Chapter 25 Short Story The Child Who Feeds a Viper

Sha Yuan's appearance is very ordinary, without any distinctive features. When he is not speaking, his face is almost empty. Of course, it is still a little different from a dead person. "Be good all the time," Sunahara's mother told me, "The bad thing is that you shouldn't go out. If you stay at home all the time, you won't have any problems. This problem started when I was six years old. At that time, my father and I Unprepared, he slipped out. We searched for a long time, and finally found him sleeping among the rose bushes in the park, with his body on his back, his limbs spread wide, and he didn't care. He told us afterwards that he saw It’s not rose flowers, but many snake heads. He also said that even the snake’s bones can be seen clearly, because a snake bit him, and he fell to sleep. To be honest, Shayuan had never seen it at that time. It's a real snake, I've only seen it on TV, my father and I were terrified, and we were extra careful not to let him go out."

When we were talking, Sunahara was sitting in the room, his face was facing a cabinet door pasted with wood grain paper, I was very surprised and kept looking towards him. "Don't worry, he can't hear it for a long time, and he won't listen if he wants to. Later, a doctor advised us to take the child to a place with beautiful scenery and let him interact with people more, saying that it will improve. Let's go Sunahara used to play with the wild children by the sea during the day, but he gets tired easily. We have been watching him carefully, and this kid is just unreliable. As long as he is tired, he just falls down and sleeps anywhere. He is too Whatever you want, you can sleep while washing your feet at night. We think he is washing his feet, but in fact it is just a mechanical action, and his brain has already rested. On the third day we went to the beach, a fisherman's child held He ran into the house with a bloody middle finger, saying that Shahara had bitten him. When we questioned him afterwards, he smiled in a trance and told us that it was the head of a snake. If he didn’t bite it, that guy would come and bite him. Yes. We lived by the sea for a month, and the beautiful scenery did not have a good influence on him. That year, Sha Yuan was nine years old. Since then, we have traveled every year, to the desert, to the lake, to the big forest, the prairie, and the sand field Apathetic, he sat in the train car as if sitting at home, neither looking out the window nor talking to others, maybe he didn't know he was traveling at all. Of course, both my father and I knew that the kid had been Too casual, indifferent to the things around him, or a little cold, how should I put it, he lacks a sensitivity to new things.

"It happened the year before last. We found that his right arm was covered with scars. Under pressure, he led us out to an air-raid shelter. It was pitch black inside. He squatted down with a flashlight. We saw a cardboard box. It contained a nest of small flower snakes. His father asked him where he came from in fear, and he said, "I caught one here and there. It's strange, isn't he with us all day? We have been taking good care of him!" It's not always with you, that's just a superficial appearance. He's talking in that casual tone again. After his dad coaxed him away, I found a hoe and hacked up those little ones. The poisonous snake was gone. When we came back, we kept vigil all night to prevent him from slipping out, but two days later, fresh scars appeared on his arms, which were always the two red tooth marks. He also said to us : Why are you bothering, you are so tired, you just don’t understand, I’m just with you on the surface. Where can I sit here and can’t go? There are many snakes, and they often get lost. Get them together so they don’t get alone. Of course you can’t see them. Yesterday I found one under the bookcase over there. I just had to look for it. When I was young, I was afraid of them and even bit the head of a snake. Now I want to It's funny. That's how he talks to us."

That day, when Shahara was sitting with his back to us, he suddenly reached out and patted his head.We walked over, and Sunahara's mother turned his shoulders to make him face us. The expression on his face was very easy-going.I chose my words carefully and asked him what he was thinking while sitting here?Aren't you lonely? "Listen." He answered my question briefly. "What did you hear?" "Nothing, very quiet. But it's different at nine o'clock at night." "You just leave us like this, how can we live?" Sha Yuan's mother started nagging again.

"There's no such thing as abandonment," Sunawara said kindly, "I was born to catch snakes." I began to dissuade Sha Yuan's mother from interfering with her son's affairs. In my opinion, although his son is a bit weird, he is naturally outstanding, and he might do something great. "We don't care what big business he is doing," said Sha Yuan's mother. "His father and I are ordinary people, but my son is doing shady activities, raising poisonous snakes. It's too scary. What exactly does he want to do? Isn't this as terrible as giving birth to a poisonous snake? We have been worrying about it, and we have been dragged down by him. The most terrifying thing is that he can do strange things without going out, and he can always achieve his goal."

One day, I met Sha Yuan’s mother coming out of the air-raid shelter with a haggard face and a hoe in her hand. After asking, I found out that she had wiped out another nest of young snakes, a total of eight.Her hair was about to be stripped off, and her walk was old.Behind her, followed by Sha Yuan's father, an old man who kept blinking one eye.Shahara was the last one to come out, with his back bent and a very easy-going expression on his face. He nodded when he saw me, and began to talk: "I deliberately created this killing scene, which can be said to be a bit spectacular. Eight lives were destroyed at once. .For them, there is not necessarily any great horror. What surprises me is why the hand holding the hoe is so confident."

I asked him if he took his parents to the air-raid shelter, and he said that was exactly the case. As soon as they said they would go, he took them there immediately. He was always curious about his parents' behavior.When he said this, his mother stared at the distant sky with blank eyes, and his father kept saying the same sentence: "If a person is too extreme, it will cause many difficulties in life, and the beautiful scenery can make people happy." Eyes opened." I found that the most dejected of these three people was the mother who was the executioner, and Sunahara always looked indifferent.In an instant, I suddenly realized that there was a delicate relationship between these three people, a strange restraint.This incident is a confirmation.Originally, he didn't have to take his parents to the bomb shelter at all, he could take them somewhere else, but was it just because of his easy-going personality?

I recalled Sunahara's baby days.There was no doubt that he was an exceptionally sensitive baby, with a very expressive face.Sha Yuan’s mother is very proud, but a little uneasy. She once told me quietly that this child gets tired easily, especially because he can’t listen to people’s conversations. Falling asleep, "like a mimosa, but he wasn't shy." He kept the habit until he was five years old, and then he learned to control himself, but it was just a courtesy.When others talked to him, he would yawn profusely if he said a few more words, and if he continued, he would fall asleep on his own.At that time, he didn't dislike the life of traveling, but liked it a little, because he didn't need to listen to other people's conversations.When his parents went to enjoy the scenery of nature, he sat alone and listened to the noise made by small animals.He could always point out exactly where the vole burrowed and the krait stalked, and perhaps from birth he was practicing his special sense of hearing to which the human voice was excluded. outside.After exercising until now, he can already achieve a certain purpose of action through the sprouting of his thoughts.On the surface, he is a submissive child, the kind of child who is most likely to lose one's guard. The bitten fisherman's child was hurt in this situation. Now it is his parents' turn.How he sees the people and things around him is really a deep mystery. For example, he seems to have pity on the little snake, but he instigates his parents to kill it. It is difficult to figure out such things.It cannot be said that the beautiful scenery has no effect on him, perhaps it is the beautiful scenery that gave birth to his temperament, and everyone's feelings about the scenery are quite different.In this way, the painstaking efforts of the parents have only played the opposite role of their expectations.

Suddenly one day, Sha Yuan no longer faced the wall in thought, and his attitude towards his parents changed from easy-going to kind.When I went there, I always saw their family of three in harmony, and Sha Yuan’s mother also had a smile on her face. In the past ten years, this old woman was completely dragged down by her son, but now, her face The wrinkles on my face seemed to be unfolding, and she happily said to me: "This child Sha Yuan is becoming sensible. Think about it, how many poisonous snakes I have killed for him!" When she said this, Sha Yuan sat smiling and sitting Aside echoed.

I didn't believe that things would be so simple, I vaguely felt that Sahara's smile was a bit hypocritical.Although he no longer keeps poisonous snakes, who knows what new tricks he will come up with?I resolved to have a good talk with him. "I don't need to find a place to raise snakes," Sunahara replied, "They are in my stomach, of course they don't stay there all the time, they come whenever I want them to stay, especially that little flower snake is my favorite. " I gazed at his thinning body and asked him if his mother knew these things?He said that there was no need to tell his mother, because the little snake didn't take up any space at all. If he didn't say it, it would mean that there was no such thing, and everyone was happy and happy.I asked him again if this affected his own health?

He glanced at me attentively, suddenly looked drowsy, yawned and said, "Who doesn't have a few of these things in their stomach? I don't know, that's why I'm healthy. I always want to sleep, you Said quite a lot, I rarely say so much, you are a weirdo." I wanted to ask him more, but he fell asleep standing by the table with his head drooping on his chest. Sha Yuan's mother cheered up again, much younger. "Looks like travel is still necessary," she said as she packed her bags.Sha Yuan also helped to clean up together, looking very happy.But after a while, Sha Yuan turned his back and started to vomit. "Small problem," he said, wiping his pale lips, and muttered to me privately, "It's that little flower snake." Soon they set off again by train. The train was heading southwest, and it was very windy that day. It took about two years for them to come back. The three of them were the same as before, and they were still very harmonious. Upon closer inspection, nothing unusual could be seen at all.On the contrary, Sunahara has become visibly fatter, and his face has a little luster.When I secretly asked him about the snake, he said that the snake is still in his stomach, but he has learned to adapt, even jumping high and running will not be dangerous, and sometimes, this situation is good for the body !When I asked him what it was good for, he yawned again, complaining that listening to people was such a chore.Sha Yuan's mother invited me to dinner. At the dinner table, the old lady who always liked to chatter became taciturn, and she was not as confident as before.Sha Yuan's father said "I will never travel again", and everyone fell silent. Since then, their doors are always open, and their parents no longer monitor Sha Yuan's actions, as if they have lost interest, as if they have become much duller.They were restless and kept looking at their watches from morning to night, clearly waiting for something. "Wait to die." Sha Yuan said, patted his stomach lightly, it was flat and there was nothing inside.Sha Yuan said that was just right, and now everyone thought that he no longer kept little snakes, but how could he actually change it? The wind in late autumn blows from the plain, like singing from morning to night, this mysterious family is more and more confusing to me.I remembered that Sahara's mother was only fifty years old, and her father was fifty-five years old, but look at how old they are, both of them move worryingly slowly, and both of them suffer from cardiovascular sclerosis. "He killed us." The father said suddenly one day, with a very complicated expression on his face, "We are finished so soon." After he finished speaking, the expression on his face immediately softened again, and his eyes stayed on Sha Yuan's thin The shoulders turned into loving caresses, the three of them tacitly agreed. Parents have very different accounts of how the child disappeared.My father said that after dinner, he said he would go to the air-raid shelter to take a look, because he hadn't been there for a long time, and maybe the inside had changed.At that time, the two elders didn't care about what their son said, because they were really tired of it.The son stood up after speaking, and stumbled towards the door. Recently, he has become as thin as a stick of dry wood.As a result, he didn't return all night, and his family didn't bother to look for him. "This kind of thing is very disturbing." Father said, staring at the window glass in a daze. Sunahara's mother doesn't seem to admit that her son ran away. "This kid is not very reliable. We have been watching him for more than ten years, but there is no obvious effect. How to put it, he can still walk around, but we can't see him. Now I also give up Now, who knows if he was my boy, and if he's been living with us? I don't think he went away yesterday, and I've never been sure he existed." When they said that, I was confused too.What is Sand Plain?After thinking about it, only some fragments and some strange sentences remained in my mind, and when I concentrated again, the sentences disappeared.About Sand Plain, besides this name, I really can't think of anything else. When everyone thought he was gone, Sha Yuan came back, still at home quietly and kindly.When he does this, his parents don't care whether he exists or not, and they are really tired. "How did the name Shayuan come from?" I suddenly remembered and asked. "When I think about it, I wonder, no one has ever named him, how did this name come from?" the mother said in a daze. October 1990