Chapter 4 Chapter 1 (4)

One night, when the children ran back to their home for supper, I was haunted by the puzzle of the ruins, until the purple sunset and the first stars rose. This time, according to the common legend, is a time when ghosts wake up. when it comes.I put my ear to the ground, as the children had taught me, and listened for sounds the children could hear: crashes and groans, and irregular, deep drumming from below.On my cheeks I felt the sound of sand slapping fast, from nowhere to nowhere in the desert.The last rays of light faded, and the silhouette of the earthen battlements against the sky became more and more indistinct, and at last melted into darkness.I waited there for an hour, wrapped in my greatcoat, and leaning against a corner-post of a house in which people must have talked, ate, and feasted.I sat there watching the moon rise, absorbed in the night, waiting for something to show up around me, under my feet, not just sand and ashes and rust and broken china and ash.But the sign I was hoping for didn't come.I didn't feel the shuddering and jittery reactions I had when the ghosts appeared.My nest in the sand was so warm that I soon fell asleep.

I stood up, stretched my arms and legs, and shuffled wearily home through the tender night, the lights of my house illuminating me as vague silhouettes against the sky.I thought it was an odd thought: a gray-bearded man sitting in the night waiting for the genie of barnyard history to speak to him before he slipped into the warm bathroom of the barracks and climbed into the comfort of his own bed.The space around us is nothing but space, no grander than that of a shack or a tenement; no less humble than the space of an office or a temple in the capital.Space is space, life is life, and it's the same everywhere.But for me, who is enshrined by the labors of others but lacks the civilized vices to fill up my leisure time, I indulge my melancholy in an attempt to discover a poignant piece of history in this empty desert region .Empty, idle, so led astray!No one will see how "lucky" I am!

* * Today, four days after leaving the Colonel's perilous journey, his first captives have arrived.From my window I saw them cross the square, sandwiched between horse-riding guards, dusty and exhausted, huddled out of a crowd of watching them, children jumping up and down, dogs howling. Through the middle, in the shadow of the barracks wall, the guards dismounted; the prisoners immediately squatted down to rest, only one child, standing on one leg, with one hand on his mother's shoulder, looked back curiously at the Onlookers.A pail of water and a ladle were brought.They drank impatiently, and more and more onlookers around them slowly squeezed in, so that I couldn't see anything.I waited impatiently for the guards to push through the crowd and come across the barracks compound to me.

"How do you explain this to me?" I yelled at him.He bowed and fumbled in his pocket for something. "They all fish! How did you bring them here?" He pulled out a letter.I opened the seal and took out the letter, which said: "Please detain these people and detain them separately until I return." Under his signature was the seal again, and the seal of the third round was brought to him. Went to the desert.If he's lost, no doubt I'll have to send another party to retrieve the seal. "What an absurd man!" I exclaimed.I had a fit of rage in the room.One should not belittle a superior in front of a subordinate, just as one should not belittle a father in front of a child, but I have no respect or loyalty to this man in my heart. "Didn't anyone tell him these were fishers? It's a waste of time to bring them here! You were supposed to help him catch thieves, bandits, invaders of the Empire, but they seem like the kind Anyone?" I taped the letter to the window.

When I appeared before the dozen or so miserable prisoners in the middle of the square, the crowd parted before me.They flinched back in my rage, and the little boy slid into his mother's arms.I signaled to the guard: "Send the crowd to disperse, and bring these people into the barracks yard!" They let the prisoners march forward in a group, and the barracks gate closed behind us. "Now, explain your own conduct," I said, "did no one tell him that these prisoners were of no use to him? No one told him that the difference between these men was that they fished with nets, and in the wild they hunted on horses." Do they use bows and arrows? Didn't anyone tell him that these people don't even speak the same language?"

One soldier explained: "When they saw us approaching, they tried to hide in the reeds. They saw the horsemen coming, so they hid. So, sir, the lord ordered us to arrest them. Because they were hiding." I cursed angrily.What a policeman!What a reason for the police to arrest people! "And did your lord give any reason why he brought them here? Did he say why he couldn't interrogate them there?" "None of us speak their language, sir." Of course no one would!These people are the natives of the river, and their history is even older than the nomadic tribes.Their families, spread out in smalls and smalls at the settlements along the river, fished or trapped most of the year, and in the autumn they rowed to the far south shores of the lake to catch gossamer worms and dry them.They build their shelters out of reeds, howling with the cold when the cold snaps, they wear clothes made of animal skins, they are afraid of anyone, they always hide in the reeds, how can they understand the hordes of savages People against the Empire's plans?

I sent a soldier to get some food from the kitchen.He brought a loaf of bread left over from the night before, which he gave to the eldest of the prisoners.The old man took the bread reverently with both hands, first sniffed it with his nose, and then broke it apart.Distribute the bread cubes to those around you.They all gobbled up the "manna" ②, chewing quickly, and none of them raised their eyes.A woman spits chewed bread into the palm of her hand to feed her child.I motioned for more bread.We just stood there and watched them eat, it was like watching a group of strange animals.

"Keep them in the yard," I told their guard. "Of course it will inconvenience us, but there's nowhere else to go. If it gets colder tonight, I'll make another place. Keep an eye on their food. Give them something to do so they won't be idle. Lock the door Lock it up. They're not going to run away, I just don't want people coming in and staring at them." I suppressed my anger and carried out the colonel's instructions: I kept his useless prisoners in "solitary confinement" for him.After a day or two these savages seemed to have forgotten that they ever had another home.They were attracted by the abundance of free food here, and after eating their bread, they relaxed, everyone in front of them was smiling, and moved from one shady place to another in the yard of the barracks, dozing off and then waking up Come on, it's time to eat and I'm so excited to die.Their habits are unrestrained and squalid.A corner of the yard has become a public toilet, where men and women squat in a grandiose manner, and swarms of flies buzz there all day long. ("Give them a shovel!" I told the guards; but they didn't use it.) The little boy, who had grown so fearless, used to run into the kitchen and ask the maids for sweets.Besides bread, sugar and tea were novelties to them.Each morning they were given a small flat brick of tea, which was brewed in a four-gallon pail and boiled on a trivet over the fire.They're happy here; in fact, unless we kick them out, they're going to stay with us forever.Nothing can lure them out of this free country.Hours and hours I watched them from the upstairs window (other idlers and others could only watch through the crack of the door).I saw women catching lice, brushing their hair, helping each other braid their long black hair.Some had fits of dry coughing.Surprisingly, there were not many children in this group, only a milk doll and a little boy.Is it because the young man was very alert and clever when he escaped from the soldiers?I hope so.I hope that when we release them back to their home by the river, they will have many stories to tell their neighbors.I want this experience of their capture to enter their legends, passed down from grandfather to grandson.But I'd rather go into the town they remember, and the weird food they've eaten won't lure them back here.I don't want to breed a begging race in my hands.

Over the course of a few days, people's opinion of these fishermen has turned a corner because of their incomprehensible slurred language, their strong appetites, and their shameless behavior like animals. Behavior, they lose their temper at every turn.The soldiers watched them from the doorway, yelled obscenities at them that they did not understand, and laughed.Often some children ran to watch them with their faces pressed against the bars of the gate.I look down from my window and they can't see me behind the glass. Later, everything took away our sympathy for them: the filth, the smell, and the louder and louder their quarreling and coughing.There was also a scandal when a soldier dragged one of their women through the door, maybe just for fun (who knows), and they threw stones at the soldier.A rumor began to spread in the town that these people were all sick and would spread the disease to the people of the town.Even though I have asked them to dig a hole in the corner of the yard to dispose of the poop, the people in the kitchen still think they are dirty and refuse to hand over the utensils to them, and throw them in the aisle when the food is distributed, as if they are nothing animal like.Soldiers locked the gates of the barracks, and the children could no longer come running.There was a commotion one night when someone put a dead cat on the wall.During the long, hot days, the gang hung out in the empty yard.The little baby cried and coughed, coughed and cried, and I had no choice but to hide in a room in the farthest corner of the yard.In a fit of rage, I wrote to the Third Bureau, a round-the-clock institution of the Empire, accusing it of sending such incompetent staff. "Why can't you send someone with border experience to investigate the unrest at the border?" I wrote.But immediately tore it up wisely.I really want to know, if I unlock the door on a quiet night, will these fishermen escape?But I did nothing.Then one day, I noticed that the baby had stopped crying.Looking out of the window, I can't see the little guy anywhere.I sent a guard to find out what was going on, and that's when I found the little body in my mother's clothes.We had to pull the baby's body away from her and she didn't resist.Afterwards, she covered her face and wept alone all day, squatting there without eating.Her countrymen seemed to avoid her.Did we violate some custom of theirs by taking her child away and burying it?

I curse all the troubles Colonel Joel has brought me, and the things that have brought me shame.