Chapter 25 first quarter
After Xiumi was escorted to Meicheng, she was held in the dungeon of the prison for three months, and then she was transferred to a deserted post station in the south of the city, which was filled with cotton.Her last residence was a garden house in the Col.
The garden building, surrounded by black iron fences and lances, was funded by an English missionary.The surrounding trees are deep and beautiful, and there is no sound.Chinese-style waterside pavilions, curved corridors and stone paths were built in the garden, as well as a bronze angel statue and a fountain.Due to the long years, the statue has a thick layer of green rust.In order to persuade those devout Buddhists to change their beliefs and convert to Christ, this missionary began to study Buddhism at the age of 62, and at the same time taught herself Pali.Five years later, she became a Buddhist herself. In 1887, she stated frankly in a letter to the bishop of Scotland that "Buddhism is superior to Christianity in every respect".And God's punishment followed. In July 1888, in a sudden riot, she died in a desolate monastery in the north of Meicheng, and her body suffered "heinous insults".
Except for the singing of birds and the heavy rain at night, this bungalow cut off all communication between Xiumi and the outside world.She thought it was fine.A muddled brain, a tired body, day after day of lying still, a little sad leisure, all of these are very suitable for her.Indeed, there is no place like a prison.She felt at ease with the idleness of losing her freedom.
After the revolution, Long Qingtang was busy with a new round of competition for local forces. When he recalled this revolutionary from Puji, Xiumi had already been detained in prison for one year and three months.By this time, Long Qingtang had no intention of harming her. On the contrary, he sent people to visit him in prison again and again.Bring tea and food, exquisite snacks and various daily necessities.Xiumi left only an inkstone, a brush, a piece of ink, and a book about silkworms.
Based on this, Long Qingtang vaguely guessed Xiumi's mood and interest in Nongsang.In order to match his preferences, he sent someone to send Fan Chengda's "Fancun Ju Pu" and "Mei Pu"; Chen Si's "Begonia Pu"; Yuan Hongdao's "Vase History"; Han Yanzhi's "Orange Record" ".After reading these books, she felt a complex emotion of disgust and gratitude towards Long Qingtang.This autumn, shortly after she was allowed to walk freely in the garden, Long Qingtang sent someone to bring her several packets of flower seeds.Among them were several flower seeds that looked like both garlic and daffodils, and she planted them on the sand by the fountain.In the early spring of the second year, the flower seedlings broke through the ground.The flower diameter is slender and the buds are fat.After several spring rains, purple and blue flowers bloomed.She had never seen such a beautiful flower.
Plants and flowers gave her pleasures which she thought she did not deserve, and for which she plunged into sorrow and sorrow.Even a hint of joy would disturb her peace, reminding her of a shameful and tumultuous past, especially that of a child born in prison.She didn't even take a good look at him.
He was born dying.That night, in a trance, she vaguely saw an old woman in a soap dress with a red hairpin on her head, carrying him away.Maybe they buried him, maybe he was still alive, but Xiumi didn't care about it.
After her body recovered, she trained herself with amazing perseverance to forget him, forget all the people and things she had experienced.
Whether it was Zhang Jiyuan, the little donkey, Ma Bian from Huajiashe, or those energetic revolutionaries gathered in Yokohama, the faces of all these people became unreal.They are like smoke, far away, faintly, and when the wind blows, they all disperse.Looking back at the past years, she felt that she was like a leaf falling into the river. Before she could make any sound, she was carried away by the rapids. It was neither voluntary nor forced; There is no consolation.
When Baochen came to visit the prison, she refused to meet him, but just wrote him a note: I don't know how the wind blows the lamp in my dream, but I can bear the rain to hit the window when I wake up.Long Qingtang sent someone to invite her to the theater, and she wrote her answer on a piece of paper as usual: My mood is no longer suitable for any pleasure.It's a ritual of farewell to the past and part of self-torture.Punishment and self-torture would allow her to find justifiable comfort in the midst of her grief.She had no mission for the rest of her life but to enjoy mourning.
The problem now is that she is about to be free.She felt that the news came sooner.She didn't know where her true resting place was.
The day before he was released from prison, Long Qingtang came to the prison suddenly. This was not the first time they met, but the last time.His current status is no longer an alternate magistrate, but the president of the Meicheng Local Progressive Association.Although Long Qingtang didn't know that Xiumi had become a mute, he still showed considerable tolerance for the latter's silence and indifference.Of course, he also gave her the last suggestion: stay in Meicheng and work with us.He even immediately appointed her an official position called "Chairman of the Farmers' Association".
Xiumi thought for a while, then spread out paper and ink, and answered with a couplet of "begonias in spring cages are suitable for swallows, and elms in autumn are no longer cicadas".When Qingtang saw her, her face turned red.He nodded and asked again: "So, what do you plan to do after you get out of prison?" Xiumi wrote this sentence on the paper: "The most suitable thing for me now is to be a beggar." Long Qingtang laughed : "I'm afraid that's inappropriate. You are too beautiful and too young."
Xiumi said nothing more.She decided to return to Puji.Of course, she can only do so.
It was the scorching midsummer, and the scorching heat made her frail body look even more tired, and there was a mysterious silence in the street in the afternoon.Those crooked shops, black tiles that are about to collapse one after another, white clouds piled up on the black tiles, listless water sellers, fat men sleeping soundly with big bellies under the melon stalls, and street corners shaking The baby playing the diabolo (the buzzing of the diabolo reminds one of the ringing of the empty temple bells) made her feel new and strange.
It was the first time for her to face this chaotic and sweet world, which was chaotic but in its place, bringing her deep and stable peace.She walked forward unhurriedly, looking around, looking around, in fact, her mind was blank.No one noticed her except a swarm of flying flies.
Between Meicheng and Puji, there are more than a dozen villages of different sizes.Now, under the scorching midday sun, she could occasionally recall the name of a village or two.These names are part of childhood songs, part of memory that is soft and fragile, untouchable.At that time, her mother took her to visit relatives in Meicheng, sitting in a sedan chair or a trolley, sitting in a porter's cradle. She opened a corner of the red sedan curtain and looked at the strange people, houses and trees while listening to the Her mother sings:
I don't know if it was the familiar tune, or the sense of déjà vu that hit her, or the blurred face of her mother in the overlapping forests, which made her burst into tears of regret .She is not a revolutionary, not a substitute for the father who dreamed of looking for a paradise, nor a girl looking at the sea in front of a wooden house in Yokohama, but a baby who walks among cottages at dawn and sleeps soundly in a cradle.She thought sadly that her life had actually ended when she realized it could start over in the depths of her memory.
When she was begging for water in a village called Douzhuang, the villagers had no doubt that she was a beggar or a mute.Her dramatic gesture drew a crowd of onlookers, mostly children.They hit her with dirt to test her reaction.Her submissiveness and silence stimulated the curiosity of the children, who made faces at her and followed her, jumping around in front of and behind her.They screamed, frightened her with caterpillars, leeches, leeches, dead snakes and various unknown insects, hit her in the face with slingshots, and even tried to push her from behind into a reed pond by the roadside.
Xiumi still walked forward unhurriedly, neither quickening her pace, nor stopping to wait and see; neither angry nor smiling.Finally, the children were tired, and they stood dejectedly by the reed pond, watching her go away in bewilderment.
When she was alone, she would just stand by the side of the road in a daze.She remembered little things.His body was lying limply on the gutter of the corridor in the temple, and the water formed by the melted snow was rushing.The black blood line slowly flowed forward on the snow, blocked by the wooden pillars under the porch.Even at that moment, she knew that it was not blood that flowed from his small body, but all his little soul.
I am a fool.she murmured to herself.
When it was getting late, she finally arrived at the west wing door.On a dusty official road outside the village, she met a little old man with a hunchback.
He is a real beggar, but also a calculating womanizer.As soon as they met, Xiumi could see it in his face.He followed her closely like a shadow, without speaking, and in no hurry to take any action.The stench of his body accompanied her all the way, neither far nor near.Even when they stopped overnight on a threshing floor, they were separated by a considerable distance.
The cool wind blows away the heat of the day.The lights in the village were extinguished one by one, but the stars in the sky lit up little by little.The beggar lit a fire with wormwood and wormwood to keep the mosquitoes away.In the light of the burning fire, they looked at each other's faces.At this time, the beggar pointed to a haystack on the threshing floor, and said the only sentence to Xiumi:
"If you want to pee, go behind the haystack, don't hold it in."
She shed tears of gratitude again.Why do I love to cry so much now?"That's not a good sign," she thought, trying to restrain herself.
When she woke up the next day, the beggar had already left.He left her a gourd full of clean water, half a cucumber, and an old sock full of rotten rice that gave off a sour smell.A beggar's alms is a real alms, but there is nothing in return.If he had wanted it last night, she would probably have obeyed.Anyway, this body is not mine, let him spoil it.It is impossible to give oneself willingly to a filthy and ugly beggar, and only the impossible is worth trying.
Xiumi returns to Puji's house.Her first feeling was that the houses and courtyards suddenly became much cramped, and more dilapidated than the deep house and courtyard she remembered.The foundation of the courtyard wall was skewed due to the heavy pressure, and the plaster on the wall was warped, sharp and hard, like the leaves of a tallow tree, and it seemed to be covered with butterflies of all sizes.The wooden pillars under the corridor and the round and flat stone plinths under the pillars are full of cracks.Black masses of ants took over the hives on the wall and snaked their way up the wall.
There are more chickens and ducks running around in the yard.In an east wing (where the mother died) the inner wall had been removed and a log fence of birch or locust tree was replaced, and inside lay an old grizzled sow.She glanced into the pigsty twice, and it turned out that a portrait of Avalokitesvara stuck to her mother's bed hadn't had time to take it down.The sow has given birth.At the sound of human footsteps, the running speckled cubs stopped suddenly, their ears stretched and motionless.
She even saw a big white goose with an ocher-yellow crown, shyly walking down the steps.I saw it shrank slightly, and with a "poof", a puddle of feces came out and flowed down the stone slabs of the steps.
My God - Xiumi shook her head and sighed.These newly added small animals are probably the masterpieces of magpies.She thought so, and walked towards the backyard again.
There is an extra duck shed in the bamboo forest in the backyard, and everything else basically maintains the original pattern.The courtyard steps are silent, the shadows of the trees float, and the sparrows stand in a row on the cast iron railings of the attic.
Magpie may have heard the news that she is going to be released from prison, and the yard has been cleaned.Rotting leaves and shriveled grass piled in the corners.In order to prevent slipping, the attic steps are covered with a thin layer of sand.She glanced at the waist door on the east side. It was through this door that her father went out more than ten years ago.This narrow door seemed to be the most important hub in her memory. She had recalled that sunny afternoon countless times, trying to find an answer to explain the mystery of the swiftly passing time.A tattered tarpaulin umbrella by the door was still in its place.The cloth paper was eaten away by moth ants, and the umbrella bones were exposed.She clearly remembered that when her father was about to leave the house, he picked up the umbrella, tried to open it, smiled shyly at her, and left her the last sentence: "Puji is about to rain It's gone." After so many years of wind and rain, this umbrella is not necessarily more decayed than when my father went out.
The magpie disappeared, and the courtyard was silent.She went upstairs alone, pushed open the door, still the same.There was still a musty smell that she was familiar with, but there was a white long-necked porcelain vase on the bedside chest of drawers, and a newly picked lotus was inserted in the vase.For some reason, looking at the flower, her tears flowed again.
When Magpie came back, Xiumi was sleeping.
She went to the neighboring village to go to the market early in the morning. She had a basket full of eggs, but none of them were sold.At noon, she saw Yang Dazi's daughter-in-law.She walked up to Magpie and said to her in a low voice: "The principal is back." As early as ten days ago, Magpie heard the news that Xiumi was about to be released from prison, but once she really came back, Magpie Still feeling a little flustered.She protected the eggs in the basket with her hands and hurried back.Walking to the head of the village, she saw Tan Shuijin, the helmsman at the ferry, walking towards her.
His back was even more stooped.Putting his hands upside down, with a dark face, he muttered to her from a distance: "That lunatic is back?"
After walking a few steps forward, he said again, "I heard that she came back alone?"
Of course the magpie understood what he meant.The first sentence shows that he is still brooding over the tragic death of his son Tan Si, while the second sentence shows that he is thinking about the child in Xiumi's womb.Poor Shuijin, more than anyone else, he hopes that Xiumi is pregnant with their Tan family's child.Her slightly bulging belly is the only hope for her dying years.However, since she came back alone, where did that child go?
After returning home, Magpie locked herself in the kitchen to catch her breath for a long time, but still didn't dare to go to the attic in the backyard to see her.Her heart was pounding.After all, it has been many years since Xiumi was alone.Especially in recent years, Xiumi didn't even look at her.
In the evening, she made a bowl of noodles and brought them to the attic.When he opened the door and entered, he grinned his teeth and made a funny face for a long time, so as to embolden himself.Xiumi was in a deep sleep, lying on her side with her back to her, her clothes and shoes still on.The magpie gently placed the bowls and chopsticks on the chest of drawers, then held her breath, walked out step by step backwards, closed the door, and went downstairs.
The magpie spent the whole night in the kitchen. She heated up the bath water and waited for her master to come downstairs to take a bath, but there was no light on in the attic all night.The next morning, she tiptoed to the attic, and was surprised to find that Xiumi was still sleeping soundly on the bed, with her back to her, and she had eaten up all the noodles in the bowl at some point.When she was collecting the bowls and chopsticks, she found a note under the bowl with words written all over it.She went downstairs and read the note upside down for a long time until her eyes turned green, she didn't know what was written on it.Her heart also became heavy: Did she forget that I can't read?That said, her madness was by no means cured.But the magpie was worried that the master would explain something important, so she asked her to do it immediately.After staying for a while, I took this note to Mr. Ding's house.
Ding Shu has been ill in bed for more than six months.It is said that the oil is exhausted and the lamp is dry, and the wheat cannot be harvested.But when the new wheat was harvested this year and Ding Shu tasted the noodles made from the new wheat, his situation did not get worse, and of course, it would not get better either.He bent sideways on the bed like a prawn, making the bamboo mat wet with his saliva.
He looked at the note that Magpie handed over, gulped a few mouthfuls of saliva, and then pointed three fingers at her.
"There are three sentences." Ding Shuze's teeth almost fell out, and his mouth was leaking when he spoke. "The first sentence is: I can't speak anymore. It means that she has become a mute. I can't speak anymore, this is the first sentence."
"Why can't she talk?" Magpie asked.
"It's hard to say." Ding Shu said, "She wrote clearly on the paper: I can no longer speak, that is to say, I am dumb. As the saying goes, once the yamen is as deep as the sea, she can live Come back, even if it’s good.”
"That's right." Mrs. Ding interjected, "Once this person is in prison, he will have to undergo all kinds of punishments. Making you dumb is a kind of punishment. That's right, they gave her a dumb sentence." medicine, maybe earwax, and she'll be dumb. It's easy to do. If you accidentally eat your own earwax, you'll be dumb too."
"What else did she write?"
"The second sentence, the front yard is yours, and the back yard is mine. That is to say, she wants to separate from you. The Lu family compound is divided into two. The front yard belongs to you, and the back yard belongs to her. River water. As for the last sentence... I want you to tear down the duck shed in the bamboo forest in the backyard."
"She must hate me very much in her heart. She made this house look like a pigsty, and raised so many chickens, ducks and livestock." Magpie's face was ashen.
"She can't blame you," said the teacher's wife. "The property in the family sold her without a penny left, and the family has no savings. You are a daughter's family, and you don't raise some animals. How can you make ends meet? Besides, she is now released from prison after serving her sentence. , basically became a useless person, unable to hug her hands, lift her shoulders, and rely on you to raise her? Just ignore her. Since she has given you the front yard, you can do whatever you like, and raise whatever you like What, let alone raise some chickens and ducks, even raise a man, she can't control it."
This remark made the magpie's neck turn red.
For several days after that, magpies frequently came and went in and out of Ding Shuze's house. In the words of Mrs. Ding: "It won't be long before the threshold of our house will be leveled by you."
Some of the writings on the paper are the names of things that Magpie helped her buy in the market, such as pens, inkstones, ink, paper, etc., as well as some daily trivial matters, such as "the toilet leaks, it should be repaired quickly" or " The soup last night was slightly salty, is it okay to light it?" or "It is not necessary to remove dust from the attic every day, it can be done every ten days." Another example is "a flock of chickens sing at dawn, it is annoying, why not kill them all?"
Ding Shu read the last sentence, and said with a wry smile: "This child is really stupid. The one who sings is the rooster, and the hen can't sing. Why kill them all? It seems that the old habits of the revolutionaries have not faded away. The hen You can keep the eggs for laying, if the rooster is killed, bring me a bowl of soup."
The next day, when the magpie brought him chicken soup, Mr. Ding said: "Since she can hear the crowing of the rooster, it means that she is not deaf, but just dumb. If you have any questions, you might as well tell her directly. Don't let me write, my old bones can't stand your toss."
The most bizarre thing is this note: "The following items are urgently needed, and they are ready for use: some dung juice from next year, some stone sulfur, some pond mud, some bean dregs, and some live weedels."
Ding Shu looked at it, first smiled wryly, then shook his head: "Why does she want these irrelevant things?"
The teacher's wife didn't understand what it meant, she just sighed and said: "If everything goes according to her wishes, maybe she will ask you to go to the sky to pick the stars tomorrow. If you follow my advice, you don't need to talk to her at all."
But Magpie secretly decided to satisfy her.
When she went to dig mud from the pond, she fell into the river and nearly drowned.After finally climbing to the shore, I didn’t have the courage to try again, so I dug a little hard mud in the gutter in front of the house, diluted it with water, and kneaded it to make it sticky and thick like dough, which looked like pond mud No two.Bean dregs are easy to handle, and there are tofu shops in the west of the village.As for the dung juice, just take a spoonful in the latrine and deal with it. Anyway, she couldn't smell whether it was from this year or the next year.As for live weeds, there were plenty of them in the ditches in the fields. She asked the children in the village to catch them, and within a short while they caught a basket full of shrimp.The most difficult thing to get was that stone sulfur. She asked many people, and even the clerk in the pharmacy didn't know what it was. In the end, she bought a few firecrackers, broke the twist, shook out the gunpowder, mixed it with yellow sand, and finally prepared "stone sulfur".
She prepared these things and arranged them neatly on the stone steps beside the attic in the backyard, and then returned to the front yard to spy on the movement through the crack of the door.A strong curiosity prompted her to find out.In the afternoon, she saw Xiumi come downstairs sleepily, saw her smell and smell these rare things, saw her roll up her sleeves, excited like a child.
It turned out that she wanted to plant lotus.
There used to be two vats of lotus in the house, which were wide and deep blue and white porcelain vats.Baochen has been taking care of it all the time, and it blooms in June and July every year.When the old lady was around, she often used lotus leaves to steam meat and glutinous rice cakes. She even vaguely remembered the fragrance of lotus leaves.Before it snowed in winter, she saw Baochen put wooden strips on top of the tank and covered it with thick straw to support the roots.
After Baochen left Puji, no one took care of these two vats of lotus. The magpie thought the lotus had already withered.In the early summer of this year, she went to the attic to clean the room, and suddenly found that a red lotus bloomed in the tank, which was thin and small.There are only a few lotus leaves in the tank, floating on the black water that emits a foul smell. The edges of the leaves are curled or broken, and there are jagged rusty edges around them.Countless bedbugs gathered in the tank, and as soon as people passed by, they would fly away and hit people's faces.The only lotus flower, the magpie picked it casually, took it to the attic, and put it in a white long-necked bottle.
It turned out that Xiumi wanted to take care of these two vats of lotus.I saw that she put the bean dregs, pond mud, and "stone sulfur" into the wooden basin and stirred them, then added the dung juice, mixed well, and dragged the wooden basin to the sun for exposure.Then she came to the side of the lotus vat, blasted the full vat of bugs, fished out the weeds, and scooped up the residual water in the vat with a wooden spoon.I was so busy that my clothes were wet, I was out of breath, and even my face was stained with mud.
When the sun went down, the magpie finally couldn't hold back, and jumped out from behind the door to help.Xiumi was spreading the fresh mud in the wooden basin on the rhizomes of the lotus branches.Seeing her coming, Xiumi kicked a wooden barrel beside her, and looked at her again.The magpie immediately understood what she meant. She asked herself to fetch water from the pond.The magpie galloped to fetch the water, watched Xiumi pour the water into the tank slowly, and couldn't help but asked, "Is this useful?"
Of course, she got no answer.
Almost a month later, when the magpie came to the backyard again and passed by the flower vats, she was surprised to find that the new lotus leaves were so crowded that both vats were full.The lotus leaves are the size of a palm, black, green and fat, and the lotus leaves are full of flowers.One is light white, the other is deep red, exuding a faint fragrance.The magpie stood by the tank until it was dark, and couldn't bear to leave for a long time.I heard from Baochen earlier that these two vats of lotus are old treasures that the master has raised for decades. Seeing them today, they are really lovable.Those few weedels flipped up and down from the lotus leaves, causing the flower stems to tremble slightly, and the lotus moved in the wind, making a sound.
The next morning, when she went to clean the attic, she found another note on the desk.She showed it to Ding Shuze, and Mr. Ding smiled and patted her head: "Silly boy, she just wrote it for fun, no matter what you do."
The magpie asked him what was written on the paper, and Mr. Ding said: "Furong, Fuqu, Shuiyun, Zezhi, Lian, Ling, and Hanlian written on the paper are all the names of lotus, while Jinbian, Yinhong, Lutao , Xueji, Jiujin, Xiaobai and so on are nicknames, this is a little trick of scholars, for meditation. It has nothing to do with you."
After a long while, Mr. Ding twitched his beard again and muttered: "Flowers and herbs have always been known as beauties. They can nourish nature and explain speech. Orchids come out of the valley, chrysanthemums hide in the fields, plums pile up with fragrant snow on the mountains, and bamboos raise their fragrance. In the window house, the Duhe was disgraced in the mud and fell into the filth, but it came out of the filth without being polluted, its character was clean and clean, and its nature was gentle. Xiumi was like Jialian because of its poor life experience. ?Although, when I look at his aspirations, there is a sense of seclusion, which is lamentable, lamentable."
Magpie hesitated and said: "Mr. Ding said just now, but Magpie couldn't understand half a sentence."
Seeing what she said, Ding Shuze's cloudy old eyes gave off a green light, he stared at the magpie for a while, and said slowly: "It's not difficult to understand what I say."
Magpie didn't know what he meant, so he turned to look at his wife.Mrs. Ding explained: "I see that you run to my house all day, startled, that dumb, whenever you scribble a few words, you fly to report as if you have received an imperial edict. After a long time, there is no way. You are tired. , we are even more tired. To put it bluntly, if the husband returns to the west one day, do you still have to dig the grave and ask him to come out to pass the message for you? I discussed with Mr. Ding last night, let him teach you how to recognize Handwriting, with our husband’s knowledge, it won’t take you a year or so before you can understand her handwriting. What do you think?”
The magpie glanced at the skinny old man on the bamboo bed, then at the sputum stains all over the floor and walls, could not help feeling fearful and embarrassed.Seeing his wife looking at him eagerly, he had no choice but to prevaricate: "Master, let me think about it again."
Unexpectedly, the teacher's wife said seriously: "What do you think? Mr. Ding has the talents of the heaven and the earth. If the fortune is right, he will be out of the prime minister and be in the rank of immortals. It is also your blessing to teach you to read, so good You can't find it even with a lantern. If you don't agree, you don't have to run to our house from tomorrow on."
Magpie was flustered when she saw his wife's face changed, so he agreed in a daze.Because there was phlegm on the ground, it was inconvenient to salute, so Mrs. Ding came over and held her head and gave Mr. Ding three random bows, which was regarded as a formal apprenticeship.As soon as he worshiped the teacher, Mr. Na Ding immediately showed a fierce look. He got up from the bed, sat against the wall against the bed, and said loudly:
"Teaching and literacy, according to the law, I have to charge money. You don't have any savings for routine work, so I don't want it for you. It's just that the hen lays eggs every day, and you pick the big one. I eat it. I don’t need too much, one or two a day is enough.”
The magpie came out of Mr. Ding's house full of worries, and went straight to Hua Erniang's house next door.She wants to discuss this matter with her.Hua Erniang was spinning under the window, and while she was spinning the spinning wheel, she listened to the magpies talking about her thoughts.At the end, he smiled and said:
"An egg a day? It's thanks to that old man who can figure it out! As the saying goes, life begins when you can't read and write. The most important thing for a person to live in this world is to dress and eat. You are a daughter, and you don't want to take the number one exam." , What are you going to do with that effort? I think you should ignore his troubles."
After leaving Hua Erniang's house, she went to Granny Meng's house again.After all, Granny Meng was related to her, and besides, she knew a few words when she was young, so her views are naturally different from Erniang Hua's.Granny Meng said: "Knowing a few words is not a problem. At least you will need to keep accounts when you sell piglets in the future. He doesn't want your bundles. Thirty eggs a month is not too much. That Ding Shu, who has no children, has been sitting and eating all these years, is really pitiful, I don't think he can remember what the eggs taste like."
After the mother-in-law said this, the magpie was relieved.From then on, I went to Mr. Ding's house to read every day, and the wind and rain continued.In the first one or two months, nothing happened, but as time went on, the magpie gradually had another thing on his mind.Na Ding Shu always liked to touch her head with his dirty hands, and often touched her body here and there intentionally or unintentionally.At the beginning, the magpie didn't dare to speak out because of the face of the elders, but later on, the Ding Shu became more and more absurd and rude, and even picked her with nonsensical words between words, which made people feel hot and blush Although the magpie half-understands what he said, he understands everything when he sees the way he speaks.She knew that Mrs. Shi was a well-known jealous person, if she told her, it would inevitably cause a storm and let others know the joke, so she refrained from saying it and just pretended not to understand.Once, Na Ding Shu told him about the matter between his wife and Zhang Jiyuan, and when he was talking about Xing Nong, he grabbed her hand, rubbed it endlessly, and screamed like mother, mother.
Magpie had no choice but to complain to his mistress, who knew that after hearing her words, his mistress giggled: "Your husband is a man who is about to die. He fumbled a few times and took advantage of his words, as long as he is not out of line." , let him go."
This loft is built on a cluster of Taihu stones.On the lower part of the west side of the attic, there is a hexagonal pavilion.There are guardrails around the pavilion.There is nothing but stone tables and benches in the pavilion.On the left and right sides of the pavilion pillars are engraved couplets written by my father:
After Xiumi was released from prison, apart from occasionally going downstairs to take care of flowers and plants, she spread books in the gazebo every day to entertain herself.The life of living in seclusion with no intentions brought her the tranquility she imagined.Tired of reading, I lay down on the stone table and took a rest for a while.It was usually in the afternoon before she could see the slowly moving shadows on the wall of the west courtyard.As time went by, she was gradually able to judge the time by the movement of light and shadow on the wall.
Similar to sundials, when using light and shadow to calculate time, it is often necessary to take seasons, time series, and the length of day and night into consideration.At that time, my father had personally made a comparison list of wall shadows related to seasons and time series.As part of his father's large number of posthumous manuscripts, it was carefully bound into a volume by Baochen.
If light and shadow linger on the crowns of plants along the wall, such as hollyhocks, plantains, or loquats, the timing is even more inaccurate, because the plants grow each year and the number and size of flowers that bloom vary.If the father wants to accurately calculate the change of time, the simple way is to make an hourglass.But my father didn't do that.Only lonely people have a profound study of time, and it is similar if you are tormented by inner pain to do nothing.
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Notes: