1
During that time, the town’s veterinarian, Liu, a balding middle-aged man with a green canvas bag and a thick steel needle, visited more than once to give injections to sick, fat pigs.
The room was dimly lit, topped by beams of eucalyptus trees, covered in blue tiles blackened by soot and wood. Veterinarian Liu hands down on his waist, frowning, looking at the paralyzed pig, finally shook his head, tut a voice, “no, kill it.”
Grandpa handed over a piece of five-ox hard gold, struck a match, lit one for himself, and said nothing more.
To kill the pig, I invited master Chen, a butcher in town. The back of the long knife was round and rusty, but the blade was sharp and shining. The knife was very decisive, so I lifted the long knife, put up a small lunge, stabbed the pig in the chest, and then pulled it out quickly.
Grandpa still hands over a wuniu, strikes a match, and lights himself — golden Wuniu from Chengdu, soft jade from Yunnan, are the most popular cheap cigarettes across the southern hilly regions of Sichuan.
The pork that died of illness, the next day by grandfather take zigong to sell. Get up early, in the bamboo basket lined with a piece of plastic film, eat breakfast, took me out of the door. There was a light mist floating in the depths of the tian Wan, and silver dew settled on the hay.
Buses of that time also carried black rubber airbags on their roofs. At a crowded railway entrance, rainbows of oilcloth were spread and strips of red and white meat were placed on it. Grandpa did not peddle, but waited for people to ask. Some people say that pigs die of illness, grandpa denied, that attitude, even I look do not believe.
By mid-afternoon, when the meat had sold out, it was past three in the afternoon when I packed up my things and went to my great-grandfather’s janitor’s room. There was a huge clock in the porter’s room. The pendulum swung and it ticked. Grandpa put down his back basket, sat down on an armchair and smoked a cigarette. He handed one to his great-grandfather without any respect or formality, nor offering anything to him.
“Have you had your meal yet?” asked great-grandfather, smiling. “Yes,” said grandfather, with a sullen face. I heard, almost shouted, we did not eat, grandpa did not look at me.
“What did you come down for?” The great-grandfather’s question was also based on the fact that he never visited him simply, at least not on the surface. Most of the people in this family are in this style, and all the impractical practices are eliminated, especially the meaningless emotional communication.
“Sick pig, kill take some meat down to sell.” Grandpa smacked his lips when he smoked. In the bankrupt shoe factory guard room far away from downtown, each time the two old men spit, it seems very long.
“Pigs don’t sell for money when they die. Next season it’s going to be worse.” Grandpa finally spoke again.
“It’s much worse.”
“Less.”
Great – grandfather staggered out of the chair, stooped, moved slowly into the room, rustling his clothes, and came out a moment later with a stack of silver hundred dollar bills in his hand.
“Here is a thousand dollars, use first, not enough to say.”
Grandpa held the cigarette in his mouth, stretched out his hand to take the money, without counting or thanking him, put it into the wrinkled old square black handbag, zipped it up, put it back on the chair next to him, and pressed it gently with his hand, as if it were a small animal, afraid it would move.
“It’s getting late, Rahee. Let’s get ready to go back.” He’ll be gone in a few minutes after he gets his money.
2
My grandfather was then in his fifties, tanned and thick-muscled, with his deltoid muscles plump and angular, his pants pulled up to reveal his strong Achilles tendon. He liked to wear a scarlet vest, white and ragged.
Home land scattered in several places, changshan soil is dry land, spring evergreen wheat, summer followed by corn sweet potato, dry field is not fixed, there is water to grow rice, no water to grow rapeseed. Gentle hills, formed in the middle of the depression, the terrain from high to low, the lowest place is called “chong bottom”, here the most moist and fertile soil, grandpa’s most important part of the ground in the “Chong bottom”.
Early in the spring, Yan Fei, grandpa began to go to the field, digging the silted mud, green water celery turned to the bottom of the mud. Circle an area, wipe the wet mud with a dish, and then cut into several long square, on the top of the seed, flexible bamboo sticks inserted in the water, bent into an arch, covered with white plastic film, make a simple greenhouse for seedlings.
Transplanting rice is a skill. I have learned it from him many times, but I have never succeeded. Mingming sank into the mud, and after a while, they all floated up again. Before transplanting, the field again apply nitrogen fertilizer and phosphorus fertilizer, nitrogen fertilizer blunt nose, phosphorus fertilizer slightly better, put in the white woven bag to carry to the edge of the field, plastic ladle ladle full, directly to the field.
Grandpa never wore shoes when he went to the field, his trousers were rolled up to his thighs, and he pulled out the seedlings. He made a handful of seedlings as thick as his arms with dry grain and grass. Dozens of seedlings were in the baskets, which were carried far away.
Grandpa buried himself in work, rarely talk, his waist always bowed, his legs constantly moving back, left hand end seedling, right hand fast twist, catch the roots of the seedlings, firmly toward the water press. Finish a furrow just go ashore, with a large aluminum cup of tea water, with chemical preparation like “ten drops of water” to cool off, and then take out wuniu or jade, even smoke two or three, throw away cigarette butts, and went into the field. The first time inserted, but also to repair seedlings, for a few days, he would turn so, see the seedlings floating, immediately to repair.
By the time the seedlings grew tall, tough and dense in the fields, grandpa could not relax — the grain was not in the barn, the mind was unsettled, the slightest mishap deprived him of a whole year’s livelihood — and the memory of starvation impressed him so much that his legs swelled with hunger.
“Come on, go and see Yangko, do you want to go, Raxi?”
I couldn’t remember which year it was. In the afternoon, grandpa went to see the field as usual. The rice had grown very tall, neat, dense, and oily green.
At that time, I felt that such a life is so peaceful and beautiful, so I asked my grandfather, “How to plant rice seedlings, so as not to float up?”
There was a long silence before he said, “You don’t want to learn that.”
Grandpa had a blue-gray suit with a silky nylon inside pocket. For several days, I could feel the smooth paper money, but I was afraid to take it out. I thought it was very large and would cost at least 10 yuan.
In the afternoon, it was raining. Grandpa and grandma were watching TV in the main room. I pretended to take a nap, climbed into bed, found a blue-gray suit, felt in my pocket, the money was still there, took out a look, and sure enough, it was 10 yuan, a drab old coin, the pattern is a few simple and strong workers.
The game room room into the latest PLAYSTATION, an hour 1.5, has been watching others play, hand already itchy.
That day a lot of children watching, suddenly someone said, Raxi must have stolen home money. When I heard this, my heart became confused. Before the time was up, I threw away the game controller and hurried out.
Walking down the street, I feel like I’m being stared at by a lot of people. Out of the town, into the wilderness, from the back mountain path around home, the rest of the money buried in the leaves. Back home, they were still watching The Legend of The White Bride on the 14-inch black and white TV set in the main room.
After dinner, grandpa realized the money was gone, and as they talked quietly, I became more and more upset.
“Did you take grandpa’s money?” My grandmother came to ask me, in a mild, unreproachful tone. I said no.
Grandma did not give up, continue to say, “This is grandpa to Zigong to do flowers travel expenses, the last ten yuan, lovely, take you out is.”
I couldn’t help it. Shame, inexplicable grievance, tears rolling out, still in denial, “No, I didn’t.”
My grandma went away. A few weeks later, my grandpa went to Zigong to make flowers. He traveled dozens of kilometers back and forth, all on foot.
3
Grandpa’s educated youth identity, has long been unable to identify. It was only in the most obscure scenes that his impressions, deeply engraved in his mind, came to light.
The house was a three-bed courtyard with white brick and dark brown tiles. My great-grandmother came home earlier than my great-grandfather and lived in the smallest room. She had been wrapped enough hours, walking inconvenient, eating and drinking lazaretto are in the house, where there are no Windows, only the top two glazed tiles into some light. Great – grandmother used to moan at night and recite the exorcism scriptures.
Whenever my great-grandmother chanted sutras, my grandfather hated it and would lose his temper at night, and my grandmother would not dare to say anything about faith in Bodhisattva. Every time to incense, grandma did not dare to say, changed the clean clothes and shoes, just said to see uncle.
The Bodhisattva Temple is on the top of a low hill. I walk five or six miles from my home, climb two low hills, give incense to bodhisattvas, and knock my head over my head. Then I have a fast meal in the courtyard of my uncle and aunt, and sit and listen to the old people. Fortunately, grandpa never asked.
When I was a child, I often got up early. When the day was just getting bright, the sparrows in the bamboo forest behind the house were calling densely, crisp as sharp bamboo leaves after rain. Wake up open eyes, muddled to see the roof bright white glazed tile, under the bed, find slippers on the ground, came to the yard, grandma in the kitchen, cooking firewood stove pig food and breakfast, I called her a, she back, up ah.
One day, As usual, I came to the edge of the yard, the rape in the dry fields had not yet grown high, the hillside buried in the distance in the mist. There is a shadow in the fog, I have been watching the shadow approaching, only to identify an old man, leaning on a stick, body slowly bent forward.
He came to me in a blue-gray suit, dirty, torn, wrinkled, his lips slightly parted, his teeth few. He slowly raised his smudged hand, palm up, to me. He tried to speak, but there was only a vague faint hum in his throat.
Hearing my cry, grandma ran out of the kitchen at once. The old man wanted something to eat. The porridge was still steaming in a large white porcelain bowl, and she deliberately strained the soup to save the rice, which had not yet fully swollen. That day, grandma also specially told grandpa not to say, she also gave the money. “The Bodhisattva says, do good.”
People around grandpa, most people talk about ghosts and gods.
His six aunts, My name is Six zu, was at that time the village’s most prestigious old man. She stood on the ridge high in the field and watched us children passing by. Suddenly she cried out in compassion, “We old people have had enough. The world is going to end. She thought we didn’t understand, but I was stunned and dismayed.
Summer night, the temperature began to turn cool, the courtyard of the storage room is very wide, a few elders in the village love here to enjoy the cool, smoking, laughing, talking about the harvest. The moon rose higher and higher from the distant hill-top, shining brightly in the courtyard, a slight wind blowing in the open field, and the rice-straw rice-rice-straw rattling noisily.
The lame man, a double amputee who smokes grass, says that in distant places, hanging coffins on the cliffs, zombies live; in the depths of the hills, there are ghost walls that make people lose their way; Fang Ye is railroad retires a worker, there is the double tube hunting gun that hits an eagle in the home, raising sinister shiba Inu, he says one day in the middle of the night wakes up, see the old man with a full head of white hair standing before the bed, he takes hunting gun, old man with white hair disappeared however.
But only grandpa never told ghost stories, he spent his life talking about his materialistic thoughts, and even had a certain intellectual superiority because of it. “If you say there are ghosts or immortals,” he scoffs at his great-grandmother’s exorcism incantations in her dark room, and she offers her goddess of mercy three times a year. “Who will catch me one?”
4
It was around the time when I entered junior high school that my great-grandfather returned to his hometown and settled down. At that time, my uncle, my grandfather’s eldest son, built a new house. It was a beautiful two-story house with a spacious courtyard and dazzling white tiles on the outside walls.
One Spring Festival, my great-grandfather suddenly called me and my cousin into the dining room. Looking mysterious and mysterious, he told us to pull up the couplets and stand in the distance with our hands behind our backs, smiling and looking pleased. The room was mixed with ink, gas and stale leftovers. I still remember the couplets, which read “fighting corruption, building a clean government and maintaining integrity” on the top, “getting rid of the old and creating a new wind” on the bottom, and “Building a well-off society together” on the horizontal.
“Now that you are in junior high school, you should know about couplets.” “My great grandfather looked at the couplet and said,” Our two brothers had to go along with it. Then he added impassioned, “You go and hang me at the gate of the town hall.”
We looked at each other, not knowing what to do. Still hesitating, the grandfather walked in, and when he heard what the great-grandfather was going to do, he became very angry. “You don’t want to mess with these useless things!”
It was the first time I had ever seen grandpa speak so harshly, almost as if he were scolding his father. Much of what my great-grandfather had done before then had been met with contempt or indifference. The rest of the family came and stopped my great-grandfather’s “big-character poster”. He sighed, and the compromise resulted in hanging the couplets on his front door.
My cousin and I moved the table out, and build a stool, it took a long time to put up the pair of lengthen couplets, the top extends to the roof.
Great-grandfather lived next door to him, and there was the old wall clock ticking all day long, and a high pile of books on the wooden table, all about gardening, and there were hundreds of POTS of plants he had grown himself.
Many a sunny warm day, I will look at the great grandfather sat a depreciation on blue plastic chairs, seats, sitting beside on soft jade, or gold WuNiu, cock slender legs, long time sitting quietly, carefree, puffing, rise to write a few Chinese calligraphy, split when he was young and handsome lips, walked over to told me the dangers of masturbation.
The two men seemed to be diametrically opposed to each other. The grandfather was silent, gloomy, taciturn, and the great-grandfather was cheerful, cheerful, and talkative. Born in the Republic of China and married in an arranged marriage, he taught in a primary school on the outskirts of Zigong. In the 1950s, he was elected as a deputy to the people’s Congress at the township level.
Grandpa is also a gardener, but he doesn’t love flowers and plants. He doesn’t care about the things in the yard. Flowers and plants have totally different meanings for him and his son.
5
After some time, the six ancestors who said the end of the world was coming died. The cancer is terminal, give up treatment to go home, park in the old house next to mine, wait for last breath. The sixth grandfather is the sixth brother’s wife, also is the grandfather’s close aunt. But even so, grandpa’s behavior was, in the eyes of the neighbors, a little too good.
Six ancestors a prosperous, knee not lack of people to take care of, at home waiting for the old of that time, grandpa is as attentive as a son. Every day he would sit in front of the slanting couch, carrying water and urinating, taking care of himself. The reason behind it was explained to me by my grandmother later.
In the late 1950s, there were only two people in the small town who were admitted to the high school. Grandpa was one of them. He could have studied in a normal school, and then he would become a teacher soon after graduation. But his heart is big, chose high school, want to go to college.
High school in another town, the hilly area of the rugged mountain road, more than 30 kilometers back and forward, a two-hour walk, grandpa every day before dawn would get up, home at night it was dark.
By then, the commune in southern Sichuan had begun to run out of food. He went to his great grandfather, a teacher, and asked for money. My great-grandmother had her feet tied around her. She could not hide her identity. She took several children with her, ate too much, worked too little and was despised everywhere. In the communal canteen, someone deliberately rammed great-grandmother, the bowl of rice bowl fell to the ground and broke, only larger pieces of pottery could be used to serve porridge. Grandpa is seventeen or eighteen years old, is the age of long health, daily reading, hungry so pale and thin.
Soon, some people into the “swollen hospital”, the treatment of edema therapy is to eat some porridge every day, well go out, not good, into the hole in the col.
Among the Sichuanese, Liuzu was a tall woman with a good relationship with the commune cadres, so she got an easy job in the production team and was responsible for feeding pigs. Grandpa was already hungry and his legs were swollen. Therefore, the sixth ancestors saved the grain for pigs, moldy corn and sweet potatoes, and secretly cooked them for grandpa at night. There were nine great-grandmothers with bound feet, but only three survived, while grandpa survived by eating pig food.
Later, grandpa did not have the opportunity to enter the university. In his sophomore year, the school implemented the policy to send him back to his hometown to receive the re-education of poor and lower-middle school peasants, and he became a “returned educated youth”.
6
Grandpa had a grudge against his great-grandfather, but he only told grandma about it.
Indeed, in all these years, I never heard my grandfather call my great-grandfather a father. My grandfather and two siblings all called my great-grandfather “Fourth Master”. My great-grandfather hated arranged marriages. He taught away from home all the year round and seldom went home. He even stayed at school during holidays.
When my grandfather returned to the countryside to plant crops in the production team, he became a custodian because he could write and calculate. In this position, he was “scolded” by his family because he would not reach out to the warehouse.
The commune high school was short of a substitute teacher, and my grandfather, who was then a “rare” middle school student, thought he was a suitable candidate. But a lot of people have their eyes on the job and it’s a relationship job. The grandfather went to the great-grandfather to ask if he could make a connection or deliver something. The great-grandfather was a primary school principal and elected to the rural People’s Congress, but he scolded his son to his face.
My grandmother relayed what my great-grandfather had said, to the effect that you should not engage in such evil practices, but go back and perform well and win the trust of the organization.
Grandpa came home empty-handed, instead of going through the back door, and a much less educated man became a substitute teacher.
By the end of the 1970s, grandpa was in his 40s, working in the fields on the edge of town. The educated youth who walks 30 kilometers to school every day has become a middle-aged farmer with a tan.
The system of substitution was introduced, and both the grandfather and the youngest brother could take over the great grandfather’s position as a teacher.
Finally, the opportunity came to the youngest. The great-grandfather thought that his younger son was not married and needed a decent job. But yao ye replaced the result is that the teacher post into a canteen handyman, grandpa will always stay in the outskirts of the town surrounded by mountains on three sides.
A father and son, enemies for life
It wasn’t until many years later that great-grandfather passed along one of his planters and a huge flower shears, like two long intersecting knives. My great-grandfather retired to work as a janitor in a shoe factory. As a gardener, he was an occasional helper, earning a modest salary.
Grandpa in his 50 already, with that cut the huge flower, he finally started to go to work, live to now, this is his first “work”, before leaving for a few days, he began to prepare: let grandma to find out a pile of clothes, in the only glass tiles in the light of the room, picked up the clothes than try, finally chose that often wear colored hair clothing. Dressed, grandpa stood silently in the room, no mirror to look at, but raised his hands to gently press the collar, glazed tiles through the bright light, you could see countless flying dust. The light fell on his slightly arched back as if from an old statue.
Before dawn, he was dressed and standing in the main room. He took out his huge flower shears, put them in a clean woven bag and wrapped them round and round, in a bamboo basket, and some other utensils, a simple aluminum lunch box, pliers, scissors, a new towel to wipe off sweat, and a square leather bag with a wrinkled surface.
Check a thing, pick up the back rope, throw the basket to the back, another hand through another back rope, and deliberately pull a pull back dress corner, walked. Grandma and I stood at the edge of the yard, watching him disappear into the mist in the distance.
7
Before my great-grandfather died, those images were always in my head.
On a sunny day, he sat in his old plastic chair, crossed his legs for a cigarette, and was asked for “career advice” by a young man who was to become a lecturer at an engineering university.
Grandpa was drying food in the yard. On the clean concrete floor, thick and golden corn cobs were spread. The white tiles on the wall reflected the golden light all over the floor, shining and dazzling.
His great-grandfather had a heart attack in 2006, and after a rescue attempt, he was on medication.
For a while, great-grandfather seemed to be much better, but he was still in a happy mood, smiling with his thin lips, joking with his toothless great-grandmother, smoking cigarettes with his legs crossed, trying to plant the latest flowers he could find, lifting his watering can and shuffling to the balcony to splash water on his favorite plants. Grandpa still does not help him take care of the plants, advised him to stop tossing, but it is no use.
Great – grandfather needed a quick remedy. The day before their quarrel, the great grandfather felt ill and gave him money to buy medicine in Zigong.
“Boss, I’m out of medicine, you hurry to get me some.” Great – grandfather used endearment all the time.
The next day, my great-grandfather asked if he had bought the medicine, and he felt that his health was failing.
Not yet, grandpa coldly replied.
“You know very well that this medicine saved my life. Why don’t you hurry up? Do you want me to die soon?”
As with all things in life, Grandpa chose silence.
Soon after, the great-grandfather fell ill again and was rushed to the hospital for a final rescue.
The funeral took place in the old house, the body in the main room, above the coffin, was a faded picture of a pine sunset that a friend, a professor, had sent to the town when my great-grandfather was 80.
On the night of the wake, grandpa was silent for a long time, smoking his favorite golden five-ox cigarette. Thick smoke spilled from his mouth and rose upward, obscuring his dark eyes. After midnight, he told us all to go inside and sleep. “Just watch.” The materialistic old man scorned his father’s funeral process like a bodhisattva.
The next morning, the dry grass was dewy as the great-grandfather’s body was carried to the crematorium. It was a large place, with tall yellow fruit trees whitened by the ash from the crematorium. Waiting for a break, the men smoked to pass the time, the aunt sat beside, her eyes red and swollen with tears, and occasionally sobbing, and the grandfather squeezed himself into the crowd, smoking his five golden cows.
When the order was finally reached, the blue-uniformed staff began the operation to carry out the great-grandfather’s body, and the aunt burst into tears as her stiff face appeared again in front of her relatives.
Relatives and friends formed a semicircle a short distance away as the body was placed on the conveyor belt. The machine started up and the conveyor belt crawled forward. The door of the crematorium burst open with a roar of fire. Grandpa suddenly rushed out of the crowd, kneeling in front of the body, loudly shouted, “Old handle son (father), allow (forever) farewell!”
I watched in amazement as my grandfather made the most dramatic expression of emotion I can remember, for the first time in his life, using fatherly terms to refer to his dead great-grandfather. It was a piercing cry that seemed to go through a century.
8
After the death of his great-grandfather, grandfather took over the flowers and plants on the balcony, he took out a complete set of equipment, with powerful pliers trim the hard branches, with a long knife like big flowers cut to build verdant leaves, with a delicate small spade for the ochre red flower pot loose soil, he carried a special spray, for their watering.
The next year, the yard of flowers, the last time in full bloom, those chrysanthemums the year before in place, bloom, still like a warm fire.
At that time, grandpa’s body had also begun to slip, from the old house to grandpa’s new house, less than a mile, to stop three times.
In his last years, he talked about his death at dinner.
“Death is not to be feared,” he declares with far-fetched confidence. That year, one of my grandfather’s Cousins died, and when he was buried, he was still at the head of the pack, carrying the heavy load and helping the coffin to the ground. The moment the coffin fell, he immediately like blood and gas rushed to the top, fell on the spot in the sweet potato field. Heart disease, too.
Many years later, I was able to replace the shame of seeing that scene with a deep sense of compassion:
Grandfather lay in bed, emaciated and filthy. It suddenly hit me that this was not what he had been like — struggling with no dignity in the face of hunger and death, surviving on pig food — decades later, at 68, he was still struggling and screaming with no dignity, losing his last vestige of decency in front of his children and grandchildren.
“I’m going to die,” he said, his neck slightly tilted, and he let out a cry of despair. He was not asking for help. After these four words, there was no other demand. He saw death close at hand, and felt a complete horror that he would cry out. Then he died in a hurry.
Grandma later said that grandpa didn’t go to buy his great-grandfather medicine in time that day. In fact, he had a heart attack of his own. He found coronary heart disease in high school, until later after onset, no second person knows. He thought he could not afford it.
Grandpa couldn’t walk a long way, but he didn’t think of asking anyone else to buy it.
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