Chapter 40 short story great aunt

In the corner of my desk stands an ancient book bound in rough-edged paper, which I have never read, and which I suppose is incomprehensible to those who write it, not even to the man who wrote it.I did not buy this little book, it was left to me by a relative of mine. She was a shaggy old woman who came from afar with a bag of rags.It was evening and we were having dinner when she came in without knocking.She looked scary, like she was extremely tired, she didn't eat and asked us for a bowl of soup.My mother got up and brought her a bowl of taro soup, which she drank right away.She licked her mouth like a cat, took out an old brass lock from the bag with a satisfied expression, lowered her head and fiddled with it like no one else.I had never seen this woman before, and my mother called her "Xia Gu" - she was my mother's aunt.

That night, Aunt Xia told her mother that a niece who had taken care of her had passed away, and now she was the only one left at home, so she locked the door and went on a trip. The next stop was to go to a cousin’s house in the south. It is said that the soil in that place is very fertile, as long as some seeds are sprinkled into the soil, there will be something to eat all year round.Her mother nodded approvingly as she spoke.My wife and I were not interested in this kind of conversation between old women, and after listening to it for a while, we both excused ourselves and went to our own business.

A strange thing happened in the middle of the night: first I heard a loud noise in the room where my mother and Aunt Xia slept, as if hammering something on the wall, and then I saw Aunt Xia clapping her hands through the window glass. The electricity went to the empty ping in front of the house.She took out a match and lit some scraps of paper in her hand, and in a short while a bonfire was lit on the pile of papers.There was no wind at night, and the flames shot straight up, and Aunt Xia's messy white hair was reflected in the firelight.At this time, the mother also came out, and the two pointed to the fire, and fiddled with their toes from time to time. They seemed very excited.After the things were burnt, the two old women went in.

Aunt Xia left early in the morning, and we didn't even have time to say goodbye to her.I asked about what happened to my mother at night, and my mother was very impatient, saying that it was a blow to herself. "What are you burning?" "genealogy." I didn't dare to ask further questions. I figured this must be a very important matter.My mother's family used to be a prosperous family. There was even a prime minister in ancient times. The decline only happened in recent generations.As a female family member of this family, I can't imagine that I would have such deep-seated resentment towards the family.But maybe they were not resentful, but for some other reason?

A few days later, my mother handed me the little book on rough-edged paper.I flipped through the pages and found that most of the characters in the book were ancient characters that I didn’t know, some of them looked like oracle bone inscriptions, and there were also some patterns of animals and plants that I had never seen before, which were hard to understand.For example, the eyeballs of a chicken bulge out like light bulbs; the tail of a snake swells up into a lotus flower; several hornets' nests grow on a corn plant, etc., all of which are disgusting illustrations. "Did she say what book it was?" I asked.

"No." Mother shook her head. "Anyway, it's some old antique left over. She took it out of the bag and threw it on the table, as if she always carried it with her and now doesn't want it anymore." The mother looked very sad, she has been stuck in the memory, I do not understand why she burned the family tree. So this little book is on my desk.The reason why I seldom read it is because the rough edges of the book have become useless due to age, and it will be broken from my hands when I flip it frequently; I can't think of the meaning of some words that I can recognize when they are matched together.Then I gave up completely.I found a velvet case to put the book in, and put it on the corner of the table so that I could not touch it.

Not long after, Aunt Xia wrote a letter to my mother from the south. The general idea of ​​the letter was that life in the south was indeed very prosperous, and her relatives took good care of her. In pain, she discussed with her mother whether she should go home now, and what the pros and cons were.Mother crumpled up her letter disapprovingly and threw it into the wastebasket, saying she didn't understand what Aunt Xia meant.I guessed repeatedly that night and didn't fall asleep all night.Before dawn, I went to the toilet. I fell to the ground due to a sharp pain. I barely got up and turned on the light. It turned out that I had several shingles on my waist. The pain was so excruciating that I couldn’t even put on clothes. .

I went to the hospital of traditional Chinese medicine, and the female doctor looked a bit like Xiagu.After listening to my story carefully, she closed her eyes to rest.I waited patiently for several minutes before she opened her eyes.She looked at me, but she didn't look at me. Her expression reminded me of my mother. She was also remembering something, and she looked very dazed.Later, she finally came back to reality, used a pen to scratch on the paper angrily, and wrote out a long list of traditional Chinese medicines. "Is this disease serious?" I asked her hesitantly. "I can't die!!"

The next three days and three nights were painful three days and three nights, as if several snakes wrapped around my waist tightly, and it was difficult to even breathe, and the blisters and redness spread to my chest.For a moment, feeling hopeless, I struggled for some reason to get out the little book in the velvet case and flip through it.My fire-breathing eyes stared at the small print, and suddenly the print moved line by line, and they disappeared in the margins of the pages, revealing what lay beneath.At the bottom is a paragraph of text, which is smaller than the font above.I concentrated on reading a paragraph, and found that what was recorded was a common event in ancient times. It talked about how a certain official took care of a wounded carrier pigeon. Although it took a lot of effort, the pigeon died.Look at the next paragraph, which is about a peasant girl learning to embroider.When she was working in the embroidery room, a cat jumped onto her satin from the window sill and completely ruined the cloth. The girl was afraid, so she hid the cloth, and the owner of the embroidery room never saw it again. that cloth.Turning a page, the small characters on the surface moved again, revealing the content underneath.This paragraph is even more bizarre. It records the whereabouts of a toad in a certain mountain stream in a day, including where it went, how many mosquitoes it ate, what type of mosquito it was, when it made several calls, and what emotions it expressed, etc. wait wait wait.After writing about the toad, I went on to introduce the growth of the mosquitoes eaten by it, their living habits, the local water and soil conditions, and so on.When I saw this, the shingles on my body changed, I felt less pain, and I moved a lot more freely, but at the same time, the words in front of me gradually became blurred, and finally the book resumed When it was the same, I couldn't understand a single word.

I want to talk to my wife about this book.As soon as I opened my mouth, my wife looked around in fear, then got up and closed the door and windows, and then sat down cautiously. "Have you read the book?" I asked. "I read it when you went to the doctor the other day, and it almost killed me! There's witchcraft in it, and I suspect your aunt is a witch!" "What's going on?" "There was a tiger in the book. As soon as I opened the book, it jumped out, and then I passed out. Look at my hands, they are all caught by the claws of that beast." I saw that her hands were in good condition, and I thought to myself, maybe the scar is in her head.

"Such a witch book has aroused my hatred." She added exaggeratedly. "What shall we do?" "I've thought about it, and the only way is to move out. Let's take Xiaobao and find another house." The wife said, a gleam of hope shot out in her eyes, but it quickly went out again. We left the haunted house and moved into a small building in the suburbs.On the first day, my wife walked up and down in a strange room and stayed up very late.She speculated that my mother would definitely follow us to our new address, because my mother has the spirit of my great-aunt.As she spoke, she asked me if I remembered that my great aunt always held things with her left hand and rarely moved her right hand.I was irritated when I heard it, so I fell asleep first angrily. The first day passed without incident.On the second night, the wife yelled again, banging the floor with her heels, saying that the tiger had already gone upstairs.But it was not a tiger that came in outside, but my mother.I led her into the room, and my wife had returned to normal. They greeted politely, asked some things, and asked Xiaobao to come out to see grandma.Neither my wife nor I dared to ask about the situation in the old house over there with our mother. That was our common concern. After my mother left, my wife asked me very seriously: "If your mother wants to take Xiaobao back to her place, will you let me?" "She didn't bring it up." "Yeah, but I was thinking about this all day yesterday. I thought, if she brings it up, let's let her take him, I know where she's going to take him, and let Xiaobao pay our debts Bar." When my wife said these words, I found that her expression was exactly the same as that of my mother.Did people become alike after living together for a long time?In the past, she was a person who dared to think and dare to do.I followed her and saw her tiptoe into the little treasure room, then closed the door behind her, and signaled me to go back into the room.She became so apprehensive that it dismayed me that I might as well have stayed where I was if I had known the outcome of the move.I remember that there were many difficult things in the past, and the crisis passed as soon as it was stiffened.What happened this time?How could I have decided to escape from my original home so quickly? After the mother came, the wife was quiet, but after going to bed, she muttered softly: "I will send Xiaobao there tomorrow, anyway, he is used to it in the kindergarten over there." I arrived at my former home before dawn.At that time, except for the area under the street lamp, the surrounding area was completely dark.I was just about to raise my foot to enter the gate when I heard their voices.My mother and Aunt Xia stood in the shadows by the gate, both staring at me. "It turns out that the aunt is back, hello aunt!" "I'm just passing by and I'm leaving soon." Aunt Xia said proudly. The two of them entered the mother's bedroom, closed the door, and turned off the light after a while.But I could hear them discussing something enthusiastically through the window, the two of them are really energetic.Standing in the empty space in front of the house, I remembered the situation where my mother and Aunt Xia burned the family tree here not long ago.Everything seems to be the same as before, except for the fact that I moved from here.I went around to sit outside my bedroom again, imagining the furnishings in the room, the carved wooden bed, the old cabinet, the heavy desk, and the strange book on the desk.I didn't have the courage to go in, and this sleepless night, and many before that, had worn me down, and I felt timid for no reason.But I didn't dare to leave right away. I vaguely felt that my mother and Aunt Xia were discussing something related to me, and of course it was also related to my wife and son Xiaobao.This home is like an invisible net covering me, and I feel this more deeply now than before I moved away.Every corner, behind every door, and every piece of equipment gathers some unpredictable energy. If I am negligent, I will be knocked down, just like I was knocked down by that little book before.I feel that I understand the fact that my mother and Aunt Xia burned the family tree together.It has been decades since this old woman walked into our home from memory, how could she let us go so easily?She must be a regular at our house (mother's).The more we avoid her, the more we bond with her.Now I see the lights in my mother's room are on again, and the two of them are taking each other to the kitchen to get something to eat.There was the sound of bowls and pans in the kitchen, and within moments I could smell the pungent aster mutton.The smell makes me sad.Many years ago, before my father died, my mother cooked aster mutton for us to eat every day.Later, when we visited my father's grave, my mother put a pot of aster mutton on the grave. The sky was already pale, and I was still sitting on the empty lawn in front of the house.In the room, mother and Aunt Xia remained silent after eating, probably they went to bed again.I am very envious of their leisurely and mysterious life, but I have to go to work today, otherwise I will not be able to support my family. When I got home, my wife and Xiaobao had already woken up and were sitting at the table having breakfast.Xiaobao pouted and refused to go to the new kindergarten, while his wife was coaxing him.I slipped into the kitchen, washed up quickly, peeled and ate the eggs my two wives had boiled, and packed my things to go to work. My wife came in, put a hand on my shoulder, looked me in the face and said: "I don't have to go to work today." "why?" "I asked for leave for you. We sent Xiaobao to his grandma's house today, which is also in line with your wish." "Then why did you tell him just now that you would send him to the kindergarten here?" "I lied to him. Children sometimes have to be frightened to be courageous. I think after we send Xiaobao there, your aunt will have no reason to hold us. I am familiar with this Kind of people, they have capacity, and they are not willing to be lonely. Besides, Xiaobao will not be affected by the two of us, so it is better to let him adapt to the environment." I sat slumped on the chair, and I told her that I wanted her to send Xiaobao there alone, because I had been walking on the street all night, and now I couldn't even stand upright. "What did the aunt say?" she asked suddenly. "How do you know I went back there at night?" I was taken aback. "Where else can you go? I heard from your mother's words yesterday that the great aunt is back." "Mum didn't say a word about..." "Hey, there's no need to mention it! That kind of information was already revealed in her words. So, I have been thinking about the countermeasures all night. Aren't you going? Not interested at all? Then you can rest at home." They are gone.I can't sleep, I think of a lot of past events.At that time, there was a deep rice vat at home. My mother never finished eating the rice in the vat. She always bought about two-thirds of the rice and poured it on top.At that time, I thought worriedly: If you don’t eat the rice underneath, will it grow moldy?One day, two-thirds of the rice in the jar was eaten, so I went to the rice jar while my mother was out, and after a few times, I touched a hard object with my hand. At first glance, it turned out to be a wooden bird with rough workmanship and purple paint on it. It was a long time ago.I took it out and put it on the table, and it gradually took on a vicious look. It was a crow.When I reached out to take it and put it into the rice jar again, it shook in my hand, I screamed in fright, and it fell to the ground.Later, I came back to my senses and looked carefully, and found that the crow was still wooden, and had not turned into a real crow.I hastily stuffed it into the rice jar, covered it up, and escaped from the room.After that, I never touched it again, but forgot about it completely.How is the bird now?I thought of my father again.At that time, my father was already very weak, but he was still on crutches from time to time, struggling to move around the various rooms.One night he woke me up from a deep sleep and told me that the bombing had begun and that I had to go outside with him.I followed him in a daze, and he tripped and tripped in the empty lawn in front of the house.I called him anxiously, trying to help him up, but he stopped me with an angry voice, asking me to pay close attention to the movement in the sky.It was drizzling that day, and I looked up to the sky for a long time, but I couldn't see anything.The drizzle soon drenched us all, and he lay on the ground again, refusing to get up.In desperation, I cried, secretly hoping that my mother would come out when she heard my cry. "Why are you crying, child?" said the father softly. "Aren't we all still alive? When you were not born, there was a garden full of peonies behind the house, and your mother fell asleep as soon as she got there." , she always lives in a dream.” Later, the rain stopped, but my mother never came out of the house.My father and I went into the house at dawn. That time, my father and I were ill for a whole month.Time and time again, in the high fever, my father and I would go outside the house, lie on the ground, and talk about the bombing.After he recovered from his illness, my father denied it, saying that I must have hallucinated.Now that I have really moved away from there, these strange things are gradually showing their effect; if I don't move away, those memories will gradually fade away.The kind of garden my father mentioned, the kind of garden that makes people drowsy as soon as I enter it, maybe it only exists in the long memory?The death of the father is also extraordinary.He hadn't gotten up for many days. On that day, he suddenly called me to help him go to the miscellaneous room over there. After he went in, he asked me to help him sit in that old chair that was covered with a thick layer of dust. Then he leaned his head against the wall behind him and remained motionless like that.At first I didn't know what happened, so I yelled in fright. Later, my mother came in and stopped me severely.My wonder and admiration for her overwhelmed my grief for him in the way she handled his father's funeral in such an orderly manner.In fact, the things I remember are quite different from what my mother remembers.I once talked with my mother about the crow in the rice jar. My mother denied that there was such a thing, and said that she turned up the rice at the bottom of the jar every other week. What about the bottom of the tank?Regarding the death of her father, she also had a completely different version. She said that her father fell into the toilet and fell asleep. At that time, she asked me to call an ambulance and send him to the hospital for emergency treatment.Now I am lying in this rented hut in the suburbs, and I deeply feel that memory is the most useless thing. No one can sort out the messy memories and make sure that those things are true. happened before.But I feel that I am approaching that mysterious, ungraspable essence!What's going on here? In the sky outside the house, the sun was moving slowly, large groups of black dragonflies were flying and circling in the water vapor, and the sound of thunder could be faintly heard.I imagined that my son Xiaobao was walking towards that strange world, and many years later, the dream garden in his memory would appear in front of him.Xiaobao has shown a penchant for secret things at such a young age. He always has something to hide from me and his mother. He is not attached to us at all, which both worries me and makes me a little happy.One day I caught him and Aunt Xia burying some nails under the tree in front of the house, and he got mud all over his body.Afterwards I had this conversation with him-- Me: "Xiao Bao, what were you doing just now?" Xiaobao: "Bury the nail there, no one will know." Me: "What's so good if others don't know?" Xiaobao: "That's good. I have to bury a few more places. You saw this place just now, so it doesn't count." So is it good or bad for the wife to send Xiaobao to his mother?I know that my wife doesn't think about this, what she thinks about is how I and her are separated from this family, and she is really bored with the days full of privacy.But is it possible to escape?As soon as we left there, she and I began to suffer from insomnia, and now we don't even go to work, and what we think about all day is related to the home we are leaving.Sometimes I feel that my wife sent Xiaobao there for the convenience of running there for myself?Could it be that she said she wanted to leave just to deceive me?My wife is very scheming. For example, I never talked to her about the wonderful book left by Aunt Xia, but she flipped through the book behind my back, and made up lies, saying that she was killed by the book. The tiger that jumped out was so frightened that he passed out. A couple of young men and women came out of the next room and stood at the door of my room. They were talking about the earthquake. They seemed to be in a state of panic. The man said he wanted to run to the mountains, and the woman said it would be better to stay in the empty plain. inside.Later, the woman started to cry and cry, and walked away with the man.I turned over on the bed in annoyance, and began to direct my thoughts to the earthquake, which made me drowsy instead.I slept until my wife came home still struggling with the boiling water coming out of the ground. The wife came back alone, standing in the kitchen washing dishes with a dazed expression.She washed the dishes, stacked them one on top of the other, and put them back in the sink to wash, as if she had lost consciousness of what she was doing. "Is Xiaobao okay?" I asked worriedly. "Of course, what's wrong? He hid with his great aunt as soon as he entered the door. Later, your mother and I searched for him for a long time. Maybe they slipped away through the back door. My mind is very messed up." She looked old, and she sat down on the bench without saying a word.I figured she must have been through a shock, but I didn't want to ask her, lest I get involved in her troubles, I had already seen her bad. Since then, I have never seen my son Xiaobao again. He ran away with his mother and Aunt Xia.The lock on the gate of the old house has long been rusted, and several pieces of glass on the windows have been broken.When I stood on the ping at the door and looked in, I always heard the laughter of some children inside. Of course, it could only be my hallucination.Sometimes my wife also goes there with me. Now she is no longer bothered. She goes to work every day and does housework step by step, but I feel that she is becoming more and more elusive.She and I stood side by side by the door like this, looking at the closed windows inside, each thinking about our own thoughts, but as soon as we opened our mouths, we would talk about the same thing, and what we said was the same as the people who lived in the house. It has nothing to do with people, and it has nothing to do with the secrets in the house. What we are talking about is always nothing more than some travel plans, going to the south, going to the north, going to climb mountains, etc. We both know that these plans will never come true . One morning we received a letter from our son Xiaobao. The handwriting was strong and full of popularity.He said in the letter that he had already graduated from junior high school, he lived in a good environment, and he wanted to do some things according to his plan.In the end he begged us to forget him completely, because only then could he "travel light and fly away".My wife was very happy after reading the letter. She told me that if it wasn't for this letter, she would have almost completely forgotten about Xiaobao.It was a holiday that day, and in the morning we celebrated Xiaobao's event and drank a bottle of wine.At the end of the drink, my wife suddenly changed her face and told me that she looked out the window and saw the back of a person, who looked very much like my great aunt.It's just that he is much older than before, and his back is bent to the ground.After she finished speaking, she pushed me hard again, and asked me if I had sent back the wooden crow I stole from the old house last time. If I didn't send it back, things would be bad.I said I didn't steal that thing at all, how could I send it back, she flew into a rage, saying that I didn't intend to live a good life at all, and always disturbed the order.She didn't finish her drink, and walked away angrily. On quiet nights in the suburbs, I often dream of the garden full of hypnotic flowers.Among the colorful pollen, bees and butterflies fell from the air to the ground one by one; even the earthworms fell asleep in the soil; the gardener covered his face with a straw hat and lay on the ground with his legs stretched out... There are many children in the flowers The voice shouted: "Hurry up! Hurry up! Hurry up!..." When you go there to search, you find that there is no one there, and above the head, the carefree blue sky suddenly turns dark.