The Complete Works of Lu Xun's Novels

Chapter 5

But Fourth Shan's sister-in-law had done her best in treating his Bao'er, and there were no flaws.Burned a string of paper money yesterday, and burned another 49 volumes of "The Great Compassion Mantra" in the morning; when he was restrained, put on a new clothes for him, the things he likes on weekdays - a clay figurine, two small wooden bowls, and two glasses bottle,—all by the pillow.Later, Wang Jiuma pinched her fingers and deliberated carefully, but finally she couldn't think of any flaws.

During this day, Lanpi Awu didn't show up all day, so the shopkeeper Xianheng hired two porters for Mrs. Shansi, each with two hundred and ten big money, to carry the coffin to the ground of the funeral cemetery.Wang Jiuma cooked for him again, and everyone who touched or opened their mouths ate.The sun gradually looked like it was going to set; the people who had eaten didn't realize that they were all looking like they were going home—so they all went home at last.

Fourth Shan's sister-in-law felt very dizzy, and after resting for a while, she actually calmed down a bit.But he felt very strange one after another: encountered something that he had never encountered in his life, something that did not seem to happen, but it did happen.The more he thought about it, the more strange he felt, and felt a strange thing—the room was suddenly too quiet.

He stood up, lit the lamp, and the room became more and more silent.He went to close the door in a daze, came back and sat on the edge of the bed, the spinning wheel stood quietly on the ground.He collected himself, looked around, and felt that he couldn't sit still, the room was not only too quiet, but also too big, and there was too much room for things.The room that was too big surrounded him on all sides, and the things of space pressed him on all sides, making him unable to breathe.

He knew now that his Bao'er was indeed dead; he didn't want to see the room, so he blew out the lamp and lay down.As he cried, he thought: Back then, when he was spinning cotton yarn, Bao’er sat beside him and ate fennel beans. He stared at his little black eyes and thought for a moment, then said, “Mom! Daddy sells wontons, and I will also sell them when I grow up.” Wontons, sell them for a lot of money——I’ll give you all.” At that time, even the spun cotton yarn seemed to be interesting and alive.But now what?Fourth Shan's sister-in-law really didn't think of anything about the current matter. —I've said it before: he's a clumsy woman.What could he come up with?He just felt that the room was too quiet, too big, and empty.

But Fourth Shan's sister-in-law, although clumsy, knew that resurrection was impossible, and it was true that his Bao'er could never be seen again.Sighing, he said to himself, "Bao'er, you should still be here, you can see me in my dream." So he closed his eyes, wanting to go to sleep quickly, meeting his Bao'er, struggling The breath passes through the stillness, grandness and emptiness, and I can hear it clearly.

Fourth Shan's sister-in-law finally fell asleep in a haze, and the whole room was very quiet.At this time, the ditty of the red-nosed old arch had already been sung; he staggered out of Xianheng, but raised his throat again, and sang:
"My friend!--poor you,--alone..."

Blue Pi Ah Wu stretched out his hand and grabbed Lao Gong's shoulder, and the two of them squeezed away with crooked smiles.

Fourth Shan's sister-in-law fell asleep early, Lao Gong and the others left, and Xian Heng closed the door.At this moment, Lu Zhen fell into complete silence.Only the dark night wants to become tomorrow, but it is still running in this silence; there are also a few dogs who hide in the dark and bark.

This article was originally published in the October [-] issue of Volume [-], Issue [-] of Xinchao, a monthly magazine in Beijing.

one little thing

It has been six years since I ran from the countryside to the capital.During the period, I heard and witnessed a lot of so-called important national events; but in my heart, there are no traces. If I want to find out the influence of these events, it will only increase my bad temper. Said, is to teach me to look down on people day by day.

But there is one little thing that is meaningful to me. It dragged me away from my bad temper, and I still can't forget it.

It was the winter of the sixth year of the Republic of China, and the north wind was blowing fiercely. Because of my livelihood, I had to walk on the road early in the morning.I hardly met anyone along the way, so I finally hired a rickshaw and taught him to pull it to Gate S.After a while, the north wind subsided, and the dust on the road had already been blown away, leaving a white road, and the coachman ran faster.Just approaching the S gate, suddenly there was a person on the handlebar, and he fell slowly.

The one who fell was a woman with gray hair and tattered clothes.Yi suddenly cut across the front of the car from the road; the driver had already moved out of the way, but Yi's ragged cotton vest was not buttoned up, and the breeze was blowing, and it spread out, so she finally took the handlebars.Fortunately, the coachman stopped a little earlier, otherwise Yi would have suffered a big tumble and fell to the point where his head was bleeding.

Yi fell on the ground; the coachman also stood up.I guessed that the old woman was not hurt, and no one else saw it, so I blamed him for being meddlesome, wanting to stir up trouble by myself, and also missed my way.

So I said to him, "It's nothing. Go your way!"

The coachman ignored it—or didn’t hear it—but put down the cart, helped the old woman get up slowly, put her arm to a stand, and asked her:

"What happened to you?"

"I broke."

I thought, I saw you fall slowly, how could you break it, it's just a pose, it's abominable.The coachman is troublesome, and he is asking for trouble. Now you can think of it yourself.

Hearing what the old woman said, the coachman didn't hesitate, still holding Yi's arm, and walked forward step by step.I was a little surprised, and quickly looked ahead. It was a police station. After the strong wind, there was no one outside.The coachman supported the old woman and walked towards the gate.

At this moment, I suddenly felt a strange feeling. I felt that his dusty back was instantly taller, and it was getting bigger and bigger. I had to look up to see it.Moreover, he gradually became almost a kind of coercion to me, to the point of squeezing out the "little" hidden under the leather robe.

My vitality seemed to be stagnant at this time, I sat without moving or thinking, and I didn't get out of the car until I saw a patrolman walking out of the sub-station.

The patrolman approached me and said, "You can hire a car yourself, he can't take you anymore."

Without thinking, I grabbed a large handful of copper coins from my coat pocket, handed them to the patrolman, and said, "Please give him..."

The wind has stopped, and the road is still very quiet.I walked, thinking, almost afraid to think of myself.Putting aside the past for now, what is the meaning of this large amount of copper coins?Reward him?Can I still judge the coachman?I can't answer myself.

Even now, I still remember this from time to time.Because of this, I also suffered from pain from time to time, and tried hard to think of myself.The literary and military power of the past few years is as early as the "Ziyue Shiyun" I read when I was young, and I can't recite half a sentence.Only this one small matter, but it always floats before my eyes, and sometimes it is more obvious, it makes me ashamed, reminds me to reform, and increases my courage and hope.

July [-].

This article was originally published on December [-], [-] in the Beijing Morning Post Anniversary Supplement.

hair story

On Sunday morning, I took off an overnight calendar, looked at the new one and said:

"Ah, October [-]th—it turns out that today is the Double Tenth Day. But there is nothing recorded here!"

One of my seniors, Mr. N, was coming to my apartment to chat. Hearing this, he said to me very unhappy:
"They are right! They don't remember, what do you do to him; what do you remember?"

This Mr. N was originally a bit perverse, and he often got angry and said some unsophisticated things.At this time, I mostly let him talk to himself, and I didn't approve of it; if he finished his comments alone, that's fine.

他 说:

"I admire the Double Tenth Festival in Beijing the most. In the morning, the police came to the door and ordered, 'Hang up the flag!' 'Yes, hang up the flag!' Most of the families lazily walked out of a citizen, holding up a piece of mottled foreign cloth② This continued until night, when the flags were collected and the doors were closed; for those that were accidentally forgotten, they hung up until the next morning.

"They forgot the remembrance, and the remembrance forgot them!
"I am also the one who has forgotten to commemorate. If I remember it, the things before and after the first Double Tenth will come to my mind, making me unable to sit still.

"The faces of so many old people float in front of my eyes. A few teenagers worked hard for more than ten years, and a bullet killed him secretly; a few teenagers missed a single shot, and suffered more than a month of torture in prison; A few teenagers with lofty ambitions suddenly disappeared, and even the corpses did not know where they went.——

"They have all lived their lives in society's sneering, cursing, persecution and downfall; now their graves are gradually collapsing in oblivion.

"I can't bear to remember these things.

"Let's remember something proud and talk about it."

N suddenly smiled, stretched out his hand to touch his head, and said loudly:
"The thing I am most proud of is that since the first Double Tenth Day, I am no longer being laughed at when I walk on the road.

"Brother, do you know that hair is the treasure and enemy of our Chinese people, how many people have suffered worthlessly on it throughout the ages!

"Our very ancient people seemed to take hair lightly. According to the criminal law, the most important thing is the head, so the big punishment is the upper penalty; the second is the genitals, so castration and claustrophobia are also scary punishments. ; As for Kun ①, it is very small, but after thinking about it, I don’t know how many people have been trampled by society all their lives because of their bare scalp.

"When we talked about the revolution, we talked about Yangzhou for three days and Jiading massacre②, but in fact it was just a means; to be honest: the Chinese people's resistance at that time was not because of the subjugation of the country, but because of delaying the braid.

"The obstinate people have been killed, the old people have died, the braids have been left long ago, and Hong Yang started to make trouble again. My grandmother once said to me that it was difficult to be a common people at that time. All the people with hair were killed by the officers and soldiers. , Those with braids will be killed by Long Hair!

"I don't know how many Chinese people suffer, suffer, and perish just because of this painless hair."

N looked at the beams of the roof, seemed to be thinking about something, and still said:

"Who knew it would be my turn to suffer from hair loss.

"When I went to study abroad, I cut off my braids. There was no other secret, but it was too inconvenient for him. Unexpectedly, some students with braids coiled on top of their heads hated me very much; the supervisor was also furious and said that he would My official fee was suspended and I was sent back to China.

"In a few days, the supervisor had his braid cut off and escaped. One of the people who went to cut off his braid was Zou Rong, who worked on "Revolutionary Army". Because of this, this person could no longer study abroad and came back to Shanghai. Later, he died in the West Prison. Have you already forgotten it?

"After a few years, my family's situation was not as good as before. If I had to find something to do, I would starve, so I had to go back to China. As soon as I arrived in Shanghai, I bought a fake braid. It was a binary one at that time. I bought it at the market price and took it home. My mother didn’t say anything, but when others saw it, they first studied the braid, and when they knew it was fake, they sneered and charged me with beheading; , and was going to sue the officials, but later, because he was afraid that the rebellion of the Revolutionary Party might succeed, he stopped.

"I thought, it's better to be fake than to be straightforward, so I simply scrapped the fake braids and walked on the street in a suit.

"Walking all the way, there were laughing and cursing voices all the way, and some followed behind and scolded: 'This daredevil!' 'Fake foreign devil!'

"So I stopped wearing foreign clothes and changed into a big shirt, and they scolded me even more.

"At the end of the day, I only got a cane in my hand, and I beat them desperately a few times, and they gradually stopped scolding them. They just kept scolding when they walked to places where they hadn't been beaten.

"This incident makes me very sad, and I still remember it from time to time. When I was studying abroad, I saw in the daily newspaper the story of Dr. Bendo who traveled to Nanyang and China; this doctor did not understand Chinese and Malay. Yes, people asked him, how do you walk if you don’t understand the language? He picked up his cane and said, this is what they say, and they all understand! I was angry for several days, and who knew that I would also Did it, and those people got it.  …

"In the early years of Xuantong, I worked as a supervisor in a local middle school. My colleagues avoided me for fear that I would not be far away, and the bureaucrats avoided me for fear that I would not be strict. I felt like I was sitting in an ice cellar all day long, like standing beside the execution ground, but it was nothing else. Just because a braid is missing!
"One day some students suddenly came into my room and said, 'Sir, we are going to cut the braids.' I said, 'No way!' 'Is it good to have braids or not?' 'No braids Well...''Why don't you say that?' 'No, you better not cut it, just wait a minute.' They went out of the room with their lips pursed without saying anything, but they finally cut it off.

"Oh! Terrible, people said tut tut; but I just pretended not to know, and let them go to the lecture hall with bare scalps and many braids.

"However, the braid-cutting disease was contagious. On the third day, the students in the normal school suddenly cut off six braids, and six students were expelled in the evening. These six people could not stay in school, nor could they go home. They stayed until the first day. It took more than a month after the first Double Tenth Festival, before the fire brand of crime disappeared."

"What about me? It's the same. It's just that I went to Beijing in the winter of the first year and was scolded several times. Later, the people who scolded me also had their braids cut off by the police, so I didn't get scolded anymore; but I didn't go to the countryside. .”

N showed a very smug look, but suddenly his face sank again:

"Now you idealists, you're yelling about women cutting their hair, and you're going to create a lot of people who don't get anything and suffer!"

"Aren't there women who have cut their hair now, so they can't get into the school, or are they expelled from the school?"

"Reform, where are the weapons? Work-study, where are the factories?"

"Keep it still and marry someone else to be a daughter-in-law: forget everything and still be happy, if you remember something about equality and freedom, you will suffer for a lifetime!"

"I would like to ask you, borrowing the words of Alzibasev: You have promised the emergence of the golden age to the descendants of these people, but what have you given to these people themselves?"

"Ah, until the whip of creation reaches China's spine, China will always be the same China, and I will never change a single hair by myself!"

"Since you don't have poisonous fangs in your mouths, why do you have to paste the two big characters 'viper' on your foreheads to attract beggars to kill them?..."

The more N said it, the more bizarre it became, but when she saw that I didn't want to listen, she immediately shut up and stood up to take her hat.

I said, "Go back?"

He replied, "Yes, it's going to rain."

I quietly walked him to the door.

He put on his hat and said:

"Goodbye! Please forgive me for disturbing me. Fortunately, tomorrow is not Double Ten Day, and we can all forget it."

October [-].

This article was originally published on October [-], [-] in Shanghai's "Current Affairs News Xuedeng".

Storm
On the soil field near the river, the sun gradually absorbed his yellow light.The tallow tree leaves next to the river on the sidelines were dry enough to catch their breath, and a few moth-footed mosquitoes were humming and dancing underneath.In the smog of the farmhouse facing the river, the smoke from the kitchen gradually decreased, and the women and children poured some water on the dirt field in front of their gates, and put down the small tables and low stools; everyone knew that it was already dinner time.

Old men and men sat on low stools, shaking big plantain fans and chatting, children ran like flying, or squatted under tallow trees to play with stones.The woman brought out black steamed vegetables and pine flower yellow rice, which were hot and smoking.The literati's wine boat passed by on the river. When the literati saw it, they became very excited and said, "No thoughts and no worries, this is really Tianjiale!"

But Wenhao's words were a little untrue, because they didn't hear what old lady Jiujin said.At this time, the old lady Jiujin was furious, and she tapped on the foot of the stool with a broken plantain fan and said:
"I've lived to be 79 years old. I've lived enough. I don't want to see these prodigal figures. It's better to die. I'm going to eat immediately, and I also eat fried beans. The family is poor!"

Liujin, Yi's great-granddaughter, was running from the opposite side holding a handful of beans. Seeing this, she ran straight to the river, hid behind a tallow tree, stretched out her small head at the corners of her sap, and said loudly, "This old man is not dead!" of!"

Although the old lady Jiujin lived a long life, her ears were not very deaf, but she didn't hear what the child said, and she still said to herself, "This is really not as good as the next generation!"

The habit of this village is a bit special. When a woman gives birth to a child, she likes to use a scale to weigh it, so she uses the weight as a nickname.Since celebrating her fiftieth birthday, the old lady Jiujin has gradually changed her mind. She often said that when Yi was young, the weather was not as hot as it is now, and the beans were not as hard as they are now; in short, the times are not right now. .What's more, Liujin was three catties less than Yi's great-grandfather, and seven catties less than Yi's father, another one catty less. This is really an undeniable example.So Yi said vigorously again, "This is really not as good as one generation!"

Yi's daughter-in-law ① Qijin's sister-in-law was walking to the table with a rice basket in her hands, she threw the rice basket on the table, and said angrily, "Your old man said that again. When Liujin was born, it wasn't six catty five Two? Your family’s scale is a private scale, with a weighted scale, 18 two scales; with the accuracy of 14, our six catties should be more than seven catties. I think it is the grandfather and father-in-law, and it may not be exactly nine It weighs a lot, and the scale used may be [-] taels..."

"One generation is not as good as one generation!"

Qijin's sister-in-law hadn't answered, she suddenly saw Qijin turning out from the entrance of the alley, she turned her direction, and shouted at him, "Why did you come back at this time, dead body, where did you die! No matter who is waiting for you to eat! "

Although Qijin lives in the countryside, he already has a sense of prosperity.From his grandfather to him, the three generations have not held the handle of a hoe; as usual, he also helps others prop up the boat, once a day, enters the city from Luzhen in the morning, and returns to Luzhen in the evening, so he knows some current events: for example Somewhere, Lei Gong killed the centipede spirit; somewhere, the girl gave birth to a nightshade or something like that.Among the villagers, he is indeed already a character.But in summer, I don’t light up the lights when I eat, but I still stick to the farming habit, so I should be scolded for going home too late.

Qijin held the six-foot-long Xiangfei bamboo pipe with an ivory-mouthed white copper bucket in one hand, walked slowly with his head down, and sat on a low stool.Liu Jin also took advantage of the situation and slipped out, sat beside him and called him Daddy.Qijin didn't respond.

"One generation is not as good as one generation!" Old lady Jiujin said.

Qijin slowly raised his head, sighed and said, "The emperor is sitting in the Dragon Court."

Mrs. Qijin was stunned for a moment, then she suddenly realized, "That's great, isn't this the emperor's grace to pardon me again?"

Qijin sighed again and said, "I don't have braids."

"Does the emperor want braids?"

"The emperor wants braids."

"How do you know?" Mrs. Qijin asked anxiously.

"The people in the Xianheng Hotel all said they wanted it."

At this time, Mrs. Qijin intuitively felt that something was wrong, because the Xianheng Hotel was well informed.As soon as Yi caught sight of Qijin's bald head, she couldn't help getting angry, blaming him for hating him and resenting him; suddenly she became desperate again, packed a bowl of rice, pushed in front of Qijin, and said, "Let's hurry up and eat your meal! With a sad face, will it grow braids?"

(End of this chapter)