Chapter 52 Chapter Forty-eight

Winter is here. One night, the village head asked his daughter-in-law Sima Taohua and son Murong Song to keep calling the men in the village to his bed.Every time a man goes in, just stand beside his bed for flies and mosquitoes, and all of them come out.The face that went in was calm and peaceful, but when it came out, it was full of tears.What did you say?The answer is still that.When the men passed each other in the Du's courtyard, with just a few words, they all understood that the village chief's throat disease had worsened, and it would take three to five months at most, and ten days and a half months at least, before he would pass away.So, on that night in early winter, the women didn't know what the village chief said to the men one by one. When the men returned home, they lay quietly on the bed for a while, and then Leng Ding'er sat up from the bed, regardless of what happened. On the 21st, I started having sex.

The cold air of early winter is also mixed with the last yellow fragrance in late autumn.The corn stalks are leaning against the front and back of the house, before the smell of dry milk and the smell of golden corn hanging on the tree under the eaves squeezed into the house through the cracks in the door, and the villagers who were awake were all He smelled the half damp and half warm light yellow breath.In the dead of night on the village street, the sound of falling dead leaves is as loud as the chirping.Sima Lan didn't know what happened at home. When he woke up, he found that he was not in the original bed.Originally, he was sleeping on the bed in the east room with the tiger, the deer and his mother, but when he turned over and touched his mother's bag of milk, he touched his elder brother Sima Sen's stone-like head.

He opened his eyes. He found that the six brothers were lying on the bed in the west room like a row of radishes and covered with a quilt, but when his father was not in the west room, Sima Lan's heart jumped inexplicably. It will splash and soak the black room into a red pool.He stepped out of the bed frightened, with his ears pricked up, and took a step towards the main room, he heard the bed in the east room weeping and crying, with the legs of the dry bed screaming under the bed board.So an ominous premonition enveloped his whole body, and he was drowned in sweat.He knew that something had happened and was going on.He didn't understand what was going on, but he was dimly aware that it was a matter of his father bullying his mother, and his mother was willing to be bullied.The crackling of the bed was like a bamboo being cut open by a knife, and the parents' shortness of breath was hidden in the intermittent screams.Sima Lan could smell the sweat coming from his panting.He walked through the main room carefully and approached the east room. In order not to make any noise, he touched things with his hands to find the way.The chairs were cold and cold.The legs of the wooden stool are as thick as a tree.The reed mats at the bottom of the boundary wall are the same as the erected coffins.Walking to the center of the room, he clearly remembered that there was a dustpan of corn grains there, and it was the mother who led them to peel the corn, and they were put to bed when the dustpan was full, but the dustpan could not be touched right now. up.The jade and Shu grains on the ground were crushed under his feet, making the soles of his feet itchy and painful.He dared not move a step.He was afraid that Ding'er would make a loud kick that would startle his father and mother.He has a sense of humiliation of being tricked by his parents from the east room to the west room, and a nervous feeling that he has discovered the thief.He felt that he was doing a shocking event right now, as if after this event, he would become an adult and the world would be his.The sound of the bed suddenly stopped, and the tempting breathing became slightly calmer.Sima Lan was in the middle of the room, and Leng Ding'er was soaked in disappointment, as if when the thief was about to be caught, the thief pulled away and ran away.

He thought it was his parents who found him. He cut off his breath abruptly in his throat. The room was so quiet that it seemed that the room no longer existed, and the dark and flowing voice drifted past his ears like a dark cloud. ──Will you get pregnant? ──Yes.The village chief said that early winter is also the season when women are most likely to conceive a baby. ──Is he really going to die? ──I can’t survive the winter, my throat is swollen like a piece of red-hot iron. ──I am afraid that I will bleed to death when I have another child. ──No way, you can relax.We have six children, seven children in one birth, one life for seven lives, just like you and Meimei, the three-surname village will have fewer and fewer people.

Then the bed was rumbling again, and the sound of panting exploded like firecrackers.The sound was quick and intense, and the panting of the parents was also quick and intense.The room was filled with firewood and moxibustion, and Sima Lan's whole body was numb and swollen from the heat.He hoped that the voice would stop as abruptly as before.He suddenly lost the excitement of catching a thief.He vaguely knew that his parents wanted to follow his sixth younger brother Hu to give birth to a baby, but the humiliation in his heart refused to let go no matter what.He knew that he should go back to the bed in the west room, but his disobedient hands and feet crawled on the ground like a cat or dog, and crawled carefully to the parents in the east room.The cries from the bed in the east room were endless, as were the gasps of the parents, and there was also the mother's happy and soft screams.When his mother's happy screams slid past his ears like red silk, his bean-like heart shrank into a pockmark.He felt his heart constricted by his mother's call, turning into blood that was about to flow out of the pores on his chest.He climbed to the door of the east house.The room became smaller, the walls squeezed against him, and he seemed to be locked in his mother's half-brick sewing pot.He climbed over the gate of the boundary wall, his heart was beating like he was gathering firewood on the hillside with the forests and woods and smashing stones on the open-air coffin board. The rattling rattling made the bones in his chest throb.In order to calm his heartbeat, he squatted there again and did not move, the bed was screaming, and the bed board was laughing and laughing.My mother said that whether you let me live past forty or not, I will serve you like a cow and a horse in my life.My father said that as long as I become the village head, I will let the whole village grow rapeseed all over the mountains and fields, so that everyone will live to fifty-sixty, seventy-eighty.Mother said, can you be the village chief?My father said I could, and my younger sister was married to his family's children.A layer of warm water began to float in Sima Lan's heart, and his heart slowly unfolded in the warm water, like something swelled in the water, alive, beating like a lamb in the field.He raised his head, and the moonlight leaked through the wicker window, splashing on the bed like a basin of well water.Casting his gaze on the bed, his eyes lit up in the darkness.He saw that the quilt had fallen under the bed, and his parents were stacked on top of each other on the bed, one on top and the other on the bottom, with four legs like four big white fish swimming on the bed.He smelled the smell of milk mixed with salt, the smell of blood mixed with the smell of meat, mixed with the smell of meat, squeezed out from between the tightly hugged bodies of his parents, creaked and soaked the bed, A house is flooded.Sima Lan was covered by that strand of white.A multicolored thread of red and purple breath was entangled, and the throat was dry and itchy, and I really wanted to cough and spit out something.The sound of the bed was still endless, and the geese hit him on the head like a hatching stone, and the body of his parents' white fish made his hands itch like mosquito bites, making him want to go and touch that body.He wanted to lift his father off his mother like a sack, and then snuggled into her arms, holding her milk bag with both hands. In the moonlight, the mother's face turned crimson, like a piece of red cloth wet with water.The father hugged her tightly and tightly, as if he wanted to strangle the mother to death in his arms.But my mother said, Father Sen, hold me tighter, the tighter you hold me, the harder it will be for me.Sima Lan heard her mother's upper body bones rattling brightly when her father hugged her tightly.Sima Lan felt her throat suffocating like a sore throat, the sweat in her hands flowed down her thighs to her feet, and the blood in her small body clanked like a rushing river.He was a little dizzy.He wants to say to the parents who are busy and happy on the bed, father and mother, the room is turning in circles, the table, the bed and you are all turning.Want to say I'm hot, I want to drink saliva.But he didn't make a sound, stretched out his sweaty hands and pressed them against the mud wall.The mud wall was icy and cold, and the squeaking and screaming dried up the sweat on his hands, and a gust of cool air ran down his palms, passed through his arms, and flowed all over his body.

Finally, the sound of the bed stopped. After resting, he began to force himself to forgive his parents for this night of mistakes.He stood there, using great strength to stop himself from thinking about it, but he couldn't think of anything else anyway.His mind was full of red-hot thoughts, like a piece of red-hot nails nailed to a wooden board, which made the board smell of scorching. He thought, Mother is going to have another baby. He thought, maybe there are really fewer and fewer people in the village. He thought, that bed is so strong, why didn't it collapse? He slowly tiptoed to the bed, picked up the quilt that had fallen under the bed, and put it on the bed.

The parents were startled, and froze with a bang. who? Dad, the quilt fell off. Who are you, go back to Westinghouse and go to sleep. I'm blue...the quilt fell off. Ah...it's Lan, go back to sleep, I'll ask your mother to give you another girl. Sima Lan was at the bedside, and his father was on Mother's body. She stroked his head with her hand, and Mother put her hand out from under Father's shoulders, touched his face, and he came out of the east room. Sima Lan went back to the west room in the dark, put on her clothes, quietly opened the door, and stood in the courtyard.He didn't want to sleep, and the inexplicable excitement was running around like a rabbit all over his body.Suddenly, he felt that he had grown into a teenager and grown up.He understood one of the most mysterious things in the world.He wanted to talk to people, but the three brothers all slept like little pigs and lambs.The two younger brothers, Lu and Hu, are too young to understand what he has seen.In the courtyard, the moonlight was as thick as raw white cloth that had just been unloaded from the loom, and the cool breeze was blowing, making the flute sound muffled.He shuddered, and touched a mother and touched his face with his hand.The goose bumps on his face were like sown grain seeds, but he felt the warm steam from his mother's hand from the coldness, and they were still hanging on his face.

The sound of the bed in the room came over like music, and it was like the dripping of spring rain in March and April in the courtyard. Sima Lan gently opened the gate and stood on the village street, listening to the faint sound of moonlight falling on the ground.The sky was clear and clear, and there were a few floating clouds, which made the night look even more peaceful and abnormal.He saw a figure swaying at the other end of the village, so he walked over by the moonlight, and it turned out that there was a child like him standing there.Liu Gen, are you awake?He yelled and asked, and the child turned around and said that he didn't know what was going on, and he would not die yesterday.Then he walked eastward with Lan Liugen, who was one year older than him.The gate of a courtyard in the east of the village rang quietly, and then Du Zhuang walked out through the gate.The three of them went to the south of the village again, and met Du Zhu and Lan Baisui's fourth daughter, Lan Liushi, fifth daughter, Lan Shifu, and sixth daughter, Lan Shishi. When they met each other, they stood silently for a while without speaking , They all seem to understand why they didn't sleep in the middle of the night, why they quietly opened the gate and came to the village street.There was a dog following them, wagging its tail cracklingly, as if it had been lost for half a year, and then suddenly returned home and met its old master.The children walked through the south of the village, and then walked towards the north of the village. After walking through the front village and the back village, they crossed several alleys in the village one by one, and the team immediately grew to more than ten people.No one said what they did together, and no one asked why they got up in the middle of the night.After they walked the last alley, they all stood under a big tree in the west of the village, which covered them like a gauze.The dogs in the village, hearing their noise, barked a few times, and immediately ran out from the open gate to join their team. A while ago, a while later, the cheerful running sound was like hanging on the tree half a month ago. The persimmons were red and sweet, and there were already five or six dogs running and barking around them, grunting and chirping like the inexplicable smile they had when they leaned on their mother's arms three or two years ago.

The moon walked to the back of the village, with footsteps as light as catkins flying. In March and April, they heard the slow movement of tree shadows in the moonlight, as loud as leaves falling.The green scent of wheat seedlings pouring from the fields outside the village spreads wetly on the village street.A child shivered from the cold, and Sima Lan said you should go home and sleep, but the child stabbed his neck and said, "I hate my father, and I won't go outside until I die."Sima Lan said that your father wanted your mother to have a younger sister, but my father was at home and let my mother have a younger sister. Whoever hates his father is a worm.After saying this, he turned his head and looked into the village, as if someone might be eavesdropping there.When he turned around again, Sima Lan didn't know what happened. He found that all the children took half a step or a step towards him, and all their eyes were looking at him hotly, as if he had said that they wanted to Say what you can't say.That group of gazes burned the moonlight into a layer of rain-like bubbles, which popped and popped continuously in the clear night.

Lan Liushi said, you really don't hate your father? Sima Lan said, my father and mother gave birth to a sister for me. Lan Liushi said, my mother is still crying on the bed. Sima Lan said, that was happiness, my mother screamed when she was happy.Then he glanced at the children and said, if you don’t believe me, follow me to listen.After saying this, he walked past the children, kicking the moonlight.The children thought that he was going to lead them back to his house to hear their father and mother on the bed, and they were all stunned in the silence, but they saw that Sima Lan didn't go into the village, but walked towards the nearest family.

So, boys and girls all followed. They all imitated Sima Lan's appearance and put their ears on the back wall of that family.Sure enough, I heard the sound of the bed passing through the back wall. Although it was dry and cracked, it loosened the soil particles of the brick wall, but the woman's laughter was wet, sticking the soil particles on it again, making the brick wall loose. The wall was intact and intact. After listening, Sima Lan said, believe it? Both boys and girls laughed, but no one answered. Sima Lan led the children to the next house and put their ears on the back wall of the next house.When they couldn't hear the sound, they ran from one end of the back wall to the other, and then heard the happy voices of men and women coming out of the cracks in the adobe wall, blowing like the breeze of early spring.They ran from the back wall of one house to the next house, and when they heard the sound of the bed being hoarse and rough like chopping firewood, they said that the bed in this house must be made of willow wood.When they heard the sound of the bed as thin as silk thread and as sharp as a needle, they said that the bed was made of elm wood.Hearing the sound was slow and blunt, half ringing and half ringing, he said that the bed was made of persimmon wood.Sometimes, when a man's panting is as short as fire, and a woman's cry is sharp and piercing, they keep their ears away from the wall to avoid hurting the eardrum. They just giggled and smiled at each other.Sometimes there is only the sound of the bed and the long cry of the woman. The bed may be made of ash wood, and the sound is crisp and clear like a wooden fish, while the woman's cry is like a song, often with sweet and intense Laughing, and flying out of the bed, the children seemed to be listening to a play, sticking their ears to the wall, despite the biting cold wind, they refused to take their ears off the wall until a sudden sound came from the crack of the wall. A burst of silence made their hearts thump to their throats, thinking that something unexpected happened in the house, thinking that the screaming and singing were in the climax of joy, how could it suddenly stop?They have strong regrets for each other, just like the curtain of a play is drawn at a critical moment. They don't know why they have to draw the curtain, but they don't dare to call out to quickly open the curtain. The trick continues, so lost, waiting So, boys and girls searched under the moonlight with their eyes, letting time slowly pass through their hearts like moving mountains, everyone was so anxious that they wanted to let out a cry from their throats.Fortunately, this kind of intolerance is not long, it only takes a long laugh, and the longest is the time of a piccolo. At this moment, there is another sound from the room, but unfortunately it is no longer the wooden fish-like ash. The sound of the bed is no longer the sound of a woman's wet smile, but the sound of a man's shoes getting out of bed, and the sound of a woman getting dressed and tidying up. The children understood each other, and the happiness of the men and women in the room was over, as if the makeup was removed after closing the curtain, and they came out of the scene and said some very disappointing things.The man said, I am exhausted, more tired than digging the ground all day.The woman said that I was really afraid of hurting your body.He also said, God let me conceive a baby, my family will be full of children if I conceive.The man said again, go to bed and sleep, I will sell you thigh skin again this time when you are pregnant, so that you can have eggs every day during confinement.The woman was happy, and said to buy me a pair of foreign socks or a foreign scarf. Maybe I am pregnant with twins. If it is twins, it means that neither of us can live to be thirty-five years old, and the population of our family is also increasing. Wang.The woman expects the man to say a word of encouragement for her twins, and chatters cheerfully, but the man doesn't see anything else to say.Sima Lan heard the man's thunderous snoring just outside the wall, and heard the woman sigh and curse, saying, "Pig, you're a pig. You sleep when you're happy, but he doesn't even fall asleep at all." Then I heard the sound of a woman going to bed discouraged. After that, there was no sound at all, and the play ended and even the curtain was removed from the stage.The cold weather is as fierce as fire, the moonlight is gathered up like cloth to be dried at some point, the night is like black and chaotic clouds flowing on the village street, sparse and thick, there is dim light in the wide alleys, thick narrow places and under the high walls It was so black that I couldn't see my fingers.They stood silently behind the wall of a family named Du, and in the silence, they suddenly found themselves. At some point, the boy and the girl were standing apart, one by one, holding hands like a demon. A pair of husband and wife are very lively.Sima Lan pulled Lan Liushi, Du Bo pulled Lan Fifty, and Du Zhuang pulled one of his sisters.Some did not find a female partner, and a pair of male children pulled each other, and some did not find a male partner, and a pair of female children pulled each other.The tacit understanding between each other is very much like a man and woman who are in great kindness and love.They didn't know that this was somewhat like a rehearsal of their lives. They didn't know that more than ten years later, their lives would be a repetition of this night.I don't know that this cold night with clear moon and few stars is exactly the same as their life.When the young couple suddenly interrupted the male and female music, they didn't know what to do with their one-on-one holding hands, when they heard the weeping sound from the back wall of someone's house, sad and like a stream. The river was impassable, so they just dragged and walked towards the cry. So, Lan Shisi also started crying behind them. Sima Lan turned her head and saw that everyone was holding each other in pairs, but only Shishi was alone, and no one was holding her hand. Lan Liushi said, Lan, you can hold my sister forty, I am older than you, she is younger than you, I will not marry you when I grow up. Sima Lan stood still. Lan Liushi said that a man should marry a woman younger than himself. Sima Lan went over and took Lan Shishi's hand, it was like holding a small ice ball.It was justifiable to listen to the mournful cry of the woman.That woman was Du Zhuang's aunt, a girl from Sima who married into the Du family at the beginning of the year, and Sima Ye gave birth to a dead baby for the Du family.The children heard Sima Ye crying on the back wall and said, I just gave birth, and I will bleed to death if you do that. The man said that you have credit for giving birth to a stillborn baby, and that you will not be able to conceive a baby if you don’t hurry up. My offspring will be cut off from this branch.It is said that the women in the village are like you, afraid of men and having children, the population of the village is getting smaller and smaller, and gradually there will be no villages in this world. The woman stopped talking. Then there was the creaking sound of the bed being broken. As if for some reason, when the children were listening to the wall, they found that Du Zhuang and Du Zhu were not lying on the wall to listen, so they quickly left the wall.They all invariably ignored the walls of any of their families, never mentioned whether their own parents' intercourse was happy or unhappy, and didn't say that their beds were made of willow, poplar, or solid old elm.They heard from this house to that house, from the back alley to the front alley, and halfway through the front alley, not only did the moonlight disappear, but the stars also disappeared like ice particles that had melted.Only vague darkness flows in the village.Sima Lan walked in the front, holding Lan Shishi's small balls of hands, and walked in the dark. At first, he could hear the sound of bed calls or women's bed calls from one or two families, and then he could only walk four or five courtyards. Listen to one family, and later, the family's voice disappeared. The village was as quiet as a cave dwelling, following the dog who had been running all night, surrounding the children energetically, not knowing what to do.They stood on the cross street in the middle of the village, still holding hands between men and women, standing silently as if they were afraid of being separated, and quietly using their ears to catch the sound of the bed rattling.However, that seductive sound disappeared completely, and what remained on the village street was only the slightly fishy and slightly salty milky smell when a man and a woman had sex.The snoring sound of a man coming out of the door frame, the shaking of the ground shook the children's stiff eyelids, and they knew that this wonderful night was over.At dawn, whoever holds another's hand will be ridiculed, or even scolded by adults.Lost hit the children like rain and fog. They stood there blankly, anxiously waiting for the cries of the wooden yellow bed, the sound of the woman's red bed cry, or the man's breathing heavily smelling of sweat.However, what happened unexpectedly was the clear and clear call of the centenarian woman from the other side of the village. ──Sixty, fifty, forty, where are you still not coming back to sleep in the middle of the night. The hands of the children all fell apart with a clatter.After they parted, Sima Lan felt like a bird had flown away from the hand that was holding Lan Shishi's lump of flesh, leaving only the empty hot nest in the palm of his hand. ──Sixty-five, fourteen, where are you? ──Mom, we are here. Following the answer, the sisters of the Lan family walked away in a flutter. They all silently followed each other home. But Sima Lan was silent on the street alone, until his father Sima Xiaoxiao came to find him back, he still felt like he was holding a ball of cotton fire in his hand.