Chapter 13 Section Thirteen

The photo has long been yellowed, and the corners have been gnawed by mice. Look at the date, May 1939.There are five or six men side by side in the photo, with Ma Guotou standing in the middle.Xia Mingruo looked at them one by one, and couldn't help sobbing. "Hai Hai, look at fate being so cruel to a man," he wiped away the tears from the corners of his eyes, "Master, he has actually started to bald since he was twenty." The young old Mr. Li stood on the far right with his usual expression, with his chest and stomach protruding, and he was upright. "I stepped on the trap and died. Li Changsheng saved me and gave me an injection." Ma Guotou said.

Chu Haiyang nodded, presumably the wound was infected, and Mr. Li gave him a dose of antibiotics. "In 1939, what was he doing in Yunnan in 1939?" Xia Mingruo asked. "Southwest Associated University," Chu Haiyang replied, "Have you forgotten? He is from Tsinghua University. After the fall of Peking in 1937, the school was transferred." He smiled at Ma Guotou: "You are lucky. Our teacher Li is not a big deal. The rest of you are all figures in the world of archaeology." Ma Guotou started to smoke with a half-understood understanding. The barefoot doctor surnamed Cheng walked in in a mess at this moment: "It's a fierce battle! Comrades of archaeology, do you have any soap?"

"Yes." Xia Mingruo stood up, "Let's go to your house." The barefoot doctor surnamed Cheng climbed ashore wetly and asked Xia Mingruo, "Do I still smell?" Xia Mingruo said: "There is still a little bit of cow smell." The doctor turned and jumped into the river again. Xia Mingruo laughed and said, "Why do you love being clean so much and become a doctor? How long have you been here?" "The Yi language name of this river is translated as Taohua River." The doctor squinted his eyes and said, "In 1966, I was a young literary boy with a delicate mind, but I was deceived by the name."

"Because I was too lazy to cook, in 1970, Mr. Ling used a hatchet to force me to go to the county health school for a month's class. After returning, I became a barefoot doctor. But there is one advantage in the mountains, it is quiet, and I can do what I want to do. , I can assure you that one-third of the manuscripts in Yunnan come from me.” "Still a writer." Xia Mingruo asked, "What do you write about? The Plum Blossom Party? The Heart of a Girl?" The doctor smiled lewdly, Xia Mingruo took a step back and said with a smile: "Stop, don't talk!"

On the Peach Blossom River, the water mist seems to be soaked in the fragrance of trees and flowers. The green hills on both sides of the river confront each other, and there are big trees in the upper reaches, and there are people releasing discharges on the river.Most of the dischargers were young Yi people, dark and stocky, naked, with a pocket cloth around their waists. The doctor laughed when he saw this: "I'm not afraid of being seen by the girl!" The group waved at the doctor, and when they came to a bend in the fast-flowing water, they began to shout hoo ho ho ho. "They are another branch of the Yi nationality. The stockade is on the other side of the mountain. The pronunciation is 'Shasa'. I don't know how to spell it."

The doctor went ashore and said with a sigh of relief: "I just love this landscape of mountains and rivers. Let's go to Mr. Ling's house to beg for food!" Xia Mingruo praised: "How bold!" "A man." Dr. Cheng said as he walked, "My family background is not good. My father is Xiaokai (Shanghai dialect, the boss's son or son of a son) on the beach. He wears a suit and white leather shoes all day long. 1966 Wu Dou, I was fourteen years old, my house was stolen, my house became a bottle cap factory in the alley, and I was imprisoned in a private cell set up by the school. Later, I found out that my parents were gone, and I was really ashamed. Without any worries, he escaped in the middle of the night and sneaked onto the coal train."

"Alone?" "My friend smashed the window and let me go. Later, I heard that I was severely punished." The doctor said, "My fate belongs to him. It's a pity that it's been fifteen years, and I don't even remember what I look like." The two walked and chatted, and when they entered the village, they heard a loud commotion, as if a woman with a high voice was yelling something hastily. The two hurried to look, only to see Leopard wrestling with a Yi peasant woman. Xia Mingruo shouted: "What are you doing?" Leopard was panting in pain from being pulled by his hair: "Xiao Xia! Xiao Xia! Come and save me! This woman has gone crazy for some reason! Suddenly she jumped out and beat people!"

Xia Mingruo walked a few steps quickly and then stopped: "Leopard, what are you holding in your hand?" The leopard got two ear scratches and screamed: "What did you take? I took a wooden stick!!" Xia Mingruo said to the peasant woman, "Kill him!" The peasant woman thought that I still need you to say it, so she raised the hatchet and rushed forward. Chu Haiyang was talking with Ma Guotou, and he came out when he heard the voice, and he couldn't help it if he saw the situation.Unexpectedly, women in rural areas do rough work for a long time, with great strength, not only Chu Haiyang can't hold back, but even a doctor can't hold back.

But the peasant woman saw that the leopard could not be killed for a while, so she spat hard, stuck the hatchet in her waist, and walked out of the village. Before Leopard could heave a sigh of relief, the doctor said, "It's not good, I called her man from Shangdi. The Yi people in Pusu have a strong custom, and the custom of beheading enemies has not been completely eradicated. You will be lynched. Comrade Leopard, hurry up, or it will be too late if you don’t leave.” Leopard was still in a daze, Chu Haiyang took the wedge-shaped stake from his hand, sighed and said, "Don't you understand? Pack your bags and go."

Leopard said: "This..." "It's going to be circumcised." The doctor said seriously. Chu Haiyang looked at Ma Guotou's house, but the old man didn't show up from the beginning to the end, only the faint coughing could be heard. Chu Haiyang pushed the leopard: "This is Uncle Ling letting you go. Go quickly, go to the doctor's house and take our package, and wait by the river east of the stockade. We will say goodbye to him and come." The leopard fled quickly with its tail between its legs, and the other three made a speechless gesture behind him at the same time.This man was just recovering from a serious illness, instead of lying obediently in the doctor's house, he insisted on going out for a walk.Stepping on the mud while walking, he pulled out a wooden sign and scraped it. It didn't matter after scraping, a tigress came whistling in the wind.

The leopard thought about the wooden sign: it was long and pointed, with messy ghost symbols on it, nothing. After waiting by the river for a few minutes, he saw Xia Mingruo and the others running, followed by the doctor. The doctor said, "I'm going to the village for a meeting anyway, why don't we go together." He whistled, and someone on the river heard it, and leaned over with the wooden raft. The doctor grabbed the penny and jumped up: "This is the fastest way, go down the river, and you can go to the village before dark, just walk back." It will take two days." Old Huang screamed miserably. The doctor asked, "What's wrong?" "Afraid of water." Xia Mingruo replied. "Cat spirits are also afraid of water?" "Because it is not a pure cat essence," Chu Haiyang said, "it also belongs to the category of five poisons." "What a tortuous life experience." The doctor praised. Leopard squatted alone at the front of the raft, and finally turned around and asked, "Is there something wrong with the stick?" Chu Haiyang nodded: "Yes." "What's the problem?" The doctor answered for Chu Haiyang: "The wooden sign is a sign to remind others that there is a corpse below. The old lady of that family just passed away the month before last, and she is now buried below." The leopard fell back in fright: "You...you mean I took someone's tombstone to scrape mud?!" "Almost," the doctor smiled, "so she's going to hit you." "That...that!" Leopard was unwilling, "Why does this family bury the dead behind the house! We outsiders don't know!" "It's not like a family is buried like this, and it's not buried for a long time. It's buried until she dies." The doctor said. "Is it really a burial?" Chu Haiyang asked. "I don't quite understand your proper terms," ​​said the doctor. "From my observations, after the death of family members, both male and female, they are buried in the shade behind the house and poured with boiling water three times a day. The bones are picked out—of course the meat is rotten—washed, wrapped in a white cloth, brought to the patriarch’s house for a ceremony, and then put into earthen jars and buried in the mountains.” "Where in the mountains?" The doctor approached and lowered his voice: "You know, Yongcui Mountain is a relatively closed environment. Of course, outsiders cannot participate in this kind of thing. But in 1968, when the old patriarch in the village passed away, I secretly followed him during the funeral. There is a big cave over there. The patriarch’s bones are held in coffins, and the young men hang them on the cliff with thick hemp ropes around their waists, and slowly hang the coffins into the cave.” Xia Mingruo patted Lao Huang and said, "Oh, it turned out to be that hole, no wonder, no wonder." "Then let me ask you one more thing." Xia Mingruo said, "Do you know anything about the white fur on leopards?" "I also find it quite strange," the doctor said with his head propped up. "It's obviously a genetic disease of the Yi people in Pusu, so why did he suffer from it?" "What?" Chu Haiyang and Xia Mingruo stood up at the same time, the wooden raft shook, and the doctor said nervously, "Don't move around! It's about to turn over!" "Genetic disease?" The doctor nodded: "Well, the Pusu Yi nationality branch is very small, and there is probably only such a village in the whole of China. In fact, the adults in Pusu village have tufts of white hair on their backs, more or less, so they usually not only In 1966, when I came to the village, there were 110 households, but now there are only 81 households. In the 1975 disease census, I still Reported this, but never heard back. Well, what's the matter?" The other two thought to themselves: Comrade Cheng, this is not a problem. "Don't believe it, come here," Chu Haiyang hooked Xia Mingruo's neck and pulled him aside, "Tell me again the theory of raising Gu that your father fabricated." "Bastard!" Xia Mingruo glared angrily, "my father is rigorous in his studies, and every word and sentence has been rigorously verified!" "Okay," Chu Haiyang said, "tell me the theory he fabricated after rigorous research." "My father made it up like this," Xia Mingruo moved closer to him, "Gu worms can be transmitted from mother to child... Oh my mother! No way!" "What do you think?" Chu Haiyang asked back. "Whether it will or not, I'll scare people first." Xia Mingruo walked towards the front of the raft with a sly smile, and after a while, the leopard's howl was mixed with Lao Huang's screams, echoing mournfully on the calm river. The water has turned a bend, and the green hills on both sides of the Taohua River are continuous, and there are terraced fields between the mountains, shining like a mirror in the setting sun.Three or four miles away is Yongcui Township, but the leopard is refusing to come down when it reaches the bank. As night fell, the crickets chirped softly in the grass, and the so-called township was just a slightly larger village. The three walked slowly, and Chu Haiyang spoke to Xia Mingruo in a low voice: "Let's assume that the maggots attached to the bones are only passed down in his ethnic branch, and outsiders must also touch the bones to be infected. If people are alive, If the muscle and skin are still there, it won't affect others, right?" Xia Mingruo nodded. "That's also touching the bones, why didn't the two of us appear like leopards?" Xia Mingruo turned his head and thought for a while: "Could it be that I was bitten by Lao Huang?" "...So I've been bitten by it before," Chu Haiyang said, "But... Hey! Don't believe it!" Xia Mingruo had already hugged Lao Huang and screamed: "Old Huang—tell me! You tell me you are just an ordinary cat! Chairman Mao—my poor Huang—" The doctor whose morality is obviously a bit deviant even advised: "Hey, everyone has his own life, Comrade Xiao Xia, you want to prescribe some..." Xia Mingruo saw it, it was great, someone encouraged him, and he became more involved in the performance. Finally, there was a natural sound to stop all this, and the tweeter on the telephone pole rang.First there was an agitated march, and then there was an incomprehensible local mandarin by the announcer of the township radio station: Socialism is good, socialism lasts for thousands of years, how many catties of rice, how many catties of potatoes... And then, some local news: "Cheng Jingjun!" the announcer shouted at the top of his voice, "Cheng Jingjun! Lin Shaohu called you today! Say it! He wrote hundreds of letters and didn't reply! You have no conscience! Say it again! If you don't go back, he will come to Yunnan! Even death will drag you back..." The doctor covered his face and fled in front, Xia Mingruo followed behind.The doctor slipped into the township government compound against the wall, and Xia Mingruo also followed, and immediately saw an acquaintance. "Teacher Sun!" Sun Minglai patted the table and stood up and shouted, "Xia Mingruo!" Chu Haiyang just came in, and it was too late to hide. "You two little comrades!" Sun Minglai sighed, "It's so urgent, why not wait for me for a day or two?" The two lowered their heads and did not speak. At this time, the loudspeaker rang again: "Comrade Chu Haiyang! I have a telegram from Beijing! Hurry up and get it from the radio station!" Chu Haiyang Zhang Er Monk—— went there confused, and came back with a telegram in his hand, but unfortunately there was only one word on it: "Return!" In the telegram, one word costs seven cents, and two words cost four cents. The old man carefully calculated and calculated the cause and effect of the decision without mentioning it, so as to maximize the effectiveness of one word. So, the next day, Chu Haiyang and Xia Mingruo somehow returned. The doctor stood by the river to see them off. Xia Mingruo asked him: "When are you leaving?" The doctor said vaguely, "Wait a little longer." Xia Mingruo said: "Lin Shaohu is coming." The doctor finally went berserk: "Fuck Lin Shaohu!" Xia Mingruo ran wildly, then supported Chu Haiyang's hand and jumped onto the raft, leaving behind the waves.