Chapter 9 pregnancy

In front of Shichahai in the city of Beijing, there is a new pad of coal ash soil on the southern end of Hainan. The daylight is shining, and there is a circle of idle people who have nothing to do, all of which are glued together by a small bustle. hiss... A sound of cracking silk, this sound is like a small firecracker soaring into the sky, rising from the ground, and the little toy with wings made of five-color paper was sent to the sky by the toy seller on a spiral wire.So there are all kinds of faces here, all looking up to the sky with the bright blue background.The small toy is made in the shape of an airplane, ascends and descends, and at the same time attracts the eyes from afar, because its color is so bright, which has the distinctive characteristics of Beijing city toys.

After the little plane reaches a certain height, it hovers down like a parachute, and still lands in a corner of the field, where it can be picked up again and sent up again.Or when it is distributed a little bit, its destination is changed. Sometimes it flies with the wind and hangs on the willow branches, sometimes it falls on the top of the white curtains of various stalls, and sometimes it happens to stop at or passer-by. superior.It is so light, when someone got this little thing on the straw hat, he didn't understand at first, but he still walked towards the crowd, and then a group of naughty children followed behind, shouting and laughing like puppies, until The tourist figured it out, grabbed the little thing on his head and threw it away, the children just scrambled to snatch it, forgot about this or the tourist, and ignored it.

Every time the small plane is released, it is worth three coins. If you pay for any good deeds, you can play on the spot and send the plane "to the sky" with your own hands until the plane is lost on the "ground". There were many people who took out coppers from their waist pockets, and after a while, the toy sellers smiled and counted the money while walking through the Wanghai Tower to drink tea and listen to the play.There are only some empty lotus pods left in the field, emerald green wrinkled skin, soft greenish-white flesh, brown lotus seed shells, and green lotus seed shells.

An old man over sixty came from Houhai with a pair of big puppets on his shoulders. When he arrived at the field, he looked around and seemed to understand that this was not a place to play with puppets, but he stopped reluctantly. The old man sat the puppet under the scorching sun in the arena, picked up the lotus pods on the ground, and pinched them with his hands to test the reality of them, while coughing lightly to adjust his throat.He has neither a small gong nor a small drum, except for the pair of simple and dull puppets with one black and one white face, nothing else!No one was watching.

He glanced around with his small red eyes, and since the location of the field was so unsuitable and the weather so hot, he knew in his heart that if he didn't come up with some tricks, he would definitely not be able to lure the idlers here.The old man looked at the pale-faced one of the puppets sitting in the ground, and greeted him in a low and affectionate voice, as if he was comforting himself with these words. "Wang Jiu, don't worry, people will come slowly. You see, this lotus pod is not the way for the old men? Let's stay for a while, and let's show the men what to play. If we play well, we still worry about the men Reward three pieces and five pieces? Have a good time, and when the old men go home, they will say to the students at home: Hey, Wang Jiuzhao Si is so solid in wrestling, he is twisting and hugging under the sun in June, and he is not sweating! (He said softly again) No, you never sweat, it's so hot, you don't sweat and you don't get tired, good man!"

A man came, looking at the water as if he was throwing water, and dragged the lower corner of the striped shirt for a long time, making the ugly appearance unique to Beijing city university students, and his face also had the haggard color unique to the aging nation. The old man glanced at the student, then smiled, thinking that the "lucky star" from the gang was coming, and put his whole body into a flexible posture of a young man, shaking his arms up and down. The college student stood there admiring the face of the puppet as if he was studying it, while the old man repeated what he said to himself, treating him with intimacy like a father and son in a family.

"Wang Jiu, let me say, look, if you don't come, Mr. and Mrs. will come. Okay, let's do it, Mr. won't leave. Be careful not to let Mr. Zhao fall down. Mr. help us make a scene, see If you beat Zhao Si, sir, you must not leave." So he lifted the puppet up, tidied up the worn-out gown on the puppet, took out two artificial legs from under the clothes, and tied them to his trouser belt. He got into the clothes worn by the puppet, covered himself with the clothes, and put two gloves into the artificial legs, corrected the position of the two artificial legs, and began to play the appearance of two people beating in the dusty field by himself.He used various methods to move the pose of the puppet, jumping, jumping, and sometimes he used his real feet to grab the fake feet that were gloved, pretending to wrestle and cross his feet.He himself could neither see the puppet on his head clearly nor the audience on the scene clearly, yet he performed extremely vigorously.

The college student smiled sadly, and, on the far side, someone noticed the situation in the open space here, and was aroused by the situation, and the second person came running. Not long after, the third and even the thirteenth came. In order to watch the puppets fighting, more and more people gathered around. Everyone laughed, and from the corner of their clothes, the old man could vaguely see the legs and feet of the audience around the scene, so he tripped over Zhao Si's fake foot with his real foot for Wang Jiu, and the puppet and the puppets who were playing with puppets hidden under the clothes , all slumped down in the ashes, there was a roar of laughter on the scene, and the play was over for a while.

The old man slowly crawled out from a pile of worn clothes, revealing a white-haired head covered in hot sweat, with a tired smile written on his red face. After leaving the puppet, he lifted the puppet up again, and He said to himself: "Wang Jiu, good boy, you really do it. You see, I said that the uncle will come, but not all the uncles will come? You played well and threw Zhao Si down, and the uncle will come Sprinkle the coppers, and we'll have corn buns to eat later. Look, your face looks like a big girl's. Are you tired? Are you afraid of the heat? (As he speaks, he wipes his own forehead with the corner of his clothes .) Come on, let’s do it again, let’s go to the Nanjing Martial Art Association tomorrow to earn a lot of face for the North!”

Everyone laughed again. Just as he got under the puppet's clothes for the second time, a policeman with a pockmarked face collecting donations squeezed in from behind. Because the performance was weird and interesting, the patrolman kept silent and just stood in the front to watch this kind of one-man wrestling.However, just after turning a corner, the bent old man recognized the identity and status of one of the audience members from a pair of thick black leather boots on the patrolman's feet, so after playing for a while, he only pretended that Zhao Si was unable to support him, and immediately became a pile of collapsed people. It's underground.

He hastily stretched out his head and gave the patrolman a flattering smile, as if to say "Hi, sir, hello, sir." While removing the artificial leg from his hands, he smiled lightly at himself with a sense of humor and self-sarcasm. Said to the puppet: "Look, the uncle is really here, Huang Guaer, took a small book to collect four floating stall donations, knowing that we can't do anything about chewing big cakes, they came to watch us wrestle! It's so hot! The uncles are all standing here, come, let's wait and come again." He remembered that the donation from the street stall came, but he didn't have a big one at hand. After a while, he saw that there were quite a few gangsters in all directions, so he bowed and bowed in all directions and said, "Masters, I have wronged you all on a hot day. If you have copper coins with you, help me to throw a few. My purse is empty." Yes, help me to stay for a while and make a scene." Someone in the audience threw one or two coins, and the others stood still in their original positions, but a young officer tossed a handful of coppers and walked away frowning.In order to pick up the handful of coins scattered all over the floor, the old man walked along the field as usual, and the two artificial feet tied to his belt swayed ridiculously from side to side. The donated patrolman had already marked the yellow note and was going to give it to the old man. When he saw it, he quickly counted four copper coins in his hand and gave it to the patrolman.The patrolman said softly "Wang Jiu Wang Jiu" and walked away with a smile.After the patrolman left, the old man twisted the donated stick into a twist, clamped it to his ear, and said to the puppet: "There are not many big boys, don't you think so, Wang Jiu? You don't feel hot or sweat! The patrolmen ran around, You're sweating a lot!" At this point, he seemed to remember the profuse sweat on his head, so he knelt down and wiped the corner of Wang Jiu's clothes, trying to make everyone laugh, but no one in the audience laughed. This old man is also similar to a certain kind of person in the society. He pretends to be a show for others, even sings and acts, not because he is doing particularly well, but because he is doing it, so most people look at him with strange pity.When money is due, those who have money don’t spare money as usual, but no matter where, as long as there is a new thing, this point of cohesion will be lost, and everyone will forget everything here and run away. At a lotus seed stall under the shade of willow trees, someone suffered from heatstroke and fell down by the stall and fainted. Everyone didn't know what happened, but when they saw someone running towards that direction, they also ran away.After a while, most of the audience on the puppet-playing field left, and a few people seemed to have noticed the scorching sun above their heads, and gradually dispersed. The college students with the air of waiting to jump into the water seemed to have remembered what they should do, they couldn't do nothing under the scorching sun, squeezed into the tourists along Qianhai Road and disappeared. There were seven people left in the field. The old man looked at it, smiled, without saying a word, squeezed his hands together for a while, then squatted down and lifted the puppet, covered it on his head, put his hands into the artificial leg, and began to shake his shoulders violently Back, playing the set that has already been played.The strange action attracted four people, but five people walked away before long.After the beating really happened in another place, the rest of the people all ran away. The old man is still playing, and still often deliberately lifts up the fake foot, as one of the postures where the whole body is lifted, and tilts his shoulders to the left and right as hard as possible, just like a puppet sumo wrestling fiercely.In the end, he still fell under a kind of rule, falling down without any hesitation.Naturally, Wang Jiu defeated Zhao Si again. While waiting for him to crawl out from the pile of old clothes, there was only a short patrolman checking the donations standing there smiling.Since he was the only one in the audience, it seemed that he was very big and looked very happy. He walked towards the patrolman, bent down, and grabbed the yellow paper strip from his ear, but it disappeared, so he hurriedly rummaged through the puppet's clothes.After arriving, I found the donation note from the ground, and hurriedly handed it to the patrolman.The patrolman didn't check the donation slip, but looked at the two artificial legs tied around the old man's waist, smirked, shook his head and left. So he sat on the ground like the puppet, counting the coins around him, smiling at the white-faced puppet Wang Jiu, and said the same jokes that both made the audience laugh and made fun of himself.He spoke so intimately, so softly.He didn't let people know that his dead son was Wang Jiu, and he didn't explain why his son's death was due to fighting with Zhao Si.He never mentioned these things.He only let people see that when the puppet Wang Jiu and the puppet Zhao Si fight sumo wrestling, although Wang Jiu often does not go well in the scene and Zhao Si takes the upper hand, every time the final victory always goes to that Wang Jiu. Wang Jiu had been dead for ten years, and the old man had been acting as Wang Jiu beating Zhao Si inside and outside the Beijing city circle for ten years. The real Zhao Si died of jaundice five years ago in Baoding Mansion. September 3, 1933, Peking