Chapter 21 Section VII
After the madam had been sleeping in bed for more than ten days, she suddenly opened her eyes this morning.She asked Bao Chen to help her sit up, and then told the magpie, "Go and cook a bowl of jujube soup for me to drink. Don't forget to add some honey."
The magpie hurriedly boiled a bowl of jujube soup under the stove and brought it to her. The lady finished the soup after a while, saying that she was still hungry and wanted to eat gnocchi.Magpie and Baochen glanced at each other, then went to roll the noodles under the stove again.All those present breathed a sigh of relief at her unusual behavior.They thought it was a sign that the old lady was about to recover from her serious illness.But the doctor Tang Sixth Master didn't think so.
When Tiger came to his house, Sixth Master Tang was leaning on a bamboo chair, shaking his legs, humming the opera without a word.
"It's useless," said the old man, not even bothering to move. "This is a flashback. You go back and tell your father to take care of the funeral. She will die in two hours." After speaking, she shook her head and sang, "Yang Lin and I came to fight, so I will send you a tribute." To Dengzhou..."
When the tiger returned home, he told his father what the doctor had said. Baochen said, "How could it be? She just ate six gnocchi in one go."
The lady called the magpie again in the house.
"Go and boil a pot of water," Madam said.
"Boil water?"
"Yes, I want to take a shower."
"Why do you want to take a bath now, madam?"
"Go, it's too late."
Magpie and Erniang Hua bathed her, changed into clean clothes, and helped her to lie down on the bed. Madam asked Baochen if the coffin was ready.
Bao Chen said, "It's been prepared, but the paint hasn't dried yet."
Madame nodded.She leaned against the quilt behind her, closed her eyes and rested for a while, then said to Bao Chen: "Go and carry the little thing over here, and stand by the door for a while, let me take another look at him."
"The little thing is here." Baochen said.He waved his hand, and the people standing by the door moved to expose him.His calves were covered with mud, which had been dried by the sun long ago, and something cut a big hole in his trousers, exposing his round buttocks.The madam burst into tears when she saw him.
She said to the magpie: "What time is it? Why are you still wearing a single shirt for him? His trousers are also torn and he has no socks..."
She said to Baochen again: "This child is almost five years old this year, but he doesn't even have a name yet. Think about it quickly and give him a name now."
Baochen said that Mr. Ding gave him a big name called Puji.After thinking about it, the lady said, let's call him Puji.She turned her face and looked at him motionless, shedding tears for a while, and then said to the little thing: "My child, mother-in-law is leaving."
"Where are you going?" the little thing asked.
"Go somewhere far away."
"is it far?"
"far away."
"Mother-in-law should wait until she recovers before going." The little thing said.
"If the illness can be cured, mother-in-law doesn't need to go." Madam smiled, and said again, "After mother-in-law is gone, will you miss mother-in-law?"
"Think about it!"
"Then you go to your mother-in-law's grave and talk to her."
"You live in the grave, how do you talk?"
"When you see those trees and grass, they will rustle when they are blown by the wind. Whenever there is a sound, it means that the mother-in-law is talking to you. If you are free, come and see me. If the grave of the mother-in-law is washed by the flood If it’s broken, don’t forget to dig a shovel and mend it.”
"But, but, where is my mother-in-law's grave?"
"In the golden needle field in the west of the village."
"What if the mother-in-law misses little things?" After a while, little things suddenly remembered something and asked.
"You don't call me Xiaoshi anymore, you call me Puji. I'll call you now. Once I call, you agree. Puji..."
"Hey." The little thing replied.
She barked three times in a row, and the little thing agreed three times.
Magpie's eyes were red from crying, Bao Chen and Hua Erniang also raised their sleeves to wipe away their tears.The little thing saw that everyone was crying, and tears and snot flowed out together.
"If he didn't say that just now, I almost forgot about it. Magpies—" Madam said, "you open a drawer on top of my chest of drawers to see if there is a small lacquer box, and you can give it to me." I."
The magpie hurried over, opened the drawer, and turned out a small box, on which were hot-painted and colored.The madam took the box, looked at it, and said to the little thing: "If mother-in-law misses you, just open the box and take a look, and just smell it."
"What's in the box?"
"It's the little nails that my mother-in-law cut for you. Fingernails and toenails. My mother-in-law is not willing to throw them away. Today, my mother-in-law is going to take them away." Madam sighed for a long time, still staring blankly. Holding the little thing, "Go out and play, mother-in-law is leaving."
The lady began to breathe again, and she turned her head into the bed and out of the bed, always out of breath.Soon, she was vomiting.Hua Erniang and Bao Chen also became flustered, and they didn't know what to do, they stood there bewildered.Tiger heard Hua Erniang say a word softly:
"She's going to lose her mind."
Her body convulsed violently, making the bed creaking and creaking, and she said she couldn't breathe under the covers. "I'm suffocating," she cried.Magpie hesitated for a moment, then lifted the quilt for her.The tiger saw that she was wearing a twill blue pajamas, and her white, stick-like calves were exposed under the wide trouser legs, and they overlapped ugly.Her feet kicked the bed from time to time, her fists were clenched tightly, her lips changed from red to white, then from white to purple, and finally gradually turned black, and she stopped moving after a while.
"It's almost done." Granny Meng announced, "Magpie, don't cry, let's dress her."
But at this moment, Madam opened her eyes again.Her eyes were bright, she looked at everyone carefully, and suddenly said clearly:
"It's going to snow, Puji."
No one spoke.In the silence, Tiger really heard the sound of snowdrops falling on the corrugated roof.
Blood froth came out of her mouth again, her lips trembled unceasingly, and rhythmic "uh uh" sounds came out from her throat from time to time, just like hiccups.The magpie fed her two tablespoons of water, which rolled in between its teeth and flowed out from the corner of its mouth, making the pillow wet.She looked at Baochen, and Baochen could only sigh.
After a while, her body began to twist again, her mouth opened and closed.Seeing her ripping off the clothes on her chest, the tiger shouted, "It's so hot, I'm suffocated to death! Take off the quilt for me."
"It's been taken away." Magpie cried.
The lady's fingernails streaked her neck with blood, and her withered breasts slumped on her sides.Her waist was raised high, her legs were stretched straight, and there was an angry expression on her face, as if she was very angry about something, and her teeth were chattering.Her waist rose and fell, like waves rolling towards the shore, again and again, as if trying to force out the last bit of strength in her body.
Her movements became smaller and smaller.Gradually, her clenched fists loosened, her tightly squeezed mouth opened, and her tense body relaxed.The eyes are wide and round.Only the calf was still contracting slightly, and in the end, even the calf did not move.
Just then, he saw the principal.
She seems to have been here for a while.The snowdrops on his body had melted, and his padded jacket was wet.She stood alone by the door, no one noticed her.It looked like he still hadn't woken up.She walked gently to the side of the bed, straightened the madam's crooked leg, laid it flat on the bed, folded her hands on her chest, straightened her clothes, lifted her head, and put the pillow back.Then, put on her eyelids.She turned around and said softly to the people in the room:
"You all go out."
And so she shut herself and the corpse in the hut until dark.No one knew what she was doing in that room, and no one dared to disturb her.Neighbors who came after hearing the news crowded under the eaves, under the porch, in the living room and in the kitchen.Every time Xiaodong saw someone walking in, he would tell them over and over again: "My mother-in-law is dead." But no one paid him any attention.
Bao Chen rolled up his sleeves and checked the sky from time to time. All they could do was wait quietly.
Tiger felt that everyone in the village seemed to have a little awe of her, which probably stemmed from people's somewhat mysterious fear of madmen.For Tiger, though, he's been a different person these days.He was worried about nothing, and his wife's death seemed to have nothing to do with him.He felt relaxed, at ease, even a little bit happy.
He always felt that he was enclosed in a dark box, and Puji's sky was such a box, boundless.What he saw were only some small parts, which were obscure.He has no way of knowing how one thing after another happened, what kind of thread these things are stitched together, what kind of mystery is woven into it.And now, he himself was part of the mystery.It was the flame hanging on the tip of the rush; it was a hawk circling in the sky; it was the smell of his craving body: it was sweet, sad, and intoxicating.
When the lamp was turned on, the small wooden door opened.Xiumi came out from inside.She seems to have aged a lot suddenly, but there is no sad expression on her face, she still looks sleepy.When the tiger first came to Puji from Qinggang, they saw Xiumi like this, as if sleeping in a long, dark dream.
As soon as the little thing saw her mother, he quickly ran to hide under the pillar of the porch, and then ran through the corridor to behind the magpie, buried his face between her legs, and secretly looked sideways at her. her mother.But the headmaster didn't notice him at all.When Bao Chen took the principal to look at the coffin in the courtyard, the little thing even ran up to his mother, raised his head and looked at his mother's face with a silly smile, as if saying to her:
"I'm here."
Bao Chen rubbed his hands together and asked how his wife's funeral would be handled.Xiumi pursed her lips, and said two words softly:
"Buried."
"Oh, that's right." Xiumi suddenly seemed to remember something, and said to Bao Chen, "Where do you plan to bury her?"
"It's in the golden needle field in the west of the village."
"No!" Xiumi said, "You can't be buried in the field of lilies."
"That piece of land was chosen by Madam herself." Baochen said, "Madam explained it a few days ago, and I asked Mr. Yin Yang to look at it."
"I don't care about that." Xiumi's face darkened again, "You can't bury her in the golden needle field."
"Then where do you think it was buried?" Bao Chen asked in a low voice.
"You can figure it out. As long as you don't bury it in the lily pad, you can go anywhere." After saying this, she went back to school.
Seeing Granny Meng touch Hua Erniang with her arm, the tiger gave her a wink and said in a low voice, "Erniang, did you see her waist just now?"
There was an imperceptible smile on Hua Erniang's face, she nodded.
What happened to her waist?Tiger looked at Hua Erniang, then at Granny Meng.Looking outside the door again, snow beads were jumping on the coffin lid, and the principal had already walked away in the snow.
In the middle of the night, when the funeral was carried out, the snow fell even more tightly.The snowdrops that had been tossing and billowing had turned into heavy snow that tore the fluff and silk, forming a thick layer on the ground.
In Mr. Ding Shuze's view, this seemingly unseasonable heavy snow seemed to be the wrath of the sky.He circled around the coffin, poked the ground of the courtyard with his crutches, and kept cursing, "You're treason, you're treason, you're treason." Everyone knew who he was cursing, but no one responded to him.
But Baochen was thinking about something else.Why didn't Xiumi let his wife be buried in the field of golden needles?He was talking to himself, saying this sentence upside down.In the end, the magpie was really annoying him, so he came to give him some advice and said:
"Then there's no need to ask, isn't the matter obvious!"
Bao Chen patted his forehead, and chased the magpie to the other side of the coffin, "Tell me, what's going on?"
"There was a person buried in that field of lily needles," Magpie said, "You are really a log."
That person was Zhang Jiyuan.Almost ten years ago, when Zhang Jiyuan's body was found in the frozen river, the wife did not avoid the eyes and ears of everyone, and wept while touching the corpse.Later, Madam asked Baochen to hire an ox cart to drag Zhang Jiyuan's body back to Puji.Baochen said that according to the old customs of Puji, since Zhang Jiyuan was not from the Lu family and died in the wild, his body could not be enshrined at home, but his wife refused to obey.
She even threatened to fire him immediately and tell father and son to leave immediately.Baochen was so frightened that he couldn't speak, and lay on the ground with his head smashed.Granny Meng tried hard to persuade her, but she ignored her, she ignored Mr. Ding's rationale, and she didn't even listen to the fortune teller's threats.Magpie followed the crowd to persuade her, and Madam flew into a rage and said, "Fart."
It was Xiumi who finally made her change her mind.She didn't say anything, just sneered twice with her nose "humming", and Madam's face immediately turned gray.So, she asked people to build a bamboo shed by the pond outside the courtyard, held the coffin for 21 days, and invited Taoist monks to chant scriptures to remember the dead soul, and finally buried him in the golden needle field in the west of the village.
What the magpie said made Baochen half-understand.He scratched his scalp and said:
"I still don't quite get it."
"It's fine if you don't understand, you're such a piece of wood."
The words of the magpie brought the tiger back to that rainy night many years ago.In the attic in the backyard, the lights were covered in gray and yellow by the rain.He vaguely remembered Zhang Jiyuan carrying his wife's bare legs on his shoulders.Her groans were connected with the sound of wind and rain.
He glanced at the cold coffin, feeling empty in his heart.It seemed that after many years, he could still hear her breathing.
Why didn't Xiumi let his wife be buried in the golden needle field?In any case, since Magpie is so sure, this incident more than ten years ago provided some kind of answer after all.Of course, later facts proved that this answer was also wrong.
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