The Complete Works of Lu Xun's Novels

Chapter 18

"What kind of food? The food might as well be unique. Slippery tenderloin, shrimp and sea cucumber, it's too ordinary. I would say they eat 'Dragon and Tiger'. But what is 'Dragon and Tiger'? Some people say it's snake and Cat is a valuable dish in Guangdong, and it is not eaten at a big banquet. But I have seen this name on the menu of a restaurant in Jiangsu. It seems that Jiangsu people do not eat snakes and cats. I am afraid that as someone said, they are frogs and eels Now, suppose the master and wife are from there?—Let’s not care about him. In short, no matter whether the local people eat a bowl of snakes and cats or frogs and eels, it will never hurt a happy family. In short, this first A bowl must be a 'dragon and tiger fight', which is non-negotiable.

"So a bowl of 'Dragon and Tiger Fighting' was placed in the center of the table. The two of them picked up their chopsticks at the same time, pointed to the edge of the bowl, looked at me and I looked at you with amused smiles....

"'My dear, please.'

"'Please you eat first, my dear.'

"'Oh no, please you!'①
"So they stretched out their chopsticks at the same time, and took out a piece of snake meat at the same time——no, no, snake meat is too strange after all, it might as well be eel. Then, this bowl of 'Dragon Tiger Fighting' is made of frogs and eels. It’s done. They took out a piece of eel at the same time, the same size, five five twenty-five, three five... don’t care, put it in the mouth at the same time,..." He couldn’t help but just look back, because He felt that the backside was very lively, and there were people walking back and forth two or three times.But he was still suffering, and continued to think, "This seems a bit nasty, so there is such a family? Alas, how can my thoughts be so chaotic, I am afraid that this good topic will not be finished. —— Or you don’t have to use foreign students, just those who have received higher education in China. They are all college graduates, noble, beautiful, and noble... Men are writers; women are also writers, or literary admirers. Or women The ones are poets; the men are admirers of poets and respecters of women. Or..." He finally couldn't bear it anymore and turned his head away.

Right next to the bookshelf behind him, a pile of cabbage has appeared, with three plants on the lower floor, two plants on the middle floor, and one plant on the top, stacked to him into a big letter A.

"Alas!" He sighed in surprise, at the same time he felt his face suddenly heat up, and many needles pricked his spine lightly. "Woo..." He took a long breath, pushed back the needles on his spine first, and still thought, "The house of a happy family should be spacious. There is a storage room, and the cabbage and the like go there. The master's In the other study room, bookshelves are lined up against the wall, and naturally there is no pile of cabbage next to it; the shelves are full of Chinese books, foreign books, "Ideal Lover" is naturally included, there are two in total. Bedroom Another room; a brass bed, or something more rustic, the elm bed made by the No. [-] Prison Factory is enough, the bottom of the bed is very clean,..." He immediately glanced under his bed, and found that the firewood had been used up, only a straw rope, But he was still lying lazily like a dead snake.

"23 and a half catties..." He felt that the firewood was about to flow in from under the bed, and there were some forks in his head, so he hurriedly stood up and walked to the door to try to close it.But as soon as his hands touched the door, he felt that he was too irritable, so he stopped his hands and only put down the dusty door curtain.On the one hand, he thought, this has neither the concern of closing the door and guarding against oneself, nor the anxiety of opening the door: it is very in line with the "middle way".

"...so the master's study door is always closed." He walked back, sat down, and thought, "If you have something to discuss, you have to knock on the door first, and you can only come in after getting permission. In the study, if the housewife came to talk about literature and art, she would knock on the door first.——You can rest assured that she will not hold the cabbage.

"'Come in, please, my dear.'①
"However, what should the master do when he has no time to talk about literature and art? Then, ignore her and listen to her standing outside and always knocking? This probably won't work. Or it is written in "The Ideal Beloved",—— It is probably a good novel, and if I have the manuscript fee, I have to buy one of his novels to see..."

shoot!
His waist straightened, because he knew from experience that the "pat" was the sound of the housewife's palm hitting their three-year-old daughter's head.

"Happy family..." He heard the child's sobs, but he still thought with a straight back, "The child is born late, late. Or it's better to have no, two people are clean. ——Or it's better to live in a guest house In the store, I will cover everything for them, and do it alone..." He heard the sobs grow louder, so he stood up, slipped through the door curtain, thinking, "Marx will still write "Capital" amidst the crying of his children. "On", so he is a great man,..." Walking out of the outside room, opened the damper, and smelled kerosene gas.The child lay down on the right side of the door, with his face on the ground, and when he saw him, he cried "wow".

"Ah, okay, don't cry, don't cry, my good child." He bent down to hug her.

He hugged her and turned around, and saw the housewife standing on the left side of the door, her waist was also straight, but her hands were on her hips, as if she was angry and ready to start gymnastics.

"Even you are here to bully me! You can't help, you can only make trouble, - even the oil lamp will turn over him. What to order at night?..."

"Ah, okay, don't cry, don't cry," he put those trembling voices behind his head, carried her into the room, rubbed her head, and said, "My good child." Then he put her down and dragged the chair away , sat down, made her stand between her knees, raised her hands and said, "Don't cry, good boy. Daddy will show you the 'cat wash'." At the same time, he stretched his neck and stuck out his tongue, He licked his palm twice from a distance, and then used the palm to draw circles on his face.

"Hehehe, Hua'er." She laughed.

"Yes, yes, Hua'er." He drew a few more circles, and then he stopped, only to see that she was still looking at him with a smile on her eyes.He suddenly felt that her lovely and innocent face was just like her mother's five years ago, especially the red lips, but the outline was shrunk.It was also a sunny winter day, and when she heard him say that he was determined to resist all obstacles and sacrifice for her, she just looked at him with a smile on her eyes and tears.He sat blankly, as if a little drunk.

"Ah, lovely lips..." he thought.

The door curtain suddenly hung up.The firewood was brought in.

He also woke up suddenly, fixed his eyes, and saw that the child was still in tears, and looked at him with open red lips. "Lips..." He glanced to the side, and the firewood was coming in, "...I'm afraid it will be 25 81, [-] [-] in the future!... and the two eyes are gloomy..." He thought, and then he said roughly He grabbed the green grid paper with a line of questions and a pile of calculations written on it, rubbed it a few times, and then unfolded it to wipe away tears and snot for her. "Good boy, go play by yourself." He pushed her away and said; at the same time, he threw the paper ball into the wastebasket vigorously.

But he immediately felt a little sorry for the child, turned his head repeatedly, and watched her go out alone; he heard the sound of wood chips in his ears.He wanted to calm down, so he turned his head again, closed his eyes, calmed down his distracting thoughts, and sat calmly.He saw an oblate black flower with an orange heart floating in front of his eyes, floating to the right from the left corner of his left eye, and then disappeared; then a bright green flower with a dark green heart; then a pile of six cabbages standing tall folded towards him into a big letter A.

February [-], [-].

This article was originally published on March [-], [-], No. [-], Volume [-], of the Shanghai Women's Magazine.

soap bar
Mrs. Siming was pasting paper ingots with her eight-year-old daughter, Xiuer, with her back on the north window in the slanting sunlight, when she suddenly heard the heavy and slow sound of cloth shoe soles, knowing that Siming had come in, she did not look at him, but just pasted paper. ingot.But the sound of the soles of the cloth shoes became louder and closer, and felt that it had finally stopped beside her, so he couldn't help turning his eyes to look, and saw Siming shrugging in front of her, desperately pulling out the back of the robe under the cloth mandarin jacket. pocket.

With great difficulty, he took it out in a zigzag way, and there was a small rectangular bag, sunflower green, in his hand, which he passed all the way to the fourth wife.As soon as she received it, she smelled an indescribable fragrance that was like olives but not olives, and saw a golden mark and many fine clusters of patterns on the sunflower green paper package.Xiu'er immediately jumped over to grab a look, but the fourth wife hurriedly pushed her away.

"Going to the street?..." she asked while watching.

"Hmm." He looked at the paper bag in her hand and said.

So the sunflower-green paper package was opened, and there was a thin layer of paper inside, which was also sunflower-green. When the thin paper was removed, the thing itself was revealed. It was smooth and firm, also sunflower-green, with fine clusters on it. There are clusters of patterns, but the tissue paper is beige, and the inexplicable fragrance of olives but not olives has become stronger.

"Alas, this is really good soap." She held the sunflower-green thing under her nose like holding a child, and sniffed.

"Well, you will use this from now on..."

When she saw him saying this, but his eyes were on her neck, she felt that the face below the cheekbones seemed a little hot.Sometimes she touched her neck by accident, especially behind her ears, and she always felt a little rough on her fingers. She knew it was old mud accumulated over the years, but she didn't really mind it.Now under his gaze, facing the foreign soap with sunflower green and strange fragrance, he couldn't help feeling a little hot on his face, and the heat spread continuously, reaching all the way to the ears immediately.So she decided to use this soap to wash desperately after dinner.

"In some places, acacia seeds alone cannot be used to clean them." She said to herself.

"Mom, give this to me!" Xiu'er reached out to grab the sunflower paper; Zhao'er, the little girl who was playing outside, also ran to her.The fourth wife hurriedly pushed them away, wrapped them in thin paper, and then wrapped them in sunflower paper as usual, turned around and put them on the highest shelf on the washstand, took a look, turned over and still pasted the paper ingots.

"Xue Cheng!" Si Ming suddenly called out in a protracted voice as if remembering something, and sat down on a high-backed chair opposite her.

"Xue Cheng!" She also called out to help.

She stopped pasting the paper ingots, listened carefully, but there was no response, and seeing him waiting anxiously with her head up, she couldn't help but feel apologetic, so she tried her best to raise her throat and screamed sharply:
"Hey!"

This cry was indeed effective, and she heard the sound of leather shoes approaching, and after a while, Ji'er was standing in front of her, wearing only short clothes, with oily sweat dripping from her fat round face.

"What are you doing? Why can't you hear daddy?" She said condemningly.

"I was practicing Bagua boxing just now..." He immediately turned to face Siming, stood upright, looked at him, meaning to ask him what was the matter.

"Xue Cheng, I'm going to ask you: What is a 'vicious woman'?"

"'Vicious woman'?...That is, 'very fierce woman'?..."

"Nonsense! Nonsense!" Siming was suddenly furious. "Am I a 'woman'!?"

Xue Cheng was so frightened that he took two steps back and stood upright.Although he sometimes felt that he walked like an old student on stage, he never regarded him as a woman, and he knew that he was very wrong.

"'Vicious woman' is a 'very fierce woman', I don't understand, I have to ask you for advice?——This is not Chinese, it is devil's language, I tell you. What does this mean, do you understand?"

"I... I don't understand." Xue Cheng became even more embarrassed.

"Scary, I spent money to send you to the school, and I don't even understand this. What a pity your school is boasting about 'emphasizing both speech and hearing', but it doesn't teach anything. The people who say this nonsense are at most fourteen or fifteen years old. , who is younger than you, and you can already babble, but you can’t even say what you mean, and you have this face that says ‘I don’t understand’! —— Let me find out now!”

Xue Cheng agreed with a "yes" at the bottom of his throat, and exited respectfully.

"It's really outrageous," Siming said generously after a while, "the current students are. In fact, during the Guangxu period, I was the one who advocated the opening of schools. As for how big it is: what is liberation and freedom? Without real learning, you can only mess around. As for Xue Cheng, a lot of money was spent for him, and it was all white. It was so easy for him to enter a school that was a compromise between Chinese and Western. It's also "Equal emphasis on word and ear", you think it's good, hmph, but after studying for a year, I don't even understand "Vicious Women", so I'm still studying rote. Scary, what kind of school has cultivated some What? I simply said: They should all be turned off!"

"That's right, it's really better to turn them all off." The fourth wife said sympathetically, sticking paper ingots.

"Xiu'er and the others don't need to go to any school anymore. 'Girls, what book do you study?' Eunuch Jiu said this before. When I opposed women's schools, I attacked him; but now it seems that it is the old people who are right. You think, it's already very indecent for women to walk on the street, but they still have to cut their hair. What I hate the most is those female students who cut their hair. I simply say that soldiers and bandits are okay. It turns out that they are the ones who are disturbing the world, and they should be dealt with strictly..."

"That's right, it's not enough for men to look like monks, women have come to learn from nuns again."

"Xue Cheng!"

Xue Cheng was walking in quickly holding a small and thick gold-edged book, and presented it to Siming, pointing to a place and saying:

"It's kind of like that. This...."

When Siming looked at it, he knew it was a dictionary, but the characters were very small and scribbled horizontally.He frowned, leaned towards the window, narrowed his eyes, and read the line that Xue Cheng pointed out:

"'No. The name of the Masonic Society① founded in the 18th century'.—Hmm, no.—How does this sound sound?" He pointed to the word "devil" in front and asked.

"Oddfellows."

"No, no, not this." Siming suddenly became angry again. "I tell you: that's a bad word, a curse word, a curse word for people like me. Do you understand? Look it up!"

Xue Cheng glanced at him a few times, but didn't move.

"What kind of boring Hulu is this? You have to explain it clearly first, so that you can teach him to look it up carefully." Seeing Xue Cheng's embarrassment, she felt pitiful, so she explained it and said dissatisfied.

"It was when I was buying soap in Guangrunxiang on the street," said Siming, exhaling, turning to her. "There are three more students in the store shopping there. As for me, from their looks, I'm naturally afraid of being too trivial. I looked at six or seven items in one go, and they cost more than four cents, so I didn't buy them; , and too bad, no fragrance. I thought, it’s not as good as Zhongtong’s, so I picked the green one, with two corners and four quarters. The guy was originally a snob, with his eyes on his forehead, he had already pouted. I hate it, the bad boy, the student, winks and laughs. Later, I have to open it and have a look before I pay: it’s wrapped in foreign paper, so how can I decide whether it’s good or not? Who knows? The snobs not only refused to obey, but also were unreasonable, saying a lot of hateful nonsense; It's a bad word." Then he turned to Xue Cheng and said, "You just have to look it up in the 'bad words category'!"

Xue Cheng agreed "Yes" from the bottom of his throat, and retreated respectfully.

"What are they still talking about about 'new culture, new culture'? It's not enough to be 'transformed' like this?" "Students have no morals, and society has no morals. If you don't think of ways to save it, China is really going to die.——Do you think, how lamentable is that?..."

"What?" she asked casually, not surprised.

"My filial daughter." He turned to her and said solemnly. "On the street, there are two beggars. One is a girl, who looks about eighteen or nineteen years old.—Actually, begging is very inappropriate at this age, but she still begs.—and a Sixty-seventy-year-old, white-haired, blind, sitting under the eaves of a cloth shop begging. People often say that she is a filial daughter, but the old one is a grandmother. As long as she asks for something, she will give it to her grandmother. , I would rather go hungry. But is such a filial daughter willing to give alms?" He shot his eyes to pin her down, as if to test her insight.

She didn't answer, and only fixed her eyes on him, as if she was waiting for him to explain.

"Hmph, no," he finally answered himself. "I watched for a long time, and only one person gave a small penny; the rest gathered around a big circle and joked instead. There were also two bachelors who said unscrupulously: 'Ah Fa, don't look down on this guy Dirty. You just go and buy a couple of bars of soap and wash all over your body, and it's so good!' Well, you think, what's that?"

"Hmph," she lowered her head, and after a while, asked lazily, "Did you give me any money?"

"Me? ——No. One or two money, I'm too embarrassed to take it out. She is not a usual beggar, she has to..."

"Om." Before she could finish speaking, she stood up slowly and walked to the kitchen.The dim yellow only seemed thick, and it was already dinner time.

Siming also stood up and walked out of the yard.The sky was brighter than that in the house, so Xuecheng practiced Bagua boxing on the corner of the wall: this is his "court training", an economic law that makes use of the time between day and night, Xuecheng has practiced it for nearly half a year.He nodded slightly approvingly, then paced back and forth in the empty yard with his hands behind his back.Not long after, the broad leaves of the evergreen bonsai, the only bonsai, disappeared into the darkness, and stars flashed among the white clouds like tattered cotton, and the night began.At this time, Siming couldn't help feeling excited, as if he was about to do something big and declare war on the bad students and society around him.He became more and more courageous, his steps became louder and louder, and the sound of cloth soles became louder and louder, so frightened that the hen and chicks who had already been sleeping in the cage were chirping loudly.

There is a light in front of the hall, which is a beacon to call for dinner, and the family members gather around the central table.The lamp is on the lower side; at the top is Siming, who is alone in the center, with a round face like Xue Cheng's, but with two thin beards. In the heat of vegetable soup, he occupies one side alone, much like the God of Wealth in a temple.On the left side is the fourth wife with Zhao'er; on the right side is Xue Cheng and Xiu'er.The sound of bowls and chopsticks rained like rain. Although everyone was silent, it was a very lively dinner.

Zhao'er turned over his rice bowl, and half of the table was drained of vegetable soup.Siming opened his narrow eyes as wide as possible and stared at her until she was about to cry, then he looked away, and stretched out his chopsticks to pick up the choy sum that he had taken a fancy to earlier.But the cabbage heart was gone, he glanced left and right, and found that Xue Cheng had just stuffed it into his wide-open mouth, so he had no choice but to eat a chopstick of yellow cabbage leaves in boredom.

"Xue Cheng," he said looking at his face, "have you found that sentence?"

"That sentence?—That's not yet."

"Hmph, you see, I don't have any knowledge, I don't understand the truth, I only know how to eat! Just learn from that filial daughter, who became a beggar, but still obsessed with her grandmother, willing to go hungry. But how do you students know this? Just like that bachelor..."

"I've thought of one, but I don't know what it is.—I think they may be talking about 'Altpur'."

"Oh, yes! That's it! That's the voice they say: 'Mad man.' What does that mean? You're one of them: you know."

"It means—I don't quite understand the meaning."

"Nonsense! Keep it from me. You are all bad guys!"

(End of this chapter)