Chapter 4 dusk

After the thunderstorm, there are still some intermittent drips left in every tile groove on the eaves. The rain in the sky is no longer falling, and it is almost night. The sun will set on the other side of the sky, and there will be countless clouds left. These clouds block the sun, but make the sun's light glow with dazzling and beautiful colors.On this side, there are some clouds inlaid with gold, white, agate, and lavender edges, like the skirts of women in the city, delicate and gorgeous.The clouds are colorless and unprepared, and they are constantly flowing and changing in the air with a magician's technique.The air is clear after the rain, and all the scenery is like the air of a person who has been sick for a long time.

These beautiful skies are the easiest to meet in May in the south, and the cities under this sky are often crumbling cities.As a result of successive years of war in the country, as a result of the barren fields where grains were planted everywhere, and the widespread transplantation of poisonous substances, the rural economy has thus been declared bankrupt. , is dying. One is located in a certain county in Shidi Township in the middle of the Yangtze River. In a small stone city, in the northern corner of the city, there are houses on the side streets near the city wall. The small chimneys emit wet, seemingly heavy wood smoke.The chimney smoke rises sequentially, unevenly, at first it seems that it is not happy to burn it, and when it is lit, it has to forcefully jump out of the chimney, and it is unable to rise once it comes out of the chimney.The smoke lingers on the ridge of the roof, hesitates, unites, and finally forms a piece. When it is dusk, it is like a curtain, wrapping everything in the mist.

The edge of the city in ××, because of a row of one-story houses and a public building, has already made this place a little depressing at any time. Because of the smoke, everything has become much more depressing. A well-known public building here is the prison.There were poor, useless people brought in from all over the prison, and very honest peasants, as in any prison anywhere else.It is adjacent to the prison, so it is natural that some poor people live there.Most of the families of these poor people are composed like this: a host, a hostess, and a group of children of different sizes.Most of the owners are all kinds of people who rely on their hands to earn their daily food, and most of them are carpenters.The woman has red eyes and a thin face, as if suffering from consumption.Almost all of the children were born without being raised or taught, and they survived very strangely. When they grow up, they will not be beggars, but only sinners.In recent years, when many families died in the city, they only used cattail bags and reeds to bury them, and coffins were no longer necessary. Under such circumstances, carpenters' lives fell into an unimaginably miserable situation.Some who don't want to be soldiers, dare not be bandits and can't work, most of them go to the commercial port in the south of the city to do small jobs, no matter what kind of work they do, as long as they can survive.Some of them still cling to their professions and do not want to change their careers, so they just stay at home all day, on those musty and smelly wetlands, use an ax to chop this way and that, and make some simple furniture from old wood, piled up One room, to pass the endless gray days one after another.Women can get a bowl of rice because of local customs and a few jobs.Thanks to carefulness, prudence, patience, and especially low wages, a group of women will not starve to death immediately.Most of their work is to peel some lotus pods at the Lianzizhuang in the east of the city, pick tea leaves at the tea factory, or go to a firecracker shop to get some small firecrackers and take them home to make firecrackers. Wen or five cents.Children, older ones, no matter girls or boys, also worked with adults in Dongcheng City, earning about forty yuan a day.Only those children under the age of ten, most of whom have nothing to eat and nothing to do every day, carry small baskets and walk around, whenever they encounter something that can be chewed, they stuff it into their mouths.Some of them did not leave the vicinity of their homes, so they fished eels from the side of the large pond outside the prison.This pond may have had some use in the past, but judging from the long stone embankment built with solid and heavy stones around it, and its size and position, it is proved that the pond was in the past. Or once served the drink of the whole city.But now, the wells in Nancheng brought new water sources from the mountains, and the west city mostly used river water, but this pond has already become a place where all kinds of filth are hidden.The pond water contains all the sewage and dirt. The color of the long-term accumulated water is black and green. It is covered with a thick layer of clothing. It evaporates in the sun and emits a strange smell. It is shallow on all sides. When the weather is hot, Some water bubbles spewed out continuously from the bottom of the mud.

There are many eels in the crevices of the stone dikes around the pond.Because after the new rain, the weather is much cooler, and the pond water has increased some rainwater collected from various places, and it also seems a little angry.Eels that live in turbid water will often stick their heads out at this time, close to the water surface, and breathe fresh air with their nostrils facing the sky.The children who lived near the prison ran around the pond very excitedly, all showing an extremely happy look.They tied a foot-long hemp twine to the tip of a thin bamboo pole drawn from an old broom, and tied a small iron hook to the hemp twine. The little iron hook hooked some toad legs or other bait, and it was easy to insert them into the crevices. After leaving, he sat quietly by the side and watched over him.After a while the bamboo pole fell down very heavily, and sometimes the bamboo pole went straight into the water. The one in front of him picked up the bamboo pole and pulled it quickly, and a thing like a water snake left the water and meandered in the air endlessly.After the eel was brought out of the water, everyone shouted and laughed, scrambling to run over this side to get the eel. Tinder, collect some combustible things, and burn eels on the fire to eat.Sometimes the eel is too small, or the eel is found to belong to the so-called poisonous black eel, and everyone draws lots to decide, or everyone competes and fights in the chaos, and uses war to solve the eel belongs to the owner.It wasn't until the last owner of the eel, which had been half-dead during the fight, that the child crushed the eel's head with a stone, and then, holding the eel by its tail, threw it vigorously into the pond. Go, be regarded as the completion of fishing work.

It was getting late, and those women who carried baskets and walked along the city wall with bare feet in those days all returned home one after another by this time.Passing by the vegetable market on the way home, I took the income of the day and brought back some brown rice, salt, pepper, outdated melons and vegetables, and some pork intestines and tripe that can be obtained at very little cost. Portable fish viscera.The smoke on the chimneys of each family rises one by one for the disposal of these foods. Because the woman returned home, the children were tired of playing, and all ran home.

A child ran from the root of the city and yelled to the fishing children by the pond, "The team is here to pick up people. It has reached the corner of Qu Street and will be coming soon." Everyone knows that soldiers come here to pick up people, and there is excitement to be had. After seeing it, with a shout, they rushed towards the large courtyard outside the prison government office like a gust of wind. When waiting for the team to come, they admired the neat steps of the gun-bearers. There were hundreds of prisoners in the prison, some of them were civilians who had no choice but to break the law because they owed some small debts or stole some small things, but most of them were peasants captured by the army from all over the country.The troops stationed in the city, except for the busy October when the tobacco seedling tax is collected, have nothing to do in the rest of the day, and the battalion commander and company commander often lead the team out, just like hunting, to the Fuguo countryside to try their luck Randomly use straw ropes and hemp ropes to tie up these rural peasants in a group and escort them into the city, take them to the regiment headquarters to torture them randomly for a while, and then send them to this prison.Or in some simple and confused interrogation, it came to an end, and on a piece of yellow sweet-scented osmanthus paper, the secretary wrote Ganjie according to the line, smeared the hands of this country farmer with ink, and forced him to press it to a blank space. At the place, he left a pair of hand models, which was regarded as an admission of everything he said, so a team was sent to take the man out of the city and chop him up in the open space.Or this person is a good talker, still has some money, and is willing to accept the fine. After paying the fine, he finds a guarantor at random and releases him again.The children who live near the prison, besides fishing for eels, stand by the empty field of the courtyard office when the army sends ten or twenty brothers to the prison to pick up people, watching how the pretending deputy masters line up After entering the government office, they surrounded the outside of the prison courtyard and waited to see the prisoners go out.After the prisoner was taken away, if he had seen some news from the pretending soldiers that the prisoner's stupid head would have to be cut off in a while, he followed the team and walked towards the regiment headquarters in the city, staying outside the barracks. After coming down, until the prisoner was stripped from the upper body, his face was green, his hair was disheveled, his mouth was wide open, and he was surrounded by several soldiers, half unconscious and half dead, the children shouted a customary phrase in unison on the street Slogan to send off: "Twenty years of a hero, worth a little!"

The prisoner either looked here and barely yelled once or twice to support himself, or silently thought of the little pigs and lambs at home, fearful and confused, and walked away in a daze. So the team turned around.At the back, an adjutant on horseback took the military order, shook the yellow dragon order on the black stallion, and passed away. A little later, it will be the turn of this group of children.Everyone in this line of troops started out of the city at a trot, and when they passed by on every street, they attracted urchins and busy people on every street.When everyone arrived at the place where they were supposed to be, they spread out a circle, leaving a necessary space. The soldiers took their guns off their shoulders, loaded a row of bullets, and pretended to be ready to fire outwards, thinking that the Once it comes, the prisoner will not escape, and the people who are often seen in robbery will not form a big circle at a distance.After everything was settled, the executioner came out from the crowd, hid the knife behind his back, approached the prisoner, patted the countryman on the neck in a friendly way, deliberately pretending to be calm, and talked with the half-dead man. After giving a few instructions, he said, "Not busy, not busy," and then with a click, the innocent head flew far away, and fell to the ground with a dull and dull sound, blood on the neck It was shot out like a small fountain, and then the body fell limply, and shouts sounded from all corners, and the prisoner was treated as a hero just like the executioner.After the matter was over, the aide-de-camp on horseback, seeing that there was one less villain in the world, and that the duty of eradicating violence and peace had been fulfilled, gave an order to lead the troops and order the trumpeter a little ahead to blow the victory-returning signal. The foreign number paid the order.The spectators also slowly walked away.The children walked away immediately, and they stayed and waited for someone who saw the burnt paper and cried, or watched someone collect the body.Most of these corpses did not dare to come and collect them. After everyone dispersed, the children chose the dirty and dirty head to play with. First, they used it as a game, and then often wrestled with each other, and finally let it go. The weaker man rolled and fell into the blood, and everyone dispersed.

It's getting late today, and it's raining heavily, so it doesn't look like he's going to kill someone. At this time, the jailer who has served in the prison for seventeen years is digging the soil with a shovel in the muddy water in front of the lobby of the government office with bare feet, looking to guide the accumulated water out.I have been working for a while, but seeing no effect, I went to dismantle a bamboo broom and took out some bamboo poles, intending to use them to support the sunflowers that had been destroyed by the heavy rain and had already submerged in the water.Most of the courtyard was still submerged in the water. The impatiens, celosia, chrysanthemum, and okra that the old jailer begged from elsewhere, as well as ten kinds of brocade flowers cherished by the local people, were placed in the garden. There is an open space in each of the yards in the courtyard, all of which are submerged in water.The jailer took care of this and neglected that, so he did something for a while, and when he saw that nothing could be done well, he stopped doing it and just stood under the eaves of the lobby, looking at the evening clouds in the sky.A group of fluffy ducklings with the color of Wowotou are swimming in the muddy water among the flowers and plants, looking very happy and wantonly, flapping their small fleshy wings in the water, yelling, each with their little red mouths connected. The head is inserted into the water, and the back is like a small gauze hat. When any one of the ducklings comes out of the water with an earthworm in it, the rest of the ducklings will compete with each other.

The old jailer is calculating an account that belongs to his life, the amount is not clear, because his monthly salary is twelve strings, the money has been accumulated for five years, and he should bear this sum Qian's intermediary son has taken a fancy to it, as has his own old clothes, and Shoumu. After he has settled everything properly, he comes to remember why he didn't marry when he was young.He thought of the absurd place he was in the camp, and thought of a few women with white faces and long eyebrows related to life. A submerged stream of memories was flowing through his weak and old heart, and his eyes were burning with a kind of moist light of youth. .

I only heard someone shouting "Stand at attention, take a break" outside, and the horse's neck bell rang. I knew it was from the camp to send someone to pick him up, so I hurriedly kicked the water out to see what was going on. After the officer got off his horse, he walked dignifiedly in the water in the courtyard with long leather boots, and walked straight to the inside of the government office. Ten soldiers followed, and the jailer met the officer in front of the second gate, and rushed in to report to the warden. The warden is a figure who begs for life by the smoke lamp. At this time, he is sitting on the bedside with bare feet and short coat. The superintendent is squatting on the ground and cooking, dreaming of all kinds of oriental fantasies. The jailer shouted under the window: "My lord!" , Master, people are coming to the camp!"

The warden heard that there were people coming from the camp, but he was busy, so he ran out after dragging his shoes. The officer stood still in the lobby, fingering the fringe at the end of the whip, and the soldiers stood in front of the cornice. The warden took out a bunch of keys of different lengths from the room, and brought another book for deposit The prisoner's account book, when he saw the officer, he hurriedly saluted, waited for the officer with a smile, and called the male to move the stool and pour tea out. "My lord, how many do you want?" Without saying a word, the officer handed the warden a note with the name of the person on it, and the warden read the note softly in the twilight-filled hall of the government office, read it, and hurriedly said, "Yes." Yes, yes", he first led the way and took the bunch of keys, clipped the account book, and walked to the side prison.After a while, several people stood still outside the double doors of the prison. The old jailer put the key in the lock, opened the first door and then the second door. The door opened, and it was already dark inside, only some shining eyes in the distance, with blurred outlines, typical. The prison officer called people according to the list. "Zhao Tianbao, Zhao Tianbao, Yang Shouyu, Yang Shouyu," came out two shining eyes, ran over timidly, and said softly, "Yang Shouyu, Yang Shouyu," without saying a word, and let the soldiers pull out.The warden saw that one came, and another, and called out the name of Zhao again, and the jailer also screamed to help him, but no one came out after shouting for a while.I only heard the voice of a countryman in the darkness: "Tianbao, Tianbao, tell you to go, you go, don't be afraid, everything is fate!" In addition, some people spoke softly, generally urging him to go out, because it is impossible not to go out.It turned out that the person who was raptured was afraid to go out and was hiding in a pile of grass where he lived.This is a thing that has become a habit. Many countrymen, who have been tortured once, or have been recruited, live in prison, and when they hear their names called, they die and are unwilling to go out again. , Some soldiers must come in and drag him horizontally and vertically to get him out.This kind of thing often happens in prisons, and soldiers and prison officers are used to seeing it. At this time, the prison officer looked at the officer, and the officer looked at the soldier, and several people rushed inside.Then there were beating sounds, panting sounds in the darkness, and a group of movements at a loss because they were clinging to the pillar desperately, and the sound of resistance and conquest.After a while, I saw a bunch of things sent out. The warden knew that the matter was done, closed the doors one by one, added heavy iron locks one by one, left the prison with the officer, went back to the lobby, inspected the prisoners, went through the necessary procedures, and was about to Say a few words of entertainment, talk about the Qingxiang issue, the smoking ban issue, the officer nuzzled his lips, and a group of people lined up again, ready to walk out of the government office. The old jailer walked past the countryman who was unwilling to leave the prison at first, but after being forced out, his face was covered with blood and his eyes were fierce. He asked, "Tianbao, what's the matter?" The corner of the prisoner's mouth was covered in blood, panting, looking at the sky that was already red with the setting sun, as if thinking far and far away, without saying a word or expressing it.Another countryman looked honest and honest, but he told the jailer: "Master, when the people from my village come, please tell them that I have gone, and just ask them to help me return the five hundred yuan to the painter in the village. Pay him back the money..." So the team left in a dignified manner.The warden and the guards were sent out of the gate, and stood outside the gate to look at the wall, watching the officers mount their horses and walk through the muddy water.The children who had been waiting outside the door for a long time also wanted to follow, but they were told not to follow because of their families. Only a few children who stayed at home and had no dinner to eat still happily followed.The corner of the sky was completely red, the warden looked at the sky, and the jailer also looked at the sky, everything was so beautiful and quiet.A man was moving a high stool, and put a small lamp filled with vegetable oil on the door lamp hanging in front of the gate of the government office. The gate was full of mud, and the stool was wobbling in the mud. When the prison officer saw it, he shouted, "Be careful! Be careful!" Despite the instructions, the stool still overturned in the end, the person fell to the ground, and the lamp also fell to the ground.The lamp oil splashed all over the floor, and the man sat in the oil, not knowing what to do.The warden was a little dissatisfied with the officer's demeanor, so he said loudly: "I tell you to be careful, you are rougher than the camp fireman, you bastard!" The children did not disperse, they all gathered together for this matter. After the guards dispersed the children, the warden remembered the stewed pork in his own room, worried that Gong Ding had already eaten half of it, so he walked carefully into the yamen through the mud full of vegetable oil.The jailer looked at the boy who was sitting in the muddy water, and pouted, thinking that it would be better to sit on the ground, so he followed him in. All the red places in the sky turned purple, and all the corners of the ground gradually became blurred, so it was actually night.