Chapter 18 3. Daniel and red embroidered shoes

My father and I returned to Zhang'an in the evening. My father led me to the head of the village and patted on a cracked wooden door three times. The door creaked and the dog barked.The door opened.My father patted me on the head again and said, "Call grandma!" I forgot whether I called grandma, but I remember that the first time grandma's eyes fell on my face, there were warm drops of water. It melted on my face with a poof.But the dog circled around his father, raising its front paws with every leap.It was an old yellow dog.The father held the dog's front paw as if holding the hand of an old friend, shook it a few times, and extended a cordial greeting: "Old Huang, do you still know me?" The dog said: "Woo-oh!" Grandma said: "Before people heard the movement, it snorted with its ears open!" The father bowed again and said to the dog, "Thank you, Mr. Huang!"

Grandma took my hand and followed my father around the thatched house to the back garden, where there is a mulberry field with dense branches and leaves.Later, I found out that this is the one-acre "Zusang" left by the great-grandfather of "Romozhang".The thick green shade melts with the setting sun, drowning out the cry of cicadas and the hermitage deep in the mulberry garden.When we walked into the mulberry garden, there was a figure on the other side of the thatched cottage, and disappeared into the shadow of the mulberry garden.Grandma stared at the disappearing figure in shock, and said to my father, "Look, look, the ghost has come to seduce your father again!" My father looked into the depths of the greenery and sighed deeply. When I came to the gate of the grass hut, I stopped, patted my head again and said, "Call grandpa!"

I didn't bother to call grandpa, but looked at a prematurely lit oil lamp in amazement. The light was flickering, reflecting the shadow of grandpa printed on the stalk wall.Grandpa was reclining on a low bed with his back bare, his eyes half-opened and half-closed, surrounded by blue mist, as if he was immersed in a dream that only belonged to him. He turned on the lamp, hid something, and shook his hands again and again, saying, "Don't come in, don't let the smoke smoke my grandson!" He straightened up from the low bed, found his shoes by scratching on the ground with his bare feet, and walked out of the grass hut tremblingly. .

Grandpa is tall and thin, with a hunchback arched like a prawn. "This is Ban Ban, I've seen my grandson Ban Ban in the photos!" A cold wind with a strange fragrance rushed over my grandfather, and his eyes fell on my face coolly. "Why did you name my grandson?" Grandpa scolded his father, "Moving! You've moved far enough, where else do you want to move?" My father said, "It's not a moving thing, it's a beautiful spot." Grandpa said: "What? If you move, just move, why do you want to die? My grandson is so skinny, you can't move it. Even if you don't move, you can't move again. Hmph, if it weren't for the devils, go to the university hall in your provincial city. I threw a bomb in Nanyang and drove you to Nanyang, and you didn’t know to come back. Even if I have a heart of stone, your mother can’t stop crying.” Grandma wiped her tears with her sleeve and said, “You guard your thatched hut. Now, leave the children alone!" Grandpa said: "Leave the children alone? Then why are you crying? Why don't you go and bake some scallion pancakes for my grandson, put more oil."

The scallion pancakes baked by grandma are the best pancakes I have ever eaten, and she also made me drink wheat kernel porridge that I have never tasted before.My father was jealous that I had a good grandma, so he boasted that he also had a good grandma, and she was also a master at making pancakes. He said that she was sitting on the grass ball, flipping pancakes on the hot pan with a bamboo stick, and baked a pancake. He picked it up with a bamboo stick, without raising his head, just put it behind his back, and the pancakes swirled, flew over other people's heads, and landed firmly in his grandfather's hand.The father said with a smile that his grandpa had "good friends" with his grandma after eating the pancakes baked by his grandma.The love affair in full swing happened between the long-term worker who worked for the rich man and the daughter of the rich man's family. It was more than half a century earlier than the free love trend in the intellectual world.So my father pointed out to me, waving my grandma's poker, that his grandparents, my great-grandparents, were, with all due respect, the first rebels of the hierarchy, the leaders of the "liberation of individuality."To me at that time, my father's high-level lectures were no different from playing the piano to a calf. Grandma also half understood, complaining: "What are you telling the baby? That's his grandpa and grandma!" Taboo" means.

Many years later, a rap artist from my hometown came to the provincial capital to look for me, saying that my great-grandmother was his aunt, and he called me cousin.I hurriedly poured wine for my uncle.After drinking half a catty of liquor, he started talking, and said angrily: "Your grandfather insisted on making my aunt take his ecstasy, and then eloped with him!" Pointing to the wine glass, he said, "Pour the wine! "Like I owe him too. People in the old Zhang family took this incident as the pride of the whole family, saying that my grandfather ate the biggest and sweetest mulberry on the "zu mulberry" tree when he was a child, and swallowed the old Zhang's family for thousands of years. Although his parents died when he was young and he became a rich man at the age of eight, the shepherd boy has grown to a tall man of five feet six inches (converted by modern measurement standards, it should be 1.88 meters), With thick eyebrows and big eyes, wide forehead and high nose, he has endless strength.Just as there must be a "shoe shape" in making shoes, and a "pattern" in tying flowers, Zhang'an people said that my grandfather should be the "human shape" of the old Zhang family.

When the old man was twenty years old, he shaved his gourd head, tightened a three-inch-wide belt around his waist, and wore a small gown on his bare back. , half higher than others.The "Maikes" who came here to work hard looked up at him with raised faces and raised eyes.A rich man who came to the meeting to buy strength stared at him as soon as he saw him, hurried over, squeezed the fleshy bump on his arm, and patted the tendon flesh on his chest, looking up and down, "Young man, Why didn’t you bring a sickle when you were a hacker?” The old man said, “That’s not what I do.” The rich man said, “What kind of work can you do?” The old man said, “Do great work with great strength.” The rich man said, “Okay Come with me, I want to test your strength!" The old man didn't move, and then said coldly: "Let's talk about it first, you can't think I eat too much." The rich man asked: " How big is your appetite?" The old man said, "Five big bowls for noodles and one basket for steamed buns." The rich man said, "Who knows how big a bowl and basket that is?" He led him to a In front of a small shop selling pancakes, he saw a stack of pancakes piled high on the case, so he picked up a pair of chopsticks and inserted them down from the pancakes. The chopsticks that were one foot long were less than two inches long. The rich man said: "If you want to eat, you have to finish the chopsticks. If you can't finish it, don't eat it!" The grandfather looked at the pancakes, but didn't move.The rich man said: "Why? I scared you!" The grandfather said: "I can't eat dry." The rich man pointed to the mutton soup pot and said: "Okay, you can drink all the mutton soup!"

All the people rushing to the meeting gathered around. The old man loosened the straps on his waist and started the eating performance.He took out the chopsticks inserted in the oil cakes, and used the chopsticks to hold three oil cakes and rolled them into a tube.Someone shouted: "It's too thick, I can't bite through it!" The old man kept his face and began to show off his teeth, which were a row of neat, strong teeth that had crushed walnuts.My father inherited my grandfather's teeth.A few years later, my father became a dead bone buried on the "chaotic graveyard", and my sister and younger brother went to get his father's bones.A farmer dug up the grave, and the coffin had long since rotted into dirt. The farmer stared at my father's skeleton, "Oh, what a rare set of teeth! Why did this old man leave with such a set of teeth?" It was a set of teeth that my father had used for more than 40 years and buried in the ground for more than 30 years, and there was no defect at all.The farmer picked up a handful of green grass and wiped his teeth, and the younger brother saw that the white porcelain enamel belonging to the old Zhang family was still shining.At that time, the grandfather used such a pair of good teeth to bite off a "crescent moon" from the oil cake rolled into a thick tube, which caused a lot of applause.The grandfather first used the front teeth to successfully solve the problem of "not being able to bite through". Then, the molars worked vigorously to cut and grind, and the jaw bone moved as fast as today's cutting machine.The process on the jawbone was extending, but the chopsticks rolled up the next oil cake tube, and rolled four pieces at once.The crowd clapped their hands and applauded: "Haha, beat him up!" The rich man asked: "Who scolded me? Who can eat like him again, and I will be a bad grandson again. You can work only by eating, and there is no employer who is afraid of eating, do you understand?" The old man was not moved by the applause, but ate big mouthfuls according to the established steps, eating in an orderly manner, eating calmly, eating superbly and entering the world. I forgot about the good times.When there was a piece of oil cake left, he began to tear the oil cake into pieces, soaked it in the mutton soup, pulled it and sucked it, and before the bottom of the bowl was exposed, the waiter hurriedly added hot soup to the bowl.A little beggar who climbed a tree and looked at it with greedy eyes lit up when he saw that there was still a piece of pancake left on the case.Seeing that my grandfather ate up all the food in the bowl, he grabbed the remaining oil cake and wiped the bowl, making the bottom of the bowl shiny, and stuffed the oil cake into his mouth again.

The rich man clapped his hands with everyone and said, "Okay, the job is clean!" A bubble of hot urine fell from the sky and poured on the old man's bare gourd head.The little beggar rode on the branch of a tree, crying and cursing: "It hurts from patting my hands, why don't you leave me a mouthful?" The old man tore off the coat on his shoulders and wiped the hot urine on his face, then picked up his chopsticks and took a bite from the case. Pick up a piece of oil cake, throw it to the sky, and the oil cake will fly to the tree in a whirl. "I bought this." The old man said to the rich man, "Take it out of my wages." The little beggar smiled through his tears, bit the oil cake, grabbed the branch, flicked, and ran away.

The rich man paid the money for the oil cakes and said, "I haven't agreed on the salary yet, but you can put the money for this oil cake on your account!" Just give me a lot of styles." The rich man opened his mouth and didn't close it for a while.An old man in the crowd said: "You are a silly boy who wants to be a big boss and get double wages. I have been doing farm work for decades!" The old man just pursed his lips tightly and looked up at the sky , showing an air of no comment or even doubt.The rich man clapped his hands and said, "Okay, come with me!"

A group of attendees hugged my grandfather again, and came to the livestock market with the rich man. A large bull was running wild under an old elm tree, and the people attending the meeting moved away from the field far away and built a human wall.There was only one sweaty bull whipping his whip in a "crackling" manner, competing with the big bull.The bull handle style has a head as big as a willow bucket, a short and strong body, almost equal in height and width, like a square piece of pig iron.The big bull hooked its head and stared fixedly at the bull handle with its bulging blood red eyes.As soon as the bull handle approached it, it rushed up with its kicks, but was pulled tightly by the knotted rope tied to the tree, the old elm tree shook violently, and the leaves all over the tree trembled. .The ox kept whipping his whip violently, spraying foam and yelling: "I call you stubborn, I don't believe I can't take you away!" The whip marks on the ox flashed, and the big ox licked like crazy. With a kick.The bull handle is going around in a circle, so you can't get close.  The rich man led my grandfather into the crowd, and said, "A lot, take a break." Then he took the whip and handed it to my grandfather, saying, "This is the kicking ox I bought. If you can take it back and make it obey you, you will be given a lot of money, and I will also give you double wages." The young and energetic grandpa took the whip, looked at the cow intently, his eyes lit up, and he praised: "What a cow!" The rich man asked, "How is it?" Two lamps and four pillars!" The rich man asked, "Where did you get the two lamps and four pillars?" The old man said, "I mean it has good eyes and good legs." The big bull scatter wildly and flicks the whip, but the whip cannot be heard, only the tip of the whip flickers, wrapping around the cow's head like a snake, and the cow hits forward with a "boom" .Everyone shouted in unison in the wall.Niuyan also stared at him anxiously, but refused to admit defeat. He hooked his head again, held up the two sharp knives on his head, and took a desperate stance.  The old man saw the cow's body covered with horizontal and vertical whip marks, and felt pain in his heart. The raised whip fell down again, and he said to the cow, "I can't beat you anymore. I like stubborn cows with temper. You'll lose your temper when you get down." The cow didn't seem to understand, and still hooked its head, tilted its sharp horns like iron forks, and stared at him with bull's eyes.The old man gently lifted the whip, but he didn't shake it. He just shook the whip up and down, turning around the old elm tree, and the red tassels on the whip jumped up and down like butterflies.The cow became suspicious and followed the red tassels around. The knotted rope that tied the cow was wrapped around the old elm tree. The more it was wrapped, the shorter the rope became. The red tassel on the whip was at a loss.The old man threw the whip to a large amount, squatted down close to the cow, covered his mouth with his hand, and spoke the language of the cow slowly, whirring, and chirping.  Standing in the crowd, Dadashi picked on faults and said, "You spoke human language to it just now, but why did you turn it into cow language again?" The old man said, "It has weak teeth, and still can't understand human language." On the other side Grunting, he approached the bull.Dabashi said again: "Boy, are you speaking ill of me to the cow?" The old man said, "I told the cow that if you lose your temper, no matter how angry Dabashi is, he can't do it for you." Don’t you live?” There was a roar of laughter in the wall of people.The big cow also "hushed" and let out a bad breath.The old man took the opportunity to jump and came to the cow.The cow was disturbed again, but before it could act wildly, the grandfather grabbed the nose corner of the cow, and put his other hand on the cow's back, gently stroking and scratching the cow.My father said that it was the old man's "psychotherapy", which began to heal the "wounds of the soul" of an animal that had been unfairly beaten.  There was no sound in the human wall, and hundreds of pairs of eyes were looking at the old man's fingers.Those are ten thick, nimble, and talking fingers, stroking the whip marks on the cow like playing a piano, silently expressing sympathy for the cow.It is said that the old man massaged 4832 acupoints on the body of the cow with his fingers. Wherever his fingers passed, it would cause a burst of shudders that both people feel distressed and the cow feels sad. The teardrops hit the grandfather's instep with a "pop".Grandpa's eyes were red, and some people in the crowd had red eyes.The old man shouted angrily: "Dabashi, your cow is hurting you! It can't talk, it can't complain, it can only feel uncomfortable in your heart. You tell everyone to get out of the way, I have to take it for a walk, Give it a break." Dabashi blushed and said, "Boy, I told you to be brave!" The old man untied the rein on the tree, as if he wanted to let go of a tiger, and the human wall suddenly pulled away and dispersed.The rich man ran with the crowd and said: "Young man, you are the one who will be the most important one, just lead the cow and follow the car in front!" The old man led the cow out of the village, and then shouted to the big man: "Stay away, don't let the cow see you, and don't let the cow see your whip!" Bring the ox to the river in the wild, take off the bridle for the ox, and the ox can't wait to stick its head to the river.The old man couldn't find a place to tie the ox, so he put the rein on the ox's back, let go of his hand and said, "I trust you, I won't tie you up, drink your water well, gnaw a few mouthfuls of tender grass, don't run away Make it look ugly to me!" He shrank behind the cow and took off his underpants, jumped into the river naked, dived into the deep water with a "dog digging" posture, took a good bath, and came out of the water naked again to the cow. With water splashing on his back, he bathed the cow before going ashore and putting on his underpants.The cow wagged its tail and rubbed its head against him.He folded a wicker to make a hat ring and put it on his head, and said to the cow: "Let's go, I have the skills of 'three cuts per inch', chopping grass like chopped green onions, coriander, until black I will feed you well."  The person who called me cousin said that my grandfather should not be asked to follow the car.The old man was drinking cows and taking a bath in the river, and he forgot the car and waited for him under a big willow tree in front of him. The woman who later became my grandmother sat in the car, her name was Lianzi, and she was only sixteen years old that year.Since my grandfather took the whip under the old elm tree, Lianzi lifted up the window screen in the car and stared at him steadily. She didn't put down the window screen until she saw him take off his pants and go into the river with a flushed face, her heart skipped a beat. , Said: "Bah, it's so ugly!" But couldn't help but open the window screen. "Hey, little one!" she yelled from the car. The old man could not see anyone, but only saw a pair of watery eyes flickering in the window of the car. "Who do you call little big boy?" "Besides you, who else could it be?" "A big style is a big style, why do you call me little big one?" "You didn't take a photo in the river, so you're a big guy!" "What did you ask me to do?" "I want to ask you, why did you call Da Niu convinced you?" "It's not that it convinced me, it's that it's getting along with me." "Do you really speak cow language?" "I have been talking to cows since I was eight years old, and sheep." "Why do you call Da Niu good with you?" "Niu understands human nature, two good and one good." Lianzi suddenly jumped out of the car and ran towards my grandfather. "Let me see if your cow is as good as me?" When the old grandpa saw my old grandma for the first time, his eyes lit up.The sixteen-year-old grandmother is as tender as jade, as delicate as a flower, running and jumping like a happy deer.It was quite astonishing that she had not bound her feet. Her big feet were wearing red embroidered shoes, and she jumped like stepping on two sparkling flames. The old driver who was blind in one eye hurriedly shouted: "Miss Lian, my boss has something to say, so I won't ask you to get out of the car!" Miss Lian said, "Will you ask me to get out of the car if you are in a hurry? If you are in a hurry, why don't you ask me to get out of the car?" "My boss is afraid that people will see you..." "well?" The old man shrank his head, hummed and laughed, and pointed at her feet with his whip. "What's wrong with my feet? I'm not afraid of people watching!" She rubbed her heels twice and took off a pair of red embroidered shoes. When she raised her toes, the red embroidered shoes swayed in the sky.She stood barefoot in the grass, her toes turned up like a pair of pliers, and when she pinched her two toes, she caught a cat's eye flower, which made the cat's eyes stare, and said angrily, "That's how I am. Feet, who told my father not to discipline me since I was a child!" Grandma Lianzi had no mother since she was a child, and no one bound her feet, so she missed the most fruitful years of foot binding. Later, she had a stepmother, and she didn't ask her stepmother to bind her feet.Grandma's father - I don't know what to call this old man, I only know that he later became my grandpa's father-in-law very reluctantly, and specially invited my aunt to bind my grandma's feet.Grandma was twelve years old that year, and her bones began to harden.My aunt asked my grandmother to sit inside the threshold, and she sat outside the threshold.There is a small hole on the threshold for cats to come in and out.My aunt asked the two sister-in-laws of the same family to hold down my grandmother, drag her feet out of the hole, and ask the threshold to press down.The old woman was crying and screaming, but she couldn't move.My aunt used a three-foot-long, three-inch-wide white cloth to forcefully strangle the toes down and wrap them under the soles of the feet, and then sewed the foot wraps tightly with needles and threads. The pain made the grandmother cry.As soon as my aunt left, she cut off the foot-binding cloth, used it to tie a circle and hung it on the beam, and said: "Whoever binds my feet again, I will wrap my neck around it and go to my mother!" The youngest daughter, who was motherless since childhood, couldn't bear the horror brought to him by this circle, so unfortunately but very fortunately, she created a pair of earth-shattering big feet. On the green grass in the last century, it was the first time that the grandfather discovered that a girl's family would also have such a pair of white, spiritual, big feet with lively toes.He stared stupidly at the toe with a cat's eye on it, and when the cat's eye stared, his heart skipped a beat, and he cried out in a strange way: "Good feet!" The grandmother Lianzi blushed and said, "You baby, who told you to look at my feet!" She turned around and ran, leaving the red embroidered shoes on the grass.The old man picked up the red embroidered shoes, measured the size with his fingers, and heard my old woman yelling to the old driver in panic: "Quick, quick, tell him to return the shoes to me!" The old grandpa ran over in a hurry, stretched two fingers into a "Ya" shape, picked up a pair of fiery red dazzling red embroidered shoes, and passed them in through the window of the car, but forgot the old saying that men and women should not kiss each other, and waited foolishly for my grandma. Reaching out to pick it up, the old grandma blew on his finger and said, "You baby, let go!" The old man's fingers felt the hot and moist blowing, and he threw the red embroidered shoes on the car with a "poof". Words came from the car: "Speak to the cow in the language of the cow again!" "Say what?" "Just say you are a good cow!" "Why am I such a good cow?" "Why do you have long ears? I said you are not you, you are it... Oh, I'm so anxious!" The old lady was anxious about the misunderstanding caused by the interchange of pronouns of person and "cow". The old man had already understood, and covered his mouth with a horn in his hand, and yelled at the cow: "baa-moo-throat- —” The big bull who was gnawing grass by the river immediately raised his head to look at him, wagging his tail repeatedly.The old grandma clapped her hands and said, "It understands, it understands!" The man who called me my cousin said it was God's will.Or, why would a big guy take off his underpants and tell a little girl to show everything about him, regardless of whether there are eyes under the willow tree?How could a little girl take off her red embroidered shoes and tell a young man to look at her toes the first time they met!The big ox will also please the aunt, maybe the Jade Emperor sent it to the world to be a matchmaker for his aunt. "Pour some wine, cousin!"