Chapter 44 Chapter Forty

Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, the priest of Midian, heard all that God had done for Moses and God's people Israel...Take Moses' wife and two sons to the mountain of God...Moses greeted his father-in-law and greeted him Bow down, kiss your wife and children, and greet each other. In a few days, the red clay wall under the east cliff of the wheat field was dug into a cave dwelling, and the stiff soil was dried and crushed, and the steamed buns with some grains could be baked into pieces until Sima Sen couldn't poop. Lying on the ground, let mother use chopsticks to gouge out the buttocks, only then did they understand that the red soil can't be eaten too much, and if you eat too much, you will die.Sima smiled and went to guard the cliff of the wheat field, telling everyone who dug the soil, stop digging, the soil is not as good as the bark.He also said that it’s fine if you want to plan. You know which child should be eaten and which child should not be eaten.The digger stood by the cliff, and still dug a pot and walked.

Still can't stop the villagers from digging. A few days later, several dead children were thrown on the east beam of the village. The older ones were fifteen and sixteen, and the younger ones were three and five years old. Sima went home with a smile and took the pick, which cut off the way up the cliff.In the next half month, no one in the village went to dig the soil, and few people went out of the house.Spring came quietly, the tree buds sprouted, and the grass became green.I thought that with the spring green, I could survive the day, but half a month later, three or four dead babies were thrown into the barren grass on the beams behind the village. The oldest was about five years old, and the youngest was only half a year old.The woman Sima Xiaoxiao went out to look for some wild vegetables and came back. She met her in the grassland and smiled at Sima when she came back and said, "It's really weird. Those who died were all clever and clever children. They were simple and foolish, but they were patient." Be hungry.Let's go and have a look. The old ducks have eaten all the corpses, and the bones have been bitten white by wild dogs. They are everywhere in the fields on the ridge.

Sima Xiaoxiao was drinking elm bark soup, and stopped drinking after hearing this.He threw down his soup bowl and went out, standing at the head of the village in a daze, saw Dugan walking in front of him, and said that you said yes, Brother Gen, you listened to my village chief, and at that time all the idiots and cripples were locked in the house, Maybe every family still has a handful of grain now.Dugan said yes, stood in front of him for a while, and then went to the village.After Dugan left, he went to the center of the village, picked up a piece of bluestone, struck the iron bell on the saponin tree a few times, then threw the stone, and stood under the saponin tree by himself.

It has been half a year without hearing the bell.As soon as the green-thorned bell rang over the village, a man came out of the house. "Village chief—is the half bag of rape seeds distributed?" "Fate, let's see how many there should be in the family." "..." "There are more than a dozen dead children thrown on the beams in front of the village and behind the village. They are all smart children. If you want the good children to die with them, they will all eat and drink together and starve to death together, and then your family will have no children and grandchildren. The surname village is gone in this world. If you want your family to be extinct and let the village be passed down from generation to generation, you can do as I say."

The men didn't say to do it, and they didn't say they wouldn't do it. They sat around Sima Xiaoxiao under the saponin tree, in a mess.A vast ocean of silence submerged them deeply.They all smoked, either cotton wool or leaves, and the mist covered the sea, and every face disappeared.In early spring, the air should be moist and green, but at that time the air smelled burnt, as if it had been roasted by fire.Everyone hooked their heads between their crotches, looking at the field under their feet.Lan Changshou, Lan Baisui's cousin, saw big ants crawling around on the ground, so he pinched the ants, first drank the white wine on the ant's buttocks, and then put the ants in his mouth to chew.Then he stood up and said, "Actually, ants can also be used as food." Seeing no one answered, he said, "Village chief, you can let my daughter-in-law leave the house for half a day."

A man answered the call: "My ancestors, I really can't bear to let the child beat the wolf. What do you think, village chief?" Then, the necks of the men turned around with a squeak, their green and hard eyes fell on Sima's smiling face, and the cigarette pouches were all stiff on their hands or lips.The air became thinner.There was a heat rumbling through the veins of the men, as if whoever took a puff of a cigarette or struck a drop of fire would set the men ablaze.Say it all, the village chief, you can do whatever you want, even if you beat your wife to death.Sima smiled and pulled his cigarette pouch from his mouth, knocked it under his feet, and said that I took all the women to Dongliang to pick vegetables. There is a wasteland there, wild vegetables must be flourishing, and the children stay at home, Xishan The wild ditch in Liang is remote and far away. You lead the children there.

The men were silent. Sima smiled and said, "If you don't want to starve to death, just do what I tell you." After saying this, Sima stood up with a smile, and called out to the village: "There is a field of wild vegetables on the Dongshan Liang, and it's fine for anyone who has food to eat. If there is not enough food, follow me to the Dongliang wasteland to pick wild vegetables." ──” He called and walked, calling from the front of the village to the back of the village, from one alley to that alley.Amidst his vegetable-smelling shouts, the women rushed out, their faces blushing, and said, village chief, where are the vegetables?He said just follow me.It’s okay for a woman to bring smart children, but if she brings stupid or disabled children, he said that it’s dozens of miles back and forth, why do you take them?The woman then sent the baby back home.After walking around the village like this, all the women followed, and he led them to Dongliang.

It was half an hour, and the sun was already high.The mountains are all yellow and yellow.The crops are already scarce, and no one has the strength to weed and fertilize. The crops in the wheat fields are dry and deserted, and the footprints of women and children picking vegetables are overwhelming.Sima Xiaoxiao walked in the front, turned over one mountain ridge, and then another mountain ridge, and when the sun was approaching the sky, he came to a gully where he had been looking for cattle once.Sure enough, the gully is not the same color as the beam.From the depths of the ditch, a stream of spring water flowed, gurgling, and the sound of the blue-white water seemed to have paint that could dye the ears green.The tall grass on both sides of the stream is knee-deep, and there are newborn moths flying around from time to time.The women hadn’t seen this color for a long time. They screamed like hungry sheep and rushed into the grass on both sides of the stream, and began to search for cauliflower, tooth horn buds, flat red celery and wild plums in the grass. said the village head, how can there be a ditch of good food here, isn't it enough for the children to eat for a few days.Sima smiled and said, don't be in a hurry to pick the vegetables here, the basket is full and then pick it up in the sun, it's not easy to do it once, and then turned around and went back.

It was noon when we returned to the village, and the village was as quiet as before, even flying insects were heard coming and going in the village.In this quiet moment, I suddenly heard the crying of a baby, and the red blood dripped over.Looking up, he saw Lan Changshou walking in the alley with his prickly-legged child on his back, repeating a sentence non-stop, saying, "Father wants you to enjoy life, not to make you suffer."But the child kicked and beat him on the back, crying loudly and begging, saying, "Daddy, daddy, I won't say I'm hungry anymore, I won't say I'm hungry even if I'm starving to death, isn't it okay?"When they arrived in front of Sima Xiaoxiao, they stood one foot apart from each other, their faces were covered with ice-cold white, but sweat was dripping on them.

Sima smiled and said, "Have you sent them all?" Lan Changshou said: "Send it away for a long time, I guess it's time to go back. My child is disobedient." The prickly-legged child looked at Sima pleadingly and smiled. "Uncle Xiaoxiao, I don't want to die, I'm only seven years old." Sima smiled and glanced at the child. "Go, baby, you have done your filial piety to your parents." Lan Changshou left with the baby on his back, his figure swaying in the sunlight like a cloud shadow, the footsteps sounded from near to far, lonely towards the mountain ridge, and finally drifted away like a withered leaf.

Sima smiled and looked at them all the time, when they disappeared over the mountain ridge, he was about to turn around and go home, when suddenly from the other side of the mountain ridge came the hoarse, cold white scream of the child from the Lan family: "Village chief—you will die—you won't even live to be thirty-five." Then there was a slap, and everyone fell silent. Sima Xiaoxiao felt his heart turn red and cold, and when he heard a loud noise in his heart, it was as if a mountain fell in his heart.A slightly fishy and slightly salty black smell rose spontaneously from his chest to his throat. He swallowed the smell back into his stomach forcefully, and shouted to the sky beyond the mountain ridge: "What can I do? Even if I die today, I will do the same. Otherwise, the village will be over." Speaking of this, he started to walk home, and after a few steps, he seemed to remember something again, turned his head and said Looking at the sky on the other side of the mountain, he called: "I have three children. Which one of Sen, Lin, and Mu is not my own child? If I didn't treat you sincerely, I would let you all suffer in the village." Regardless of the mountain ridge Can the father and son of the Lan family over there hear him? He tore his throat to pieces, and made his cry like a wormwood rope, floating over the village and the mountain ridge like a wind and rain.Afterwards, a few human heads emerged from the side of the ridge in black dots, as if they were pulled out by his words, getting bigger and higher, and everyone's face was covered with dust, as if they had been killed. It's like being alive again.Sima smiled and saw that the one walking in the front was Bai Sui, surnamed Lan.He saw Sima Xiaoxiao standing at the entrance of the village, and wanted to hide and walk away, but it was too late, and the eyes of each other met together like a stream of water.So, he bit the bullet and walked towards Sima with a smile. Sure enough, he regretted a bit and said, "I wish I had listened to you on the day of the food distribution." Lan Baisui said this to Sima with a smile, turned his head to the side, looked at the empty village, and a layer of fluffy white seeped into the dust on his face.Several men stood up, as if they were waiting for the village chief to arrange the next step of the living.Sima smiled and said to the men, let's all go home, I am also in a hurry to send the three children to enjoy the blessings, and when the daughters-in-law return, I can't tell them where the children are. The men entered the village, and with their footsteps like wooden hammers, the village kicked and kicked, with a copper sound, like a wooden fish in a temple knocking on the silence at the head and tail of the village. The women returned to the village at dusk.They didn't notice anything strange in the village, and they agreed to pick vegetables in that ditch tomorrow and the day after tomorrow.But after a while, I don’t know which house first heard a woman’s clear cry, “My baby—where is my baby—” This cry whipped like a cowhide whip in the setting sun Fighting, in a blink of an eye, there was a sound, and the ditches, valleys, and ridges became the purple and blue calls of women.Afterwards, another woman ran to the village street, screaming heart-rendingly—"My baby—my baby—" and many women were called out, and they all frantically ran around the village looking for, running I searched and searched again, and they all went under the saponin tree again, hugging each other and crying, scolding the men for being cruel, crying for the poor children, scolding the men for being human, pigs or dogs, they deserve to be cut to pieces brute. A man was annoyed by his daughter-in-law crying, so he went to kick her, but the daughter-in-law suddenly stopped crying and laughed wildly, scaring the women so much that they dared not look at her anymore. Her man went to find Sima Xiaoxiao, "Village chief, my wife is crazy." Sima smiled and said, "Crazy is crazy." The man said: "I don't know how to cook, and I can't raise children even more." Sima Xiaoxiao stepped into the setting sun and slapped the crazy daughter-in-law a few times.The daughter-in-law was smiling, but suddenly froze, and stopped crying. Sima smiled and said, "Go home and take care of those two good children." The woman went home silently. The women crying on the street, seeing this scene, actually stopped crying.They just sat scattered under the tree, let the moonlight that started to rise over the village wash their bodies, and watched Sima walking towards them with a smile, and no one spoke ill of him.Sima smiled and said, don't cry, the whole village has a short lifespan, and no one lives past forty. If all the children are to starve to death, is there still a village with three surnames in this world?The women say there is no baby anymore, so why don't we cry?Sima smiled and said, it's getting dark, you are crying to death, can the men take care of the smart child left behind? A few women stopped crying and said, "Don't cry, don't cry, if you cry again, you will die." Also really no longer cry. Sitting silently until midnight, until dawn, until sunrise. The sun shone brightly on their faces again, and those faces were uniformly gray.The early sparrows sit on their heads and shoulders.The mountain worms, which had begun to fly from generation to generation, flew over their faces as if they were flying over a plank. When it's cooking time, they don't go home to cook. The men cooked the meal and brought it to them in front of them. They didn't touch the bowl, they just sat in silence, didn't speak to each other, and sat in a daze, not talking about the sorrow of losing a child, let alone talking about it. Set off to find the baby somewhere.Even the farm house on the wheat field that was only a stone's throw away from them, no one got up to take a look there, and squatted on the ground in a daze, hugging the hungry and sleepy child, as if they or a child As soon as the baby moved, it was as if mother and child were separated again, so they all sat still, silent for a long time, endlessly.The silence of death passed in front of their eyes, and it was as if they had died in a silent river. Sitting like this for a day. Another day of sitting. On the third day, Lan Baisui came. The sun was in the middle of the sky, and the sun tanned them like autumn grass, and when they were about to fall down, Lan Baisui came over with a bundle of grain and grass, his third daughter, Seventy, who was wrapped in the grain and grass.Seventy's little hand dangled from the grain grass, like a dead cucumber, holding a handful of yellowed wild horse teeth.When he arrived in front of the group of women, Lan Baisui stood outside the crowd and saw his daughter-in-law sitting under a tree, leaning on the tree, holding the little girl Sanjiu in her arms, and staring at a tree far away from the tree crown. The twigs, unblinking, are like a pair of blind eyes without light.He stepped between the women and walked under the tree, put the bundle of grain and grass in front of the woman, and untied the rope of the grain and grass, revealing Seventy's bruised, swollen face and bulging belly. He said, "Look, Seventy is dead too." The 100-year-old woman Meimei withdrew her gaze from the branch, and stared blankly at the third daughter's face and belly, but hugged the younger daughter Sanjiu until her tendons and bones were broken, crying in pain, and still exerting all her strength. He hugged her tightly, but her gaze on the third daughter was still white as a dead fish's eye, dry and dry without a single tear.The third girl came here the day before yesterday to sit down with the women, and she was hungry for two days. Today, the elder sister and the second sister led forty to go out to find grass and dig vegetables, and cooked a pot of half-dried wild vegetables at home. , I didn’t know where to get a handful of beans and salt, boiled them in a pot and mixed them with vegetables, the wild vegetables became extremely sweet, so I swelled my stomach and died on the edge of the pot.When Lan Baisui returned home, even her hands were icy cold, which was wrapped in straw. He said: "The village chief is right. The smart ones can't support themselves, so what are the poor fools doing?" She ignored him, and after a long time, she thought of touching the face and body of the third girl with her hands.But when her fingers touched the face of the third girl, her hands froze on that face and did not move. Lan Baisui looked at the women who were all looking at the faces of his three daughters, his eyes were red but he kept his tears from falling in front of the women, he said they should all go home, don't hate Sima Xiao Smile, compare your heart with your heart, I will become the village head, maybe I will be like this.He bent down, took the woman's hand away from Seventy's face, and said that there are four girls left out of seven, and if you stay here like this every day, you may not be able to keep four.Then he tied the grain and grass again, carried the bodies of the three girls on his shoulders like a bundle of hay, and walked away from under the feet of the women. The woman's eyes creaked and turned with him like an immovable stone mill, watching him carry the bundle of grain and grass up the mountain ridge, farther and farther away, like a soul floating into the muddy yellow sun , leaving behind a line of green smell of boiled vegetables.At this moment, his woman threw Sanjiu in her arms to the ground as if she had woken up, and ran in the direction her man was walking. When she reached the entrance of the alley, she stopped abruptly and shouted: "She Dad, what are you talking about, are you saying that Seventy is also dead?" Lan Baisui turned around, "Look at you, didn't you see it?" She sprang at him again, "Didn't your rolls be sixty and fifty?" He called: "Hey, what are you doing in a daze, you stop my woman." A few waking women caught up with her and pulled her off, letting him walk away holding the grass scroll. His woman Meimei cried hoarsely, saying that I killed the third child, I killed the third child.As she spoke, she struggled to break free from the women who were hugging her, suddenly her strength became astonishingly great, four or five women couldn't stop her, the neighing sound shook the sun, and the branches above her head swayed. At this time Sima came over with a smile, he took a bowl of soup, water and vegetables from Sima Lan's hand, and came to deliver food to his women. Seeing this scene, he handed the soup, water and vegetables to Sima Lan, and pushed the women aside Go, planted in front of Du Meimei like a tree and stopped moving. Seeing Sima smiling, she suddenly stopped struggling, stood upright and said: "Seventy is dead too. Four of my seven daughters are left." Sima smiled and stared at her hard, "Will she be swollen to death if you stay at home at seventy?" Sima smiled and glanced at the women in the village, and said, "You all go home and live your life, good children, if you can lead the past famine years, it will be considered your meritorious service." Oh, why are you still in love with the stupid and disabled?" The women looked at each other, and the eyeballs that had been dead for the past three days finally began to roll. Sima smiled and said: "Do you still want to stay until your family is like the Lan family and die a good boy?" Women started coming home. They all went home in a mess, and ended up sitting foolishly for three days.When the women left and Meimei was left, she still looked at Sima with a smile and said, "Your family has six children, three are left, and my family has seven daughters, four are left."Three of your family starved to death, and my family also starved to death. Do you think the rest will still be alive?Sima smiled and said that a ninety-year-old girl is sixteen years old, and you can marry her off if the family can provide five catties of grain.Ninety, eighty, forty, and thirty-nine can support each other after marriage.Meimei said, who can still have food in this year?Sima smiled and said that Du Yan's family may have food, and his younger brother is twenty-eight and has not yet married. Meimei was startled, "That's silly." Sima smiled and said: "It doesn't matter if he is stupid or not, giving five catties of grain is giving a life."