lu of the commune, Director Lu said that this was not fucking stealing a car, but destroying it, so he began to send villagers to guard tools. Sima Lan lived in Liangshang and never returned to the village. During the day, when others were working, he walked around this field, looked at that field, and ate at the top of the terraced fields in any village. At night, he didn't need to guard the tools, and he would sleep on the wheat field. In the straw nest.He has not returned home for seven days and seven nights, wandering in the mountains like a wandering god.One night, Sima Lu found him in the terraced fields, and said that his mother has been crying these days, and she cried and asked you to go back.He was silent for a while, and said that his mother had a sore throat, and it was good to cry.Said that director Lu of the commune asked me to check who stole the car and the shovel, can I go back?Since Director Lu said it, Lu turned around and went back.Then he turned around the mountain range, and turned to the grave of his father Sima Xiaoxiao. There was no moonlight, and a few cold stars appeared and disappeared in the wandering clouds.The tombs of Sima's family, several miles away from the village, were piled up on a wilderness, and there was a fresh green grass in the withered grass.Occasionally, among the thick black branches and leaves of the cypress tree that grows to maturity at the tomb, the brown crackling sound is hidden.He walked through the shadow of the tree, his footsteps fell together, and the sound was transmitted from the graveyard to the beam.He felt something stopping him under his feet, cold and cold, like ice-cold hands, stretched out from the grave, and pulled his trousers and ankles.He ignored those hands and just walked through the gap between the graves.Just walk towards your father's grave.In the terraced field across the ditch, a lantern was shaking, and it walked towards the sail tent like a ghost.Left and right, except for hundreds of graves, it is so quiet that you can hear the wind blowing on the graves and the voices of graves and graves.He didn't think about anything, and walked towards his father's grave without turning his head.The grave is on the second row below the hillside. A hole collapsed during the rainy season last year. When he went to the grave after the Qingming Festival after the New Year, he and his younger brothers Lu and Hu filled up the collapsed hole.He has already reached the second row of graves, and he has seen that the repaired collapsed hole sank into a pit after the snow melted.He looked in front of the pit, and then looked around. A few starlights were covered by shadows and disappeared from the cemetery. In the terraced fields in the distance, there was a sudden smell of earth, and the early spring from the fields. The subtle sound of grass growing; and the occasional chirping of insects, crisp and cold like beads rolling on ice.Sima Lan felt a few strands of his hair stand up on top of his head, and a few more, and then they all stood up like a forest.He knelt down by his father's grave.When he knelt down, he lowered his head, and when he raised his head, he saw a shadow swaying on his father's grave. After looking carefully, he recognized that the swaying shadow was his father, Sima smiled.Sima Xiaoxiao was still wearing the black jacket and cotton trousers he had been encoffined with before his death, his face was blurred, like a piece of paper covered in black ash.He sat cross-legged on the edge of the hole, with his hands on his knees.Sima Lan called Dad.He didn't answer.Sima Lan yelled loudly again, and then he lightly agreed.His response was weak, with hoarse weeping, as if he had no strength to talk to his son after answering this sentence.Sima Lan finally couldn't hold back the tears.When he smelled the salty taste of tears entering his throat, the sadness and depression in his heart finally pushed and shoved around him, and he couldn't help crying loudly anymore, kneeling down and rushing towards his father .When he hugged his father, the cry was pale and miserable, flowing out in a rush, ding ding dong dong in the quiet night around the cemetery.When his father went to wipe the tears on his face, his hands were cold and trembling. The nails that hadn't been cut for several years hung on the fluff on his face like the grass he kicked when he came.He heard that his father's crying was not loud and pale like his, and tears and snot flowed into his mouth in a river.His father hugged him, just like when he was a child more than ten years ago, with one hand on his shoulders and the other hand stroking his head, then his father's hands slid down his face and hung him on the Tears were wiped from the eyes.After wiping him off, he bled more and more, and his father used his coat sleeve to touch his face until his voice became hoarse from crying, and the tears seemed to be dry, his father said softly, there was nothing more to say, father I know everything, don't mention a word about family affairs, your mother won't live for a few months, so let her go. Sima Lan said: "Father,... the baby is sorry for you." Sima smiled and said, "Lan baby, I don't blame you for a word." Sima Lan said: "I'm an adult now, and I shouldn't let the Sima family suffer this humiliation when I grow up." Sima Xiaoxiao seemed to be stunned, and stared at Sima Lan half-foolishly, as if his son said that he became an adult and he was unexpected.It seemed that the lord had arrived at Sima Lan many years earlier.He stared at Sima Lan as if looking at a precious item someone gave him, and at the end he said to himself: "You should do some adult things." Sima Lan said: "I have sold skins before. I also led others to sell skins." Sima smiled and said, "I was in charge of the village affairs when I was seventeen, and I started trying to find ways to make the villagers live past forty." Sima Lan said: "Director Lu of the commune said that when he left the village, he would let me be the village head, and the Sansurname village would be handed over to me." Sima smiled and said, "You can go back to the village tonight. Director Lu of the commune doesn't want to dig land in the village anymore. Once Director Lu leaves, you will withdraw the people and horses. You can't finish the land in three to five years. Three years I don't know how many people will die in the village in five years, maybe people around your mother's age will die." Sima Lan was a little taken aback.Director Lu said four or five days ago that he wanted to speed up the repair of the terraced fields earlier, so how could he withdraw them?He wanted to ask his father, but suddenly saw that his father's eyes were not on his face.Father's eyes were vacillating, like old people's eyes dazzled, looking out from his shoulder in a blurry black and blue, looking at something behind him.Sima Lan turned her head back.He saw his mother standing behind him, as dumb as a dead tree.He wondered when his mother stood there, her face was as white as snow, so white that the graveyard was reflected in light.The mother didn't look at Sima sitting on the grave and smiled, she looked down at the baby Sima Lan, guilt fell from that pale face like goose feathers and snow, and tears fell down towards the grave.After seeing Sima Lan turn her head back, she tremblingly said: "Lan, mother is begging you to go home. Remembering that you are the flesh of mother, you will forgive mother. It is the end of winter and it is cold outside. You can beat and scold your mother, but you have to go home." Sima Lan was silent. She also said: "Mother won't live long. Your fifth younger brother Lu and sixth younger brother Hu will be completely taken care of by you. Since Mother is suffering from a terminal illness, you can go home tonight." Sima Lan stood up from the ground. He said: "Let me go back, but you kneel down to Daddy, it is Daddy you are sorry for." A cloud like a threshing-floor passed overhead.The stars lit up again, and the moon showed its teeth at some point.The cemetery is as blue as water.Seeing his mother's face stiffen, Sima Lan raised her head slightly, glanced left and right, and then turned her eyes on him again, as if she didn't see her father.He said, isn't my dad sitting right in front of you?Then she looked up, and he heard a pale tremor like a thunderbolt on his mother's face, and saw that her face was pale.He knew that his mother saw his father sitting on the grave.He thought that his mother must be afraid because his father could sit and bask in the sun as if he was alive, and because he and Lan Baisui couldn't face his father because of his misbehavior.He was worried about his mother's situation for her, afraid that his father would suddenly sit up and hit his mother like he hit blue forty.He turned his head, and when he saw that his father was still sitting there with no complaints on his face, he respected his father even more.He thought that this embarrassment was enough for his mother's irregularity. After all, she was suffering from a throat blockage and was about to die soon.Thinking that he didn't rush into the house seven days ago with a kitchen knife and cut off Lan Baisui's head, thus saving his mother's reputation, he was doing his mother a favor, and he had done his utmost filial piety to her.Thinking that today he can make his mother kneel in front of his father, he will be sorry for his father again, and he has done his utmost filial piety to his father. If he wants to be a child equivalent to the eldest son, he has already deserved his parents. So, he gently urged: "Mother, kneel down for father." The mother finally bent her legs slowly, tears streaming down her face, and she knelt down by the grave as if she had lost all her muscles and bones.The sound of her mother kneeling reverberated in Sima Lan's ears like an avalanche. In the thin and bright night, a thick and intense chill began to flow.Sima took one last look at his mother who was kneeling and weeping and his father who was sitting sadly, then turned around silently and left, leaving the silence to his parents.He walked straight to the outside of the cemetery, the moonlight passed through his cotton-padded coat, and the water on his back was lasciviously cool.After walking out of the cemetery for a long time, he still heard his earthy footsteps, fluttering and struggling in the cemetery like a wounded sparrow. three It was almost dawn when Sima Lan returned home.When he entered the village, he saw dozens of laborers from other villages, pulling a cart full of shovels, picks, shovels, quilts, pots, pans, ladles, and unfinished bags of grain. Walk up the beam.The murky noise in the early morning woke up many villagers with three surnames. They stood hopelessly by the side of the road, watching helplessly as people from other villages happily walked up the beam. On the face, on the car, the bright and bright poses are all over the place. Sima Lan remembered what her father said at the grave. Sima Lan stood in the middle of the road, stopped and asked, why did he leave before the terraced fields were finished?Someone sternly said to work for you for nothing, do you want our crops?In the early spring, who will weed and fertilize our own wheat? Sima Lan was dumbfounded.After asking Lan Liugen on the side of the road, he realized that the situation was exactly the same as what his father had said.It is said that this is the third group of people who have been evacuated.It is said that Director Lu of the commune went to the county to hold a meeting, and said that the county had set up the pilot terraces in the whole county in the foreign commune, and when Director Lu came back, he disbanded the people.Said that the village chief Lan Baisui went to Director Lu and kowtowed to Director Lu face to face. Director Lu said that he had repaired 200 acres for you for nothing, what do you want?Could it be that the entire commune’s crops are going to be barren?I had no choice but to watch those laborers hastily put an end to the half-built terraces and evacuate them batch by batch.The red light that is getting brighter in the east begins to dye the branches of the village. The paulownia tree that blooms without leaves bears clusters of dark green bones like grapes. Occasionally, there is an early-blooming tung flower. When it is about to shine, it falls down, leaving a wet mark on the ground, and a faint flowery scent wafts out.The villagers with the three surnames just watched another group of laborers get up and leave early, climb up the mountain ridge from the village, and disappeared in the morning light in a blink of an eye.The rest of the villagers with the three surnames surrounded the village and no one spoke, and the frost on their faces was covered in gray and white cloth.From now on, they will start the endless labor of exchanging soil for their lives like cattle and horses like three months ago.Someone got up and opened the door, and walked to the well platform with a bucket, and the blue creaking sound came loudly.Sima Lan said there is no other way?The villagers said that when Lan Baisui kowtowed to Director Lu, blood flowed from his forehead.They all dispersed silently, and walked slowly towards their respective homes like a flock of chickens drenched by the evening rain.Someone's sleeping dog, still carrying grass branches and warmth, came out of the house and urinated on the trees on the side of the village street.Sima Lan looked at the scattered villagers, and suddenly called out loudly: "What should I do if I want all the laborers from other villages to stay?" Those who left stopped and turned their heads. He said: "I can ask Director Lu to withdraw the troops again, but will they come back in vain?" The villagers were silent, looking at him like a sick man waking up from the madness of a sheep. He asked: "From now on, can you all listen to me and stop treating Lan Baisui as the village head?" In the end, no one said a word, and they started walking to their respective homes again.Floating footsteps, in the silent morning, are as silent as wood floating on the lake.The villagers looked like doctors with no medical skills who had no choice but to leave in discouragement after seeing a madman who was too ill to save him.The last one was Lan Liugen, and Sima Lan stepped forward and grabbed his arm, saying hello to you, you should also say something now.Lan Liugen shook his arm, and said in a mixed voice, I'm afraid you will lead people to the teaching fire academy to sell human skins again.Sima Lan remained silent, watching Lan Liugen get lost in the village street from near to far.The alley in front of me was quiet again, so quiet that I could hear the sound of the last ray of morning sun passing through the branches and falling from the slope of the house.The dog that was still there just now disappeared somewhere. Looking at the alley that runs from one end of the village to the other end, there is no one or living thing walking around, Sima Lan's heart immediately felt empty, like the barren mountains and wild mountains in winter. On the margins, there is no grass.He scolded and said, "My ancestors from the village with the three surnames said that you have a fatal throat disease, so hurry up and pour it into the courtyards of each house, so that all the men, women and children in the village with the three surnames will leave this world."Staring at the empty village, he suddenly bent over inexplicably, picked up a stone like a basket, raised it above his head, and threw it at a small elm tree in front of him. The elm tree shook, fell over, and bounced like a bow again. It stood up, swinging unbently and unbently.Sima Lan stood blankly, staring at the yellow sap flowing from the small tree and rolling to the root, then went home silently. The fifth and sixth brothers are still sleeping on the bed.